With the cross-party bill on marriage equality likely to be introduced next week, debate is hotting up. In a show of solidarity, the owners of Canberra airport greeted arriving politicians with a rainbow light show and Australian Marriage Equality’s new national campaign slogan, #WeCanDoThis.
Marriage equality opponents, The Marriage Alliance, have hit the airwaves with a new advertising campaign with the slogan “there’s more to it than you think”.
The Marriage Alliance says it’s funded by individual donors with founding directors including former investment banker Jim Dominguez, Prof Ashley Goldsworthy, the former Australian Liberal Party President who along with company Director Mark Phillips has also had involvement in Catholic education.
The Alliance says it wants to save Australia from what it calls “a populous wave of ill-conceived cultural redefinition”.
“It’s time to step back and consider all the issues around same sex marriage. Like how it will affect children or sex education in schools or what rights you could lose.”
They claim legalising same sex marriage could cost people their right to privacy, and their freedom of speech and beliefs.
An article in the Age by Patrick Parkinson, a professor of law at the University of Sydney and a founder of Freedom for Faith, elaborates on these concerns.
He suggests that authorised celebrants and staff of registry offices and people who have built businesses in the wedding industry ought to have a right of conscientious objection.
If private business people choose to turn away customers, so be it, but staff at registry offices are government employees who have a legal obligation to do their job, regardless of their personal political or religious views.
Professor Parkinson said “those who advocate for a change to the law need to consider how to respect the rights of those who hold traditional views, including our ethnic minorities and many Indigenous Australians.”
That’s news to me that Indigenous Australians hold traditional views on marriage. And just how and when did that happen? In the missions and orphanages where they were being sexually and physically abused by their religious “protectors”?
Parkinson points out that “The great majority of our recent migrants come from countries that hold to traditional views about family life.” Some of them also come from countries where female genital mutilation is an accepted practice. Some come from countries where an adulterous woman gets stoned to death or where drinking alcohol is punished by public whipping.
In our multicultural society we must indeed respect the rights of our ethnic minorities just as they must respect the rights of others. Muslim and Jewish people do not eat pork but that doesn’t mean that it is not sold in supermarkets.
Those that campaign against halal certification for food are often the same people who are against marriage equality. They insist we respect their beliefs but are not willing to do so for others.
In an interesting view, Parkinson says “It ought to be unlawful for people to suffer discrimination because they express traditional views.”
I don’t see anyone who is against same-sex marriage being discriminated against but the discrimination in not allowing SSM is obvious. Parkinson says that freedom of speech is under attack because opponents are being called bigots. Considering a bigot is “a person who is intolerant towards those holding different opinions”, I would suggest that the label is appropriate.
The Professor says that “Religious freedom is in Australia’s DNA” and goes on to cite the example of Lutherans who established the South Australian wine industry after fleeing religious persecution in Germany.
“We owe it to the nation to ensure that their descendants – faithful, decent and useful citizens – continue to enjoy freedom of religion and conscience, without fear of persecution for their beliefs about marriage.”
And what do we owe to our LGBTI community?
“Labor, being the major party advocating change, needs to advance policies for how to protect its left-behind believers, and indeed those of other political persuasions or none, who might otherwise suffer hardship or discrimination on account of their beliefs if the law changes.”
Oh for pity’s sake.
As one commenter said:
Those who oppose SSM on religious grounds simply need to understand the difference between these two statements:
“I can’t do this because it’s against my religious beliefs”.
“YOU can’t do this because it’s against my religious beliefs”.
