GetUp Director Links Same Sex Marriage to Changing Australia Day
With Australia Day 2018 fast approaching the left who have spent the past year attacking our national day have moved their campaign to change the date into top gear. The week began with the Greens launching an official campaign to change Australia Day and since then the news cycle has been dominated by debates about if the date should be changed.
The left clearly believes they are in the ascendancy in Australian politics, they have been buoyed by the recent legalization of same sex marriage after 61% of Australians voted yes in the voluntary marriage postal survey and feel empowered to campaign on their other pet issues. This has been reflected in the change the date campaign despite the two issues being unrelated.
GetUp campaign director Sally Rugg thought it useful to link the two issues in a tweet yesterday by calling upon those who were LGBT and supporters of same sex marriage to join the left’s latest campaign.
For everyone who (rightly) lamented how awful the postal survey was for LGBTIQ Australians, pls now think of First Nations people who have to listen to debate around Jan 26th and watch their trauma rendered inconvenient. Every year.
— Sally Rugg ????️???? (@sallyrugg) January 15, 2018
Of c Rugg as with many other leftists on this issue believes all indigenous Australians feel the same way about Australia Day and believes she speaks for all of them. As we have seen over recent days there are many indigenous Australians who support Australia Day and areas with high indigenous populations such as Kathrine and Alice Springs still celebrate Australia Day. The audacity of Rugg to link same sex marriage which was about a present day inequality in the law is not the same about people choosing to feel trauma over an event that happened in 1788 that no one alive today experienced.
no Aboriginal alive today has been remotely impacted by Jan 26. gay people alive today were denied basic human rights to marry. so not the same
— Ian W (@Dropbear67) January 16, 2018
It icourse a form of emotional blackmail to say to gay Australians because we supported your right to marry you should support all these other groups who say they are victimized by the nation. Also linking the two issues reaffirms in the minds of some who are alarmed by the left’s influence that same sex marriage is part of the slippery slope of cultural decline. If the left are wanting to help indigenous people and care about their rights in the present day they should assist the campaign to stop domestic violence and child abuse in remote communities, support jobs in those communities in industries such as mining, grant those living there the same property rights granted to ordinary Australians and support education for indigenous children that includes teaching them English. Changing the date of Australia Day fixes none of this.
The left should also not interpret Australia voting yes to same sex marriage as an endorsement of the rest of their agenda. Many Australians who voted yes would be disgusted by the campaign to change Australia Day. If we had a postal survey on changing Australia Day the left would lose in an landslide with polling currently showing that 85% of Australians support keeping Australia Day on January 26th.
The left will have to do better in their change the date campaign than by drawing a long bow with LGBT issues. Convincing Australians that date of the nation’s founding settlement and hence the birth of the modern Australia we all benefit from today is racist and offensive will be a bit more of a difficult message to sell.