Gays overboard again

Gays overboard again

Well, it’s been a pretty predictable week. Once again rumours that a gay player would be outed on The Footy Show (AFL) proved false. Once again Kyle Sandilands showed his quality, mocking a disabled contestant on Australia’s Got Talent.
Question: if Australia has got talent, how did those three get on the panel?
And once again the Labor Government decided it could survive without the support of the LGBTI voter.
Newly announced changes to the Sex Discrimination Act will protect women and men equally from discrimination, increase protections against sexual harassment, and establish breastfeeding as a separate ground of discrimination, according to the press release. All good stuff.
But no plans to extend the act to outlaw discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation or gender identity.
The release was headlined STRENGTHENING DISCRIMINATION LAWS FOR FAMILIES.
Including two-mum and two-dad families, Mr Attorney-General sir?
It talked about “ensuring that protections from sex discrimination apply equally to women and men”.
Including trans women and men, Mr McClelland? I think we should be told.
Sadly, at the time of writing, answers to the above were not forthcoming.
The Attorney-General said, “Ensuring that anti-discrimination law meets the needs of contemporary Australians is an important part of ensuring the promotion and protection of human rights.”
Sure is, Bobby-boy! So how, exactly, do these changes ensure the promotion and protection of the rights of this contemporary Australian?
This is a dangerous game to be playing. Labor is throwing voters overboard on the left without gaining them on the right. Progressive voters are already moving to the Greens, and gay voters are joining them.
Labor is gambling that it doesn’t matter, because preferences will flow to them anyway — if everyone follows the how-to-vote cards instead of using their heads. But this strategy puts a number of high-profile names at risk.
The seat of Sydney, held by housing minister Tanya Plibersek, has one of the highest gay populations of any electorate in the nation.
In the equally gay seat of Melbourne, it’s reported that private polling already has Greens candidate Adam Bandt pulling ahead of finance minister Lindsay Tanner, which would render the preferences argument moot.
Transport minister Anthony Albanese’s seat of Grayndler is also vulnerable.
Ironically, all three favour same-sex rights, but will not break party discipline to support equal marriage. But if they don’t, and the gay vote deserts them, they may not have parliamentary careers for much longer anyway.
And Australian Labor may find that, like their British counterparts, they will need minority party support to cling to office. The forthcoming election gets more interesting by the day.

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4 responses to “Gays overboard again”

  1. As long as labor is in power there will never be equal marriage rights for gay and lesbian couples. If MP’s like Tanner and Pilberesk actually supported gay marriage then they would have voted for the greens bill that was put to parliament last year. All they do is make a token speech here or there at gay and lesbian events and hope this is enough to get them re – elected. I have written to Lindsay Tanner numerous times with questions about Labors stance on Gay rights but I have not received any replies at all from him.

  2. Tanya Plibersek may well support same-sex rights in private, but as my local Federal MP she has never in any correspondence in response to my questions of her publicly stated that support; at best all you will get from Plibersek is a Federal ALP template response – so for all intents and purposes she DOES NOT support the gay and lesbian community.

    Albanese is not much better – his “sometimes you get what you need, not what you want” speech at the ALP conference was the most condescending speech I have ever heard on same-sex rights.

    To claim that these MPs support same-sex rights is not supported by their public actions – until they are willing to make such support public they must be seen (and treated) as opponents.

    If they do not have the courage to support the voters in their respective electorates, then why should we support them?

  3. Excellent points, Doug.

    The fact of the matter is this: discrimination on the basis of sexuality and gender identity was first brought before the Senate of this nation in the mid-90s.

    We’ve now seen SIX different terms of government go by, and this is going to be the seventh. The Rudd Government continues to advance anti-discrimination laws (rightfully) in very precise and narrow areas — while leaving a whole broad swathe of people unprotected.

    And there’s no hint of a timetable from them as to when they will fix it.

  4. “Including two-mum and two-dad families, Mr Attorney-General sir?”

    Back in 2008 when the govenment passed the laws to remove discrimiation they also changed the Sex discrimination act to include same-sex couples and their children as family in that act, so its highly unlikely they would change the law to discriminate against us after they removed the discrimination. I understand they are simply expanding the law which currently includes us – so its actually a good thing as it reinforces the message that a same-sex couple and their child or children is regarded as family under the rudd federal government. And as for the breatfeeding, well thats not really a surpise as I expected the government to act on that. Yes we still don’t have a federal law preventing discrimination on sexuality and gender identity, however expanding the sex discrimination act in my opinion is a postive thing, especially for lesbians.