I’ve been trying to figure out who is actually negatively affected by marriage equality.
It won’t make any difference to me as a straight person, because nobody’s proposing to prevent straight people from getting married. It wouldn’t make any difference to me if I were a religious person, because even if I believed it wasn’t compatible with my religious views, it’s not like I’d expect the government to enforce those on everybody else anyway – the only way to make sure that nobody behaves in a way incompatible with my views would be to have a theocracy with my sect in charge, and I’m realistic enough to realise that I’d rather no theocracy than one run by the other religions.
The only people it would actually affect are the gay people who want to get married, and their partn… ah HA!
Wait a minute – has anybody spoken to the gay and lesbian people in relationships with partners who want to get married much more than they do? Men and women who are taking full advantage of the ban on gay marriage to refuse to make a formal, legally-binding commitment to their partner? Is the current law just a convenient escape clause for gay commitmentphobes?
It all becomes clear.
The anti gay marriage lobby can’t be really being run by religious organisations, whose members presumably have no intention of getting gay married and therefore won’t realistically be affected. I mean, the vehemence of some of them on an issue so completely peripheral to anything their religious figures actually spoke about – it just never added up.
But now it does. The Australian Christian Lobby and the other anti-marriage groups must have been infiltrated by diabolical gay commitmentphobes. A shadowy cabal preferring to spend a little money and time now to keep their independence intact. A bunch of cowards who can’t just say “no” to their partners, and be honest, but who instead would rather work behind the scenes to make sure that an awkward proposal never occurs.
I mean, seriously – who else could really get so fired up to fight against other people’s basic civil rights if they weren’t themselves interested in the outcome? I can understand disinterested people being prompted up by a sense of fairness to fight for equality – but against it? You’d have to have something personally at stake. Like a partner who you know is just aching to pop the question and make you decide once and for all.
I don’t know why we’ve taken so long to see through their ruse. Give it up, you scoundrels. We’re onto you.
Moved On 
“But now it does. The Australian Christian Lobby and the other anti-marriage groups must have been infiltrated by diabolical gay commitmentphobes.”
I know you were trying to be funny, but there actually is a pretty high correlation between anti-gay groups and members who are in the closet and completely self-hating about it; e.g. Ted Haggard in the US. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the ACL is also lousy with closet cases.
Really deep down aren’t you happy to be a progressive person? Sure we get angry and indignant when injustices are delivered upon people who have done nothing to warrant such a thing, but we aren’t afraid and we aren’t hateful. Deep down the thing that drives all conservatives is that they are either very scared people or very hateful people.
The opposition to marriage equality is just one of the more visible examples. Conservative church types are worried that their world is changing, they wish the world could go back to they way it was when they were children. This is what drives the ridiculous claim that allowing marriage equality will somehow ‘debase’ the value of it.
Of course once it actually happens those who were previously opposed to it on the exact same grounds (that they were scared it would ‘debase’ the value) are fine with it. This is what happened in the Netherlands. A Dutch politician who was once the chief opponent of gay marriage in the Dutch parliament is now an advocate of gay marriage to other parliaments.
Of course there are just those who want to deny marriage equality because they hate gay people. In much the same way hateful people hate anyone who is not exactly alike themselves. Wouldn’t it be a sad existence when your entire life is embittered by hate of people simply because they are different to you.
So I’m very grateful that my parents taught me right from wrong, that my education instilled a sense of fairness in me and that my life experiences introduced me to all manner of people so I don’t hate anyone just because they are different to me. My life is much happier and more fulfilling for being a progressive (and coincidentally a gay one).
“Really deep down aren’t you happy to be a progressive person? Sure we get angry and indignant when injustices are delivered upon people who have done nothing to warrant such a thing, but we aren’t afraid and we aren’t hateful. Deep down the thing that drives all conservatives is that they are either very scared people or very hateful people. ”
Hey Dave, be grateful but don’t take it for granted.
[Quietly awaits SB’s retort of DaveB on the ground that leftards hate themselves most]
Some good news: Queensland Labor backs same-sex marriage: http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2011/06/19/3247688.htm I suppose we’ll have to see if Federal Labor shows some guts in the national conference during December, or continues to be afraid of religious nutters on the margins who’ll never vote for them anyway.