Turns Out Last Night’s Bullshit Anti-SSM Ad Featured A Stinkin’ Big Fib

Yesterday we brought you a response to the first television ad rolled out by the ‘Coalition for Marriage‘, a group made up of smaller anti-equality groups who in turn make a large chunk of the ‘No’ campaign, deadset on fighting tooth and nail to make sure the upcoming postal plebiscite fails, and LGBTQI people remain second class citizens. What a fun group of cool guys!

The ad was easy to criticise on first viewing, as it featured three Concerned Mums who each expressed fears about things that seemingly do not have anything to do with marriage equality, instead focusing on gender education and other unrelated issues.

The main way they did this was featuring a woman named Cella White, who has been an outspoken activist against the Safe Schools program, and who became a darling of the Australian Christian Lobby after pulling her children out of school because they were being taught that transgender people exist or something.

At the time she had a lot of interesting (outrageous) stuff to say, like “They’re telling my children to call transgender children by their requested pronoun.” OMFG no!! Imagine your children being taught to be kind, and compassionate, and accepting of the diversity of human life. What a total nightmare.

In the ad, Cella doubles down on her claims.

The school told my son that he could wear a dress to school next year if he wanted.”

This is the opening line of the 30-second ad, obviously designed to make a huge impact. Unfortunately for the group, it has come out today that this incident never fucking happened.

Making up a story in order to appear in an ad that is trying to stop loving couples from achieving equality. Exactly what Jesus would do!

John Albiston, the principal of Frankston High, which is the school in question, is Not Having It and today called out White for lying about the incident.

We checked with all the teachers, it never happened. I have never had any complaints that we advised the boys they could wear dresses. We didn’t offer them that option.

Well that’s awkward.

Leaving aside the fact that, in my opinion, everyone should be allowed to wear what they want, and boys should wear dresses if that’s what they choose, the fact that this group is relying on made-up incidents as a point of contention in order to try and win this fight is so telling about the amount of good arguments they have in their back pockets. Zero. They have absolutely nothing.

Principal Albiston said that White had complained to him about Safe Schools, but had never discussed anything to do with uniforms with him. He followed this up by wondering, “Why would this so-called incident that never happened have anything to do with marriage equality?” A wonderful point, well made. The answer is that it has nothing to do with marriage equality.

The ‘No’ side knows that they have no leg to stand on, so they are conflating gender education and marriage equality in an attempt to stir up controversy and fear and for people to funnel that fear into their postal survey ballot. It is disingenuous, it is underhanded, it is lying, and I would guess that it is extremely un-Christian.

After being called out today, they should be ashamed, but they probably won’t be. Their arguments and rhetoric are likely just going to get more extreme from this point on, so get ready.

More Stuff From PEDESTRIAN.TV