If you have listened to this song before then it should not have escaped your attention that the process of making good gravy is just as important as the nature of the the ingredients  I hear the song on the radio this morning as I read Janet Albrechtsen this morning.

Janet Albrechtsen click for source

Gay marriage is not akin to securing the vote for women or ending apartheid. After all, civil unions are commonplace. Gay couples enjoy the same substantive rights as heterosexual couples. If they don’t they should. But the political battle to claim the word “marriage” for homosexuals is an elite agenda of the political classes for reasons not always honest.

Take the disingenuous claim that traditional marriage is an evil form of discrimination against gays. As Chief Justice John Roberts said in Hollingsworth last week, “when the institution of marriage developed historically, people didn’t get around and say let’s have this institution, but let’s keep out homosexuals. The institution developed to serve purposes that, by their nature, didn’t include homosexual couples.”

Yet, those who oppose gay marriage for legitimate reasons are too often treated as morally inferior, out-of-date, and worse, bigoted.

Whether it’s a snooty editorial from The New York Times ridiculing the “incoherence” of opposing gay marriage in Hollingsworth or mocking grumbles from the audience on ABC1’s Q&A, too many gay marriage advocates have chosen the wrong way to advance their cause.

Redefining marriage in a way that promotes social cohesion means winning people over with reasoned arguments rather than trying to guilt them into agreeing.

What our activist friends seem to forget is  that for the sort of social changes they desire they have to convince  rather than coerce a change from those of us who want to see marriage remain as a heterosexual institution.

Patience is a virtue that seems far too removed from the activist mindset, maybe it shouldn’t be so if they want the changes they desire to be enduring accepted and effective.

Cheers Comrades