Ron Boswell (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

Madam Acting Deputy President Crossin, I understand we are debating your bill today. I find it a very serious debate. In fact, to me it is one of the most serious debates that we have ever had to face in this parliament, because it will fundamentally affect the way Australia reacts as a society. In my party, one of the basic philosophies is that the family is the basic unit of society and without a family you do not have a society. I cannot imagine a more severe attack on the family than undermining marriage. It is what the whole of our society is based on. It is what the whole of society over centuries—probably from the start of man—has been based on: a man and a woman getting together to procreate children and for those children to stay together under the care of a mother and a father. Without that, what do you have? What is society? That all stands before us. Fortunately, the Marriage Amendment Bill (No. 2) 2012 is not going to get through, but I have been around long enough to know that this is only the first attempt.

But what I want to say to you, Madam Acting Deputy President, is: yes, in the inner city suburbs of West End, South Brisbane and Redfern, there might be a bit of support for this, but there is certainly no support for it out in the western suburbs among the blue-collar workers, where the families are strong. Among the different communities, whether they be Catholic, Muslim or Jewish, it is an anathema. It is an anathema with my party. Senator Bishop said that he has not been lobbied very much. I can tell you, Madam Acting Deputy President, that I have not been lobbied at all except to say to me, 'You stand up strongly for the basic unit of society, which is marriage and the family.'

I believe we now stand at the brink. We have to make a decision. Do we as a society turn away from everything we know and everything that our society is based on—the ideal that the family has been based on for thousands of years—or do we go the other way? Do we say, 'Near enough is good enough, because it does not really hurt anyone, it does not cost anything and people want to do it; why not?' and allow gay marriage and just give up on the ideal that the family is the basic unit of society and it gets there through marriage? We know from experience that the whole of the family—a marriage between a man and a woman—allows children to live in a safe, protected environment where they are allowed to grow into adults and pass strong values on to their children. The family is a continuum. We know this from experience, and therefore we continue with that ideal and look to uphold it.

I believe people have not thought this through. I think people in Australia do not give a lot of thought to these important issues, and we as members of parliament have to. From a distance, the issue of gay marriage looks a lot like other issues for Australian voters. From the outside it looks like it does not harm anyone, does not affect any individual who does not engage in it and does not seem to harbour any cost to the taxpayer or any other organisations. It seems relatively harmless—a relaxation of laws and conventions. If it does not hurt me and it does not hurt them, who does it hurt? It hurts society—that is who it hurts—and people have not thought it through.

What happens when the conventions are relaxed? What happens after the conventions have been removed? Marriage is based on a man and a woman, for the reason of having children. Two men and two women cannot conceive without some outside assistance. Marriage is not just a convention or a mere formality; it is a mechanism that was created by society to bring two sexes together and create a foundation of moral, social and legal protection and stability. Without this foundation, we are risking the lot. Like all things that have a foundation, society has a foundation. What is it based on? What is society based on? A man and a woman getting together, having children and then, in a broader sphere, an outer family of cousins, uncles and aunties, all providing support for the family, and that family fighting like crazy to make sure their kids get a good way of living, a good education and sometimes even the parents backing them into a home—people standing up for their family. The family is what people give their children. They send them to expensive schools and make great sacrifices for them because they believe in the family.

People think, 'How does it affect me—a man marrying another man?' If it is made legal they think it will not have an impact on their lives. But they have not considered the real harm that homosexual marriage can bring about, and there are three big harms in legalising homosexual marriage. It abolishes a child's birthright to have both a mother and a father. Marriage includes the right to start a family. Under article 16 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the right to marry comes with the right to start a family. If two men are legally able to marry, they obtain the absolute right to have a child via surrogacy. After gay marriage is legalised, a child can henceforth be brought into the world without ever having the right to a mother and father. Sometimes this happens inadvertently—through desertion or death—but it is not something we plan for; it is not something we want.

Same-sex marriage says that a mother or a father does not matter to a child—and it does. Two mothers or two fathers cannot raise a child properly. Who takes a boy to football? Who tells him what is right from wrong? What does he do—go along with the two mums? How does he go camping and fishing? Yes, there might be some attempt by one of the mothers to fill in as a father figure but it will not work. It is defying nature. And what about a young girl changing from a teenager into a young woman? Is it fair to say to her, 'You don't have a mother; your mother can't take you shopping' or to not be able to help her understand how her body is changing? What are we trying to do here? Why are we trying to defy what has been the right thing for hundreds of thousands of years? What suddenly gives us the inspiration to think that we can have gay marriage and it will not affect anyone?

I say to the people who very narrowly think this through or who do not think it through: it is more than saying, 'It doesn't hurt me; it doesn't cost anything.' It is a lot more than that. Once you have gay marriage in law, you have normalised the law, you have normalised homosexual marriage in law, which forces the normalisation of homosexual behaviour in the wider culture—

Senator Hanson-Young interjecting—

I will not be drawn in, Senator—especially in the school curriculum. I ask the people of the Western Suburbs: if you have gay marriage and it is legal, how can a teacher discriminate between normal marriage and gay marriage? He has to explain both as part of the curriculum. How can a teacher explain one part of the law but not the other?

So I ask these people who think it does not hurt me: do they want their children to be taught about gay marriage?