This is a quotation on the “True Marriage Equality” website – a noisy, and to our eyes offensive and very ridiculous organisation, that has popped up.
This is the Alt-Right/Fake News experience happening right now in Australia. This is the unpleasant, harmful and entirely unnecessary experience – that many warned that Malcolm Turnbull’s weak-kneed inability to stand up to his own right wing as he clings to The Lodge was foisting on us – that has been created by this ludicrous opinion poll.
The quoting of Paul Keating implying clearly that he is against same sex marriage (in an interview from a long time ago, despite the date on the article header being 19th August two days ago, clearly the date the post when up but NOT when Keating said anything) is actually an utterly dishonest taking of quotes out of context and it is promoted as a positive for their biased arguments.
In a desperate attempt to fight back against this crap being promoted by the No campaign – which has included anonymous and deeply offensive posters appearing on Melbourne’s streets, from who-knows-where) here is the actual text from whence the quote was plucked:
RAY MARTIN: John Howard, are you relaxed and comfortable about homosexual marriages in Australia?
JOHN HOWARD: No, I’m not. I don’t believe that homosexuals should be discriminated against. I believe that sexual preference is a private matter. I do not believe that homosexual relationships should be given the same legal status as a marriage. I believe that marriage has a special role in our society. It is a special institution which gives an enormous amount of stability to our community.
RAY MARTIN: So, a gay couple in marriage is not a family unit in Australia?
JOHN HOWARD: I didn’t say that. Look, I am not going to get in to a legalistic definition. I mean, a family is an emotional relationship and it is a commitment of people.
RAY MARTIN: But like Tim Fischer, you are not in favour of homosexual marriages?
JOHN HOWARD: But I do not and I make no bones about it. I am not in favour of homosexual marriages.
RAY MARTIN: Paul.
PAUL KEATING: People live in all sorts of relationship, Ray. You can’t describe a family in any one way. The nuclear family is an important, but nevertheless somewhat ageing concept.
RAY MARTIN: Can you ever be convinced that two men and a cocker spaniel is not a family unit as you once said in Cabinet?
PAUL KEATING: Well, you will never build a society on it. You will not build a nation on it, but it is another thing to discriminate against people. It is another thing to seek to do as the National Party and others have done, is speak in discriminatory terms about people who live in homosexual relationships.
JOHN HOWARD: You really are trying to have two bob each way. I mean, just state your view and get on to the next one.
PAUL KEATING: Oh, excuse me, I can give my own answers, thanks. I don’t need you to interpret them, John.
Presumable he doesn’t need “True Marriage Equality” to interpret them in this way, either. We also refer you to our much-read article explaining why all the arguments posted by Christians in favour of bias against homosexuals is NOT Biblical.
Why is the Church anti-gay if the Bible isn’t?
Well, This Is What I Think 
The issue is that Turnbull moved too soon, had he waited Abbott would have imploded and then Turnbull could have moved into the position with some strength instead of a position of weakness and owing those who voted for him. If he had done that there would have been a vote in parliament instead of this disgusting debate about people’s right to marry the person they love. Let’s not even talk about the money they are wasting, money that could have been used for so many good things.
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I have given up on Turnbull, who I had hopes for. He is weak as piss. Sadly, the alternative is uninspiring too.
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The issue is that Turnbull moved too soon, had he waited Abbott would have imploded and then Turnbull could have moved into the position with some strength instead of a position of weakness and owing those who voted for him.
From a position of strength there would have been a vote in parliament instead of this disgusting debate about people’s right to marry the person they love. Let’s not even talk about the money they are wasting, money that could have been used for so many good things.
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Here’s a slightly different angle to look at it – think of all the children who are abused who come from heterosexual marriages – if you asked them if they would have preferred to be in the horrible situation they are now, or if they would have preferred to have been adopted into a same sex couple’s marriage which did NOT abuse children but looked after them well, which would they choose? I would suggest that unless they had something seriously wrong with them, they’d choose the non-abusive form of parenting and not give a flying fig that the two parents were the same sex.
The BBC used to do a really good series on the now defunct BBC Three digital channel – where they paired some of the most blooming awful children the UK has to offer (and it really was BAD) with parents in other parts of the world, some were religious, some weren’t. Some were heterosexual, some weren’t. It was fascinating.
There was a very memorable couple in South Africa, one of whom was a lawyer, and they took in two of these awful teenagers for just two weeks, and turned their characters around and found something worthwhile to build on in them. The couple had I think 5 adopted children already, and the whole family took a day a week to go and work in a local very poor area, and help people out with basic needs and just a helping hand and a listening ear. They were utterly and completely admirable in every way – and it didn’t matter to me as a heterosexual, most of the people watching, or their adopted children that they were a homosexual couple – it was the love, compassion, intelligence, kindness, common sense and fairness that they had that stood out.
Any child wants those qualities in a parent and wouldn’t give a fig for their parents’ sexual orientation if they brought up their children in such a caring and loving manner. Yet these silly politicians would presumably stop children being adopted by such caring parents. Shame on them.
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Shame on them indeed.
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