satire
8 May 2008
What, Porn and Firecrackers Weren't Enough?
All hell would break loose in the ACT if gay marriage were legalised
Every now and then, round my place, a heavy tension settles in the air, as my wife and I go about our days.These periods of anxiety always coincide with the ugly rearing of same-sex marriage in the public discourse. Whenever the possibility of legally sanctioned gay marriage is mooted, we become distinctly uneasy about our future.
This is because like all decent, hard-working Christian patriots, our marriage contract contains a "homosexual get-out clause". It was made explicit even in our vows: "I promise to love and honour thee till death do us part, unless gays ever get married, then all bets are off." And let me tell you, those vows are sacred.
So you can imagine our relief when we found out that Attorney-General Robert McClelland, in removing same-sex discrimination from 100 laws, had opted not to allow same-sex couples to get married and made clear that "the Government believes that marriage is between a man and a woman".
Of course marriage is between a man and a woman. Have you ever seen a woman have a buck's party? Have you ever seen a father give away his daughter, who is a man? Of course not, because it's illegal. And why is it illegal? Because marriage is between a man and a woman.
Make no mistake, if the law were changed, it wouldn't just be men marrying men and women marrying women - we would open the floodgates and allow mothers to marry sons, sisters to marry brothers, toddlers to marry sharks, and priests to marry woodheaters. Experts agree that it is impossible to draft a law allowing consenting adults to marry each other, without also allowing children and animals and kitchen utensils to do so as well. I doubt you'll be thanking Mr Rodney Croome of the Australian Coalition for Equality the day you see a healthy young man marry his own hair, all because the gays got a little over-sensitive.
The argument against gay marriage is rather elegant and quite impeccable: marriage is a historically based institution which forms one of the foundations of our modern society. The basic unit of society is the family, and families are created by a marriage between a man and a woman. To alter this institution would necessitate a drastic shift in the way our society is organised and the way we think about our social relationships, which could pose a grave risk to social stability, the welfare of our offspring, and the continued procreation of our species. Marriage, as we know it today, is the wellspring of all the cohesion and harmony that allows us to evolve and progress as a people.
Or, to put it a little more succinctly: Gays? Eww.
It was even more of a relief to see that McClelland quickly slapped down the ACT Government, when it tried to introduce civil unions for same-sex couples. As McClelland says, we cannot have anything in this country that mimics marriage, any more than we can have a territory government mimicking autonomy.
ACT Chief Minister Jon Stanhope may claim that legal recognition of gay and lesbian relationships does not diminish his marriage "one iota", but I think he will find on reflection that it would diminish by several iotas, possibly more. Experience shows that in places where homosexual civil unions are permitted, over 90 per cent of decent upstanding heterosexual marriages have dissolved within a fortnight, frequently in violent circumstances. In some cases, straight people have reported arriving home the day the civil union legislation was passed, and finding they literally did not recognise their spouse.
So Mr Stanhope, for your sake and that of your marriage, just be thankful your Government isn't a real one.
The instant collapse of normal, non-perverted God-fearing marriages everywhere would be only the beginning of the catastrophe that the homo-activists are trying to rain upon our heads. Redefining marriage would mean changing the language, which has been steadfast and unchanging for millions of years. If we alter one word's meaning, what's to stop us altering others? If marriage can mean a union between two people of any sex, then dog can mean cat, stop can mean go, trampoline can mean anaesthesiologist, until eventually our language breaks down completely and we are reduced to a rabble of burbling buffoons. Just look at Spain - they legalised gay marriage there and I can't understand a word those people are saying.
So have a good hard think, same-sex marriage backers, about the world you're trying to usher in. A world full of primitive deviates communicating through grunts and whistles with the bucketful of live ducks that they married the day before, and dying prematurely of exhaustion from the constant pride parades.
A grim vision, I think you'll agree.
So let us defend the culture that has served us so well and kept us so happy and free all these years. And let us remember what Hollywood has taught us: homosexuals have their place at weddings, and that place is comic relief. Can we afford to lose that?
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Thanks Ben, for a wonderful piece. Yet somehow I have this nagging feeling that there will be plenty of people that won’t see the satire.
Yes, I kind of agree with wvw. The piece is labelled satire on NM but take that away and the piece could easily be interpreted literally.
Somehow Joel and I are still married, but presumably that’s because he’s REALLY A WOMAN!!!!!!!1
Beware, Australia — do not end up like Canada! We’ve imploded entirely!
I’d sooner call a square a circle before allowing the word marriage to be redefined like this. What about the cost of updating all the dictionaries? Has anyone thought of that? Brendan - have you?
Ben - I think you need to acknowledge your indebtedness to FC for this piece.
It’s very simple really : marriage is between two people who love each other.
And if those two people stop loving each other and find they are no longer compatible, there is a divorce clause, which means those two consenting adults who no longer wish to consent, can dissolve their marriage.
Obviously this assumes that a secular marriage contract has been recognised as the human right of all consenting (romantically inclined) adults, regardless of gender.
Too smart by half
If two people love each other, they live together. What does marriage have to do with it? If they want ot bequeath their property to each other, they sign at Stat. Dec. to that effect, or leave each othyer their stuff in their wills. So, just when the rest of society is getting more relaxed about de facto relationships, some homosexuals want the formalisation of traditional marriage. Progressive, yeah right.
Meanwhile more than a hundred thousand people, human beings, poor people trying to raise their kids and care for themr families in terrible circumstances, have been killed in the cyclone and tidal surge in Burma, and more than two million are homeless, have lost everything. And we worry about the rights of a bunch of queers to get married. Priorities, anyone ?
Joe
"Make no mistake, if the law were changed, it wouldn’t just be men marrying men and women marrying women…all because the gays got a little over-sensitive."
Henry Rollins did an excellent bit on this ridiculous assumption as part of his last spoken word tour. Apparently, he was contacted by a bloke who thought that if men were able to marry men, then men would soon be allowed to marry horses!
Joe, Joe, Joe,
is that the deep stench of hypocrisy I can smell? Wasting your and our precious time online with hate mail when you could be over in Burma yourself helping the Burmese. did you go to work during the week? are you going to church tomorrow? where are your priorities? Really? why didn’t you quit your job the moment you found out about the disaster in Burma? because clearly it is impossible for you to consider more than one issue at a time. Sure the people in Burma need our assistance and sympathy, they also need america to back off and stop trying to turn this to their political advantage. But did you ever stop and think that some of the people in Burma are gays and lesbians as well? do you want to help them too or are they just "a bunch of queers" as well.
No I don’t hate, ja500n - I’m just not all that obsessed with the issue, it bores the shit out of me (are we allowed to say that ?) compared with the concern that I think all decent people should feel about what is happening, or about to happen, in Burma. I don’t have a job now, actually, except some volunteer work with refugees.
I support gay rights too, but I don’t think that they are very important in the scheme of things. People should have the right to keep a cat, or to drink to excess, or like ‘Friends’ (well, that’s going a bit far), or stuff themselves with ice-cream, but I don’t rate them particularly worthwhile causes. I’d march to protect their rights from brutal police treatment, or summary execution, too, just as I would for the rights of queers to be free from police brutality or summary execution.
If you like it, go for it, but don’t expect anybody else to be as preoccupied with your personal business, or to have your preferences, any more than they would expect you to have theirs. I’ll keep trying to work out what I can do about a far more important issue such as the human rights and welfare of Burmese people, including (yawn!) Burmese gay people (which is so totally irrelevant to the general predicament that they are in).
Joe
Well said, Joe. I’ll make sure to write some snappy gags about dying Burmese for my next piece.
Hey Ben-
What a fantastic article!!! Still trying to get my head around the whole issue of incest, but you nugged me in the right direction in this piece with the comments about kitchen utensils (I should say that my Sex Gender and Family tutor has also been nudging me on that issue :-)).
Sounds like hate to me Joe.
Certainly you don’t seem to like a lot of minority groups. At the same time you are all for defending ill informed and ignorant morons like Bolt while at the same time claiming that writers on these pages should research their articles better. You sound to me like one conflicted and confused "bundle of impotent rage."*
*Bragg, B. Goalhanger Bmg Music London 1996
Jas500on,
I don’t think I have ever read an article by Bolt, or therefore ever said anything in praise of him. Not hate, mate, just indifference, except insofar as homosexuals are people too who have rights not to be harassed, beaten by police, etc. But there are far more important issues to be concerned about, that’s all.
Sorry, Jason, which minority groups don’t I like ? I’m married to an Indigenous person, I do volunteer-work with Africans and Bosnians and Iranians. I don’t understand your personal insult, Jason. Oh, I get it - you’re claiming minority group status for queers ? Frankly, I didn’t know they were one - I’ve always taken it for granted that the majority of the ruling class were homosexuals, and a fair proportion of the middle class, especially C. of E.
Have I claimed anywhere ‘that writers on these pages should research their articles better’ ? Now that you mention it, ……
And I’m sorry, Ben, if real-world issues intrude on your desire to make jokes - it’s so annoying that way, isn’t it ?
Joe Lane
I always suspect people who have ideas about how other people should live their lives.
A man I know was in a monogramous union for 28 years with a man he dearly loved. He was forced to adopt his partner to make sure he had rights of succession and that they could make end-of-life decisions for one another. This is a humiliation neither of them should have faced in a civilized world.
I suggest that people either mind their own business or search their souls, discover their own inclinations and get it one.