Same-sex marriage: corporate bosses push questionable agenda

“If you’re unhappy with a company that’s involved with the (same-sex marriage) campaign you won’t be able to bank and you won’t be able to fly anywhere.” These are the words of Qantas chief executive Alan Joyce, quoted in The Sydney Morning Herald on April 15.

Joyce, as is well known, is gay and Irish, and he runs Australia’s national airline. He is also a prime mover behind the corporate support for gay marriage. His personal support for this radical social policy change has not been questioned. Why should it be? Joyce has every right to voice his opinion on the matter, as do we all. In this at least we are all supposed to have an equal voice. But some voices are more equal than others.

Telstra’s double backflip on its level of corporate support for this cause clearly shows that corporate sponsorship can be a powerful tool in pursuing a social goal.

The story so far has concentrated on whether the Catholic Church put pressure on Telstra to pull away from being an active partner in the same-sex marriage campaign, with headlines such as “Church told gay CEOs at Qantas, SBS to stop supporting marriage equality”. But this raises several questions, one being the potential for corporate sponsorship to be used by powerful chief executives to further a personal agenda.

Why should the church support an organisation that is campaigning against a vital element of its social and moral teachings? Why is it accepted that it is ethical for a public company to pursue a change in the marriage laws, particularly a telco, during a period of political campaigning? Who has more right to stand by ethical, social and moral teachings, the church or Telstra and Qantas?

What would we think if Catholic organisations were to provide only to Catholics those services they now provide in the community? What if church organisations employed only Catholics? What if Catholics, or Muslims, ran organisations that virtually forced their employees and those doing business with them to profess the tenants of Catholicism, or at least not express any contrary position if they wanted to be promoted? Sounds wacky, but it used to happen in this country, and in Muslim countries it still does.

Now the spectre of this type of corporate fascism is upon us again.

There is a vast difference between maintaining responsible and ethical standards in business practices and foisting views about controversial social policy issues on to clients.

And who is paying? Are corporations involved in this campaign using corporate money to push the same-sex marriage agenda?

According to Telstra, it has taken a survey that shows most of its clients and the public support this. Whose money was used to pay for that survey? Why, when Telstra’s performance as a reliable telco is so poor, have we had to tolerate surveys on same-sex marriage? How much shareholder money is spent at Qantas or Telstra or any of the other companies to push this agenda? Who organises these strategies, the numerous corporate breakfasts addressed by Joyce and other chief executives?

Then there is Facebook, that wonderfully democratic conduit for “free for all” opinion and friendly exchange of views? Think again. Facebook is shamelessly, systematically censoring opposing views on same-sex marriage.

The censoring of a post by an academic pointing to the virulent nastiness of supporters of same-sex marriage is not the only case. Family Voice Australia, which opposes same-sex marriage and supports the natural family, had all of its posts on the subject in June disappear. Complaints to Facebook met a stony silence.

Later Family Voice Australia posted on a story about a US town whose council had banned the annual nativity scene, and the people rebelled. But according to spokeswoman Ros Phillips: “When we paid Facebook to boost our post, they took our money — but then refused to boost it on the ground that it did not meet their standards!” Phillips says some other attempts to boost posts have met a similar fate. This simply proves that some people are more equal than others in the online world.

These are just some of the questions that come to mind about this campaign. But the most important question goes back to Joyce’s remark that if you are unhappy with a company supporting same-sex marriage you will not be able to bank or fly anywhere.

In other words, if you don’t support this campaign even tacitly by spending your money with this firm, in effect you will be held to ransom. Of course Joe Public has no choice in any of this. We bank Commonwealth, we fly Qantas, we shop at David Jones, presumably adding material support to a controversial campaign that is the subject of a future plebiscite, that we may or may not agree with.

How democratic is this corporate campaign? Is the public being manipulated into a foregone conclusion on the plebiscite? What business does business have in getting involved in a matter of social policy and sexual morality that is the subject of a plebiscite? Joyce claims to support the campaign because he thinks it will encourage diversity. Frankly, as shown by his exalted position at Qantas, there is no lack of diversity in Australian corporations.