Bob Day (SA, Family First Party) Share this | Hansard source

When members of parliament and senators sought the views of their own electorates in the not too distant past the majority told them the truth—Australians do not want marriage or the word 'marriage' to be redefined. On the question of a public vote, you just have to ask how it can be a fair debate when you have a barrage of unfounded claims thrown at you the minute you open your mouth saying you support keeping the status quo, keeping the definition of 'marriage' as it is. You also have to ask how it will be a fair debate when you look at who is lining up on the yes case.

But the Greens do not want to wait for any of that to materialise. The Greens are just like chanting students and socialists. They chant: 'What do we want? Gay marriage. When do we want it? Now.' Name-calling, sloganeering and empty platitudes are unbecoming and facile. Take, for example, the phrase 'marriage equality' itself. By calling same-sex unions 'marriage', it is asserted by stealth that they already qualify as marriage. This is before any supporting arguments have even been offered. Saying it is a matter of equality evokes the struggle of the suffragettes or Martin Luther King.

If you dare oppose that, you do not have a difference of opinion; according to the gatekeepers of tolerance, you are just plain wrong—end of story. While this may be very effective rhetoric, it tells us nothing about what marriage actually is or why different treatment is automatically bigoted. It is ironic that those who cry bigot are guilty of bigotry themselves. When people advocating traditional marriage are dismissed out of hand or when their motives are treated with suspicion and malice, that is prejudice and that is bigotry. When, like Archbishop Porteous, they are subjected to complaints—complaints that cost the alleged victim nothing but merely completing a form, but cost the accused everything—bigotry gains an ally on its side: the gorilla of state apparatus to suppress dissent and the expression of millennial values.

A civil debate on marriage would focus on the key principles of what is marriage. Why does it matter what it is? What sort of relationship is marriage or is a marriage? Should the state define a marriage? If so, why? What role does the state have in this institution of marriage? Marriage is the foundation of society's most fundamental unit—the family. Marriage is itself a social good worthy of protection by law. Marriage provides the best environment for the family to flourish and for children to be raised and nurtured. It is this critical function of marriage in our society that allows the state to take an interest in its regulation. I will repeat that. Marriage provides the best environment for the family to flourish and for children to be raised and nurtured. It is that critical function that allows the state to take an interest in its regulation.

Normally the state would not regulate relationships between adults. It is only because marriage has a position as a foundational building block of society that marriage is an exception to that rule. Out of the 1,000-plus societies recorded in Murdock's Ethnographic Atlas marriage between one man and one woman is common in all, whilst the marriage of men to multiple wives is prevalent in over 800. By contrast, marriage between people of the same sex has never been widely accepted in any culture since the dawn of time.

Here are another set of questions a civil and measured debate should consider. If this bill seeks marriage equality, what is it trying to protect equally? What relationships then are not marriages? Why would redefining marriage stop at same-sex relationships? The bill talks about two people, but why not three? The 'throuple' concept—three people—advanced by polyamory advocates goes something like this. Three people of any gender can be married to one another. They will make all the claims of emotional union, romantic feelings, pledges to care for one another et cetera. How soon until we have marriage equality dusted off for the 'throuples'? I suggest that there will not even be enough time for the dust to settle, and it will be on again. If you do not believe me, I note that the Greens' cousins in the UK are right now advocating for consenting polyamorous relationships.