What was wrong by voting “NO”?

On November 15, the results of the plebiscite concerning SSM (Same Sex Marriage) were announced, showing a majority for the Yes vote at 61.6%. At the same time, the campaign was conducted more or less respectably on both sides, and accepted as won by the Yes advocates.

What has become a matter of contention since the publication of the results is the continuous comments by the print and electronic media, discussing the fact that of the 17 national electorates who voted No, 12 were in NSW, whilst 7 of these were in Western Sydney.

The Media began analysing the reasons for this disparity. How was it that several adjoining electorates, most of them held by the Labor party, managed to produce such a result? There have been several assumptions and speculations on the matter. Let us look at some of them, as they were described in the article Samesex marriage vote paints stark picture of two Sydneys by Keely McDonough and Jack Houghton in the Daily Telegraph of 18 November 2017:

1. There was concern how large and concentrated the No vote in Western Sydney had been. The central belt of the west could have been from another country entirely.
2. The reason is attributed to religious conservatism among ethnic communities, but other factors could have included a blue-collar demographic, an older population, ethnic cultural differences, lower margin of university education, and low familiarity with the issue.
3. The population living in Western Sydney has a high number of recently arrived migrants from conservative countries (comment by David Borger, Western Sydney Business Chamber) which are impoverished, where minorities are persecuted, and for many of them the idea of spending much time debating SSM is ludicrous (comment by Mr George Zakhia, Bankstown councillor).
4. These multicultural seats in the west are not people who are Chinese or Indian or Muslim, but include plenty of people from an Anglo-Celtic background, Eastern Europe, the Balkans (comment by GetUp! analyst, Ben Raue).
5. One very astute voter in the Bella Vista area hit the nail on the head by saying: “Voting Yes without legislation alongside it, was like signing a blank Cheque!” Needless to say, that person had voted No!
6. A Lebanese Christian truck driver, who on his admission was not religious, voted No, because he believes in traditional marriage between a man and a woman, and believes in the value of the family.
7. Ben Raue had the temerity to say that the No campaign focussed on letterboxing and pamphlets that contained factually incorrect material to whip up fear and division! Really? Is this true or is he talking through his hat?

The most concerning admission told by the Yes side is that of Ms Masha Gessen, uttered at the Sydney Writer’s Festival in 2012: “Fighting for gay marriage generally involves LYING about what we are going to do with marriage when we get there. Because we lie that the institution of marriage is not going to change. And that is a lie. The institution of marriage is going to change, and it should change, and again I don’t think it should exist” (Radio National, June 11, 2012, www.abc.net.au/ radionational/programs/lifematters/why-get-married/4058506 at 6.20min).

Knowing that the most sinister lies have been told, and continue to be told, by the Yes camp, we return to the unusual No vote in Western Sydney. Assuming all the reasons offered for that voting pattern – conservative ideas, recently arrived migrants, religion, ethnicity, low levels of education and ethnic customs – are more or less correct, the article implies that all these features of Western Sydneysiders make them appear as uncivilised, their poor education renders them inferior citizens, and their customs are a hindrance to integration into the Australian Society.

Who can say that to have conservative ideas, a religious faith, keeping your social customs, or have low level of University education, makes you a person inferior in terms of human value, compared to our Society, where telling lies and more lies, so as to socially engineer a radical change based on hypersexuality and not voting Yes in the plebiscite?

Have the authors considered the fact, that the above attributes protected these people from the difficulties of the environment in which they lived and are now living? And what is worse, they are presented as a backward mass of people who could not see the “wood for the trees” by not voting Yes for SSM, as the rest of our “enlightened community” has done, and therefore delay the arrival of the “magnificent” type of Marriage and Family pattern, a la Masha Gessen?

It would be advisable if the Daily Telegraph were more careful in judging social issues, and took guidance from people with experience of how society functions, particularly in such a delicate area as multiculturalism.

Source: Lychnos December 2017 / January 2018