The annual Helen Lovejoy Won’t Somebody Please Think Of The Children? award goes to the Australian Marriage Forum, who overnight, aired a TV commercial speaking out against marriage equality in Australia.
The ad, which aired as members of Australia’s gay and lesbian community walked Sydney’s streets in celebration of Mardi Gras, and which you can see here should you so desire, took the old ‘marriage equality is bad for kids’ line and ran with it hard.
After showing a visual of a family on a playground (the sort of playground that would presumably be overrun with sodomites in an apocalyptic gay future type scenario), the commercial cuts to David van Gend, of the Australian Marriage Forum.
“Children have an equal right wherever possible to both a mum and a dad,” he says. “So-called marriage equality forces kids to miss out on a mother or a father. That’s not equality for the kids who miss out. That’s not marriage.”
Sigh, facepalm, etc.
Rodney Croome, national director of Australian Marriage Equality, says that the ad’s timing, during a celebration such as Mardi Gras, ultimately reflects how “out of place” anti-gay prejudice is in Australia’s “increasingly inclusive and respectful society.”
“If this campaign has any impact at all, its obvious prejudice and fearmongering will actually increase support for marriage equality,” he continued.
The ad seems to have backfired, drawing heavy criticism from the wider community – the YouTube video has 10 times as many dislikes as likes, and there is a Change.Org petition asking for it to be removed.
Funnily enough, the petition mentions a study into the health of children from same-sex families, which found that the main source of unhappiness they face is the negative effect of “external societal stigma.”
The Australian Marriage Forum’s ad is a pretty excellent example of those “external societal stigma”, sending the message that families with same-sex parents are somehow not good or worthy enough.
Bigotry is sadly still very much alive and well in Australia, but the fight for marriage equality continues.
via News Limited
