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A debate waged on Australian television over the fate and repercussions of “gay” marriage in the country took a fiery turn after one of the panelists, Spiked Online editor Brendan O’Neill, pointed to the intolerance of same-sex union advocates toward traditional marriage supporters, and said the scenes coming from America show religious persecution has become an acceptable part of the platform.
What was even more noteworthy: O’Neill described himself as a liberal.
The discussions kicked off when traditional marriage advocate Katy Faust, who was raised in a same-sex household, said the United States didn’t consider the harmful effects of raising children in a household headed by “gay” parents, News.com.au reported. Labor’s Sam Daystari broke in and accused Faust of making uncivilized and unnecessary comments.
Daystari said: “I find it very hard to respect your views because I don’t think it comes from a place of love, I think it comes from a place of hate. I worry that so much of your view comes from not really with an issue of marriage, but an issue with homosexuality. You have described it as a lifestyle. You have said homosexuality drives us further away from God. I’m sorry, but I think this American evangelical clap-trap is the last thing we need in our debate.”
That’s when O’Neill jumped into the mix.
He outlined what “freaks me out about gay marriage” as putting forth as a “civil-rightsy issue” but instead, possessing a “really ugly intolerant streak” where those who oppose are “demonized, harassed,” he said, the news outlet reported.
In a video clip of the debate, O’Neill went on: “We’ve seen people thrown out of their jobs because they opposed gay marriage, ejected from polite society. You know, 200 years ago, if you didn’t believe in God, you wouldn’t have a hope in hell of getting ahead in public life. Today, if you don’t believe in gay marriage, you don’t have a hope in hell of getting ahead in public life. There’s a real ugly element to this and I think, you know, you really see it with the whole cake shop phenomenon.”
O’Neill pointed to America’s long-running media coverage of the Christian bakers who cited their religious beliefs as cause for refusing to make a cake for a “gay” couple’s marriage ceremony, and who were subsequently shot down in court and ordered to perform the service.
“This whole thing around the Western world where people are going to traditional Christian cake shops and saying to them, ‘hey you, stupid Christians, make this cake for me,’ and if they don’t, they call the police,” O’Neill said in the video. “There are equality cases, shops have closed down. It’s a 21st century form of religious persecution. It’s horrendous.”
He went on to say the tone of the debate has shifted to an “extraordinary” level where those with contrasting views can’t even express themselves without fear of being labeled discriminatory.
“What’s extraordinary and unacceptable is that [gay rights’ advocates] cannot tolerate the existence of people who do not support gay marriage,” he said, “and I think we sometimes fail to understand how extraordinary that is.”
The debate comes as Australia’s government is deciding the fate of a Marriage Act that would open the doors to same-sex unions. And according to O’Neill, it’s the intolerance of the “gay” activists who are putting a dark damper on any type of reasonable political discussions on the matter.
He said, News.com.au reported: “I think the reason why [Prime Minister] Tony Abbott is very defensive on this issue and is ‘errming’ and ‘ahhing’ and shifting from the free vote to the not-free vote and all this stuff – he clearly has a problem with gay marriage and he cannot articulate it because we live in a climate where it is not acceptable as we have just seen in Sam’s attack on Katy in calling her ‘hateful’ and saying she is talking ‘clap-trap.’ It’s not acceptable to express this sentiment in public life.”
And his conclusion?
“Tony Abbott is now being described as someone from the Dark Ages for believing what humanity has believed for thousands of years,” O’Neill said. “Within the space of a decade, something humanity believed in for thousands of years has somehow become a form of bigotry, a form of hate something you’re not allowed to express in public life. That extraordinary shift in intolerance is something all liberals, like me, should be worried about.”
