Piers Akerman: Marriage vote was a victory for left’s hate

THE battle for marriage has been lost and the politically left are now assailing gender. This is not fiction.

Members of Parliament embrace one another after parliament passed the same-sex marriage bill last week.

OPPOSITION leader Bill Shorten is the winner in the 2017 Hypocrisy Stakes but Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull is not that far behind.

The vision of both men standing with cheering supporters of homosexual marriage served to remind many viewers of just how desiccated Australian politics is currently.

If we get the leaders we ­deserve, what on earth did we do to wind up with these two pygmies?

There they were trying desperately to climb aboard the surge of emotion cre­ated by tears and hugs and rainbow flag waving yet neither individual came to the party with a clean and clear record of support for the process that finally deli­vered homosexual marriage to Australia.

The moment of radiance looked somewhat diminished by their presence.

Columnist Piers Akerman.

Just as the celebrity-studded audience in the packed public gallery, cheering and clapping, detracted from the event and reminded some of the countercultural leftists ­activists who had been instrumental in overturning the millennia-held view of traditional marriage as being between a man and a woman to the exclusion of all others and the bedrock of stable family life.

The redefinition of words by political process is plainly Orwellian.

The battle for marriage has been lost and the politically left are now assailing gender. This is not fiction. We have ­already seen the example in Australia of activists trying to remove the word woman from midwifery texts on the grounds that to refer to a specific gender promotes inequality.

As an American feminist wrote: “Gender inequality and the harmful effects of patriarchy are sustaining the widespread oppression of women across the world and this is also having an impact on maternity services with unacceptable rates of maternal mortality, the continued under-investment in the midwifery profession and the limiting of women’s place of birth options. However, the current zeitgeist is affirming an alignment of feminism and gender equality such that both have a high profile in public discourse. This presents a once in a generation opportunity for midwives to commit to righting the wrongs of this most pernicious discrimination.”

What this has to do with the safe delivery of healthy babies is anybody’s guess but the argument is ­indicative of the manner in which issues that seemed settled are being deconstructed by activists with an agenda to create confusion and imple­ment a new order.

The homosexual marriage debate, while enabling the very small minority of Australians who believe their already state-recognised unions will mystically be enhanced with the redefinition of the traditional meaning of the word, has been a distraction and will continue to be so if the foreign experience is any gauge.

Both Shorten and Turnbull have turned their backs on ­religious communities in Australia, though Turnbull has ­offered them the fig leaf of a panel review of protections for religious freedom.

It’s a far cry from Turnbull’s September claim that he ­believes in religious freedom “even more strongly” than in same-sex marriage.

It was as weak as Labor’s claim that its members would be given a conscience vote on the issue when the opposite was evident with shadow ­Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus repeatedly standing to ­announce: “Labor opposes these amendments.”

He was exposed by LNP MP George Christensen who noted: “So much for the conscience vote! We know there are people on their backbench who have the same concerns about religious liberty that we do. But they are not letting them have a conscience vote. That says a lot about Labor.”

Christensen noted that amendments to protect reli­gious freedom had repeatedly been voted down by Labor “and we’ve had cheers from the gallery — cheering for the erosion of religious liberty! When I’m specifically saying ‘eroding religious liberty’, they support that. That is the voice of tolerance today!

“I am absolutely disgusted that we are going down this track. These amendments, which no doubt are going to be opposed like every other thing today, are about ensuring that a church hall, a church property or a church service, or a business run by a church ... is going to be protected from ­activists trying to take some sort of stand, which we know they will do. They have done it before and they will do it again — and there will be no protections for those churches.”

Christensen spoke for many on both sides when he said: “If our freedom of religion is simply leaving our faith behind at the church door, the synagogue door or the mosque door and not actually putting it in practice in our own lives — particularly when it comes to ministers of religion and what they have to do in the course of their jobs — then this House is effectively eroding freedom of religion, freedom of faith and freedom to act out in the conscience of your faith.”

And Labor ensured that those religious freedoms were stripped away, not that Turnbull offered the Coalition more than meagre leadership.

Quite a few Australians ­answered Yes to the survey in the hope that their ­response would help bring an end to the rainbow throng’s clamouring but unfortunately they will be disappointed.

When the High Court finishes dealing with the multiple dual citizenship matters it will have before it in the New Year, it will find itself adjudicating on rights as activists take churches and people of conscience to court to defend themselves against charges of discrimination.

Don’t believe me — just look at the case before the US Supreme Court of the religious baker who didn’t wish to create one of his artistic cakes for a homosexual couple.

The vote was not a happy ending, it was merely another front crumbling in the left’s long, sour and hateful campaign against Western culture.