Advocates of same-sex marriage, including senior members of the Turnbull Government Simon Birmingham and Christopher Pyne, argue that a “yes” vote will not adversely impact on religious freedom and the right to follow the church’s teachings.
Supporters of same-sex marriage also argue the issue is simply about marriage equality and not about promoting a radical, cultural-left gender and sexuality agenda. Wrong on both accounts.
Evidence from both here and overseas proves that if marriage is redefined to allow same-sex couples to marry then faith-based organisations, bodies and individuals will be penalised and made to suffer because of their religious convictions and beliefs.
In Victoria the owners of a holiday camp who refused to accommodate a gay/lesbian group were taken to court and financially penalised. In Tasmania an LGBTQI activist Martine Delaney lodged a complaint with the Anti-Discrimination Commissioner over the Catholic Church circulating its Don’t mess with marriage booklet to schools.
Given that both the Australian Labor Party and the Greens Party are committed to removing existing exemptions and exceptions to anti-discrimination laws relating to the ability to discriminate based on religious grounds then it’s obvious that religious freedom will be under even greater threat if the definition of marriage is changed.
Overseas examples include a British Christian school having its performance downgraded as the Ofsted inspectors concluded it was “homophobic” as it failed to teach the officially endorsed, secular view of LGBTQI diversity and difference.
In London a Jewish school enrolling girls aged 3 to 8 was threatened with closure for not teaching the government’s endorsed beliefs about gender fluidity and gender reassignment.
In America, under the Obama administration, schools were forced to allow transgender boys to use girls’ toilets and changing rooms.
If the same-sex legislation is passed the reality is that schools in Australia will also be forced to implement a radical LGBTQI sexuality and gender agenda. The Australian Education Union, one of the most powerful teacher unions in Australia, in addition to supporting same sex marriage argues that “Homosexuality and bisexuality need to be normalised” in the school curriculum and that “All staff must be in-serviced in homophobia and hetero-sexism”.
The AEU policy for schools also argues it is wrong to believe that heterosexual relationships are “natural” or “normal” and condemns churches as “un-Christian” for not accepting its cultural-left LGBTQI agenda.
It is also the case that the cultural-left has long sought to undermine Christianity and to banish religion from the public square and that the same-sex issue is part of a much broader campaign.
As argued by Aubrey Perry in a recent comment piece published in the Fairfax Press titled ‘This survey is about much more than same sex marriage’ the intention is to enforce a secular view of society, one where religion plays no part.
In relation to the SSM postal survey Perry argues: “This survey offers us a conscious opportunity to make a firm stand in support of a secular government and to reject discrimination or favouritism based on religion. It’s our opportunity to say that religion has no part in the shaping of our laws”.
ALP senator Penny Wong, in her Frank Walker Memorial Lecture, also suggests that there is no place for religion in law making when she argues “The separation of church and state is one of the central planks on which liberal democracy stands”.
In relation to issues like same-sex marriage Wong argues: “The problem in all of this, of course, is the application of religious belief to the framing of law in a secular society”.
If religion has no place one wonders why parliaments begin with the Lord’s Prayer and why the Constitution includes the words, “Humbly relying on the blessing of Almighty God”.
Roz Ward, the La Trobe University researcher responsible for the radical LGBTQI Safe Schools program that tells children gender is fluid and limitless, goes one step further and argues there is no place for a religious view of marriage as “only Marxism provides the theory and practice of genuine human liberation”.
Ward goes on to argue “Marxism offers both the hope and the strategy needed to create a world where human sexuality, gender and how we relate to our bodies can blossom in extraordinary new and amazing ways that we can only try to imagine today”.
Underpinning the campaign to change the definition of marriage is a radical LGBTQI gender ideology, described by Pope Francis as one “which denies the difference and reciprocity in nature of a man and a woman and that envisages a society without gender differences, thereby removing the anthropological foundation of the family”.
The Pope also argues that defining marriage as involving people of the same sex “leads to educational programmes and legislative guidelines which promote a personal identity and emotional intimacy radically separated from the biological difference between male and female”.