The marriage equality movement and the new intolerance

Note the paradox. The marriage-equality movement has succeeded in changing public opinion across the Western world by championing love and acceptance. Polls show Australians have become more tolerant of the LGBTI community, so much so that support for same-sex marriage is now a majority view. And yet many activists have become intolerant of people who might subscribe to religious or more traditional positions.

It is nothing short of outrageous that these people should have been subjected to such vitriol because of their opinions. Yet they are just some of the many people who have become the target of the Twitter crowd.

What is really disturbing is that these campaigns are justified in the name of “tolerance” and “diversity”. The activists are supposed to oppose bigotry, yet they impose a new stifling orthodoxy of their own. It is as if gay marriage is made a taboo subject – unless you hold the approved point of view. Who is really being intolerant here?

Our civil society should be vibrant enough to tolerate all people of whatever sexual or religious instincts. But the same-sex marriage lobby will lose the goodwill of many voters if it keeps turning its agenda into a political orthodoxy from which there can be no dissent.

Why the panic? Attitudes are shifting rapidly. As recently as 2013, Julia Gillard and Hillary Clinton opposed gay marriage. Even Penny Wong was to the right of Dick Cheney! Like many westerners, they have changed their minds.

So the case for altering the definition of marriage has gathered steam. But a political debate over the subject is precisely what many of its supporters do not want. They instead want to impose a national solution via either the judiciary or the Parliament, even though the Turnbull government went to the last election on a pledge to resolve the matter via a plebiscite.

Whatever one’s views, the democratic process – the plebiscite or, if the High Court approves, the postal vote – is a good thing. Both sides play by the same rules and can accept the people’s verdict as legitimate. And as support grows for a legally sanctioned union between people of the same sex, the politics will follow. Isn’t that how democracy works? Or are socio-cultural changes more durable when they are imposed from the top?

Alas, anyone who dares to express views outside the mainstream is regarded as a fanatic, who has to be subjected to absurd scrutiny.

We saw a telling example of this when ABC News presenter Joe O’Brien asked the Australian Christian Lobby’s Lyle Shelton whether he could in good faith support gay athletes in sporting endeavours. The contorted logic here is that if you oppose gay marriage you must be a homophobe.

Yet Shelton’s sin is to hold views that held sway for millennia, views shared by virtually all priests, bishops, imams, rabbis and other religious leaders.

John Stuart Mill would be aghast. In On Liberty, the great 19th-century British liberal warned: “Unmeasured vituperation, employed on the side of the prevailing opinion really does deter people from expressing contrary opinion, and from listening to those who express them.”

This is a matter of grave concern that goes to the heart of contemporary public discourse in Australia. The new intolerance should appal all genuine liberals.

Tom Switzer is a senior research fellow at the Centre for Independent Studies and a presenter at the ABC’s Radio National.