Senator Eric Abetz on Same-Sex Marriage

***Check against delivery***

Your Grace, Archbishop Porteous, Minister Guy Barnett, Distinguished Guests.

May I begin by offering some counsel? If one is in the habit of underlining meaty sections of resource books, then don’t read “Stealing from a Child” with a pen in your hand. If you do, you will find that virtually not a single line will escape the impulse of underlining.

This book is meaty. Every word in this book is worth underlining.

This book is worth reading, learning its content and sharing. So buy up big and give to friends and colleagues. A resource to answer every question.

In David van Gend’s masterful work, “Stealing from a Child – The Injustice of ‘Marriage Equality’”, we are treated to a tour de force which steps through an issue of current media interest with genuine sensitivity combined with unassailable hard evidentiary support which comprehensively debunks the glibness, the shallowness, and the hollowness of the case which seeks to deconstruct our society’s foundational institution – an institution which pre-existed the nation-state, parliaments and courts – an institution which has the same basic components of father, mother and child in all cultures, be it our own Judeo-Christian culture, the Indigenous culture, the Pacific Islander culture, or the Muslim world view.

The threat to our society and the irreparable damage to the next generation are well set out, in language easy to understand, and backed up with 463 footnotes. Those 463 footnotes highlight the depth of reading and research undertaken by our author. Those 463 footnotes provide the support and underpinning to his 236 page treatise.

The title is reflective of the author’s style – what you see is what you get. We are told as it is and how it will be – changing the definition of marriage is to steal from children and that is a gross injustice.

No hidden agenda here. Unlike those advocating to deconstruct the nuclear family.

When advocates for marriage point out that the deconstruction of marriage through so-called same-sex marriage will have further consequences such as the adoption of the highly unsafe “Safe Schools Programme”, which tells us boys aren’t necessarily boys and girls aren’t necessarily girls so let’s have a free-for-all in the school’s toilets, they were ignorantly ridiculed by the media. Until it was pointed out that is exactly what Marxist Roz Ward (the author of the not so Safe Schools Programme) was advocating on a flyer for an election rally just this year. It read “Marriage equality now – Safe Schools Everywhere”. The hyperventilation of the media immediately returned to passive breathing. Nothing to be said or be seen here anymore. Let’s just move on.

Some, like Dr van Gend won’t let us move on – and thankfully so.

The campaign to deconstruct marriage and rob it of its meaning started in the 1970s with the 1970 Gay Manifesto of an extreme homosexual element telling us marriage is a “rotten, oppressive institution”.

Two years later the “Gay is Good” manifesto told us homosexuals are in “revolt against the nuclear family structure”. (I add most in fact weren’t).

Six years later in 1978 the revised Gay Manifesto of the extreme homosexual lobby told us “The oppression of gay people starts in the most basic unit of society the family… we must aim at the abolition of the family…”

And that was all the go whilst I was at university. Marriage/family equals bad/evil.

That approach failed and failed abysmally.

So this trenchant, manic opposition by the deniers of marriage regrouped and deceptively repackaged themselves into an allegedly benign “Love is love” campaign so that by 1989 they deliberately “[reduced] the issue of gay rights, as far as possible to an abstract social question.”

And so we have the abstract benign sloganeering of “Love is love” and “marriage equality” by exactly the same movement and provocateurs who were just a couple of years ago sworn enemies of marriage.

Friends, make no mistake this issue of changing marriage is not minor. The promoters of the change know it and brazenly tell us so. Within their ranks, they have enlisted what the Marxists refer to quite disrespectfully as the “useful idiots” – those who go along without understanding the true aim. They are in fact truly “dangerous idiots” to adopt the dismissive Marxist terminology. We need to alert them to what they are actually supporting.

Another important aspect of this excellent work is the debunking of the nonsense that if you disagree you discriminate. Ever notice how it never applies in reverse?

“Recognising difference is not discrimination” – according to another powerful quote in the book, this one from the gay Paddy Manning who is able to recognise

“A same-sex relationship is different to marriage, because marriage is at its heart about the children, and providing those children with biological parents. Recognising difference is not discrimination.”

Ever notice how when some people go from the heterosexual to homosexual lifestyle they are able to be celebrated and honoured for their honesty and courage? They’ve come out. Ever thought why there is no celebration for those that decide to go from the homosexual to heterosexual lifestyle? Are they not honest? Are they not coming out as well? And that is just one of the examples of the one-way traffic and bias from the media.

Allow me to read you a few quotes from the book.

Page 9 – Lesbian social historian E.J. Graff exults that “same sex marriage is a breathtakingly subversive idea,” but we, the public, are assured that nothing will change.

Page 10 – In a moving speech, then Prime Minister Julia Gillard confessed our shame for a policy that broke “the most primal and sacred bond there is, the bond between a mother and her baby”, but it’s seemingly ok to deliberately do that for gay couples?

Page 11 – The greatest of modern anthropologists Claude Levi-Strauss described marriage as “a social institution with a biological foundation” and,

The atheist philosopher Bertrand Russell understood the child-centred basis for marriage, writing in his 1929 book Marriage and Morals: “It is through children alone that sexual relations become of importance to society, and worthy to be taken cognisance of by a legal institution”.

Page 14 – And  our author also reminds us of the royal wedding of William and Catherine in 2011, when the Bishop of London read from the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, as to why we have the institution of marriage and the very first item was “First [marriage] was ordained for the increase of mankind…”. Note that the Bishop’s rationale is anthropological not theological: marriage exists to nurture a new generation,” but we are told marriage is not about raising children.

These quotes are just from the first six pages of the book. It gives you a flavour of the wealth of the resource that is about to be launched.

Using quotes from as diverse a range of people as Bertrand Russell to former Senator Ron Boswell to the Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court to Catholic Bishops to Marxists like Roz Ward (the author of the not so Safe Schools programme), we are treated to a rich variety of sources which are woven together in a rich tapestry which by its sheer force will convert any mind even slightly willing to entertain the case for marriage into a zealous advocate.

After reading this scholarly work, you won’t be able to pretend to be concerned for our society’s future and say marriage is not worth fighting for.

You will want to be active – to write letters to the Editor, post on Facebook and tweet and ring radio stations and tell everyone at work, at university or the bingo club about the vital importance of marriage.

When Marxists and others who are determined to destroy family and any vestige of our Judeo-Christian heritage brazenly tell us what they are up to we have an overriding duty to respond.

“It’s a difficult issue”, “it’s complex”, “it’s controversial” or “well, love is love” or “we might upset someone” will be the response for which they hope from us who know so much better. The test is – do we – do I – do you have the courage to say “no” and:

-          Defend the right of children to a mother and father?

-          Allow genuine diversity of views?

-          Allow freedom of speech?

-          Allow freedom of conscientious objection?

This book is a clarion call to arms and provides us with all the tools we need to effectively take up that challenge – for our children’s sake.

Dr David van Gend, thanks for this labour of love, thanks for your commitment, thanks for your love of country as so poignantly expressed in “Stealing from a Child: The Injustice of ‘Marriage Equality’”. And thanks for giving me the privilege to launch it, which I now do.