The activists formerly known as Marriage Alliance — a shadowy group of opaque membership and indeterminate funding, formed to oppose marriage equality — have yanked one the key subtexts of their marriage campaign and run with it.
They are now a specifically anti-trans group called Binary Australia, which “aims to promote and celebrate the inherent differences between boys and girls, men and women”.
In the case of their raison d’etre, marriage equality — and most areas on which they campaign — Marriage Alliance failed miserably. But, depressingly, they and associates like the Australian Christian Lobby, despite routine failures in the marketplace of ideas, have a knack for getting traction.
Who are they?
It’s worth noting off the bat that the supposed “grassroots movement” has strong ties to the mainstream Liberal party. Marriage Alliance was founded by former ACT Liberal president Tio Faulkner, has former federal Liberal president Ashley Goldsworthy as a director, while CEO Damian Wyld ran for election for the South Australian Liberals.
When the organisation first launched, spokesperson Sophie York bragged in her promotional leaflet about her links with Tony Abbott, John Alexander and Paul Fletcher, among others. York used these contacts to email the NSW Liberal party membership anti-marriage equality leaflets back in 2016.
Remember the marriage equality ‘debate’
Apart from campaigning on the dangers of marriage equality — using talking points that frequently had nothing to do with marriage — and, presumably knowing the issues wouldn’t go away, they argued in favour of a plebiscite on the matter. The plebiscite was Tony Abbott’s policy and Malcolm Turnbull, uncharacteristically, went against a firmly held belief and acceded to it when he took over as prime minister.
Apart from their various ads, Marriage Alliance had their talking points parroted by powerful backers in the media, and the sympathy of several prominent politicians and influential political figures. They still failed.
Equal air time win
A major Marriage Alliance complaint, before and after the plebiscite, was that the media was biased against their views (in one case, Media Watch even agreed). And, wouldn’t you know, during the survey it got hurriedly written into law, via the Marriage Law Survey (Additional Safeguards) Act 2017 that broadcasters must, if they “give opportunities for one side to put their views, must provide the other side with reasonable opportunities”.
Of course, when they lost, they still blamed media bias.
Safe Schools
Woven through the majority of their anti-marriage equality material was fear mongering about “radical gender theory” in schools, and this has remained their target after that battle was lost. In October 2016, the federal government announced it would not renew funding for Safe Schools.
It does still exist in scattered state schools, particularly in Victoria — where the Labor government who supported it just trounced a Liberal opposition promising to scrap it.
“Religious freedom”
As Bernard Keane pointed out in these pages, No campaigners had to perform a somersault in presentation after losing the marriage equality vote.
Before last Wednesday, in their view, the religious Right were the silent majority of Australians. Now they claim minority status instead, and bid for victimhood and protection against secular persecution…
Marriage Alliance made a huge song and dance about what marriage equality would mean for freedom of religion, and again, the Turnbull government delivered for them, appointing a panel to look into protecting religious freedom in Australia. Happily, like marriage equality and the Victorian election, this turned out to be an own goal.
When the report revealed that religious schools could expel gay students and sack gay teachers with impunity, there was public outcry and Prime Minister Scott Morrison eventually heeded calls to close that loophole.
This fulfilled the major theme of Marriage Alliance and their associates’ contribution to public life. While they are able to extract major concessions from those in power, when their talking points are put to the public, they inevitably fail.
However, they have a history of keeping harmful, hateful rhetoric in the public debate — and it’s worth noting that, just as Tony Abbott shared their views on marriage, our current prime minister has some questionable views on trans issues. Binary Australia may not achieve any lasting change, but they can still do a lot of damage.
I was going to donate but they don’t take anything less than 30 quid. Also they are all as mad as cut snakes.
Imagine thinking that using Abbott’s name was some sort of marketing strategy…bat shit crazy.
I often wonder why 0.1% of the Bell curve ends of society occupy over 50% of the journalism in Australia ?
Perhaps that is what is wrong with ABC – it should deal with society’s matters in the area under the mean of the Bell curve. That is why the public doesn’t care about what is going on at the ABC or even should it exist without fusing with SBS
This group has a history of anti transgender activism and this name change simply focuses their agenda on one of the most marginalised group in society. The liberal party in general opposes legislation to support trans people so I am not even a little surprised at the link. During the marriage equality ‘debate’ trams people were routinely thrown to the wolves by this group.
I would like however to address this concept of “radical gender theory”. For the clear majority of the population, gender is not an issue. Everyone knows whether they are male or female inherently. For a small cohort (trans women and trans men) they discover that their inherent gender identity is opposite to that indicated by their genitalia. This small group of people still belong in the binary definition of gender, it is just opposite to the gender they were given at birth.
There are also intersex people who may or not align with the gender they were assigned at birth. This assignment is arbitrary based on the vagaries of how their genitalia presented, or didn’t. For many years, for those with ambiguous genitalia, it was the length of their clitoris/penis. This was then surgically “corrected”. Their actual gender identity might have aligned with that or not.
There is an even smaller cohort that do not fit in this binary model. They call themselves by many names, bigendered, agendered being two examples.
Now, all these people exist. You can debate how they got to where they are but the fact that they are here is self evident.
So the real radical gender theory is that gender, both phyisically and as an identity, is simply binary. It is radical because it flies in the face of evidence, the evidence being the existence of people to whom a simple binary identity simply does not apply.
So when people refer to gender being in a spectrum, this is not something that applies to the majority of people but for those in the centre, those who cannot identify or be defined as simply male/ female it is indeed a spectrum.
The safe schools program simply reveals that these people exist and perhaps bullying them for who they are is not something you should do, something the Liberal party could possibly learn.
You know your own gender. Finding out other people don’t share your experience of gender cannot change that. Not ever. There are no ‘gender whisperers’.
This group is simply a hate group. I come to that conclusion based on their actual campaigning, consisting of fear mongering, misinformation and outright lies.
Their campaign flies in the face of any evidence as to either their own radical gender binary theories or to claims of danger to community or children.
Your explanation of gender is quite spot on Gwen, especially the bit about the very small number of people who differ from the regular two. I like the line about never have so many done so much in support of so few. Why is all this such a big deal and wouldn’t it be better if we majority all just minded our own business and either stopped hating or stopped virtue signaling ?
No matter what they choose to call themselves, these hateful people are really just the scum of society, hiding behind a deceitful screen of god-bothering stupidity.
As I said the 0.1% of both ends of the Bell curve are nuts by statistical definition – why bother giving either of them any publicity whatsoever- they will only attract the like minded like the old style flypaper.
A lot of dog is being wagged by a tiny tail.
It is the nature of religious ratbaggery that the suuferers are rendered fretful by the knowledge that an insufficient proportion of the populace is similarly deluded or, worse, may be enjoying themselves.
Can we not agree that it is all very sad & pitiful that such people exist but they should keep their problems private or seek treatment but cannot be allowed to inflict themselves on the public sphere? And certainly not indoctrinate children.
Freedom from religion. Now.