There was a little party in Sydney on the weekend, just a tiny thing called the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras.
With a lack of class that’s breathtaking in its audacity, a mob which calls itself the Australian Marriage Forum paid for an anti gay marriage ad to be broadcast during the Mardi Gras celebrations – an ad which asks, and I’m not even making this up, “what about the children?”
Anyway, offensive as this ad is – and it is offensive, to every single human being who decides to get married for love, or for any reason at all that doesn’t explicitly involve children – and as demeaning as it is – and it is demeaning, to every single family in Australia that doesn’t fit this picture:
Parenting, not promiscuity is worth celebrating. #teamnile #MardiGras2015 pic.twitter.com/p04pia1BHV
— Fred Nile (@frednile) March 7, 2015
— in spite of all this, I’m not livid about this ad. Why? Because putting an ad on telly costs a lot of money. If they want to channel their funds into TV ads, let em! The pro-marriage equality guys can’t afford to, and somebody may as well get this discussion started on mainstream television. It will expose the jerks in your various social and work circles. It will allow non-bigoted people to say “hey, how about that shitty ad?” and start a discussion that maybe they didn’t feel comfortable starting before. When we have something hateful to rally behind, it kind of makes our job easier.
I’m all for free speech, and I’m all for marriage equality. I’m also all for bigoted jerks channeling piles of money into a TV campaign that exposes them for the out-of-touch creeps that they are. This campaign is going to sink under its own despicability, you just watch.
