Same sex marriage debate creates new breed of activists

A few weeks back I attended two separate meetings, of different organisations, both with an interest in public life. The first had about 50 people, mostly over 60, pessimistic about the next election; the second, more than 100, mostly under 30, optimistic about their ability to make a difference.

It might not surprise you that the first was a political party local campaign launch. And here in the United States it might not surprise you either that much the livelier group comprised supporters of marriage as it has always been understood. But it would surprise most people in Australia, where only aged, churchy losers are supposed to reject changing the nature of marriage.

Six weeks ago, some polls had 70 per cent support for same-sex marriage. With about a week to go in Australia’s postal vote, polling by the No case shows it has fallen to about 50 per cent, with about 40 per cent opposed and 10 per cent undecided.

In Ireland, the final poll showed just 18 per cent opposed to same-sex marriage; yet the No vote was 38 per cent (of the 62 per cent that turned out). Perhaps every one of the opponents of same-sex marriage actually voted; or perhaps No voters don’t like ’fessing up, even to pollsters. Just to get 40 per cent would be a moral victory for marriage; but my instinct is that shy No voters mean this result could swing either way.

Win, lose, or draw, though, starting from scratch two months ago, the campaign for marriage in my country has mobilised thousands of new activists; and created a network that could be deployed to defend Western civilisation more broadly and the Judaeo-Christian ethic against all that has been undermining it.

So far, the campaign to defend marriage in Australia has raised more than $6 million from more than 20,000 donors, and fielded more than 5000 volunteers to doorknock and phone canvass. Even now, on an Australian weekend, more people attend religious services than play organised sport, yet sport makes you normal and religion makes you odd, if you’re ruled by the zeitgeist.

Despite the vindictiveness of the same-sex marriage campaign against anyone who breaks cover, several thousand people, mostly young, have done just that. Such robust characters, once activated, are unlikely to fade away. Here is the nucleus of an organisation, created almost from nothing, to rival the left-wing activist group GetUp! that has been around for a decade; and that boasts it defeated a number of conservative MPs at last year’s federal election.

In the medium term, these new activists are likely to mean the long march of the left through our institutions is no longer largely unopposed. And we need more standard bearers, at every level, because a majority that stays silent soon becomes a minority.

In Victoria, the left-wing Labor government has reportedly given LGBTI support groups $500,000 to counsel people distressed by the same-sex marriage plebiscite. In that state, parents must sign a special form if their children are to receive religious instruction at school — but it must be at lunch time or before or after class and limited to 30 minutes a week. From next year, something called Safe Schools will be compulsory for all secondary students in Victorian government schools. This is a social engineering program that managed to trick its way into the curriculum disguised as anti-bullying, where 12-year-olds are made to role-play being gay and are taught that there’s really no such thing as being male or female.

The Victorian government is also on the verge of giving doctors the right to kill some patients; a moral watershed that has crept up on us, in part because marriage has preoccupied the national debate.

There is a massive job for these newly energised, potential conservative activists that I saw the other night. Regardless of the same-sex result, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of conscience and the right of parents to choose for their children need to be reasserted because the marriage campaign has helped to illustrate just how fragile they are.

Merely debating marriage has hinted at the risks facing cultural conservatives, the new dissidents in the world that their decency and tolerance has made possible. The Catholic Archbishop of Hobart, for example, has faced prosecution under anti-discrimination laws for a booklet outlining the orthodox Christian teaching on marriage. The threat of protest has caused pro-marriage meetings and rallies to be cancelled. A Christian teenager was sacked for putting a pro-marriage message on her Face­book page (and naturally the Aus­tralian Human Rights Com­mis­sion declined to defend her). Par­ents have been lied to on gender-fluidity programs in their chil­dren’s schools. And these depre­dations have taken place while the same-sex activists are yet to win!

As this newspaper’s Paul Kelly points out, along with former prime minister John Howard: the idea that you can change the understanding of something as fundamental as marriage without changing anything else is an “intellectual fraud”. Especially if unaccompanied by any wider charter of freedoms, we can expect same-sex marriage in Australia to have much the same consequences as in other countries. People will take offence at the traditional teaching and the anti-discrimination laws can be relied on to do the rest.

Campaigns for same-sex marriage and the like are a consequence of our civilisational self-doubt and the collapse of cultural self-confidence. The decline of belief has meant a reluctance to assert principles and a fear of giving offence. In the meantime, there are three million Australians who haven’t voted and we’re fighting to get them all because, yes or no, everyone should have a say; one way or another, the result will be easier to accept the more closely it reflects the judgment of us all.

This is an edited extract of a speech to be given overnight to the Alliance Defending Freedom at New York’s Pierre Hotel.