Word Games Won't Fool Us In Australia !

A verbal trick is being played by activists and journalists trying to fool Australians into backing same-sex marriage. See if you can pick the word game that's blinding people to what's really at stake. Last month on the ABC's 7:30 show, host Leigh Sales announced, ''The English House of Commons voted overwhelmingly for marriage equality.''   Then there was our lesbian Finance Minister Penny Wong, stating two weeks ago, ''It is an undeniably ugly vein that runs deep in some of the arguments against marriage equality."  Spotted the trick yet?  The one that's just been called out by a surprisingly unimpressed Federal Court judge?  More clues.

Note the name of the organisation leading the fight for same-sex marriage: Australian Marriage Equality. Note Greens MP Adam Bandt in Parliament: ''It is with great pride that I present the Marriage Equality Amendment Bill.''  Yes...that word-trick is to pretend that what same-sex marriage activists want is equality. To give gay people the same marriage rights as straight people. As my favourite journalist Andrew Bolt, from the Herald Sun Newspaper, points out, ''Same-sex activists don't seem to realize that gays have marriage equality already.  A gay man is as free as straight man to marry a woman. A lesbian is as free as any other woman to marry a man. THAT'S EQUALITY! ''

Actually, what same-sex marriage activists want is very different -- a new freedom to marry someone of the same sex. What they want isn't marriage at all, since marriage is the union of a man with a woman, excluding all others. And if we change what marriage means, we have a duty to consider not just the good such a huge change to such a critical social bond could bring, but the evil too. Liberal Senator Cory Bernardi speaking on that gay marriage Bill in Federal Parliament said, ''Time and time again the same characters seek to tear down our institutions that have been built and have sustained our civilisation for thousands of years. The time has come to ask: 'when will it end?' What's the next step?  The next step I envision, quite frankly, is having three people or four people that love each other being able to enter into a permanent union endorsed by society or for that matter, any other off-beat relationship. Senator Bernardi went on to say accepting gay ''marriage'' now...could lead to accepting bestiality. ''There are even some creepy people out there and I say creepy deliberately who are unfortunately afforded a great deal more respect than I believe they deserve,'' he added.

In a virtually unreported decision last month, Justice Jane Jagot rejected a claim by a prominent gay activist Simon Margan that state laws banning the registration of same-sex marriages were a breach of the Sex Discrimination Act.  Margen was wrong, found the judge: ''There cannot be discrimination by reason of the sex of a person because in all cases, the treatment of the person of the opposite sex is the same. Hence, a man cannot enter into the state of marriage as defined with another man just as a woman cannot enter into a state of marriage with another woman as defined.''  What Margan wanted was not equality, but a new form of marriage, said Justice Jagot. ''By statutory definition, persons of the opposite sex may marry and persons of the same sex may not.''

Even though linking same-sex marriage to bestiality was a stretch and a shocker, Bernardi, in the Senate last week, gave fresh evidence suggesting his warning was well-founded when it comes to polygamy: ''Three weeks ago in a Sydney paper, it reported on the establishment of the Polygamy Action Lobby (PAL) that started a petition which reads; 
 
          The House of Representatives for too long has denied Australian people the right to marry the ones they care about. We find this abhorrent. We believe that everyone should be allowed to marry their partners, and that the law should never be a barrier to love. And that's why we demand nothing less than the full recognition of polyamourous families.

So here we have it: a polyamorist lobby group petitioning Parliament to allow polygmous marriage. To some, five months ago this was inconceivable. So who is behind the PAL?  I will tell you. They are all associated with the Greens!  The two founders are listed as Brigitte McFadden, as its contact officer, and Timothy Scriven, described as an''anarchist and revolutionary libertarian socialist'', which both are members of the Young Greens at the University of Sydney. Polyamorous marriage is on the agenda. Greens activists are now pushing publicly for it while other polyamorists are lying low, waiting to be the next cab off the rank--no doubt, I suspect, having been given a nod and a wink by other deadshits advocating marriage for all. God, even the bloody Muslims want to get into the act! There are calls for the recognition of polgamy from Shekh Khalil Chami of the Islamic Welfare Centre and Keysar Trad of the Islamic Friendship Association in Sydney.

The Way I see It....the redress for these circumstances lies in the political and not the legal arena because what would be required is a change to the definition of ''marriage'' in the Marriage Act. It was nice that Justice Jagot exposed the word games being played by these low-lifes. Neil Foster, an associate professor in law at Newcastle University, agrees. ''The equality argument is fundamentally misconceived,'' he says, ''The call to allow same-sex marriage is legitimately seen as not a claim against discrimination, but a claim to change the nature of marriage.''

Some of you may want change and many do not. Fine. Let's debate. But ditch that deceptive talk of ''equality'' and be honest about what we deciding. I have a feeling Senator Bernardi may be right after all.