Facts and figures: on Australian popular support for so-called gay marriage

Here is a small item from yesterday’s Sydney Daily Telegraph:

Gay marriage support

A NEW survey shows 60 per cent of Australians support gay mariage.
The poll, conducted for lobby group Australian Marriage Equality, found strong support for same-sex marriage including among Coalition voters.
Fifty-eight per cent believed Australia should also recognise immigrating couples who wed overseas.
(The Daily Telegraph, Wednesday, June 17, 2009, Sydney, Australia, p. 16)

More information is available at an on-line version of the article:

Of the 1100 respondents, 60 per cent were in favour of same-sex marriage.

[…] Some 75 per cent of Greens voters backed gay marriage, compared with 63 per cent of Labor supporters, and 49 per cent of coalition voters.

Women were more likely to support gay marriage, with 65 per cent of them in favour of it, compared with 51 per cent of men.

Support for gay marriage was strongest among Australians aged 16 to 24, with 74 per cent in favour, compared with 45 per cent for those aged over 50.
[http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,25644430-5001021,00.html]

As one would expect, ‘Australian Marriage Equality’ (henceforth A.M.E.) has a website, and quite a slick one (marred by repulsive images of same-sex couples, naturally):

http://www.australianmarriageequality.com

Check out the nonsense on the ‘F.A.Q.’ page (original formatting of the quotations here preserved unless noted otherwise):

Q. What are the benefits of same-sex marriage?

Community

… Further, and very importantly, lifting the ban on same-sex marriage is not only about addressing the rights of this minority group; it is about protecting the rights of people in general. If we say exclusion to certain basic privileges is okay for some, then we are opening up the doors to introducing laws as we see fit to exclude others. In a different space and time, it may be your rights or those of your loved ones that are affected.

So it’s a slippery-slope argument. Slippery-slope arguments aren’t necessarily fallacious, but the case that A.M.E. tries to make here is disproven by the facts: all during Western civilisation’s (in)glorious march towards the liberal ‘end of history', ‘freedom’ (understood as liberty of action, not moral liberty, which is, of course unchanging) has been increasing (for the most part regrettably), yet all that time society recognised marriage as the lifelong conjugal union between a woman and a man.

A.M.E. goes on to say that

Equality, respect, dignity, and a sense of belonging are ideals and values endorsed by Australian society.

Equality: same-sex attracted individuals are free to marry just like opposite-sex attracted individuals (obviously they can’t marry each other; that’d just be silly!)

Respect: how does buggering someone indicate respect for that person? Not to mention the flagrant disrespect for the natural law.

Dignity: the unspeakable things that these couples do make a mockery of the very notion of human dignity.

A sense of belonging: does A.M.E. support the ‘sense of belonging’ shared by incestuous couples?

[…] Individual

The lack of opportunity for same-sex couples to formalise their relationships, as do different-sex couples, sends the message that their relationships are not of equivalent standard [1.] and that they are second class citizens [2.]. As same-sex sexuality is no more a choice than heterosexuality [3.], restricting marriage to different-sex couples will not stop committed relationships between members of the same sex [4.].…

1. Sodomy-based relationships are not of an “equivalent standard” to truly conjugal marriages.

2. “second class citizens” is an inapt description of members of same-sex couples only inasmuch as it is too generous.

3. Perhaps, but buggery is certainly a free choice.

4. One can permit an evil if attempts to suppress it would produce evils worse than the original one, but one can never participate closely in it, which is what the State and its functionaries do when gaymarriage (sic, and sick) is legalised.

Q. Will same-sex marriage result in the demise of heterosexual marriage?

A.M.E. takes a curious approach to answering this objection, arguing that man-woman marriage rates have not declined where gaymarriage (I’ll think I’ll use this term from now on) has been enacted. That might not happen in the short term, but it certainly debases the true institution of marriage, which is what A.M.E. addresses next:

Q. Will allowing same-sex marriage spoil the character of the institution of marriage?

Some people are of the opinion that by allowing same-sex marriage the institution will be ‘watered down’. For example, ex-Prime Minister John Howard stated “It is a question of preserving as an institution in our society, marriage as having a special character”. Statements such as this are particularly offensive. It suggests that the inclusion of same-sex couples into the institution of marriage will somehow tarnish or spoil its image.…

Buggery ain’t pretty, and anyone or anything associated with it is certainly tarnished thereby. In the Australian idiom, to feel ‘buggered’ is to be exhausted, and to ‘bugger up’ something is to ruin it. These people are going to bugger up marriage, in both senses of the term ‘bugger up’!

Q. Isn’t marriage traditionally about love between a man and a woman?

According to historians, the one thing that is consistent about marriage over time is that it has never been consistent. On the issue of traditional marriage, American historian Stephanie Coontz states that “if we can learn anything from the past, it is how few precedents are now relevant in the changed marital landscape in which we operate today” (p. 11, Coontz, 2005). Therefore, if marriage is to survive as an institution it needs to keep abreast with the social conditions of its time.…
[emphasis added in the last sentence]

Ahhh, I understand now: we need to destroy marriage in order to save it!!!

Q. Shouldn’t marriage be about procreation?

Yes, that is its primary end, and if we’re talking about a ‘marriage’ which, by its very nature (rather than because of some defect of nature on the part of the husband or wife), is sterile, then whyever would the State treat this household any differently to how it treats, say, a sharehouse household? If the relationship, by its very nature, cannot produce future citizens, or raise adopted children to be citizens, who respect the natural law, and hence the only ‘good’ (so they would call it) that could come of the relationship is the secondary end of mutual help and society, then why would the State bother treating that relationship any differently to any other voluntary society?

Q. If same-sex marriage was to promote same-sex parenting, then what about the impact on children?

Now late last year I noted the following:

… once the Government has legislated to give same-sex couples the same adoption rights as opposite-sex couples, how can it possibly continue to justify its refusal to permit so called gay marriage? For the Sodomites’ League will be able to turn the tables on pro-family forces and demand to know how can they deny ‘marriage’ to same-sex couples when, as the pro-family movement argues (rightly, of course), it is the family based on marriage that produces the best outcomes for children.
[emphasis newly added,
http://cardinalpole.blogspot.com/2009/02/on-nsw-parliamentary-inquiry-into.html]

And what do we see A.M.E. arguing? The following:

…It therefore seems quite ironic that those purporting that the rights of children are paramount, are those denying access by the parents to the one institution that would ensure their children’s rights. …

The F.A.Q. page concludes with the following (still on the question of the impact on children):

… In addition, opposition to same-sex marriage based on issues of parenting send a negative and very hurtful message to the number of children who are currently being raised in a same-sex couple household. If people who argue against same-sex marriage do this on the premise of the well-being of children, then they need to stop and consider the negative impact of such an argument on these children. It may well pay to ask ourselves how we would feel if the people we relied on for love and protection were depicted by society as somehow being less than capable of delivering such.

The end of the law (here, the natural law) is love. How can these people say that they love their children when they show nothing but contempt for the natural law, by which we tell right from wrong?

One last thing, one final little ‘fact or figure’ (a fact, this time): at this link at the A.M.E. website we find another permutation of the alphasexual alphabet soup: “GLBTQ/I or non-labelled”. Fancy that: it seems that some sodomites are so tired of the unceasing expansion of the range of conditions covered by the GLBTIFBKSFOIBF&c. umbrella that they’ve given up on the labels altogether!

Reginaldvs Cantvar
Feast of St. Ephrem, Deacon, Confessor, Doctor of the Church, A.D. 2009