australia is tearing itself apart over same-sex marriage

australia has just voted back in a deeply conservative government that promised to hold a public vote on whether same-sex couples should be allowed to marry.

the public vote is a ‘plebiscite’, which is literally a non-binding national opinion poll. it will cost at least au$160m and the govt could fund each "side” to mount a campaign. in reality that means bigots will receive public money to bully lgbti kids into suicide.

countless polls have indicted strong, consistent and growing support for same-sex marriage for a long time, but they have been ignored by the previous five prime ministers.

in australia, legalising same-sex marriage means changing a few words in a single law. it doesn’t require a change to the constitution and it certainly doesn’t require a public vote. (the opposition promised to legislate without a public vote but they lost the election.)

in 2004, then prime minister and astonishing bigot john howard changed the law to explicitly stop same-sex couples getting married. as a result, by law celebrants must announce this at every single wedding:

Marriage, according to law in Australia, is the union of a man and a woman to the exclusion of all others, voluntarily entered into for life.

so you can see it’s a deliberately harmful kick in the guts that continues to this day.

the plebiscite proposal only exists because last year tony abbott, then prime minister and even more astonishing bigot, threw it down to kill off intense pressure to just change the law. (an important fact: his sister can’t marry her female partner. he stopped her and continues to stop her.)

if the ’no' vote wins, same-sex couples continue to be second-class citizens. if the ‘yes’ vote wins, nobody knows what that means because the government won’t tell us. this is what we don’t know:

• their proposed legislation, and whether it will result in genuine equality or whether it will be some booby-trapped bigotry
• the text of the question, which could be anything up to and including homophobic/transphobic rhetoric
• whether the vote will be compulsory (compulsory voting is normal in australian state and federal elections)
• whether the count will be on total votes or broken down into electorates (i.e. 15 million people might vote ‘yes’, but if ‘no’ wins by seats then ‘no’ will win regardless)

• great swathes of the government are openly homophobic
• many members of the government (i.e. the same party that proposed the plebiscite) will vote ‘no’ regardless of the result, because they’ve been given official permission to ignore it
• many members of the government have been concocting new and inventive ways to rig the vote before it’s even announced, so a ’no’ vote is virtually guaranteed (there have been leaks)

i’m making this thread because i assume the whole world might enjoy watching australia lose its shit over something harmless that most of you achieved ages ago.

how is it polling among the voting pop?

next week: canada will bring back hanging. india launches nuke at karachi. south africa reinstates apartheid

otm, it's basically that ridiculous.

xp to mordy: strongly. this 2014 poll commissioned by a pro-equality lobby group indicates 77% support; this 2015 poll run by a newspaper indicates 68% support. there's a load of polls just like these, each time with strong or overwhelming support.

A note for observers:

australia has just voted back in a deeply conservative government

by "just voted," AA means "Australia voted 12 days ago but support for the conservative Coalition government" - a coalition since 1923, because none of the two national and four state-based parties in it have ever polled enough to hold power alone - "is so compromised, dubious and underwhelming that it took this long to count enough votes to determine they held the required number of seats." Normally we have a decisive result within 3-4 hours of polls closing.

thanks sic. the vote was close enough to be unsure for about a week, but they're in and they can govern in their own right. however, the tight margin means the senate (australia's house of review) could make sure the plebiscite is done fairly and with no ulterior motives, or it could scupper the plan altogether (unless there's some way they can conduct the vote without going through parliament).

it's complicated

Also for context:

we don’t know:

- their proposed legislation, and whether it will result in genuine equality or whether it will be some booby-trapped bigotry
- the text of the question, which could be anything up to and including homophobic/transphobic rhetoric

A groundswell of support and an organised movement saw us take a formal referendum 17 years ago on whether to become a republic. Unfortunately, this was held under the aegis of former prime minister and noted dormouse impersonator John Howard, so we had the choice of voting on, effectively, the following question:

DO YOU WANT to keep a system of government that you already understand
OR switch to some mysterious strange new world of doubt without dear old Elizabeth able to look after and protect after us, EXCEPT that even if you want that for some reason, we will still acknowledge her wondrous benefaction verbally in public affairs at all times?

honestly feeling very, very uneasy about the idea of a plebiscite. it's going to mean a lot of awkward, potentially very unpleasant conversations for me at work, with members of extended family, and just generally. still find it galling that strongly catholic nations like ireland are able to change the law but not us. i realise ireland also did it with a plebiscite but in that country the support for change pre-poll was not so abundantly clear iirc.

really helpful & thoughtful that you started & built depth into this thread AA, i only knew what was going on here vaguely

The whole thing just shows such open contempt for public opinion and craven adherence to a religious code which hasn't been relevant to mainstream Australia in 30-40 years. I'm looking forward to the census telling us we are essentially a country where most people have no religious belief. Further underscoring the deep moral wrong of imposing a minority religious view on a population who don't subscribe to that belief system.
May they reap the reward at the next election, along with all the other tiny-minded, kneejerk xenophobes and bigots that our entitled little country keeps electing on the sly.

strongly catholic nations like ireland and ITALY, for fuck's sake.

Even when the other mob were in charge they didn't have the balls to legislate: PM Gillard put herself in the ridiculous position of defending an institution she didn't even believe in to garner bigot votes

schlump OTM, had no idea

It is weird, how religiously conservative the govt is being about this (and other issues) given how massively secular a country we are.

There's been a push for the next census to get more people to just admit they have NO RELIGION - part of the problem here is how readily yer average joe will say "yeah I'm a protestant" or whatever when they haven't set foot inside a church since aunty betty's funeral and would laugh at you if you said grace at the dinner table, let alone prayed regularly. The govt need to know people are NOT RELIGIOUS so they stop being swayed by the likes of Fred Nile and Corey Bernadi.

I mean I was a teenage jesus freak and I can tell you, that was a deeeeply unpopular thing to be in this country as a kid, its not like the US here, people just dont do churchy la femme.

Finland had a kind of similar thing when its law regarding this was changed in 2001... The country has been overwhelmingly secular for as long as I've been alive, and the majority of people were for gay marriage. But we have a small, conservative Christian party (it's the smallest party in the parliament), and they happened to be a part of the government coalition when the gay marriage law was decided on, so as a concession to them Finland didn't get a gender neutral marriage law but a new law on civil unions. In practice a civil union is pretty much the same as a marriage, the only difference is that you can't automatically take your spouse's name, and you can't adopt as a couple. The latter especially is, of course, pretty important, and it's lead to ridiculous situations, where one partner has to first adopt a child as a single parent, and after that the other partner can apply for a intra-family adoption, so that he can become a legal parent too.

So in last year the parliament finally decided to just change the existing marriage law gender neutral, so that this ridiculous "marriage not marriage" civil union thing would be put to end and every married couple would be treated absolutely equal. But it took 15 years for this to change, all because a small conservative minority managed to push their agenda back in the day, and the other government parties were spineless enough to acquiesce to that.

When the census used to come around my mother used to call me up and say "Now, you're putting Catholic, aren't you?" and I would say "No, I'm not Catholic, I've never believed in God at any point in my life" and she'd say "But you were raised Catholic!". God knows how many people fill it out that way.

Some 60% of people want this plebiscite.

I hate all these people.

But don't just blame the religious, plenty of non-religious people want the plebiscite too, and the daddy of the plebiscite was this boneheaded move by St Adam Bandt: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/electoral-surveys-snub-gay-marriage/story-fn59niix-1226121562452

The govt need to know people are NOT RELIGIOUS so they stop being swayed by the likes of Fred Nile and Corey Bernadi.

Also what edwardo said.

at least australia is being up-front about their plebiscite being non-binding.

stalled for a moment at "churchy la femme"

cheers schlump & sleeve. it's going to be a pretty stressful few months, so it helps to nut things out with people who get it and aren't regressive.

monotony:

honestly feeling very, very uneasy about the idea of a plebiscite. it's going to mean a lot of awkward, potentially very unpleasant conversations for me at work, with members of extended family

the way i'll handle this at work is to not respond to bigoted views at all, even if i'm conspicuous in doing so. not sure how to handle it with family, most likely i'll just get up and leave.

tuomas:

But it took 15 years for this to change, all because a small conservative minority managed to push their agenda back in the day, and the other government parties were spineless enough to acquiesce to that.

i keep seeing the argument about civil unions ("why do they need the word 'marriage'? civil unions are good enough, they don't need our word", like lgbti people are lesser/don't really exist). you've summed up the issues it would produce in terms of other unequal rights, whereas fixing one marriage law would solve all those issues in one fell swoop.

edwardo:

Some 60% of people want this plebiscite.

I hate all these people.

democracy is being used as a dog whistle, with the anti-equality crowd chanting things like "let the people have their say". democracy isn't a weapon to be used against a minority, e.g. we never had a national vote on whether teachers should keep slapping left-handed students who used their right hand.

stalled for a moment at "churchy la femme"

Its a Simpsons joke

as a married person, I hate all the people who say "gay marriage will DEVALUE straight marriage", as though whatever the fuck other people do makes any difference to your own marriage. And people who say gay marriage will lead to people marrying fenceposts or whatever--well, surely straight marriage is just a stepping stone to gay marriage, and should also be banned.

Good luck Australia :(

(Feels like same-sex marriage has been around longer in NZ than only 2013, I guess due to civil unions being p.widespread. Hadn't realised that Howard move in 2004, which was prob the inspiration for a failed equivalent attempted over here in 2005)

yeah, howard's toxic move really stuffed things up here. i didn't realise your parliament tried a similar thing. thanks for pointing it out.

And people who say gay marriage will lead to people marrying fenceposts or whatever

yeah, that too

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2015/09/19/10/2C7EAC7B00000578-0-image-a-4_1442654779921.jpg

tfw the conservative wing of your party wedges the public in order to impart regressive attitudes on the nation

part of the wedge is that our beloved media is too fucking useless to explain any of the stuff around the plebiscite to people. I know a few people who were for it, and it took me all of 30 seconds to convince them it was the wrong idea. I wrote something quite long about it at the request of a friend but uh I have nowhere to put it so instead I ate it.

oh fuck the media in this country. we got tony abbott because they didn't do nearly enough to question him. you're right in that they'll toss around the pro/con sides of the plebiscite without questioning why it's happening in the first place.

I look forward to an insightful panel debate on this issue, compered by Annabel Crabb, the woman who didn't kill journalism, but convinced doctors Not to Resuscitate.

ugh. i really hope some media take a stand on this and just refuse to air the negative side. "i want to stop some people getting a certificate for the following reasons" uh no.

"Isn't Turnbull brave for putting his convictions on the line and getting a mandate from the Australian people? What do you think, Tony Jones?"

I fucking hate this country

EWWW GAYS ARE PROMISCUOUS AND GROSS WHY CAN'T THEY JUST SETTLE DOWN IN SAFE MONOGAMOUS RELATIONSHIPS

EWWW GAYS ARE GROSS THEY WANT TO GET MARRIED

otfm

"if the plebiscite comes in as 'no' then ~the gays~ will just have to accept it as the will of the people" <-- triggers the hell out of me

I mean idec because the minute I find someone who's willing to look at my face and my knob interchangeably without running away I'll just take 'em to Sweden to get married and fuck everyone

The real reason I care isn't because I care about marriage, is because I care about the people who are going to be affected by this plebiscite. Queer people in rural areas. Trans people. Kids in schools that can have all the chaplains they can eat. Not paleo-eating knobheads in Adam Bandt and Alex Greenwich country who, apart from not getting married, have no problems bigger than their coffee order being wrong. The unfortunate people are gonna get bashed so badly when Cory Bernardi starts up.

These knobheads are the canary in the coal mine for people who have bigger problems which will get bigger still when their communities and families are taught once again how to hate them, or how to hate them better.

exactly 100% this. a publicly funded national bullying campaign is potentially immensely damaging to real people who are just trying to get through the day. this buzzfeed longform piece about kids in rural qld sums up how bad things are already without a plebiscite to inflate suicides &c.

Someone needs to publicly point out to Turnbull that the blood of every person who commits suicide during, or after this, is on his hands.

OH BUT HE SOMETIMES CATCHES PUBLIC TRANSPORT AND IS PRO-REPUBLIC!!!!!!111!!!!11!! <3 MODERATE MALCOLM

Someone needs to publicly point out to Turnbull that the blood of every person who commits suicide during, or after this, is on his hands.

the distinguishing factor between the two 'sides' is that no acl nutjob is going to commit suicide because two people in another suburb can apply for a certificate, but shit the acl pulls every single day puts lgbti people (especially kids) in jeopardy.

Churchy La Femme is a POGO joke! Fr chrissakes

Xxp

[coalition frontbencher throws a smoke bomb on the ground]

fellas can we focus on the real scandal: bill shorten and his medicare props

the election was less than two months ago and already the plebiscite has almost certainly been delayed until next year.

meanwhile there's growing resentment that "sides" of the "debate" will be publicly funded.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-09-13/cabinet-signs-off-on-plans-to-hold-same-sex-marriage-plebiscite/7837464

the government has set 11 february 2017 as the voting date.

if it goes ahead, each "side" will receive $7.5m in funding. that means taxpayers will give bigots $7.5m to be bigots.

however, it's likely the opposition and other parties will stop the public vote happening at all, by blocking the plebiscite legislation in parliament.

GOOD I HOPE THEY BLOCK IT FOREVER FUCK THIS PLEBISCITE IN ITS ANUS AND IF ANY OF YOUR FRIENDS SUPPORT IT KICK THEM IN THE TESTICLES. I SAY THAT BECAUSE LIKE MOST INTERVENING CUNTS, IT IS EXTREMELY LIKELY THIS FRIEND IS A CUNT MAN

Oh no we Parliamentarians can't decide. Only the Australian public know best. Which is why we have to spend $15 million on helping them come to the decision that we already said they know best about.

Rowan Dean is kickable at all times but god last night when he said that gay people wanted the plebiscite I nearly kicked my TV screen in

rowan dean is filth

GOOD I HOPE THEY BLOCK IT FOREVER FUCK THIS PLEBISCITE IN ITS ANUS AND IF ANY OF YOUR FRIENDS SUPPORT IT KICK THEM IN THE TESTICLES.

i have nil tolerance for anyone who supports this plebiscite, and i'm actively cutting out people who scream "LET THE PEOPLE HAVE THEIR SAY" as if being a bigot is more important than equality. no fucking time for that shit.

kevin rudd: the seething years

the apple-cheeked avenger

this is going to end with another plebiscite isn't it

in come the bigots wit their propaganda

The splash you have when you don't have a splash. Dean Smith has been very open about how his views on marriage equality have changed. pic.twitter.com/AlUxPmVO4r

— Michael Koziol (@michaelkoziol) August 6, 2017

murdoch just has to piss all over this country

Only good thing about all this is how much Turnbull must be shitting himself this morning

i reckon he's already decided to capitulate to the bigots and is having a nice morning

on second thoughts he's probably preparing to fend off a leadership challenge

...which might have been what you meant in the first place

^^

all aboard the potato express

the homophobes are really not helping their cause

Craig Kelly says it'll be a "tricky backdoor method" if marriage equality passes without a plebiscite.

— Josh Taylor (@joshgnosis) August 7, 2017

the neighbours are probably wondering why i'm yelling "kill yourself" twice every 15 mins

If they're anything like the average Australian they probably just think you're talking to a refugee

bigots got their way because of course they did

matthias cormann went on lateline and emma alberici tore him a new arsehole. right out the gate she threw the consequences of his bigotry straight in his shit-eating face. on this fucking shitbag of a day this one savaging was a proper delight.

(for the record cormann is a fiercely gay-hating bigot)

He also has the strangest accent I've ever heard.

we should have a national public vote on whether he should shut the fuck up

the bureau of statistics will run the postal plebiscite. $122m.

maybe we can also have a plebiscite on whether to lock all these fuckheads in a single car boot

i can't hear Cormann talk and not picture Ranier Wolfcastle tbh /pvmic

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Bz-lUc9CMAAc06x.jpg

I have shared that clip with an expert on the spectrum of phonemes in the english language and the verdict is that he does indeed sound objectively weird

belgium's australia's shame

I was shocked to learn he was Belgian and not South African, but then I've always thought he be right a home in a Vorster cabinet.

plebisc-heid

I went to say hi to some lesbian mums visiting parli today, and found them quietly crying as they looked through their Facebook feeds.

— Lane Sainty (@lanesainty) August 8, 2017

There is just extraordinary anger & emotion in the community about the way the government has handled this.

— Lane Sainty (@lanesainty) August 8, 2017

plebiscite legislation goes to parliament today. when it's knocked back, the government will try to conduct a postal vote on whether gay people are people whether gay people are allowed to get married, run by the bureau of statistics. if that goes ahead i'll probably start a new thread with a great big faq at the top so the world can see at a glance what an astronomical fucking tragedy this is

i'm just so, so tired

between this and refugees killing themselves on manus island and that horrifying trump/turnbull transcript this week.......honestly i don't know where to begin with the incompetence of these buffoons

the press is unanimous in rolling its eyes. everyone can see what a joke this is and everyone's exhausted.
the lgbtiq community is a mess atm, if joy melbourne (radio station) is any indication.

(fwiw i hate referring to "the lgbt community" like there's a hivemind, but now that the govt is forcing us to compartmentalise every lgbtiq person like fucking cattle it's difficult not to)

Its worth remembering theyre not - I actually have some LGBT friends who are vehemently anti marriage, see it as a cis/religious/patriarchal institution not worth scrabbling for and I have to admit, I kinda get that. While this is an important thing to legislate for, I cant help but wearily think "but marriage is a religiously-created crock of fucking shite that made women chattel anyway so fuck it all"

Like - Abbot and his comments about how marriage was "protecting women and children" all thru the ages. HA HA FUCKING WHAT. We were OWNED. We were RAPEABLE. We were CHATTEL and CATTLE. We were non human items to be traded for wars and kingdoms and kings. Fuck off with your protecting women shit tones.

I have friends like that, but I also have friends who are gay and deeply want to express they commitment in the form of marriage. Choice is a wonderful thing.

What do Tony and the gang hope to achieve, do they get an extra hand shandy from Jesus for every day they delay this? Tony the fuck stick wants to make this about the politically correct elites vs the true blue battlers. It con tines to be nasty and painful and will only get worse.

yeah it's all so fucking transparent (xp to trayce)

What do Tony and the gang hope to achieve

just bigotry, nothing else

holy shit penny wong's senate speech

plebiscite defeated in the senate

A good thing, yes?

depends on what consider to be "good", because now they're going to stage a postal survey instead, which is basically the same thing but non-compulsory and completely unreliable

A survey? Uh.

i'm doing a faq atm

Like - Abbot and his comments about how marriage was "protecting women and children" all thru the ages. HA HA FUCKING WHAT. We were OWNED. We were RAPEABLE. We were CHATTEL and CATTLE. We were non human items to be traded for wars and kingdoms and kings. Fuck off with your protecting women shit tones.

this is such a great post

otm

heh thanks :) I may have got a little cranky thar.

"Are gay people people? y/n": The Australian Marriage Equality Voluntary Postal Survey Thread

actually i fuicked up the formatting, will ask for it to be deleted

although edited will do

Hats off Trayce, said it hard and said it well.