In August 2004, the Religious Right in its biggest show of strength yet, held an anti-gay Marriage Forum in Parliament House, Canberra, attended by about 2,000 people.
Keynote speakers variously described gays as “shameful, vile, moral terrorists,” while others claimed that “children raised by homosexual parents … suffered from shame and guilt”, and that same-sex relationships were “unnatural”, “harmful to children”, “highly promiscuous”, “inherently unstable” and much worse.
Despite this, Labor shadow attorney Nicola Roxon addressed the crowd and described the forum as, “Fantastic!”
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Spooked by the numbers and fervour of the Religious Right, she suddenly agreed to shut down a current senate inquiry into the gay marriage ban Bill, and instead rush it through parliament in the naïve expectation this would win Labor “Christian” votes in an election year. It didn’t, and in the process Labor alienated many gay voters and their families.
Seemingly, not having learnt from this, Beazley spoke to the Religious Right’s peak body the Australian Christian Lobby www.acl.org.au in November. In his talk he downplayed same-sex law reform by trying to hide it from the audience with an oblique sentence buried in a wide ranging speech (see last sentence on page seven, pdf file 199KB). They weren’t fooled. Beazley won little support from the Christian Right and once again offended and alienated lesbian and gay people by giving credence to an organisation dedicated to an anti-homosexual agenda.
Labor must wake up to the fact that it cannot win the votes of the Religious Right without losing middle Australia and betraying core constituencies. But it doesn’t need to.
Howard is out of touch with his opposition to civil unions. When Liberal MPs from places like Queensland and Western Australia are calling for the recognition of gay relationships in defiance of their leader you know there’s been a seismic shift in the community.
Beazley's political geiger counter must surely detect this. He should now seize the middle ground, leaving John Howard behind in the Middle Ages.
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