ANDREWS SIGNALS NEED FOR DEFENCE OF TRADITIONAL MARRIAGE

In a recent visit to Perth, former Liberal minister, Kevin Andrews MP, warned that those opposing traditional marriage were engaging in emotion and a campaign of vilification at those who sought to defend marriage as a union between a man and a woman.

Andrews, the Member for Menzies (Vic), who has held many portfolios, including Defence, Social Services, Immigration and Employment, was in Perth for a Christian Heritage seminar and also a fund raising event for Peter Abetz MLA.

Andrews argued that public policy needed to be founded on good principles and rationality.

“Essentially there are two competing views about marriage. The first is as a protective institution, especially for children, but also for adults, and society generally. The second view sees it as an affectionate relationship between individuals.”

While arguing that the two models were not polar opposites it was the former that should have primacy with policy makers.

“The first view has been favoured across cultures and centuries, although at times alternatives have gained prominence, amongst the Epicurean Greeks, in the late Roman era and in the Soviet Union between the Wars. “

Andrews said the traditional marriage had been successful because in both past and present eras because there was overwhelming evidence that it produced the best model for society and that it was a pre-political institution.

Traditional marriage has remained the inspirational model for most people and was the most reasonable for social institutions, such as the State, to deal with to promote social stability.

Andrews warned about stripping away the law of marriage being a union between man and woman and instead substituting ‘two people.’

Marriage was more than just love between two people yet attempts were being made to remove the concepts of motherhood and fatherhood from the law, governance and administration in favour of parenthood. As journalist Paul Kelly wrote, ‘once enshrined in law, the education systems, of primary schools upwards, will teach your children the ideology of marriage equality, namely equality of homosexual and heterosexual unions, as the foundations for cultural norms……’

Andrews said Kelly was right when he argued that ‘once the state authorises same sex marriage then religions will come under intense pressure and another campaign based on further application of marriage equality will begin.’

Indeed, pro-polygamy adherents may question why there should be a line be drawn at just same sex marriage?

The separation of faith and power is important as the Reformation, Lockean thought and the Declaration of Independence have proved. The State ultimately allowed diversity of opinion, belief and practice in the name of national peace, not of religious preference.

As Andrews noted the notion that law should not intrude into areas of common public morality has been challenged and undermined.

What was once ‘permitted’ has become a ‘right’ with demands of protection by law.

Andrews said when political liberalism is reconnected with morality and politics it does what liberalism seeks to avoid.

Rights are now being increasingly asserted for groups as opposed to individuals. Moral judgments against a group are now being deemed unlawful and punishable. Laws of defamation designed to protect the individual have now been subsumed by new star chambers seeking to protect group rights.

Thus, films like The Last Temptation of Christ (1988) while undoubtedly offensive to Christians in showing Jesus lusting after Mary Magdalene, do not constitute defamation. Ditto for offensive ‘art work’ like Serrano’s Piss Christ-Jesus on the cross submerged in the artist’s urine- and Ofili’s work, The Holy Virgin Mary, covered in elephant dung.

While these are certainly offensive to Christians, their strength is they accept that in a tolerant, liberal society such matters do not require the state to intervene.

Andrews contrasted the tolerance of Christianity with that of Islam, a cult that still has blasphemy laws and engages in religious persecution of others.

He said, surprisingly, many so-called liberals have failed to protest at this direction, instead championing hate speech laws at those directing legitimate concern of Islamism and the plight of those minorities persecuted in the Middle East.

The Andrews warnings are timely, particularly in the vicious attack on traditional marriage.

Bill Shorten’s intransigence in allowing a public plebiscite is matched only by his disgraceful denigration of those who want democratic rights to prevail. The Labor leader’s shriek of “homophobe,” flung at the principled conservative senator, Cory Bernardi, (Liberal SA), is a case in point. Bernardi was walking along a corridor in Parliament House, near where Shorten was holding a press conference, and he did nothing to prompt such an attack.

Even a constitutional conservative senator, Dean Smith (Liberal WA), argues, fatuously, that he cannot support a people’s vote as he claims that will create a precedent for popular votes on tough questions.

Oh, really? There have been only three national plebiscites since Federation (1901), hardly excessive, epitomising the lack of demand but does it matter if there are more?

The first two (1916-17) were both important, relating to military conscription in the Great War and twice the public opposed the Government so Australia, rightly, had an all-volunteer force. The third, 1977, was related to a choice for Australia’s national anthem with Advance Australia Fair emerging as the preferred model.

Therefore, as marriage pre-dates the state, any attempt to redefine marriage by way of a parliament majority only can expect public resistance. Traditional marriage is the accepted institution of the people and they rightly expect a say, as promised by the Government in the 2016 Federal election. Indeed, it was only a short time ago that Smith, Shorten and Greens leader, Senator Richard Di Natale, were all in favour of the people being consulted. Verily, they are a confused and fluctuating troika.

Smith, in particular, should listen to the words of his Liberal lower house colleague, Andrew Hastie (Canning, WA): ‘where Smith invests authority in the parliamentary sovereignty, I choose to invest it in the people.’ Hastie is correct.

The fact is that plebiscites, and the more important referendum section of the Australian Constitution (S.128), are provided for and have every right to be used.

There is an argument that Australia should have citizens initiated referenda, as well as that proposed by the Parliament, thus following the example of Switzerland and many US states.

The public has had enough of Left wing haters traducing the language and seeing those who argue for traditional values being pilloried by the cacophony of rage by the spiritual heirs of the mob who supported Barabbas.

This Biblical analogy is certainly appropriate when the mild mannered, quietly spoken Director of the Australian Christian Lobby, Lyle Shelton, is labelled ‘a nauseating piece of filth,’ by a sour-faced media hack, Bernard Keane.

Shelton has had abuse rained down on him from a ‘twitterati’ whose ignorance is matched only by their vicious bile.

Bill Leak’s brilliant cartoon, in The Australian, of a goose-stepping rainbow hued army marching was telling. Leak’s comment under his cartoon simply had the words, ‘Waffen SSM.’

It followed the blatant attack on freedom of speech and assembly by SSM fanatics, threatening violence, and causing the cancellation of a Christian gathering at the Mercure Hotel at Sydney Airport. The hotel staff was subjected to a barrage of intimidation and abuse.

Also female members of the ACL have had pornography sent to their emails; the ACL receptionist has had constant threatening calls, including death threats; and a SSM activist bizarrely made a mess in the female toilet of the ACL.

As Shelton said, with the memory of the trashing of Senator Bernardi’s office by rainbow fascists in Adelaide, still fresh in mind, the ACL staff was more than a little unnerved.

Dr David van Gend, a Queensland GP and pro-traditional marriage advocate, also knows the experience of having his workplace defaced. In addition his recent book on marriage has been ‘spiked’ by the printing company being scared off by the apostles of intolerance.

Of course, the silence of the SSM leadership, on such tactics, has been deafening. Easier to postulate on imagined suicides, if a plebiscite is held, than actual acts of social and cultural hooliganism!

Labor politicians, such as Stephen Jones, cravenly say both sides are guilty. But he demeans himself, and the ALP, in failing to provide examples of the SSM crowd either being attacked or being denied a voice in the public square.

With this happening now, before any change to the Marriage Act, matters can only get worse if defending true marriage becomes ‘bigotry’ under new rules.

Kevin Andrews recent warnings are timely and continues his long-time interest in marriage as an institution, as revealed in his book Maybe I do-Modern Marriage and the Pursuit of Happiness.

The former defence minister has been at his best in defending marriage.