An adjustment of Miranda's tantrum about Equal Marriage.

A rant bout Miranda Devine's latest post on Marriage Equality.

All the red bits are mine.  I was VERY angry. 

 To marriage ‘equality’ militants: Take our olive branch and shove it

For defenders of traditional marriage, the plebiscite was a significant concession and a risk they didn’t need to take. No, it was a divisive diversion in a failed attempt to send public opinion away from how bad Tony Abbott was.

But if the other side doesn’t want to come half way, then so be it. Take our olive branch and shove it where the sun don’t shine. First tantrum, and only in paragraph two.

There goes any chance of same-sex marriage being made law (without reversing the parliamentary enforced current status, by Parliamentary vote, which would be cheap, quick and easy.) with the blessing of the entire nation, (ooh, a red herring! Recent polls show that 149 of 150 Lower House electorates have a majority of voters who support equal marriage.) of fence-sitters embracing it, and of the losers (hint: that would be your side Miranda) accepting the verdict with good grace. (We’ll see, but I’m not hopeful. Abortion laws anyone?)
Attitudes will harden. Even if marriage “equality” (air quotes in print, indicating it isn’t equality, it’s “Taking err merredges!!”) activists win in parliament they won’t win. Everyone will know the outcome was rigged, (Conspiracy!!! Off the deep end already!) and that the change merchants didn’t trust the Australian public to legitimise this radical (reversal of previous Parliamentary decision) change to our foundational social institution. 

(Since 1998, Religious Institutions have not accounted for more than 50% of Marriages and last census only accounted for 25%.)

We will know that victory was only achieved through lies and intimidation. Defenders of traditional marriage (MAN THE BARRICADES!) are not bigots or hostile to homosexual relationships. (Funny, that’s how they come across) Yet they are being treated as “deplorables”, as Hillary Clinton would say, non-persons, irrelevant, disposable, hateful. (pretty good description) Anything can be said or done to them in the name of “equal love”. (Aww, people are saying nasty things about us. Get over yourselves, try to recall what the LGBTQI community has been called in the last 50 years or so.)

**Picture omitted for decency.**
Lyle Shelton from the Australian Christian Lobby. (Pic: Kym Smith)

“I never thought I would be meeting secretly in this country in my lifetime,” (What, like the KKK or The Christian Defence League?) says Lyle Shelton, managing director of the Australian Christian Lobby. “It’s not the Australia I grew up in or the Australia I want for my children.” (No Lyle, that’s because you grew up in a cloistered, cult like version of the Christian Church devised by your Father and you think that is ‘Australia’)

Shelton says his receptionist at ACL’s Canberra offices is regularly distressed by abusive phone calls. Uninvited visitors have intimidated staff. (I wonder if the authorities have ever been called?) ACL now has to lock its doors.

It is true that the marriage debate has unleashed hatred from intolerant authoritarians. But the victims are not loved-up LGBTIQ folk. (Really? The victimised are NOT the victims? What Bizarro World do you live in Miranda?)

They are gentle Christians and other defenders of traditional marriage who have been vilified for daring to hold a (bigoted, hateful, suppressive) contrary view. Those courageous enough to raise a head above the parapet are brutally made examples of. (By pointing and laughing mostly. Oh, and by pointing out that they are trying to keep a portion of the population LESS THAN EQUAL.)

It’s the social form (? The 2016 equivalent of Godwinning the argument) of warning off perfected by ISIS when they publicly behead people or lower them in cages into swimming pools or stage any number of elaborate tortures as a lesson to others who might dare even think of being disobedient.
Social death (or less impact on government policy) awaits those who defy the fashionable position on marriage.

For example, Christians in northwest Sydney who set up a group called “Children’s Future” were named and shamed in a vicious article in the Sydney Morning Herald last week because they letterboxed pamphlets which linked the same-sex marriage campaign to “Safe Schools”. (Of course they were, because “safe schools” is about bullies, not about marriage equality. They are proposing a slippery slope where there isn’t one.) Since Roz Ward, the architect of the radical sex education program, has explicitly made the same link, it’s hardly a giant leap.

But because some members of Children’s Future also are members of the Liberal party, and are Catholic, they were easy prey for factional rivals who sicced willing media onto them with gratuitous mentions of Opus Dei and George Pell.  (Remember, the vanishing Cardinal said this about Global Warming “Some of the hysteric and extreme claims about global warming are also a symptom of pagan emptiness, of Western fear when confronted by the immense and basically uncontrollable forces of nature. In the past pagans sacrificed animals and even humans in vain attempts to placate capricious and cruel gods. Today they demand a reduction in carbon dioxide emissions.” His opinion is not really trustworthy.)

One shop owner, named just because his brother is involved, was in despair last week, forced into hiding after phone calls and strange visits to his shop. He is terrified his business will suffer as a result of the smear campaign.

Let that be a warning. (A warning to who, Miranda? Is this a threat?)

Last month, when the ACL and other Christian groups tried to hold a meeting at the Mercure Hotel at Sydney Airport to prepare for the plebiscite, their booking was cancelled after threats of violence to hotel staff. (No, the hotel did not report this.)

They regrouped last week but had to meet in secret. (See above, KKK?)

The same illiberal tactics were employed at The Occidental Hotel in May when protesters (Free speech is a double edged BASTARD sometimes isn’t it, Miranda?) shut down a talk in defence of traditional marriage by Joe de Bruyn and Cory Bernardi, whose Adelaide office had previously been trashed by gay activists.

Cory Bernardi's reception area at his Kent Town office in Adelaide was trashed by protesters in March. (Pic: Mark Brake)

**Not putting someone else's pic in here.

When Toowoomba GP David van Gend wrote a book, “Stealing from a Child”, making the case against same-sex marriage, the printing company refused to print it two days before its launch last week. (Writing a book doesn’t mean anyone SHOULD publish it for you.  Again, free speech biting you on the arse.)

Then there is the soft coercion, (soft coercion, my favourite kind. Corporation hold diversity training so they don’t get themselves sued because discrimination is illegal. Simple economics and the all-powerful invisible hand of the market doing that thing that you love.) through corporate “diversity” programs. Employees soon get the message that their careers will suffer if they don’t go with the flow. (Because the Corporation will argue ‘Mr Bloggs” knew that Corporation XYZ accepts diversity and ignored the training. *washes hands*) Take Mark Allaby, a senior executive of PricewaterhouseCoopers, who was forced to resign from the board of ACL after a word from PWC’s “diversity” officer.

Let that be a warning. (Another warning? Do I get the trebuchet after three?)

This Tuesday, Qantas employees will receive diversity training at Mascot when a spokesman from Marriage Equality addresses them. Will Qantas invite Shelton along to balance the discussion? No chance. (No. Good on them.)

In the end, intimidation of opponents, and Labor’s despicable portrayal of the plebiscite as a trigger for gay suicide, (after advice from lots of LGBTQI individuals and organisations) has had the desired effect. Public support and the will of politicians to support the public vote is waning.

The militant arm of Marriage Equality (they have great uniforms, very neatly pressed.) and Labor will be rewarded when, as seems likely, the plebiscite is killed off in the Senate this month. (That will be the Senate doing what the House should be doing, but are too beholden to their Right Wing homophobes and the National Party) Then Malcolm Turnbull has an existential crisis on his hands. (Poor Mal, if he just corrected the abomination of the 2004 amendment to the Marriage Act, this would all blow away.)

Inevitably he will be faced with another bid for politicians to legislate same-sex marriage, without the plebiscite he promised at the election, (As if any promises made at the elections are believed by any voters after the horrors of the 2013 Abbott election ) and which is central to the Coalition agreement with the Nationals. (See?)

If the public will is subverted, the political bloodletting will be immediate and ugly. (But the public will is that equal marriage SHOULD be implemented.)
Instead of the country uniting around a publicly-sanctioned marriage revolution (Wow! Now it’s a revolution. No, we had one of those in Ballarat a long time ago.  It lasted a morning and when a few people got killed, it stopped.) in February, a politician-led change will never be seen as legitimate. (if a politician-led change won't be seen as legitimate, why is the current politician-led amendment seen as legitimate? Do I smell hypocrisy and mabye a hint of "pants on fire?") It will be a Pyrrhic victory which sets the stage for ever more nasty culture wars. (Instigated by those "gentle Chrisitians" now meeting in secret, I suppose.)

(And finally, threat number three, I’m off to the Trebuchet.)

All of this is because a minority of the population (I'm looking at you Miranda, Mal, Barnaby, Lyle and your ever decreasing mates) who are too self important to see that there are a significant proportion of the population who do not have the same rights as you and who are they willing to ignore that AND have the utmost GALL to blame the opressed.  

The awful truth is that Miranda and her "marriage defenders" want rights for themselves and want to keep them from others and see this equalisation as an attack, rather than as equalisation.  It makes me very sad and very angry.