Ninety-two Days of Hate
The Rise of Homophobia Under Malcolm Turnbull
Homophobia in Australia is on the rise. This is not an accident. It is the outcome of Malcolm Turnbull’s survey in the long-running fight for marriage equality. As a result of this political mechanism, Australia is now worse off in terms of social cohesion than it was before. A new-found confidence in bigotry has arisen and alliances have been formed by disparate homophobic groups. They are more organised than ever they were before, and more abusive. Regardless of the outcome, it is an important time to identify who is responsible and who benefits from this rise. The effects on LGBTI Australians have been devastating, not least because the survey was so pointless, so expensive and so avoidable.
Origins of the Survey
We now know how this thing started. Tony Abbott, the implacable enemy of LGBTI rights in this country, did everything he could as Prime Minister to stop marriage equality from occurring in Australia. He was John Howard’s disciple and a Minister in the former Prime Minister’s Government when in 2004, Howard changed the Marriage Act. Howard announced the changes publicly, rushed into the Parliament and in under an hour, the legislation was passed, without a referendum, without a plebiscite, without a survey, without so much as a by your leave. Done and dusted in five minutes, got through the Parliament by Liberal National Party superior numbers. Where there was no gender or sexuality specified before this o’er hasty change in the law, there was now a stipulation in the Act that had to be read at all marriage ceremonies.
Marriage means the union of a man and a woman to the exclusion of all others, voluntarily entered into for life.
Abbott, being the conservative Catholic and former seminarian he is, was completely on board with this change, which is consistent with his admission on 60 Minutes when asked about homosexuality that he would “probably feel a bit threatened … as most people do” and “There is no doubt that it challenges, if you like, orthodox notions of the right order of things”. When he took the leadership, Abbott did political cartwheels to prevent marriage equality, with the view to putting as much impediment as possible in its way to slow its progress, until it could be stopped forever.
Thus it was we understand that recently retired WA Catholic conservative Senator Chris Back came up with the idea of a plebiscite as a way to impede progress and try to have the change voted down by populist vote spruiked with a powerful fear campaign. This would avoid a quick decision in the Parliament. Abbott, who had called his marathon five hour Coalition meeting, jumped at the strategy, took ownership of it and understood that with a plebiscite, he had had a win over the LGBTI community when the party room endorsed it. Malcolm Turnbull, forever the hollow man, argued against it but did not carry the day.
A plebiscite would be held after the following election. Yet more waiting. Lyle Shelton, the head of the Australian Christian Lobby, wrote gleefully after the Coalition Party room vote on the conservative American blogsite Heritage Foundation that the decision had the effect of “kicking the issue into the long grass” and “blunting” the momentum of the marriage equality lobby.
We know the history. Not once, but twice, the Senate voted down the enabling legislation that would allow the plebiscite mechanism to be set up. The plebiscite, the opponents of marriage equality’s best play, was dead and buried and marriage equality in Australia was stalled. Again.
Intention of the Survey
The intention of the Survey was to derail marriage equality. Enter Peter Dutton, the new leader of the conservative side of Liberal politics once Abbott had been replaced by Turnbull, and the self-appointed heir-apparent to the leadership after Turnbull is gone. Dutton, an arch conservative and viewed as a virtual sociopath by the Left over his callous treatment of refugees on Pacific Islands, is, no surprise, publicly and vehemently opposed to marriage equality. No doubt with the intention of shoring up his own support among the conservative ranks of his party, he resurrected Abbott’s plebiscite in part and suggested instead, a survey. It would get around the Parliament, which in itself is a highly dubious strategy. It would be run by the Australian Bureau of Statistics and not the Australian Electoral Commission, which exempted it from various electoral laws. It would be non-compulsory, because they couldn’t make it compulsory by law, and thus making it non-representative. It would be non-binding, because it would only be a glorified voluntary opinion poll, and could therefore be ignored, which a number of conservatives were quick out of the gates to say that they would do just that if it returned a Yes vote. Eric Abetz was one of them.
From a political point of view, this survey was always a way for Malcolm Turnbull to placate his right flank. He has been a weak and enfeebled leader since the the very day he took the job from Tony Abbott, having bound himself to many of Abbott’s policies as a means to obtain the Prime Ministership and incentivise the conservatives to desert Abbott in a leadership spill after Abbott’s polls descended through the floor over a period of thirty consecutive fortnightly Newspolls. Turnbull got the numbers, but it was a Pyrrhic victory in that he lost his soul in the conquest and has never once stood up to either Abbott or the hard Right of his party.
Thus Turnbull, in whom both the Left and the Right pinned much hope, has been the do-nothing Prime Minister, unable to act, unable to stand up for the things he believes in, locked in between silent moderates and a noisy strident conservative backbench. As a progressive thinker, he has been a supporter of LGBTI people, but he has allowed his opponents in his own party to play him woefully, such that not only was he not able to support us in a free vote in the Parliament (where any legislation must inevitably end up), he has allowed the LGBTI community, real people with real lives, to become the plaything of internal party politics.
After John Howard took the party so far to the Right and then Tony Abbott took it even further Right (to the consternation of the electorate), there has been a war within the Liberals for the heart and soul of the party. Many were hoping Turnbull would drag the party back to the centre, but the conservatives have not given up without a fight. And no-where is that fight more pronounced than in the two policy areas of climate change and marriage equality. As a result, the LGBTI community has been kicked around from pillar to post through this survey, had our lives and relationships evaluated and degraded, all the while having a smug and fatuous Turnbull giving us lectures about democracy and giving the people a say. What was it Hamlet said about his fratricidal uncle? “Meet it is I set it down that one may smile, and smile, and be a villain”. This was never about democracy or giving the people a say. It was only ever a ploy by Abbott to stop marriage equality and then by Turnbull, to keep his own job. Hang the LGBTI community!
A disgrace, and a disgrace that will not be forgotten.
Legislating Marriage Equality
Rarely in our history since Federation has there been an issue of legislation that has been so laboured for such a long time. The first attempts at any marriage equality reform in the Australian Parliament were in 2004 as reactions against what John Howard did to the Marriage Act in the same year. That is thirteen years ago. And we’ve had thirteen years of attempts at reform ever since.
It has always been assumed that any change would come through the normal channels of parliamentary debate. That is, the Government typically would put up a bill to be debated and it would subsequently be voted on in both Houses and if passed, then sent off to the Governor-General for Royal Assent. That is how we make laws in Australia. It is an excellent system and it has stood us in good stead for a long time. We have had exemplary social cohesion and we are one of the few democracies around the world not to have had a civil war.
This is what we don’t do. We do not have a tradition or culture of populist decision making. In fact, we have actively eschewed that type of governance which is so transparently open to abuse and corruption. We don’t like referenda, as they rarely pass. And we don’t like plebiscites, having only had three of them ever, two during the Great War, brought on by Billy Hughes over conscription, and one in 1977 over the national anthem. With the amount of broad support, the trajectory was to have a bill brought before the Parliament and have it voted on in a free vote. Marriage equality was supported by a majority of the people, a majority of parliamentarians, by the Prime Minister, by the Leader of the Opposition, by business, by unions, by education, by young people and by a majority of Christians and many clergy. There should have been a free vote in the Parliament. Instead, we have wasted $122 million, or put another way, spent $122 million harming people in order to keep one sector of Australian society from being treated like everyone else.
There will still have to be a vote in the Parliament regardless and it will be based on the kinds of numbers that we already knew, that we have known for a long time.
Who Wanted the Survey?
Well certainly not the LGBTI community. We knew that it would be incredibly harmful to us as a group, which is why we fought so hard to stop its predecessor, the plebiscite. We also knew that it would be divisive to the whole of Australia as it would unleash exactly what we predicted: the bigots, the homophobes, the RWNJs, the unhinged and the angry all aiming their invective and their irrationality at us.
We never wanted this survey.
Essential reported in July that 50% preferred a binding vote in the Parliament and that only 9% wanted a populist vote. A Galaxy poll found that 70% preferred a free vote as soon as possible and among millennials, that figure rose to 86%. There is some contest now over these figures as the fear-mongering strategies (more of that below) of the No side have wittled down support for a free vote a little. To be expected. A Newspoll reported in July that 46% supported a plebiscite, but as the campaign has gone on, that number has dropped to 43% in October, with 50% opposing the survey. Clearly though, by the time the survey was first being bandied around the halls of Parliament House and before the No side started selling their message that the world would effectively end, people had had enough of the issue being pushed “into the long grass” and wanted the Parliament to do its job. Social media was awash with such opinions, often with FGS or FFS starting the message which invariably said words to the effect, “just get on with it, do your jobs and vote”.
So if not the LGBTI community and not the majority of Australians, then who did want the survey? The answer is clear: those firmly on the No side. Makes sense. They understood its origins and intentions. They were the ones who knew that a populist vote would be the easiest by far to corrupt by throwing all sorts of unassociated things into the mix to scare the horses. Let’s name them.
These are the hard Right of the Liberal Party and almost all of the National Party. These are most of the Catholic Bishops, although not all. These are the hierarchy of the Sydney Anglican Diocese and most of its parishes. These are the evangelical Protestant and also pentecostal churches, including churches like Hillsong. These are lobby groups like Marriage Alliance, a Catholic organisation, The Australian Marriage Forum led by Dr David Van Gend, and most odious of all, the Australian Christian Lobby, with its ubiquitous talking Head, Lyle Shelton. These are they who wanted the original plebiscite because they knew it could be gamed, as did its original authors. It is the strident noisy belligerent No advocates who alone wanted the survey. From the numbers, most of Australia I think would have been comfortable with a free vote in the Parliament, and the rest I suspect would have worn it as one of those things they shrugged off and not worried about too much.
Impact of the Survey
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be the target of a bigoted campaign by your government about your civil rights? Well, just ask a gay person or a person in a same sex relationship. We know only too well.
After the conduct of this survey, I now find myself feeling like I am outside the camp. Like I am back at school myself waiting for the cool boys to accept me. LGBTI people have been ‘othered’ by this survey. Our lives and our relationships have been demeaned by opening them up to allow the whole of Australia, including those who hate us, the opportunity to ‘vote’ on our worth. I have never felt more degraded in my life. I have never felt so unappreciated. It feels like I don’t belong in my own country. There is a shame that goes with this. That is the outflow of homophobia: shame. When you are being evaluated, you immediately feel inferior to those who are evaluating you, and there is a shame attached to that.
The survey has unlocked the bigotry and homophobia of some, the hatred and bile of others, the lunacy of still others and afforded these people the biggest and most public stage of their lives to denigrate and disrespect LGBTI people and our relationships. They have organised. And all with the imprimatur of the Australian Government. It is massively and mind-numbingly unfair of our Government to do this to us. It breaks a solemn understanding from Australian governments of both political persuasions, accepted by all of us as a given, that the Government will not harm Australians in the course of governing, and will in fact, do all that is humanly possible to look after its citizenry wherever we are. That is what Commonwealth literally means. In the carriage of this survey, the Liberal National Government of Malcolm Turnbull has failed in this most basic of tasks. Monumentally.
We know that there has been a spike in mental health issues since the advent of the survey. Psychologists like myself and counselling organisations, private and well-known ones like Beyond Blue, have reported an increase in their LGBTI clientele struggling with the stress of this. There have been breakdowns within families as some members declare their vote for the No side, parents, siblings of LGBTI people in conflict as inequality is affirmed.
People with mental illness are struggling. Those with depression or anxiety disorders are being challenged on a daily basis if they just dare connect to social media. Many have called out for help. Many people are having to disconnect regularly from social media as a way to protect their psychological equilibrium. I am one of those. When you are reading day after day how you are not worthy of marriage, how you are a danger to children, how you have no right to marriage as it belongs to the heterosexual world, how you could not possibly be married since you cannot procreate with a same-sex partner, and even, by the the most homophobic arseholes of all, how all those with your sexual orientation are just executing a hidden paedophilic agenda to recruit children, it all gets too much and becomes intolerable. It is draining, degrading and intensely hurtful, and when you know your Government has enabled this, you realise in blinding truth that the LNP are not the friends of the LGBTI community nor will we ever flourish under them. Tragically, I think this has put LGBTI relations in Australia back many years. A heretofore self-censoring homophobia has been unleashed into the public domain where we LGBTI folk are the sole targets and now none of us feels as safe as we did before Turnbull’s Survey of Homophobia was set upon us.
Australian researcher Dr Sharon Dane who was one of the researchers of the post-referendum Irish experience wrote an open letter to Lyle Shelton of the ACL comparing the Irish experience to that of American states, saying, “Research from the United States shows similar results. The 2-wave (before and after) study by Hatzenbuehler et al. (2010) involving 34,000 people found a 36.6% increase in mood disorders, 248.2% increase in generalised anxiety disorder, a 41.9% increase in alcohol use disorders amongst same-sex attracted individuals who resided in states in which anti-marriage campaigns were run in the lead up to a public vote banning same-sex marriage”.
Advocates
This survey from its outset has been characterised by mendacity. Lies, lies and more lies. Lies every day. The No campaign lost the argument about marraige equality years ago and abandoned the substantive issue. Instead, the LGBTI community has been harangued by a shameless campaign where the No side has talked about everything else but marriage equality.
It started with Tony Abbott when the survey first began. He said, “And I say to you if you don’t like same-sex marriage, vote no. If you’re worried about religious freedom and freedom of speech, vote no, and if you don’t like political correctness, vote no because voting no will help to stop political correctness in its tracks”. So all of a sudden marriage equality was not about committed couples being given the chance to marry, but about religious freedom, free speech and political correctness. And all these issues couched in the language of fear and apocalyptic predictions.
Lyle Shelton completely shamelessly added a scare campaign to these issues regarding the Safe Schools program, a professional development course for teachers who have LGBTI kids in their classes. He has used a blend of exaggeration, conflation and outright mendacity as his daily bread. Like the alchemists of old trying to turn lead into gold, Shelton attempted to link a voluntary Professional Development course with marriage equality and then to turn it into the ‘abolition of gender from marriage’, ‘gender fluidity for children’ and his favourite, “radical gender theory”. This is what Shelton and the Christian fundamentalists call transgendered people. They simply cannot cope with a non-binary gender model because Genesis says that “He created them male and female” despite the findings of science and the lived experience of real people. For the myopic Shelton, that some people experience their gender differently and identify as transgender is just beyond the pale and not to be tolerated. Thus, transgendered, and gay kids too, in schools are completely and utterly ignored in his relentless publicity to protect children. He and his group do not give a fig’s toss about LGBTI young people. A duplicitous and outrageous obscenity.
Shelton has been exhaustive in his coverage. His No case is everywhere. He tweets just about every ten minutes, he’s on news and current affairs programs regularly, he’s writing newspaper articles, he blogs his own stuff on the ACL page and he writes occasionally for overseas conservative think tanks like the Heritage Foundation. Shelton is everywhere. You cannot turn around lest you find Lyle Shelton staring back at you in some form. And yet one of his dominant complaints during the whole course of the survey is that he has been silenced. They cannot get their message out. They skywrite the word NO in the skies above Sydney and Melbourne, but they claim they are being silenced. Now not only is this clearly not true, but it is also a ploy to inveigle themselves into the minds of those who are on the fence that the poor No side is being treated badly by the nasty Yes campaign. “Poor Lyle. Poor No side” is the message he’s trying to spread. The ACL might use the word ‘Christian’ in its title, but make no mistake, it is an arch-conservative political movement being informed by Right-wing big-religion Americana. Shelton is false.
His tactic is constant. Never be specific. Speak or tweet in generalisations. Misrepresent outlier or off-message Yes activists to symbolise the whole Yes campaign. Never ever answer specific questions. Make wild claims that cannot be unsubstantiated. Predict the future. Keep hammering the lies about the ‘consequences’ of marriage equality to children, religion and free speech, relentlessly, ceaselessly, daily, nauseatingly. Never argue a point, just declare it. Shelton’s No campaign is the most transparently dishonest political campaign run in Australia in living memory, up there with John Howard’s manipulation of the Republican referendum.
No-where, despite my requests to him, has Shelton explained exactly how marriage equality will cause his apocalyptic outcomes. If his claim is true, then logically there must be some kind of mechanism by which these things will be brought about, but Shelton remains mum. From constant repetition, he now believes his own lies. He is mistaking his words for reality and truth just because he has uttered them. But vocalising an opinion does not make it true. Shelton is both delusional and dangerous.
The Catholic Bishops as one have largely been silent since the survey has begun. I am not aware that the Australian Bishops Conference has put out an episcopal level statement as they did back in 2015, the highly controversial and appallingly titled document, Don’t Mess with Marriage, but have left Bishops to declare their own position in their own sees. But that does not mean that their members have been silent. The three who have been the most publicly vocal nationally are Archbishop Anthony Fisher from Sydney, Archbishop Denis Hart from Melbourne and Archbishop Mark Coleridge from Brisbane.
Now you have to remember that the Catholic Church has probably been the predominant oppressor of gay people in history, in fact since the 1st century. We are still officially “intrinsically disordered” and “inclined to moral evil” and the expression of our sexuality is “gravely immoral” according to their doctrines. So for the Catholic hierarchy to come out so publicly and denounce our relationships as being less than what God would want for us is galling when the majority of grass root Catholics, 67% according to polling, and even many priests and nuns have moved on privately from these diabolical teachings. And of course, you cannot help but think also of the searing hypocrisy of Catholic hierarchs denouncing LGBTI sexuality and saying we are not even worthy of civil marriage when they themselves have overseen the most obscene organised child rape machine in the history of humanity. And now they’re telling Australia that gay people marrying their partners is not of God. Please! Do forgive my intemperate language, but give me a fucking break!
Archbishop Denis Hart was first out of the gates. He threatened almost immediately that any employee of the Catholic Church in Melbourne who voted Yes could be dismissed. How’s that people? In 2017 Australia, a Catholic bishop threatens the sack should anyone disagree with him on marriage equality. I simply do not think that will wash today. Most Catholics would be aghast at such high-minded interference in matters of their own choice and their own conscience about their work colleagues, friends and family members.
Archbishop Mark Coleridge of Brisbane in a bizarre interview said, “Parents can’t marry their children, children can’t marry their parents … sibling marrying sibling has always been ruled out. — —-There’s only one form of love that is marriage, and that is between a man and a woman. — —- Is it about equality? Well, yes and no. Every human being is equal, but not all are the same”. Appalling and breath-takingly specious analogies, this man can only spruik the party line.
And finally Archbishop Anthony Fisher of Sydney wrote a letter to Catholic parents indicating that the traditional teaching about marriage should be adhered to in the schools and that Catholics should vote No. It was firm language, conformed to historic Catholic teaching, ignoring Catholic teaching on the primacy of informed conscience, and was unsophisticated in its understanding of human sexuality. Former Jesuit priest and now historian Paul Collins wrote an open letter in response to Fisher.
I am disturbed by your identification of your personal views on marriage equality with those of the Catholic Church… The saddest thing is that you have linked Catholicism with some of the most reactionary and unattractive political forces in the entire country.
Fisher joined his Archdiocese to the Coalition 4 Marriage umbrella group. At a Sunday Mass at St Mary’s Cathedral, he devoted an entire homily to advocating against marriage equality. He said unbelievably and without a trace of irony, “Governments should, in general, keep out of the friendship business and out of the bedroom”. So governments out of the bedroom, but the Catholic Church in. Not to mention that government institutions already support heterosexual marriage and have done so, forever.
Fisher continued, “The state has no business telling us who we should love and how, sexually or otherwise. — — The only kind of friendship the state has a proper interest in recognising and regulating is heterosexual marriage, because that’s what leads to children”. So, to paraphrase. The State has no place in the private lives of its citizens. However, it is ok for the State to advocate and affirm heterosexual people, but not gay people or those generally from the LGBTI community. Fisher is a duplicitous charlatan who strongly sets off my gaydar.
While the Catholic bishops as a whole have once again and hardly surprisingly taken up their time-worn position of oppressing gay people, two Catholic Bishops have been noticeably more sophisticated and more compassionate in their approach. Bishop Vincent Long of Parramatta wrote a gentle and understanding Pastoral Letter to his flock that allows for voting according to one’s conscience, as did the article penned by Bishop Bill Wright from Newcastle. Credit to both.
The country was shocked in early October to learn that the hierarchy of the Anglican Archdiocese of Sydney headed up by Archbishop Glenn Davies donated $1 million to the Coalition 4 Marriage group, an umbrella organisation of those I listed above against marriage equality, the largest of which is the Australian Christian Lobby and Lyle Shelton. Several Sydney clerics declared they were shattered and disappointed. One of them, the Rev Andrew Sempell was reported in the media saying:
We haven’t let go of Christendom all that much. We still think that we have a right to tell people what to do. This is one of the reasons we’re on the nose.
An Archbishop giving $1 million to a campaign to deny LGBTI civil rights is not, and never will be, a good look when that kind of money could have made such a difference in other legitimate areas of need.
We also saw three frightened mothers on our television screens worried about their kids. Raising terrifying fears about Safe Schools and radical gender theory; all the same old chestnuts. All of these women are well known anti-gay-rights activists who have signed up for the dishonesty of the No side’s blatant fearmongering. One of them accused her son’s school of saying he could wear a dress next year if he wanted. The truth of the claim was of course contested by the the Principal of the school in question who said, “it never happened”. I cannot but think that that if any of their kids turns out to be gay as they grow older, they will eagerly thank mum for her sterling efforts in trying to shut down LGBTI civil rights. I love the satire of the the two Kates in Get Krack!n.
It is patently ridiculous to suggest that allowing same-sex couples to marry is somehow going to see some new wave of teaching reform sweep across the country. That’s just not going to happen. This is a simple issue, and it should not be conflated with other issues
(Simon Birmingham, Federal Minister of Education)
Finally, we saw Government Minister Matt Canavan cover himself in glory after hearing of the harm done by the survey, by calling gay people “delicate little flowers” and to “grow a spine”. Spine-chillingly appalling insensitivity and almost unbelievable ignorance of self-harm and suicide rates among gay people due to bigotry and homophobia, rejection and shame. When challenged on Q and A by a brave young gay man (see below), Canavan defended his comments and tried to minimise them. He then made things worse by a clumsy exchange about a Westpac Bank note sent to employees encouraging support for the Yes side, which suggested that a Yes result in the survey could save 3000 suicides a year. The bank later admitted the figure was wrong, but Canavan quibbled with it on the basis of last year’s statistics “when last year there was only 2,800 suicides”. Needless to say, the studio audience was not impressed and neither was I. How vomitous!
Conclusion
Malcolm Turnbull’s Survey of Homophobia has been anything but his “respectful debate”. It has never been that and it was never going to be. Turnbull’s willingness to use us a means to a political end has made an implacable enemy of the LGBTI community to the Liberal and National Parties. The wider institutional Church, with big C, has cemented itself yet again as a foe of the LGBTI community despite the majority of Christians being supportive and intending to vote Yes. Ecclesiastical hierarchs are seriously out of touch with their people.
The No case, sensing defeat on the published numbers, is already drawing the battle lines for the next fight: so-called religious freedom. People like Peter Dutton, Lyle Shelton and Anthony Fisher all want to unwind our anti-discrimination laws so they can protect their rank and file folk from lawsuits should they discriminate against gay people based on religious grounds, which at present, is completely illegal. They want to set up an Australian sexuality apartheid, so there is one set of rule for all straight Australians, but a separate set of alternate rules for gays. If you want to deny a commercial service to a gay person because you believe being gay is a sin, then that will be fine in Shelton’s and Fisher’s Australia. Perfectly permissible. Move along, nothing to see here. Apart from a segregated Australia, that is. The ALP has declared it will not support such a move. Good. It is important that it does and to have no truck with such an ugly spectre being coerced upon us by would-be theocrats. That is not the kind of Australia I want to live in. This is what Turnbull’s ‘respectful’ debate has unleashed on us; a return to religious sectarianism, this time not between the denominations, but between the conservative religious and the secular.
Anti-discrimination laws are there for a reason: so that we don’t discriminate. These opponents of marriage equality believe that private religious belief should trump Australians’ civil rights. But Australians have historically been wary of religion and have never taken it too seriously. This has done us an enormous service by rejecting the presence of morals crusaders and quasi-theocratic clerics who would have too much to say and want to run the show by bringing their brand of morality into law and institutions. Britain had Mary Whitehouse, and America, Anita Bryant. Australia came close in Fred Nile, but Fred was never taken seriously in the mainstream. Today, we have Lyle Shelton and conservative clergy.
The Turnbull Survey of Homophobia is thankfully over. It will go down in the social history of Australia as being a particularly nasty time, where one segment of society was laid open and bare for judgment and possible execution by the rest of society; all with the imprimatur of our Government. It has put LGBTI civil rights back years, no matter the outcome. It has shone a spotlight on hitherto unseen bigotry and homophobia, traits that I had believed erroneously had dissipated over my lifetime to negligence. The survey has increased hate and hate is now more organised because of it. While I want and advocate a Yes result, I remain hurt that my Government could put us through this. I am angry that we have been used as a political fix to Turnbull’s internal party problems, and I am very aware now that Australia is worse off socially than we were before. We will probably get marriage equality, but the journey has been torturous and the LNP’s and Turnbull’s part in it, particularly odious.
Turnbull’s Survey of Homophobia was not needed to evaluate support for marriage equality — we already knew that — it was only ever needed to gauge the level of anti-gay prejudice in the community, its severity and how far such people would be prepared to go to deny our civil rights. From the 8 August, the day of its announcement to the 7 November when the survey closes, we have had 92 days of rising hate. Like America has seen a rise in racism, white supremacy, Islamophobia and misogyny since Trump gave the bigots the green light by his own actions, Australia has seen a rise in hatred and homophobia due to this Government-kissed survey.
Malcolm Turnbull got his survey, he may even have saved his job (for now), but he has sold out the LGBTI community, our families and friends and loved ones in so doing and released a level of bigotry into Australia that had formerly been gagged and restrained. He remains for me, a hollow man.
