Oh I totally stand by that, trust me.
Lives are on the line insofar that a plebiscite will raise rates of suicide in the LGBT community.
So a free vote = painless, no deaths, and still reflective of public sentiment.
Plebiscite = democratic, but adversely affecting those it purports to liberate.
It is shocking that you can defend this.
The plebiscite will? Or you mean because some people who are bullies, who otherwise are not aware of the existence of a gay person in their surroundings, and wouldnāt otherwise belittle them for that, suddenly WOULD become aware, and bully them for that, simply because the news talks about the subject?
Iām not saying itās necessarily the right course of action - Iām saying it it totally understandable why this subject may be one that is put to a vote, and why that is in line with the election result last year.
So people who point out that a popular vote on gay marriage will raise rates of suicide are actually the ones to blame for their suicides?
Utter, total nonsense. Weāre trying to save lives and apparently weāre the bad guys. Total fucking logic.
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How about this logic: if those who point out it will raise rates of suicide instead asked those who felt uncomfortable with the political discussion to take positive action to raise the issue with their MP, talk about it with a close confidante (friend, family member etc), or not to despair as change is just as likely in the next parliament when Labor is in power, do you then think those suicides would be smaller in number?
I certainly do.
Why?
The LNP canāt claim to have a mandate for every one of their hair-brained policies when they scraped in with a single seat majority.
The Abbott-led LNP opposition didnāt exactly respect the government-of-the-dayās policies when Gillard was PM.
While itās obvious that heterosexuality is required for the continuation of the species, Iād be careful linking procreation with marriage:
Such a linkage could result in the proposterous, extremely offensive & hurtful conclusion that couples (including heterosexual ones) shouldnāt marry or arenāt a ārealā marriage if they canāt have kids (including if theyāve gotten married later in life or because of infertility at a younger age).
Oh and letās stop pretending that parliament voting for something is somehow undemocratic; that flawed logic suggests youād want to replace our representative democracy with routine referenda on every proposed law change anyone wants.
Also the Brexiteers only just narrowly won their referendum; it wasnāt an overwhelming majority of eligible voters deciding to leave the EU.
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So Iāve been at work all day but here again, hereās a couple of things I want to dispute.
Peopleās vierws have not been accurately established, thereās a fear that people canāt speak out about gay marriage. You watch on internet forums and in the community when they say they have concerns, theyāll be shouted at, called a religious nutjob (case below), called all sorts of things ranging from out of touch to a pedophile (surely thatās not a way to win a debate by accusing the other person of abhorrent abuse?). Take a look at what happens anytime someone says they donāt agree.
Again, something those for SSM canāt seem to understand. Not everybody who disagrees is religious, there are staunch atheists who donāt agree and they hate being put in the religious category. Similarly there are Christians who are some of the biggest supporters and the way of thanking them for their support is apparently to belittle, mock and offend their belief system which is completely irrelevant to the topic at hand.
As for linking suicides, ALL suicides are terrible. ALL bullying is terrible, the way the debate has turned at times however is that only kids who commit suicide for being gay are the ones who matter. The Safe Schools program is supposed to be anti-bullying but itās only really anti-LGBT Bullying. If youāre bullied for wearing glasses, being foreign, being indigenous, having a different coloured hair etcā¦ it doesnāt matter. Why donāt those suicides matter? Teenage years are hard for so many people. Believe it or not, that was one of the things the Chaplains in schools were in place for. But, because people had their anti-religious bigotry they all hated them without even knowing what they did or without talking to the schools who actually appreciated them
Now, Iāve sat back and let a few things slide with the anti-religious comments the past few days from many different people in different threads but donāt you think itās bullying? What if I went up to you and used a few homophobic slurs? Would that be acceptable? No. So why is it ok to deliberately try and offend others like me? Especially if youāre trying to convince me to support your cause.
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The idea of caring this much about stopping something (marriage equality) that has absolutely no effect on you seems so fucking exhausting to me.
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Unlike God, homosexuality actually exists for a start.
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And that is exactly the disrespectful response and why a proper debate canāt be had. I have my views and you have yours.
EDIT: just a quick edit now that Iām not on the phone to make the sentence make sense.
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But people believe it will have an effect on society. Marriage is already having a negative effect on society with increases in divorce etcā¦ People want to work on strengthening marriages first before changing it all even more from the way it has been.
Why are people who were so dead against marriage a decade ago now so passionate that they want it?
So many questions. Also, what is Marriage Equality? Allowing gay people to get married still wonāt make it equal. Similarly, looking at alternative measures it is and always has been equal.
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- Unlike your sexual orientation, you can choose your religion (or realise your imaginary friend isnāt real).
- (Speaking for myself) Iām not trying to convince anyone who is fixed in their views (I donāt know how much you are/arenāt); thereāll always be some people like that and Iāve concluded (unfortunately) thereās no point trying.
- Itās not my cause, but - like realising all religion is nonsense - Iāve come to accept the logic of not discriminating against people who didnāt choose their sexual orientation any more than you chose the colour of your skin.
Tell that to John Howard; his idea of strengthening marriage was to add a narrow legal definition, but I donāt recall his government doing anything to āstrengthenā it, or perhaps make it harder (for heterosexuals) to get married (to ensure people getting married really want to, avoid some mistakes & thus reduce the number of divorces?).
I worry with suggestions to make it harder to get divorced; why force people to live in misery?
Other people (including Parliament) canāt make a couple happy together again after theyāve fallen out of love.
Please accept that (preferably along with that homosexuality isnāt a choice and lose your faith in non-existent things) and move on.
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How do you propose āstrengthening marriageā. You canāt force people to stay married. How does allowing same-sex marriage have any affect on heterosexuals not being capable of holding together a marriage?
Name me one country that same-sex marriage has had a seismic shift on society and has changed the foundation of the country after it. It affects the people that will use it, everyone else can move on with their lives.
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Alright, back home again now and on the PC, thanks for the comments, some more constructive than others. Itās nice to actually have an intelligent debate on important societal issues.
I agree, you can choose your religion but there are also some people who choose their sexuality also. Iām not saying itās all or many but there are some that Iāve seen on docos in the past before talking about it. One of the reasons why was to actually fit in which surprised me. But thinking about it, that can make sense and thereās actually quite a few similiarities between the LGBT and church communities. Both operate as a community, intent on helping each other and both intent on promoting their causes in the wider world. In the past you could easily say the church had more influence than the LGBT community but the last decade has seen the balance swing completely opposite and the LGBT community certainly have momentum .
Live and let live? I always hear that itās Christians ramming their views down peopleās throats but I tend to find that many Atheists sure love to tell me what I donāt really want to hear about. One important thing is knowing that your experiences are yours alone. Only you can come to your own conclusion using your own experiences to form your opinion. Likewise, only I have experienced everything that I have experienced and I can form a different conclusion based on my own evidence. My only request is that people actually do think about what they want to believe or not believe because itās just annoying when people simply say āGod doesnāt existā just because they saw a Bible once in a hotel room but didnāt even bother reading it or because they all hate gays (apparentlyā¦ not sure how a gay Christian feels about that one). I remember seeing someone proudly announce the whole Christian story is BS because Easter falls on a different day each yearā¦ Scientists and historians etcā¦ have clearly wasted all their hours investigating it all when the whole meaning of life was so simple after all!
Back to my first point made yesterday I think, itās not discrimination, itās about what marriage means to you. To some, itās simply about love. To me, thereās more to it.
Itās not about āforcingā people to stay married, itās about helping people through their marriages. I remember people got upset at me once before when I talked about one thing that either John Howard or Tony Abbott did one election (I know, I canāt believe that Tony Abbott may have done one good thing, I feel so dirty saying that I need a shower). That was pre-marriage counselling vouchers. Itās weird, itās a normal thing in the church world, you get married and as part of the process you have some pre-marriage counselling beforehand. Itās not because your relationship is in trouble, itās not because youāre having cold feet itās because itās training to help work through issues when they come up in marriage so that you donāt get to the point where youāre āforcedā to stay together. People go to counsellors for issues all the time for a bit of a tune up, people are always doing extra training for their jobs so why is the idea of doing it for a marriage so strange? Would you rock up at a trial for the Olympic Swimming Team and get up on the blocks never having swum before and just hope for the best? I hope not, Iād hope youāve trained and trained and trained so you can do your best.
Having marriage courses, parenting courses, life coaching, whatever you want to call it, can help to hopefully bring the divorce rate down and help the many kids who are struggling through parental breakup.
As for SSM having an effect on heterosexuals not being capable to hold a marriage. Iād simply like to see more focus on marriages and having them have more potential to stay together before opening it up to more and more people without looking at the root cause of the current failures. Why set people up to ultimately fail?
Too soon to really say the effects, need a generation or so to really be able to tell but itās interesting that the slippery slope argument was being laughed at all the time when people talked about it, but now News Corp and Colombia and groups in USA etcā¦ are all pushing for polygamy, so where does it end? We were told that would never happen but it is being talked about in the same way SSM was a few years ago.
The other thing I donāt approve of is when you say it only affects the people that will use it, not necessarily. It was talked about that Pastors would be able to excuse themselves from performing a SSM if they didnāt want to but the last time the legislation was talked about, that provision no longer existed. That and the whole Christian baker cases and all of those situations. Ruining somebodyās livelihoods simply because they donāt agree with your opinion? Iād say it does affect other people.
All Iād assume is youāre referring to bisexuals, but (for brevityās sake ignoring the longer discussions that could ensue) thatās no reason that homosexuals should be denied marriage.
This seems to be a ālook over there!ā distraction that doesnāt go to the point of removing discrimination.
Thatād be because religion - which is based on faith in things that canāt be proven (such as things that arenāt real or even those which have been disproven), rather than facts - has for centuries pushed (and continues to) push their views on the rest of society.
In this case you want to stop some people getting married because of your opinion, not any facts to justify stopping such marriages, no evidence of any harm caused, etc.
Itās not my problem that facts, science, the real world, make you uncomfortable/offend your world view which is based on fantasy/religion.
Yes we each come to our own opinions based on our experiences, but what most irritates me is when people are so stuck in their views they refuse to try to see things from other points of view, such as what if you were gay, or what if you werenāt born into as well-off a household, what if you lost your job & couldnāt find another anytime soon, got cancer, etc., or what if youāre wrong and there is no god?
People need to have some empathy for those who are less well off, not believe the right-wing propaganda which just wants to make the very well off feel good about themselves by blaming people for being poor/sick/unlucky; almost none of them are lazy or the other nonsense claimed. Likewise most people donāt want to leave their home country, get on leaky boats, etc; almost all of them are escaping a horrible situation in this world. (Basically, no one wants to be a refugee.)
Cognitive dissonance isnāt uncommon with religion. Itās not atheists who are citing sections of religious texts to justify persecuting homosexuals.
Thatās easy for you to say since youāre not being denied marriage/youāre not being discriminated against.
Why?
Why should some people be denied marriage just because some others havenāt been fully successful at it?
I donāt hear you advocating abolishing marriage entirely, so why just stop homosexuals from marrying? Thereās no logic to your statement here.
(Since weāre digging up old arguments:) Will you next say I canāt eat steak because a baby canāt chew?
Why should another generation here have to continue to be discriminated against?
This is nonsense. Next thereāll be yet another delaying tactic, perhaps some sort of āAustralia is differentā rubbish.
Really? News Corp - the right-wing media organisation which owns Fox News Channel in the USA & the Daily Telegraph, etc. in Australia - are advocating polygamy?
Stirring up fear about it perhaps, but advocating it?
And as for other groupsā¦ what some fringe like a small number of Mormons, Muslims or othersā¦ this slippery slope argument is still ridiculous. Letās stick to the topic of removing this discrimination.
What legislation? How about then arguing the specifics of what exemptions you want in the bill rather than arguing against the whole thing?
Perhaps we need to just ban cars, trains, trams, planes & boats, because some of them crash occasionally?
That is more nonsense; if a business can discriminate against customers based on sexual orientation, then why not on religion, skin colour/race?
Either youāre in a business or not; why should a bakery be different than a restaurant, supermarket, bank, hotel, car dealer?
Freedom of religion isnāt about making you comfortable, itās about being free: It is you not being forced to follow a state religion (the religion decided by the majority), whether that be Anglican/Church of England, Catholic, Islam, Buddhist, etc; it is about you being allowed to practice your own religion, or none at all.
It is not about you being free to push your religion on others, refuse them service until they bow to your religion, discriminate against them legally, etc. Doing so is equivalent to not having freedom of religion.
What we can be certain of is what can be proven scientifically, so letās make this life as good as it can be for the most number of people, including people who are in same sex relationships and want to get married.
PS: A new poll:
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If marriage is already a shitty concept in modern society, then why not expand the shittiness to everyone?
Increased rates of divorce and marital separation are due to the fact that women can more readily leave relationships nowadays, find a job and remarry than they could in the early and middle 20th Century.
Therefore the only way to fix marriage is to make women subservient againā¦
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Perhaps if big business en-masse say this, just maybe enough of the LNP willā¦?
Not necessarily, but letās not get distracted. Just that thereās all kinds of straight people and all kinds of gay people in the world.
Once again, not everything to Christians is based upon religion. They can all think for themselves and come to their own conclusions. Weāre really not as dumb as people think we are. It actually has me questioning the intelligence of others though when they canāt seem to understand those concepts. At least you didnāt bring in the flat Earth argument that apparently all Christians believe in and I still donāt understand why Christians seemingly canāt believe in Science? Do you agree with absolutely everything that Science tells you or do you simply pick and choose which things? Remember a scientist was the one who said originally that vaccines cause autism and we know about that one.
I agree, not sure where youāre thinking that I donāt have empathy or that I donāt look after those less well off. I have been involved in many organisations, community groups etcā¦ helping others and churches all around Australia and the world offer so many different programs to those who are struggling. Imagine if all the effort put into persecuting the church for their apparent views on homesexuality were put into assisting or promoting the good works being done. Typical Australian culture though is to bring others down rather than build them up though.
I didnāt quote religious texts either. Iāve read the Bible and it never mentions anywhere once about gay marriage. So yet again, people can agree or disagree without being religious. Not sure how many times that needs to be stated.
Not an easy decision to take at all actually, takes a lot of weighing up and knowing that either way people will get hurt. I do believe in marriage and I want to see it return to what it has been in the past (not the women subservient BS thatās mentioned below but Iāll get to that one). Maybe then, once marriage is back to a serious commitment and entered into for life etcā¦ and not just about having the most expensive glitziest party and piss up then it can be expanded.
Itās not easy going against what everyone else vocally supports, including abortion and euthanasia. Itās even worse when people refuse to even look at your arguments and instead put words and arguments in your mouth insteadā¦ oh yeah and simply simplify it back to just being religious and there is no God etcā¦
If you had a hole in a bucket and saw water leaking out would you try and repair the hole or just throw more water in the bucket? I hold marriage values highly and I think that it could be better. Why not attempt to fix it first.
Yep, thereās been at least three stories over the past couple of months on their site. Hereās just one I could find with a quick search in the Google machine.
http://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/relationships/family-friends/two-bisexual-women-and-their-husband-love-parenting-as-threesome/news-story/cdba0aaf9425c3dc725c2fa5e2bcf4c1
As for the groups, they werenāt from any of those fringe groups so letās not just try and sweep it under the carpet. Iāll be sure to post when they put up some more for you as that link there wasnāt the best one.
Nope, Iām sure thereās other solutions and other reasons for marriages ending. But I guess those with the anti-religious blinkers wonāt bother looking for any other information. Have you seen people in struggling marriages? Have you seen them get back together? It takes work which a lot of people simply refuse to put in or are unprepeared and ill-equipped for challenges. But hey, letās just narrow it down to have a dig at the Christian again. Iām surprised you didnāt mention the āWives submit to your husbandā Bible verse again that people love to throw around without talking about the second part of the command.
Anyway, Iām done. You all have your opinions and I have mine, neither of us will budge. But just remember, there are others out there who have intelligently come to their own conclusions based on everything they have experienced and everyone they have been around. Dumbing it down to simply them being sheep is plain offensive and wrong and could easily be said about those on the other side.