It seeks to silence the group’s leaders, remove its protections and make it hard for moderates to defend. It seeks to stigmatise an entire group by associating it with political subversion, sexual perversion and a threat to children. The anti-gay crusade I have described has many of the hallmarks of campaigns to cower entire ethnic, social, religious and political groups in centuries passed. And opponents of marriage equality seem to setting up negative narratives to win over wavering voters during a plebiscite. The government’s right wing may well be trying to wedge the prime minister. I understand there is a political context to the events I’ve described. They are the words of LGBTI people and our family members who have written to me expressing their alarm and despair at recent events. It had degraded, humiliated and excluded all of us. Taken together, this has amounted to a direct assault, not just on a particular program or public figure, but on the place of LGBTI people in Australian society. ![]() Worst of all is a callous disregard that those driving these campaigns have for the vulnerable people adversely affected by their ill-informed words and deeds. There have been calls to roll back the laws that provide a modicum of protection for LGBTI people from discrimination. Why marriage equality matters to me GuardianĬartoonish stereotypes of LGBTI people have been deployed in mainstream media.
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