Australia blocks national marriage equality plebiscite; LGBT community thrilled

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Dryk said:
Our LGBT+ community is unanimous on this. They don't want to have to suffer through months of the ad campaigns and the general public openly discussing whether they should have civil rights. As a civil rights issue and it shouldn't be up for debate, and giving anti-SSM people a debate is dignifying their position with a response it does not deserve.
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I agree with this approach. Considering how even a parliamentary debate/vote can be damaging (see France's year long protest campaign by millions of bigots chanting "One dad, one mom"), I can't imagine how awful a referendum campaign can get.

Regardless, it's disgusting to submit basic human rights to a majority's approval. "You want the same rights? Let's see if enough people agree you should have the same rights as them".
 
I remember the 2004 plebiscite proposing to amend the Marriage Act to outlaw same-sex marriage.

Oh wait, no I don't, because it didn't fucking happen. If the rotten bastards could manage to legislate on their own then, I imagine they can do it now.
 
Maledict said:
Russia is very firmly in the grip of Christianity. Don't forget the Orthodox branch of Christianity, which is a state tool in Russia and extremely homophobic.
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It's so weird to see how Russia has gone back to its Christian roots after the dissolution of Soviet Union (that was atheist state). I mean Soviet Union was first country on earth that allowed Abortion in 1920 way before any western countries.
 
To give an idea of how opposed the right wing aspects of the government are to this, the National Party (part of a coalition to make our majority government) threatened to pull support from the government today, if they had a vote on same sex marriage in parliament instead of this non-binding plebiscite.

A bunch of politicians from both the Nationals and the Liberals had already come out and said they would ignore the results of the plebiscite/the Australian people and vote against it.

I'm glad that it was shot down. I'm happy to wait a few more years of we have to, because fuck the way we were going to do this.
 
I laid it out in the OP but it boils down to three things:

a) Public funding for bigotry
b) Even more widespread public forum for bigotry (considering the ACL's fucking press releases this is kind of astounding personally)
c) Even if passed it has no more legal force than what is already known (a majority of Australians support gay marriage)
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Does a) matter that much? There's also funding for progressives. Net funding, there's no change in the status quo. Same principle applies to b). It gives bigotry more profile... but it also gives progressives more profile. Given that I am fully confident progressives can do more with their profile, that's a win for gay marriage.

Only c) I think is persuasive - if only because gay marriage winning then the government doing nothing would be an enormous waste of time. But how likely is this to happen? Wouldn't any government that so publicly tried to ignore a referendum get torn apart? Look at Brexit in the UK. It was purely consultative, and four fifths of the Conservative party were Remainers. Despite that, it's being enacted pretty damn fast and being implemented by a Remainer party and Prime Minister.

Seems like a missed opportunity to me.
 
DJKhaled said:
I had to laugh at you calling Malcolm turnbull a moderate. The guy is nothing, just someone that loves money and power.
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I couldn't honestly tell you what his values are. It does seem he is just in it for the power, as I don't know what he stands for. He seems a bit of a snake.
 
DJKhaled said:
I had to laugh at you calling Malcolm turnbull a moderate. The guy is nothing, just someone that loves money and power.
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everything's relative. compared to, say, christopher fucking pyne

Crab said:
Does a) matter that much? There's also funding for progressives. Net funding, there's no change in the status quo. Same principle applies to b). It gives bigotry more profile... but it also gives progressives more profile. Given that I am fully confident progressives can do more with their profile, that's a win for gay marriage.

Only c) I think is persuasive - if only because gay marriage winning then the government doing nothing would be an enormous waste of time. But how likely is this to happen? Wouldn't any government that so publicly tried to ignore a referendum get torn apart? Look at Brexit in the UK. It was purely consultative, and four fifths of the Conservative party were Remainers. Despite that, it's being enacted pretty damn fast and being implemented by a Remainer party and Prime Minister.

Seems like a missed opportunity to me.
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It depends if you look at the cost only as a cost/benefit analysis, I think... like, the result would be nice, but is the pain worth it? When the result is both uncertain and even if you win you still have the distinct possibility of losing?

Brexit is a bad example - the UK has lost in pretty much every way in my estimation.

Also, given the NAT/Right-Wing Libs, I think there is a distinct possibility that the government would ignore a successful plebiscite. They'd get turfed at the next election, but frankly I think they're going to anyway.
 
laoni said:
To give an idea of how opposed the right wing aspects of the government are to this, the National Party (part of a coalition to make our majority government) threatened to pull support from the government today, if they had a vote on same sex marriage in parliament instead of this non-binding plebiscite.

A bunch of politicians from both the Nationals and the Liberals had already come out and said they would ignore the results of the plebiscite/the Australian people and vote against it.

I'm glad that it was shot down. I'm happy to wait a few more years of we have to, because fuck the way we were going to do this.
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The libs need to look at the damage religious nutjobs have done to the Republican party. Blokes like Bernadi are destroying the party. It's time to cut them loose and rebuild closer to the centre. Might lose an election or two but if they don't they risk being dragged into third party territory in 20yrs.
 
While I'm hardly bought over by the arguments that gay people will suffer terribly as a result of the plebiscite, the plebiscite was still dumb. Just legislate it you nongs. The Australian public has been in favour for a decade or so.

DJKhaled said:
I had to laugh at you calling Malcolm turnbull a moderate. The guy is nothing, just someone that loves money and power.
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These comments are just bizarre to me. The guy wants power to do good by the people. It's obvious by his personal policies and his rhetoric. That he's held hostage by the hard right and other factions within the party is hardly an indictment on himself so much as the parliamentary structure in Australia.
 
Peru said:
It's pretty incredible to me that Australia hasn't voted through a yes for gay marriage yet.
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The reason is we actually have two conservative parties.

The Liberal-National coalition is basically a conglomeration of free trade and anti union ideologues, rural political groups and business groups. They have attracted the support of right wing conservatives from the blatantly racist to the moderate conservative progressives as well as the more conservative religious groups.

The Labour party which is really a conservative pro-union party has become an umbrella for anti conservative and progressive ideologies. They attract everyone who hate the coalition. One of their biggest backers however is the shop-workers union which has a staunchly catholic conservative leadership group. This is why the vote was never put to parliament while Labour was in power.

The greens hold the balance of power in the senate and basically support the Labour party due to Labour being much more accommodating to left wing 'ideologies' such environmental protection, meaningful support for welfare, better public school funding, etc.
They however have no real power in the lower house.

There it's either Labour or LNP coalition who call the shots.

So even though most coalition voters and most labour voters support SSM the coalition are held back by their hard right faction of the liberal party and the Nationals and Labour is held back by their right wing faction at the behest of the shopworkers union.

But that may be changing...

Control of the shoppies union has been changing and they finally ended their opposition to SSM in August this year. I believe they now have no position on the matter.

There is hope.
 
Palette Swap said:
I agree with this approach. Considering how even a parliamentary debate/vote can be damaging (see France's year long protest campaign by millions of bigots chanting "One dad, one mom"), I can't imagine how awful a referendum campaign can get.

Regardless, it's disgusting to submit basic human rights to a majority's approval. "You want the same rights? Let's see if enough people agree you should have the same rights as them".
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Look at Ireland and the UK. Both ways work, but need parliament to actually work towards that goal.

At the moment it looks like neither way forward is going to happen because of an argument over semantics. If a parliamentary vote was viable, it needs to happen or it needs to be a manifesto issue in the next election so it cannot be ignored.

Instead you have political stalemate because nobody wants to actually put the vote forward in any way. It sucks but putting it to the people removes all shadow of a doubt. You'll get howls from the antis anyway if it went through a parliamentary vote and the abuses the LGBT community fear will occur anyway but with less rather than more moral authority. It is an imperfect solution to a problem that shouldn't exist but there we go.
 
Bizarre that this is the best course of action towards marriage equality.

Someone has to have the political guts to do what's right far earlier than 3 years in the future.
 
Jintor said:
It depends if you look at the cost only as a cost/benefit analysis, I think... like, the result would be nice, but is the pain worth it? When the result is both uncertain and even if you win you still have the distinct possibility of losing?
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I don't feel like you avoid the pain either way, though. Like, to be legalised, it will have to pass through parliament, which still means a very public debate involving bigots - it's just these are elected bigots representing bigots at large instead of the bigots at large themselves.

Brexit is a bad example - the UK has lost in pretty much every way in my estimation.
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I'm not saying Brexit was a good outcome, I'm just pointing out that the government of the day both considered it consultative and disagreed, but it is still happening just because governments daren't ignore referendums.

In this case, gay marriage would win overwhelmingly, so that ends up being really good.

Also, given the NAT/Right-Wing Libs, I think there is a distinct possibility that the government would ignore a successful plebiscite. They'd get turfed at the next election, but frankly I think they're going to anyway.
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If you're confident that both it is unlikely the Nats/Libs would go through with it and that they're also going to be turfed out in favour of someone who will next election, I guess I might just not care either way. I'm not sure I'd oppose it, though - I just wouldn't care whether it happened or not.
 
Crab said:
Does a) matter that much? There's also funding for progressives. Net funding, there's no change in the status quo. Same principle applies to b). It gives bigotry more profile... but it also gives progressives more profile. Given that I am fully confident progressives can do more with their profile, that's a win for gay marriage.

Only c) I think is persuasive - if only because gay marriage winning then the government doing nothing would be an enormous waste of time. But how likely is this to happen? Wouldn't any government that so publicly tried to ignore a referendum get torn apart? Look at Brexit in the UK. It was purely consultative, and four fifths of the Conservative party were Remainers. Despite that, it's being enacted pretty damn fast and being implemented by a Remainer party and Prime Minister.

Seems like a missed opportunity to me.
Click to expand...

Pretty well every expert came out and said a protracted campaign against the LGBT community would result in sharp upticks of self-harm, suicide and violence to the community. IIRC Headspace, a major youth mental health service, had a massive increase in calls from LGBT youth seeking help just at the idea of this plebiscite and the hatred it would bring.

Churches would not be taxed for their donations to campaigns, while a group like GetUp! (a progressive group) would be taxed heavily for donating. You also have MPs refusing to accept the results of the plebiscite as valid if any donations are received from outside the country.

We've actually had a similar debate 'recently'. Homosexuality was only decriminalised in 1997 in Tasmania, and it was a - disgusting- debate. And politicians who said "If we are going to rely on this overriding right to privacy, surely incest must be allowed as well," about homosexuality ARE LITERALLY STILL IN POWER TODAY
 
Crab said:
I don't feel like you avoid the pain either way, though. Like, to be legalised, it will have to pass through parliament, which still means a very public debate involving bigots - it's just these are elected bigots representing bigots at large instead of the bigots at large themselves.



I'm not saying Brexit was a good outcome, I'm just pointing out that the government of the day both considered it consultative and disagreed, but it is still happening just because governments daren't ignore referendums.

In this case, gay marriage would win overwhelmingly, so that ends up being really good.



If you're confident that both it is unlikely the Nats/Libs would go through with it and that they're also going to be turfed out in favour of someone who will next election, I guess I might just not care either way. I'm not sure I'd oppose it, though - I just wouldn't care whether it happened or not.
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The other thing is that the federal and state lib governments were planning to repeal parts of their anti discrimination acts to allow for "the debate", but, at least in Tasmania, there was no sunset clause or plan to reinstate it afterwards, and now the the plebiscite is dead they're trying to do it anyway.
 
Crab said:
I don't feel like you avoid the pain either way, though. Like, to be legalised, it will have to pass through parliament, which still means a very public debate involving bigots - it's just these are elected bigots representing bigots at large instead of the bigots at large themselves.
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I get what you're saying. If the plebiscite was either self-executing or a full referendum, I think (despite my generalist stance that human rights are not up for debate) I would have pragmatically accepted it. But the plebiscite doesn't even beat my pragmatism smell test - what's the point of taking the pain in this manner with no guarantee of getting what we want even if we win? May as well go through parliament in that case.
 
Jintor said:
I get what you're saying. If the plebiscite was either self-executing or a full referendum, I think (despite my generalist stance that human rights are not up for debate) I would have pragmatically accepted it. But the plebiscite doesn't even beat my pragmatism smell test - what's the point of taking the pain in this manner with no guarantee of getting what we want even if we win? May as well go through parliament in that case.
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I'm sad that you feel that way, and I know that you do so for very legitimate reason.

A plebiscite should be respected 100%. I looked at this thinking the vote was called for in good faith. If not, fuck the government of Australia for using human rights as a political football.
 
laoni said:
Pretty well every expert came out and said a protracted campaign against the LGBT community would result in sharp upticks of self-harm, suicide and violence to the community. IIRC Headspace, a major youth mental health service, had a massive increase in calls from LGBT youth seeking help just at the idea of this plebiscite and the hatred it would bring.
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Yes, but at the same time, all of these things are continuing to happen to the LGBT community right now as we speak. At least when the referendum is won, the LGBT community could look and see the 70%+ of the population who stand with them thick or thin. I helped with the Irish referendum, and most people I worked with said that for all the extra bigots crawling out of the woodwork, it was more than made up for by seeing Irish people of every faith, colour, age and sex coming out publicly to support the LGBT community.

Before the referendum, they felt unsupported, because the bigots hated regardless, but society seemed to be quiet. Realising how many people were behind them was enormous.
 
darkace said:
These comments are just bizarre to me. The guy wants power to do good by the people. It's obvious by his personal policies and his rhetoric. That he's held hostage by the hard right and other factions within the party is hardly an indictment on himself so much as the parliamentary structure in Australia.
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Lol. Okay, keep telling yourself that darkace. Keep living in your bubble.
 
DJKhaled said:
Lol. Okay, keep telling yourself that darkace. Keep living in your bubble.
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Have you ever thought to yourself 'man, I bring so little to the table that it'd be better if I just didn't post at all'.

Because if I posted what you did it's all that would run through my head.

30yearsofhurt said:
A lot of your posts just attack people who point out your stupidity.
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Aren't you that guy that doesn't understand tax incidence but tried to lecture me as if you did?
 
darkace said:
Have you ever thought to yourself 'man, I bring so little to the table that it'd be better if I just didn't post at all'.

Because if I posted what you did it's all that would run through my head.
Click to expand...

A lot of your posts just attack people who point out your stupidity. Maybe you should be thinking 'man, I bring so little to the table that it'd be better if I just didn't post at all'.


darkace said:
Aren't you that guy that doesn't understand tax incidence but tried to lecture me as if you did?
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Are you still pretending you learnt something in economics 101?
 
Crab said:
Yes, but at the same time, all of these things are continuing to happen to the LGBT community right now as we speak. At least when the referendum is won, the LGBT community could look and see the 70%+ of the population who stand with them thick or thin. I helped with the Irish referendum, and most people I worked with said that for all the extra bigots crawling out of the woodwork, it was more than made up for by seeing Irish people of every faith, colour, age and sex coming out publicly to support the LGBT community.

Before the referendum, they felt unsupported, because the bigots hated regardless, but society seemed to be quiet. Realising how many people were behind them was enormous.
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We already know that's the case, though. Support for same sex marriage has been high for years in the country. And even with this, the people are with the LGBT community. The majority of Australians want a vote in parliament, they don't want the plebiscite. And something like 80-90% of the LGBT community don't want it, especially with it being so advantageously set up for the 'No' side (and with members of parliament coming out publicly and saying no matter the result of the plebiscite, they would vote No).

We're happy to wait the 4 years for these shitlords to be voted out, rather than the protracted discrimination campaign we'd receive (The plebiscite was promised for February) for something that isn't even guaranteed to pass because religious right wing nutjobs have our leader by the balls,and have already publicly told us they will ignore the Australian people
 
30yearsofhurt said:
Are you still pretending you learnt something in economics 101?
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Hmmm.

A lot of your posts just attack people who point out your stupidity.
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.

I don't know why you bother. You lost the argument convincingly and now you're harbouring some dumb online grudge because admitting you're wrong is harder than pretending you're right and ignoring the enormous weight of countervailing evidence.
 
Great news! Voting for a group to have the same human rights as everyone else is fucking disgusting and an embarrassment for the country, it shouldn't be up for public debate, and if it absolutely must, it should be done behind close doors.
 
It´s so funny that we make such a big deal over who can get married haha, its just fucking marrige, a thing that means jack shit.

What we do need to make a big deal of is who is fit to be a parent or not. We can make babies all we want but some people should not have kids. why is this not made into an issue.
 
robertsan21 said:
It´s so funny that we make such a big deal over who can get married haha, its just fucking marrige!

What we do need to make a big deal of is who is fit to be a parent or not. We can make them all we want but some people should not have kids.
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That's because eugenics is kinda fucked up.
 
If it keeps stuff like this:

1476236520493.jpg


out of the debate, I'm perfectly fine with it. 3 days ago that poster was plastered around a major University in Melbourne and there is already all sort of nasty stuff online and popping up in mail boxes Australia-wide.

Turnbull keeps saying he believes Australia can have a civilised debate but it's already too late.
 
bobnowhere said:
If it keeps stuff like this:

1476236520493.jpg


out of the debate, I'm perfectly fine with it. 3 days ago that poster was plastered around a major University in Melbourne and there is already all sort of nasty stuff online and popping up in mail boxes Australia-wide.

Turnbull keeps saying he believes Australia can have a civilised debate but it's already too late.
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Fucking hell, that is deplorable.
 
RocknRola said:
For those curious this is the map of fully legal same-sex adoption in the world:

856px-World_same-sex_adoption_laws.svg.png


Dark pink is fully legal.
Light pink (one or two countries) is second parent adoption.
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That is purple and grey...Do you happen to be colorblind? I don't mean to offend, but you may want to get that checked.
 
bobnowhere said:
If it keeps stuff like this:

out of the debate, I'm perfectly fine with it. 3 days ago that poster was plastered around a major University in Melbourne and there is already all sort of nasty stuff online and popping up in mail boxes Australia-wide.
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This is so over-the-top ridiculous it honestly looks like something someone would draw to get people riled up. Hard to believe anybody without some sort of severe mental illness could draw that and take it or themselves seriously.
 
Stop It said:
I'm sad that you feel that way, and I know that you do so for very legitimate reason.

A plebiscite should be respected 100%. I looked at this thinking the vote was called for in good faith. If not, fuck the government of Australia for using human rights as a political football.
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It was 100% not called in good faith. The proposal of a plebiscite in the first place was essentially a delaying tactic by the incumbent right wing government to avoid having to deal with the issue before an election, despite overwhelming public support.

It was a decision fueled by cowardice and a desire not to upset the hard right, social conservative faction of the government. Some members of the government have gone on to say that they would vote against legalizing SSM even if the plebiscite was successful, so really it's quite astonishing how full of shit the whole proposal was.
 
bobnowhere said:
If it keeps stuff like this:

1476236520493.jpg


out of the debate, I'm perfectly fine with it. 3 days ago that poster was plastered around a major University in Melbourne and there is already all sort of nasty stuff online and popping up in mail boxes Australia-wide.

Turnbull keeps saying he believes Australia can have a civilised debate but it's already too late.
Click to expand...

IxQxZFH.png
 
https://www.buzzfeed.com/lanesainty...st-lgbt-debate?utm_term=.djpKreonP#.ldpj6y4xr

Here's a bit of what happened in one of our last big public debates about LGBT rights to give a bit more background on why the community is so against this, with the decriminalisation of homosexuality in Tasmania 20 years ago, which obviously passed but... You can see the lovely words our elected officials had for our community. And this was when decriminalisation was a move the majority of people supported.

Australian's politicians have not been kind to the LGBT community, public opinion be dammed.
 
MooseKnuckles said:
It was 100% not called in good faith. The proposal of a plebiscite in the first place was essentially a delaying tactic by the incumbent right wing government to avoid having to deal with the issue before an election, despite overwhelming public support.

It was a decision fueled by cowardice and a desire not to upset the hard right, social conservative faction of the government. Some members of the government have gone on to say that they would vote against legalizing SSM even if the plebiscite was successful, so really it's quite astonishing how full of shit the whole proposal was.
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In that case, fuck the fucking fuckers.

Ireland worked because it shown a nation was ready to accept equality I'm marriage. In this case it is the opposite it seems. The public has been ready for a while but your government is full of cunts.

Sorry guys, I didn't want to sound like I was arguing against people defending a bad faith move like this.
 
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