@ said:
Usually if you join a thread 25 pages in, it is incumbent in you to get up to speed with the discussion. Not on me to repeat myself every-time someone new joins in. But because i am a really really really nice guy, i will spell it out for you again … because i am a really nice guy.
Haha I knew I could goad it out of you eventually.
It's not incumbent on me to do anything. It's like saying if you arrive late at a party you can't speak to anyone, because all the conversations have already started.
I stayed away from this thread because I wanted to make my vote without all the nonsense the "no" campaign has tried to dump on me, and then take a look at the subsection of society that exists in this forum. I know many of your online personas, so unlike other random forums, I have some sort of idea of what posters in here have been like over many years. I personally don't know anyone who is voting "no", so I have no direct spoken contact with the other side of the argument.
Now I know you are a really nice guy, I also know you appear unable to help yourself, you could have just ignored me, you've postured several times now about not repeating yourself, but here you are repeating yourself. There must be some part of you that is either enjoying debating with me, or cannot let my comments go unchallenged.
So I did read your posts generally speaking, lots of pages to cover of course, but my overall impression was that they were so wishy-washy that I couldn't boil down the pure facts behind your argument. All I could see were broad strokes of scare mongering and straw man arguments.
And it's been said to you already, the government didn't ask you to debate or discuss freedom of speech, nor legislation, they asked you to discuss marriage only. You of course are arguing that it goes beyond marriage into other aspects of society, but that is an endless argument that applies to anything in the whole world that is moderately complicated. Pawsandclaws is banging on about procreation, I have no idea why, and he's on your team, assuming that the point of all this is that you've voted "no".
@ said:
I have said overseas, that:
- School curriculums have changed, forcing religious schools to teach LGBT issues.
- Churches have been either pressured or forced to marry same sex couples.
- Business Owners criminally charged for refusing to participate in gay weddings.
- Public Servants jailed for not personally signing off on gay weddings.
- People fired from government jobs for believing in traditional marriage.
- Christian couples banned from adopting children for believing in traditional marriage.
I could obviously go on and on … there are other examples i also raised.
So the problem I have here is all you have done is provided more broad strokes about "things" that have "apparently" happened. Not how many, not where, not specific examples, just "take my word for it". I don't want to be patronising, but arguments like that don't hold any water at all, you need to provide facts and figures.
For example which churches have been forced to marry gay couples? Where and how many times?
Yoss does a great job a few posts ago, going through each of your "arguments" and dissecting them; I don't need to repeat it.
Tiger Pete pointed out to you that the countries that have passed SSM into law cover some 760 million people, and we globally are aware (and you are arguing about) single individual cases, perhaps totalling multiples of 10 (20, 30 events) covering every possible new anti-discrimination scenario including homosexuals in some 26 countries. That's important: we have to look at the change in rate of anti-discrimination events, not just the total number of events, because some countries may have already been aggressively enforcing their anti-discrimination laws prior to any SSM laws being passed.
Let's overestimate and say 100 events have occurred in these countries where freedom of speech was potentially (not even proven in law, just potentially) impacted in an anti-discrimination case involving homosexuals. That would be 100 events out of 760 million persons = 1 event for every 7.6 million persons = impact on 0.0000001% of the population. Apply that to the current Australian population approx 25M and we might see something like 3 new anti-discrimination cases involving homosexuals, noting that the law already prohibits anti-discrimination against gays.
@ said:
Now I am not interested in whether you personally think the above discrimination should or shouldn't be allowed, that is not the point of me raising them. The point is that freedoms have been curtailed in direct response to gay marriage being legalised in these countries, and it is reasonable to expect the same situations would apply in Australia if we legalised gay marriage also.
Now you said you were going to refute these examples, so please go ahead and explain how none of these are real and how i made the whole thing up.
Well as I said, it's hard to show you how your examples aren't real when you can't even say specifically what these examples are. "School curriculums have changed" is too broad an argument - which schools where, how many, how often? When you make an argument you need to back it up with facts, with figures, not just "I heard" or "I read one time".
Indulge me, if I can give you an example of what I mean. I can do exactly what you did above and state a list of "examples" where freedom of speech was not impacted, without providing any specific facts, details or numbers:
- No schools have ever been legally compelled to teach LGBT issues.
- There has been no change in the rate of anti-discrimination cases involving homosexuals brought to court in countries where SSM has been approved.
- Churches in Australia are not bound by our anti-discrimination laws and have willfully fired, declined to hire, declined to serve mass to divorcees, homosexuals and de facto couples.
- Adoption services do not survey potential patients for their religious values and therefore have no capacity to determine whether or not they believe in traditional marriage.
Now how would you argue the validity of anything I said above? I haven't offered any figures or any examples, just sweeping comments about how things "are". Especially the third point, there are MANY anecdotal stories about religious groups being permitted to discriminate against persons, particularly in school employment, and not being subject to anti-discrimination laws. I actually don't know the figures for this, how many cases have been brought to court and the result of those cases, so it's not a strong argument to make - I just don't know the rates. It's likely that active anti-gay discrimination in christian schools is very limited compared to lack of discrimination - there are likely many gay teachers and students who do just fine in religious schools.
Personally, I'm non-religious but I am compelled to baptise my children in order to get them into the local private catholic schools. Technically that's discrimination and it's not even hidden, it's clear as day on their website enrolment conditions. But do I have a case in court to challenge the school? Not at all, it would not stand up. Yet you are telling me if we allow gay people to marry, somehow the school will have to start admitting non-Christians equal with Christians, public servants will be prosecuted for having opinions, and as the Kiwi MP said, droughts will be caused, the sun will stop shining and teenage daughters will rebel against their loving fathers.
