Let the status quo reign

An unwillingness of the LGBTI community to compromise, coupled with the self-interest of the Australian Labor Party (ALP) and The Greens has cost Australia the best opportunity for marriage equality in history. And they only have themselves to blame.

This is now the second time in contemporary history where the ALP and their LGBTI allies have failed to seize the opportunity to secure marriage equality. Not the first time; the second.

In March 2011, then Prime Minister Julia Gillard, herself battling a minority government but under pressure from the left of her party to initiate reform, said she was “on the conservative side” of the gay marriage issue “because of the way our society is and how we got here”. She was supported in her view by Australia’s most well-known Lesbian; the powerful, influential and so-called ‘friend’ of the LGBTI community, Senator Penny Wong. In her defence on the traditional view of marriage she said that, “On the issue of marriage, I think the reality is there is a cultural, religious and historical view around that which we have to respect.”

Thanks Penny. I wonder what your family thought about that betrayal of your values the first time around.

But it is always easier to dump your conservative values after you have been dumped from Government. It is remarkable how many politicians from both sides of politics have a damascene conversion on leaving official office. And on cue it happened to Gillard who ‘came out’ in 2015 as an ardent supporter of marriage equality saying, “In my time post-politics, as key countries have moved to embrace same-sex marriage, I have identified that my preferred reform direction was most assuredly not winning hearts and minds.”

So it was up to others to lead, not her.

But that didn’t stop Rodney Croome, then Director of Australian Marriage Equality, arguably one of the most inept activist organizations in recent memory, from failing to call a spade a spade. Instead he said, “We welcome Julia Gillard’s decision because it shows that even the most high-profile opponents of marriage equality can open their hearts to the reform”.

It was not a statement to be welcomed; it was a statement to be called out for what it was: legacy-seeking revisionist hypocrisy.

But none of this hypocrisy stopped the adoration of the ALP by elements of the sycophantic ‘activist’ LGBTI community and their affiliated organisations who seem to have conveniently forgotten how they were shafted in the name of political expediency by the Gillard Government; by the ALP.

And here we are today. Again with an opportunity to move the marriage equality issue forward – the most realistic and time-bound opportunity in history. And again, the ALP has decided to place its political interests above not only the interests of the LGBTI community, but the national interest.

Instead of ensuring that gay marriage will be legislated in the new year through what will be an overwhelmingly victorious and legitimate mandate through a national plebiscite, Bill Shorten has decided he wants to try and wedge Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull instead. He is an opportunist like Kevin Rudd, another of his shafted coterie, who (again like Rudd) just cannot quite get over the fact that he lost the election; that he has no power.

But it is not Bill Shortens opportunism and pursuit of power that is of real concern here. It is the way that he packages this into a faux concern for the well-being of the young and vulnerable. His arguments against the plebiscite are that it is unnecessary, expensive and had the potential to cause mental ill health among LGBTI people.

Let’s unpack those shall we.

Unnecessary. Well if history is anything to go by, when you leave this issue to the Parliament to resolve and the ALP in particular, it doesn’t go anywhere. So… next.

Expensive. I have not heard anyone say the referendum on Indigenous recognition in the constitution is too expensive and if they did they would be roundly and rightly condemned. So why should this be any different? Why is it acceptable to allow politicians to use economic ‘cost’ as an argument to deny a person’s basic and fundamental rights? But more importantly, how can the LGBTI community be so blind that they themselves now use cost as an argument against an opportunity that would give them the freedom they have been supposedly so ardent in trying to attain? How fundamentally depressing that the LGBTI community themselves don’t think they are worth a measly drop in the fiscal ocean.

And lastly and the most offensive and ignorant of them all – the potential to cause ill health? This is so utterly offensive because it completely and unapologetically whitewashes the history of the LGBTI community in this country; the struggle, the pain, the homelessness, the discrimination, the depression; a struggle that has been a part of our national story for as long as I can remember. To suggest, as Bill Shorten and his cohort are now doing, that the LGBTI do not have the wherewithal to deal with a short, shrift national discussion is disgraceful. Moreover, it demonstrates a complete lack of strategic foresight which would say that this is the best opportunity in decades to allow the religious right to sink themselves by demonstrating through democratic means once and for all what they really are – absent of any moral authority.

It is ignorant, patriarchal helicopter parenting in the extreme and it takes us all for fools.

But if any dignity is to be retained in this spectacle, then heads should roll. Australian Marriage Equality should be disbanded because they have failed in their one, single objective. Penny Wong should be sent packing and Tanya Plibersek should be sacked for using vulnerable children to pursue party political interests.

And those of the LGBTI community and their friends in the ALP and The Greens who scream the loudest for equality but are incapable of demonstrating a willingness to accept compromise in the face of a genuine opportunity should have a re-think about whether they really want marriage equality or not because judging from this outcome it doesn’t take a genius to recognise that it is clearly not wanted badly enough.

Let the status quo reign.