It won’t end with gay marriage

PARENTS have seen this kind of stuff before. They’ve seen a toddler screaming and howling because they want a lolly or a turn with a toy.

And, sure, we dads and mums would like them to have it. But not like this.

We can’t reward the bawling and foot-stamping because we know it sends the wrong message. It breeds nasty people. Bullies.

But bullies are exactly what we’re breeding now with the same-sex marriage debate.

Have you ever seen anything like it — all these threats, insults, sneers, wails and theatrical sobs from activists?

And have you wondered what comes next if we give in?

That is now the urgent question. Say same-sex marriage becomes law. Do you think this mob will stop there?

Be warned by the witch-hunting hysteria you already see.

It’s not just the work of the kind of fringe activists who bombarded Sydney’s Mercure hotel with so many threats that it cancelled a meeting of Christians, including the Anglican Archbishop of Sydney.

It goes to the top, with the taxpayer-funded ABC, hijacked by the Left, campaigning so aggressively for same-sex marriage that for the first time I can remember, its staff were sent a memo last week warning of their legal duty to be impartial.

“Please remember that approximately 40 per cent of the population opposes the change and more importantly that the ABC does not have a position on the issue,” pleaded ABC News editorial policy manager Mark Maley.

“It is very important that we are impartial.”

But it isn’t and won’t be. I could name a dozen ABC presenters who have endorsed same-sex marriage, but not one who has expressed the views of what the ABC says is the 40 per cent of taxpayers funding them.

Yet SBS, the other taxpayerfunded broadcaster, is still worse, even banning a commercial from the Australian Marriage Forum warning against same-sex marriage.

The stifling of debate is shameless. About 400 employees of ad agencies — including Clemenger BBDO and Ogilvy — have now signed up to the “No to the No campaign”, refusing to make or show ads opposing same-sex marriage because they are “harmful”.

Employees of these companies and the many others like Qantas now crusading for same-sex marriage know it’s safer to shut up than say they’re against it.

Even the Australian Medical Association, in backing same-sex marriage, has censored the other side of the debate.

It falsely claimed there were no peer-reviewed studies suggesting children of such marriages struggled more than children of traditional families. Nearly 400 doctors, including 26 professors, have since signed a letter protesting at the AMA stifling research that showed the opposite.

Meanwhile, those who do dare oppose gay marriage and somehow manage to get heard still risk being sued.

The Catholic Archbishop of Hobart has already been ordered by Tasmania’s Anti-Discrimination Tribunal to show why he should be allowed to keep preaching, and now two more preachers — one a Presbyterian pastor — have been taken to the tribunal by another same-sex marriage activist.

Warning: all this is happening even before same-sex marriage becomes law.

Once it’s legal, watch out.

A Senate select committee warned unanimously in a report in February there weren’t enough legal protections for opponents of samesex marriage.

Since then, Liberal MPs have talked of needing laws to stop priests and celebrants from being sued for not performing same-sex weddings, and to protect others saying they object for religious reasons.

But if there’s little protection for the religious, there’s even less for anyone objecting for philosophical reasons, or for fear of what may come as the marriage tradition weakens.

Institute for Civil Society executive director Mark Sneddon has told The Australian the non-religious have no protection under federal or state anti-discrimination laws or the Fair Work Act.

That is why the tactics being used by same-sex marriage activists do matter.

Their bullying and hatred is driven by a smug conviction that their opponents are simply evil people doing harm.

Just last weekend, the ABC promoted a new song by hatemerchant Tim Minchin, this time demanding same-sex marriage be legalised and abusing Australians as “a little bit racist, and a little bit home-ophobic”.

That’s the problem with moral showboaters. The more evil they imagine their enemies, the more heroic they feel.

And the more pitiless they are to the evil, the more virtuous they fancy themselves to be.

That explains the persecution. If it’s not stopped, it will only get worse once these bullies get their way.