One of the underpinning principles of the Government’s proposed same-sex marriage plebiscite is that Australia can be trusted to conduct a civil, reasoned debate on a subject which sensible people can disagree.
It all sounds well and good on paper, but the bloody thing hasn’t even passed Parliament and we’ve already had Bill Leak compare same-sex marriage advocates to Hitler‘s genocidal stormtroopers, and now Miranda Devine – obviously confused and disoriented because Nazis had already been done – compared ’em to ISIS.
Column’s up. Take our olive branch and shove it: the case of the doomed marriage plebiscite. Plus SA green-blackout https://t.co/LzqnvkgR0O
— Miranda Devine (@mirandadevine) October 1, 2016
Devine is by far one of the best News Corp columnists to read, because it is patently clear that she just bangs out whatever cretinous nonsense crosses her mind in the full knowledge that there is a bunch of people who will gladly read it no matter what. Conservative writers like Janet Albrechtsen or Rowan Dean – hell, even Andrew Bolt – at least try to build some kind of lunatic structure around their (extremely bad) arguments. Devine just does the newspaper column equivalent of screaming into a pillow.
Case in point: this article. Devine asserts that gays are somehow ISIS without even providing the bare minimum of an argument to support that point:
They are gentle Christians and other defenders of traditional marriage who have been vilified for daring to hold a contrary view. Those courageous enough to raise a head above the parapet are brutally made examples of.It’s the social form of warning off perfected by ISIS when they publicly behead people or lower them in cages into swimming pools or stage any number of elaborate tortures as a lesson to others who might dare even think of being disobedient.
People who cop flak for not supporting same-sex marriage in 2016 are roughly equivalent to the people ISIS behead. I see how that makes sense. It feels like there should be – oh, I dunno – three or four paragraphs supporting that assertion in between those two, but whatever.
I’m sure that ISIS would consider themselves very much aligned in beliefs and tactics with same-sex marriage advocates in Australia.
It seems unusual that the very people who argue for a same-sex marriage plebiscite on the grounds that civil debate and free speech ought to be enabled and encouraged are the same people using their very powerful pulpits to compare advocates to Nazis and Wahhabist militants.
Here’s what’s going to happen: marriage equality will be legislated at some point. It’s essentially a tedious inevitability at this point. The media Devines of the world can pound their fists and yell from their luxe North Shore enclaves all they like. But at the end of the day, it’s LGBTQI youth that end up bearing the brunt of this shit. Not fucking Lyle Shelton.
Source: Daily Telegraph.
Photo: SBS.
