Damaging public discourse: Minorities use vote to vent hatred

THE referendum on marriage equality is still some months away, but even at this stage of the debate, especially the online and often anonymous tirade and counter tirade offered as rational discourse, is sobering and disheartening.

The extreme views, albeit offered by minorities at either extreme of the argument, are either intolerant Old Testament fire and brimstone or a chilling and blind aggression towards any view other than that perceived as liberal and inclusive.

The right to disagree, and the right to express that disagreement is hardly recognised.

It is not an exaggeration to suggest that some deeply angry people, again on both sides of the argument, seem to use the issue as little more than an excuse to vent the most ugly spleen against those who hold views other than their own.

The worst examples of this vitriol show a society where barely concealed and hateful homophobia is matched, and sometime surpassed, by the illiberal pretending to be liberal but dismissing any view other than their own as superstitious piety.

A person’s faith is derided as quickly and as poisonously as another’s sexuality is demeaned.

Some descriptions of gay people and their lifestyles are, in the cold light of day, nothing other than incitements to hatred and maybe even worse.

Any gay person, and their family and friends, must be concerned that their sexual orientation, and the legitimate desire to be afforded the same rights as any other citizen, are being used, again it must be stressed by a minority, to create a picture of deviance that some might feel free to confront in the most unacceptable way.

This is, just weeks after the Charlie Hebdo massacre, a terrible abuse of free speech and the noble ideals behind the principle. Once again licence is confused with latitiude.

Some of those who oppose the amendment say they are concerned with the integrity of the family yet give scant consideration to families who love and support members who are not hethrosexual or families constructed outside their parameters of recognition, parameters limited by their faith.

They give little consideration to the struggle — still — many people in isolated or difficult circumstances face in coming to terms with their sexuality, a struggle rooted in our great national affliction — a culture that embraces personal guilt as a response to a desire, a need to live in a way not endorsed by the once-dominant theocracy.

At the other extreme there are those who imagine deeply held and sincere religious beliefs as something on a par with supporting a particular soccer club, something important to someone else but irrelevant to them.

There is a parallel between those on either extreme of this argument and the most extreme anti-water charges campaigners. A new coarseness, a new feeling that it is permissible to be offensive and personally aggressive, has damaged our public discourse and by so doing it has made changing and improving this society more difficult that it already is.

It is a crumb of comfort though that compared to the deeply divisive divorce referendums the vitriol, the slanderous and dishonest arguments are offered by ever smaller minorities.