Gay and godless: Left pushing their agenda

HOMOSEXUAL marriage is a minor issue for most Australians but it is being pushed to the forefront by the ABC and other agenda-driven organisations hell-bent on marginalising religion in their push for a secular nation.

Mainstream Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists and followers of other faiths believe in the traditional form of marriage which has prevailed in all cultures for millennia. Many for whom homosexual marriage has suddenly become a burning issue are those who take issue with religion. Abruptly changing age-old definitions to suit relatively recent fashions is extremely dangerous, but it is clear that Labor believes it is even more dangerous to take a principledstand in electorates where there is a large Green and/or homosexual vote. The ABC’s Radio National is obsessed with the issue, though its presenters do not warn listeners of their personal conflicts of interest. The national broadcaster, which has always been concerned with the possibility of repercussions for the Muslim community whenever an Islamist extremist commits another atrocity, cannot even bring itself to mention the fact that Muslims are among the most violently opposed to homosexuality, let alone the thought of homosexual marriages. In a discussion of the issue this week, the ABC commentator preferred to bloviate about “large conservative ­migrant populations” in Western Sydney which might be offended by such marriages rather than speak honestly and openly and say they were Muslim. Eight years ago, deputy Labor leader Tanya Plibersek was out and proud opposing homosexual marriage. So, too, was Labor Prime Minister Kevin Rudd in 2007, as was Julia Gillard when she had succeeded him as Labor prime minister successor in 2010. “Labor does not support changing the Marriage Act to allow same-sex marriage,“ Plibersek promised on March 21, 2007. Rudd told the ABC on August 10, 2007: “I have a pretty basic view on this, as reflected in the position adopted by our party, and that is, that marriage is between a man and a woman.” That was the traditional, universally recognised view of marriage then. It was reconfirmed when the Australian Marriage Amendment Act (2004) passed with the support of both major parties. Why are we having a debate now? The answer is the threat posed to Labor by the rise of the Greens in the House and its Senate successes in 2010. With the Greens holding the balance of power in the Senate and the Labor government depending on the loose alliance of loopy independents and the first Green MP in the Lower House, Gillard permitted a free vote on the issue in 2012. It lost. She remained opposed to homosexual marriage. In an August 2013 Fairfax Nielsen Poll, 57 per cent of ­respondents said that same-sex marriage was “not important at all” in deciding how they would vote in the coming ­election. Just last month, the Leftist activist organisation GetUp asked its claimed 950,000 members to help prioritise its top five campaigns. It received responses from 30,818 who listed the issues that were most important to them. Homosexual marriage was not in the top five, nor the top 10, not even in the top 15. It proved to be the issue of sixteenth order importance. This would suggest that Prime Minister Tony Abbott is not “stuck in the past”, as ­Opposition leader Bill Shorten sneers at every opportunity, but is more in tune with Australians than the Labor leader. In his maiden speech in 2007, Social Services Minister Scott Morrison presciently noted that it has become ­“fashionable to negatively stereotype those who profess their ­Christian faith in public life as ‘extreme’ and to suggest that such faith has no place in the political debate of this country”. Yet faith drove anti-slavery campaigner William Wilberforce and anti-apartheid ­leader Desmond Tutu, to name just two, who stood for the immutable truths and principles of Christianity and transformed their nations and, indeed, the world in the process. The degree of intolerant outrage expressed against the views of religious leaders from all faiths who oppose the hysterical homosexual marriage campaign speaks to the real agenda of this jihad.