The proponents of marriage equality should be sending bouquets to Barnaby Joyce and Eric Abetz, for their timely intervention in the discussion on proposed amendments to the Marriage Act.
Barnaby is concerned that Asian trading partners would regard us as a “decadent” nation, and Eric contends that marriage as it’s currently defined is the best policy, because that’s the Liberal party’s policy.
The agriculture minister’s worry is we might have trouble selling beef and lamb chops to Malaysia or Indonesia if gay people were allowed to marry in Australia.
Maybe our Asian customers would have to turn to Brazil for agricultural products – except that our competitors in this market such as Brazil, Argentina, Canada and New Zealand, all recognise same sex relationships in law.
There have been no reports from these countries that wheat, meat, wool and maple syrup sales to Asia have suffered because they recognise marriage equality.
In another eye-popping rationalisation the minister said:
I just don’t think that us going into the parliament, making a definition into something that it’s not, solves any problems. I think it could actually create problems. I don’t think if you go and pass the piece of legislation and said that a diamond is a square makes diamonds squares. They’re two different things.
What the minister seems to miss is that marriage is a state of being, an idea capable of evolving. It is not a table leg or a door handle, whose definition and function are fixed.
Joyce is adapt at the dog whistle on social-moral issues. On capital punishment he said: “I do get approached by people saying, ‘Well, that might be your view, Barnaby, that you don’t support the death penalty, but that’s not our view’.”
Of course, he’s “startled” by “people” with these views, but he’s putting them out there and saying there should be a national “discussion”.
On Sunday’s Insiders program it was not so much a dog whistle as a fog-horn, but still, he likes to attribute aspects of his incoherent thoughts to unknown “people”.
Asian nations make “judgments” about us, about our decadence. “Now people say, ‘well that is outrageous. How can you make that ...?” Well that is a statement that - that is how ...’.”
Maybe these “people” are different to the ones who are onto him about capital punishment, but nonetheless handy foils to bounce around propositions that are wildly out of kilter with most Australians.
The Joyce-Abetz propositions not only smack of desperation, but show the anti-gay marriage brigade is flat out of ideas.
Cory Bernardi’s infamous 2012 red light warning – that for people of the same sex to marry puts us on the slippery slope to bestiality – was instantly dismissed as crackpottery of a high order.
We’ve seen no outbreaks of mass bestiality in Britain, New Zealand, 37 of the states in the US, South Africa, or jurisdictions among the 32 significant countries that have embarked down Bernardi’s slippery slope.
Tony Abbott also put his finger in the dyke, holding back the flood with an argument that his priorities are national security and a strong economy.
This suggests that he can’t chew gum and walk in a straight line at the same time. Why can’t he manage more than two things at once? It’s not as though he’s brilliant at creating a strong economy.
Hoary old members of the ALP Catholic right also put the issue in the “second tier”, along with the republic, the flag, social justice and treatment of asylum seekers.
Abetz, with his entry into the discussion, cites the US supreme court minority judgments in the marriage equality case, Obergefell v Hodges, specifically Antonin Scalia, who kicked off his dissent by calling attention to “[the] court’s threat to American democracy.”
Abetz picked-up Scalia’s well worn theme that “unelected judges” should not decide anything socially important (unless it’s more power for gun-toters, Republicans and billionaires who want to jig the elections).
When a crazed religious zealot interrupted the US supreme court hearing in Obergefell, shouting, “If you support gay marriage, you will burn in hell ... It’s an abomination”, Scalia’s response from the bench, while the man was being hustled out by the guards, was to say: “It was rather refreshing, actually.”
This is Abetz’s judicial pin-up boy.
The leader of the Abbott government in the senate has got all his bases covered. He doesn’t want the courts to decide anything about marriage equality, he doesn’t want a free vote on it for the party room, he doesn’t want the parliament to decide and he doesn’t like the idea that the people should decide at a plebiscite or referendum - that would be against Liberal party policy.
And this, in a country where the polls are showing over 70% popular support for the legalisation of same sex marriage.
It certainly gives the impression that his objection runs deeper than gay marriage.
The conservative-religious arguments against change are out there on the lunar fringe: it will derail the plan to build a stronger economy; national security could be imperilled; there’ll be an outbreak of sex with animals; and Asians will not buy Australian beef or wool.
What’s next? Why not put it more starkly and say we don’t believe in equality before the law, or that human rights only applies to some humans? That’s exactly what the Abbotts and Abetzs and Joyces are really saying.
