Thankfully this fool is not propping up the Australian Government (as with two other independent MPs) … otherwise we’d have extra reason to be worried at the awful comments of Independent Member of Parliament Bob Katter at an anti-equality rally in Canberra where conservative American commentator, Rebecca Hagelin, said same-sex marriage will lead to marriages between paedophiles and children, and Katter said the idea of same-sex marriages “deserves to be laughed at and ridiculed”.
Australian Marriage Equality spokesperson, Rodney Croome, said offensive rhetoric has no place in the same-sex marriage debate and called on the Australian Christian Lobby and Australian Family Association, who organised the rally, to distance themselves from the comments. ”Along with other independent MPs, Bob Katter will attend a charity dinner with same-sex partners in Parliament House later this year, and they will remind him why marriage equality is about some of the most serious things in life like love, commitment and family, and is definitely no laughing matter.”
The comments at today’s rally were also condemned as “damaging” by Queensland psychologist, Paul Martin, who is an expert in the mental health of same-sex attracted young people. ”Prejudice and ridicule damage the mental health of young same-sex attracted people and the last thing they need to hear are these kinds of offensive comments from people who purport to represent ‘family values’.”
Meanwhile, Australian Marriage Equality today released an opinion poll conducted by Galaxy research which found that 53% of Australian Christians believe same-sex couples should be allowed to marry. The Christians 4 Equality webform and a list of clergy endorsing equality can be found here:
The Bob Katter Australian Party’s ad is dangerous, and frightening. It employs devices which were characteristic of the Nazis’ propaganda against their targetted minorities – dehumanisation. Redolent of horrors of the past century, it may well receive recognition with a nomination for the 2012 Most Creative Message award from the Joseph Goebbels Institute for Propaganda Research and Development.
The principle shaping such propaganda is, once you have dehumanised those you target, the ‘scapegoats’, for aggression, hatred and destruction, you can do whatever you like to them without guilt or shame. The images of the two men in the film clip have been stripped of what makes us all human: our character, our sensuality, emotion, and energy and strength. These men are portrayed as touching without feeling, their faces impassive, anodyne, weak; desexualised, neutered: castrated as it were, by the pixillation, like sharp blades, so androgynous. They have been stripped not only of their clothes, but of their sex – their maleness – and whatever else would make them human.
This campaign ad is not only dangerous, it is immoral. It exemplifies the pernicious ways in which prejudice and discrimination and phobia are constructed, and manipulated, by unconscionable seekers of power.
It will be especially frightening and dangerous for young gay men who are living through the uncertainties and anxieties of forming their adult identities. In these ways, it could well contribute to some suicides. I ‘came out’ in Melbourne in the 60s, so I know about the pain and the harm. I have the ‘scars’ to prove it.
There’s no place for this vilification in contemporary Australia. Please denounce it.