Doug PollardFace Down the God Squad & Win Votes!
December 20th 2009 02:08
What do you mean, I'm a fraud?
Labor supporters continue to propagate the myth that the party can’t embrace marriage equality because they would lose the Christian vote and hence their grip on power. GLBTI advocates have long held that this was hogwash, and now we have the proof.
Associate Professor Dr Rodney Smith of Sydney University has analysed voting at the 2007 elections, and his findings strongly indicate the opposite..
According to The Age Really Long Link he said, ''The events of the 2007 federal election are impossible to square with the view that Australian electoral politics are coming increasingly under the influence of right-wing Christian groups.''
The good doctor found that instead, that in seats where right-wing Christian groups directly targeted Labor and the Greens, the two parties actually increased their vote.
The study also explodes the myth that there is any such thing as a unified Christian point of view.
Again according to The Age, Dr Smith says “ it is misleading to lump all Christian groups under the label ‘Christian right’ “… His analysis … shows the contributions of church groups to the election were not dominated by a single view, but covered diverse issues with competing views on key policy issues. “ Among those ‘competing views’ are many Christians who support marriage equality.
In other words, the “Christian” community is no more united than the GLBTI community .The Australian Christian Lobby is only one voice among many, representing only a minority of its co-religionists.
Yet successive governments – including the current administration - have prostituted themselves for votes the Lobby cannot in fact deliver, and used Lobby demands as an excuse to dilute and delay GLBTI equality- and as a smokescreen for their own homophobia.
At the same time those same governments have refused to act on the advice of disparate gay groups on the grounds that each was only one voice among many, and the gay community was “not dominated by a single view, but covered diverse issues with competing views on key policy issues. “
No, Labor’s refusal to embrace marriage equality is not based on the fear of the consequences at the ballot box – they will be minimal, and could even be positive. It is based on the fear of confronting the homophobia within itself, and of opening up a split within the party. The ghost of Bob Santamaria is stalking the corridors of power.
As one source put it (I’m paraphrasing), ‘it’s not about principles, it’s about finding a compromise everyone within the party can live with.’
It suits Labor to aim us at Jim Wallace and the Australian Christian Lobby, because that diverts our attention from the real roadblock to marriage equality – the Labor Party itself, and in particular the malign influence of the Catholic right, propped up by votes of the Shoppies Union led by North-Korean-style President for Life, the dinner companion of Cardinals, Joe de Bruyn.
This conveniently allows Labor pollies who don’t much like us, but need our votes to hold onto their Green-challenged inner-city seats, to pose as friends whose hands are unfortunately tied by electoral necessity – and, they remind us, with gentle threats, the Liberals would be worse.
That may once have been true, but now the Liberal Party is frantically narrowing its appeal, energising it’s very conservative base (unconsciously aping its American mentors, the Republicans) and gifting the centre ground to Labor.
Labor now not only has room to shift to the left, it will be forced to do so to avoid losing many valuable inner city members, principally to the Greens. And not just – or even principally – because of their intransigence on marriage equality.
Inner city Labor voters - especially the under 35s - are baffled by Canberra’s recalcitrance on same sex equality. But they are also vehemently opposed to the proposed government censorship of the internet. And they are furious at weak and ineffective climate change policies that turn the notion of ‘the polluter pays’ on its head, creating instead a policy of ‘taxpayers pay polluters.’
On the one hand, Mr Rudd wants to paint Labor as the party of the future, of change, of technological advance. But siding with crusty old ‘Christian’ colonels makes his banner of progress and modernity seem nothing more than a flag of convenience.
But when these zealots attack Labor instead of embracing it, the Labor vote goes up. Because that seems to validate Labors progressive credentials.
Facing down the God Squad is, in short, a vote-winning strategy. If only Rudd can find the will and the courage to face down those in his own party who are holding him back.
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