Safe Schools debate: PM calls for 'measured language'
Participants should 'consider the impact of their words on young people' says Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull. Vision ABC News 24.
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The voters of Sydney's gayest suburb, Darlinghurst, have deserted the Prime Minister. Those of Potts Point have gone too.
Their departure may have been involuntary, the result of a redistribution, but is prescient. Malcolm Turnbull is proving deflatingly disappointing to many who support him, and many gay people in particular, even if the polls still have him comfortably the preferred PM.
Illustration: Michael Mucci
We knew Tony Abbott would be a disaster for equality, and he was. But Turnbull?
We thought him better than merely the welcoming face of the Liberal Party. We thought him the harbinger of change on the remaining legal inequities facing gay Australians. We thought the smartest man in Parliament House would be a true friend to gay Australia. He even went to Mardi Gras last year, in a pink shirt.
We hoped his support for marriage equality, detailed in his compelling 2012 lecture, would see it quickly passed, then he yielded on Tony Abbott's moronic $160 million plebiscite to get to The Lodge.
But incomprehensibly, he has lent his support to the review of a voluntary school program to reduce homophobic bullying and self-harm among LGBT teens.
What is the point of a gay-friendly prime minister if he can't slap down those keen on perpetuating teenage hate, angst and suicide? What is the point of an ally if it's an alliance in photo-op only?
Discouraging kids from beating up others for being different is surely the low-hanging fruit of tolerance. After him not picking it last week, Turnbull seems more frenemy than friend.
We've been here before. Julia Gillard blocked marriage equality, despite her own non-traditional take on the institution. Once out of power, she changed her tune.
Kevin Rudd, from whom the United Nations must be saved, opposed marriage equality when he could've passed it in his first spell as PM, and supported it only when he couldn't, in his second.
If the political consequences of scrapping the plebiscite were too hefty for Turnbull, at least he could have properly called out Queensland MP George Christensen's odious comparison of an effective anti-bullying program to grooming by paedophiles. He could have blocked the determination of the hateful right to destroy it.
But he didn't. He caved, and told everyone to use nicer language.
This comes at a time when a queue of prominent straight men complain the voices of those against marriage equality are silenced.
ABC political editor Chris Uhlmann termed it "offending the new ruling hegemony", declaring that he would stand with the right of the minority to disagree with changing marriage laws. Former ABC chairman Maurice Newman complained about much the same thing.
On Saturday, we read that John Howard feels this same pain of oppressed speech, a view so oppressed it was on the front page of The Australian. "There is nothing homophobic about supporting traditional marriage," he told the nation, after beating overwhelming odds to have his voice heard. "Everybody did in the Parliament in 2004."
Which is true, if "everyone" means "not everyone". When the Senate excluded same-sex couples, the vote was 38-6. Most agreed to enshrine discrimination with Howard's law, but not all.
He continued: "You ought to be able to have sensible discussion on these sorts of things," suggesting we are not having one, and as long as Cory Bernardi is involved in it, I suppose he's right.
"And you should be able to express a view on these things," he said, despite months of evidence from the likes of Bernardi proving many people are managing it just fine.
"But there is a sense in which people are so frightened of being accused of being discriminatory or intolerant that they don't speak the commonsense view."
Howard is talented at appropriating language: after years of being considered slippery with the truth, he called and won an election he declared to be about trust. Now, he seeks to take "commonsense" for opponents of marriage equality, despite their view being neither very common nor containing much sense.
The free speech argument Howard adopts is a straw man, a distraction. It's the last resort of those losing an argument. We have no reason, few facts, but we demand the right to be heard!
The rights of the straights-only marriage crowd are under no threat. Their freedoms are not curtailed; they forget that it is those of same-sex couples that remain legally constrained.
These supposedly cowed opponents of equality cry oppression yet receive more attention than anyone else. Minority views get more attention than those with majority support, a reality that Andrew Bolt and his ilk trade on. The opinion pages of conservative media rely on contrarians to build readership, and anti-equality advocates are primary beneficiaries.
Oblivious to this contradiction, they routinely cite as conclusive evidence one silly complaint to Tasmania's anti-discrimination commissioner about the Catholic Church's Don't Mess With Marriage booklet (which introduced to school children the term "throuple").
Yet as stupid as that unresolved complaint is – and stupid, it is – the effect has hardly been to silence critics of equality.
Howard was on the front page. The Australian Christian Lobby is quoted ad nauseam. Bernardi and Christiansen know they are guaranteed a national run each time they say something about it.
Speaking of which, the next time you hear Bernardi accuse equality advocates of "social engineering", remember he is attempting to engineer a society without gay weddings and apparently with bullied gay teens.
Tim Dick is a Sydney lawyer.
Twitter: @dick_tim
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