Why Liberals can’t win marriage equality debate

WHICHEVER way the government’s marriage equality debate goes next week, the Coalition will come out a loser, writes James Campbell.

The Coalition will come out a loser whichever way the same-sex marriage debate goes.

GRAHAM Richardson made the excellent point this week that you only have to look at the words we use to describe homosexual marriage to see which way the tide is running. When the idea first surfaced a few years ago, right-thinking people were cool with calling it “gay marriage”.

Over the course of the journey it morphed into “same-sex marriage” before reaching the evolved and enlightened descriptor of “marriage equality” that it enjoys today. You can still just about get away with calling it gay marriage but not, I suspect, for long.

Now I could be wrong, of course. A great reaction may be about to roll across the Western world, one that will see the rule abolished that mandates every situation comedy have at least one flamboyantly gay character, the forcible suppression of Barbra Streisand records and the re-criminalisation of homosexual acts between consenting adults.

If that is so, the Liberal Party’s position on gay marriage makes perfect sense.

But in the actual world, the one we live in, the one where Melbourne Grammar has a Pride assembly as the culmination of its Pride Week jamboree (featuring Pride chapel services and a Pride football match) organised by the school’s “Gay-Straight alliance”, there is absolutely no chance that gay marriage isn’t coming to Australia.

If there was ever a time for invoking the Kenny Rogers doctrine — which dictates that “you’ve got to know when to hold ’em/ know when to fold ’em it/ know when to walk away/ know when to run” — it is now.

Instead of agonising about the reaction to the proposal of their elderly so-called base, Malcolm Turnbull’s government should be worrying what the division is doing to their standing among the Millennials.

LIBS GOING POSTAL OVER GAY MARRIAGE

GAY MARRIAGE BROKEN PROMISE INSULTS VOTERS

To this end they would do well to have a look at a survey done a few years ago in the US calledMillennials: The Politically Unclaimed Generation, which examined the attitude of several thousand American youths to social and economic issues.

The survey found that seven out of 10 of young Americans favour same-sex marriage, which is no surprise really; more unexpectedly, “even a majority of Republican Millennials support legalising same-sex marriage, 54 to 45 per cent”.

What should be giving the Liberal Party pause for thought, however, is that the survey found that legalising same-sex marriage has become “a deal-breaker issue” for many Millennials, with one in four saying they could not vote for a candidate who opposed it even if they agreed on other issues.

To be fair, 20 per cent said they could not vote for a political candidate who supports same-sex marriage, even if they agreed with the candidate on other issues, but “since the median Millennial voter supports legalising same-sex marriage, and the trend is continuing toward greater support, the issue most likely presents a challenge to the Republican Party, which has repeatedly codified their opposition to same-sex marriage in the party platform”.

Now it goes without saying that the views of Australian Millennials might not be the same as their US counterparts, but if anything I’d be bet they’re more skewed towards to the pro-gay marriage side of the ledger given the greater strength of evangelical Christianity in the US.

The only loser at the end of a months-long plebiscite campaign on gay marriage will be the Liberal Party because, to put it crudely, every time Eric Abetz goes on The Project another fairy dies.

But instead of welcoming the move by the five Liberal backbenchers, Trent Zimmerman, Warren Entsch, Tim Wilson, Dean Smith and Trevor Evans, to move the party away from a position that can only hurt it, they are being vilified, with anonymous figures from the Right giving anonymous quotes to newspapers threatening their preselections.

Tim Wilson is likely to cross the floor and has been vilified in return. Picture: Josie Hayden

TURNBULL FACES SPILL OVER GAY MARRIAGE

Worse, the Liberals are in danger of adopting the only policy more stupid than their present position of having no position at all now that the Senate has rejected the plebiscite vote — which is to have a Clayton’s non-compulsory postal ballot plebiscite run by the AEC.

Any such proposal is destined to be stillborn as it would be surely boycotted by the ALP and Greens as well as the advocates for gay marriage.

It is hard to disagree with the Coalition MP who described it to my colleague, Rob Harris, as “the biggest piece of shit proposal I’ve ever heard and in the past decade ,that’s quite an effort”.

I have to tell you that some other MPs’ responses are not fit to print in a family newspaper.

Even those who don’t think it is that bad think it is too late. If they were going to go for it, the time was right after the Senate said no to the plebiscite proper.

Unbelievably, however, this harebrained scheme, which is being pushed out of Queensland, is a good chance to get up and even has the backing of some Victorian ministers who should know better.

Where we will land on this next week when the four backbenchers bring on this debate in the party room is anyone’s guess. Will they cross the floor if the party room says no? That is the question on everyone’s lips. The fact that we have moved straight to it is because nobody I have spoken to believes the Liberal party room is going to change its mind on this question next week.

Which means that, either way, the Labor Party will get the credit when, as is inevitable, it legislates for gay marriage after the next election.

James Campbell is national politics editor

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