The Standard’s reporting of Wednesday’s decisive ‘no’ vote on same-sex marriages was as typically one-sided as virtually all media coverage of the issue.
If the vote had gone the other way, I imagine it would have dominated the TV news bulletins and, who knows, probably the front page of every major newspaper in the country. But alas! We get a few whining paragraphs on page 8.
The sheer arrogance of this campaign has amazed me. Same-sex marriage advocates have simply assumed that their arguments alone had moral credibility, that all decent Australians supported them, and that all who stood in their way were bigoted homophobes.
Their “how-will-it-affect-you?” argument was an arrogant lie because they certainly must have known that it would change the very core of our society in profound ways. Senator Bernardi was right, for one thing, when he said that it would lead to a push for polygamous “marriage”.
Furthermore, the push for same-sex marriage represented a dangerous precedent that the well-being of society as a whole should be trumped by the so-called “rights” of small minority groups.
Even the word “equality” has been scurrilously invoked to ridicule and denigrate legitimate alternative views.
This vote was a resounding victory for common sense. We should all be celebrating!
Steve McNeilly, Preston Street, Dennington