Reaction to Abbott's court challenge ACT

It's not often I come across someone as passionate and pissed off as me about something political, and even if I do it's very rare to find someone who puts it into language similarly forceful as mine. This is one of those occasions. This from The Conscience vote, and I'm sure this speaks for the way many LGBT and non-LGBT in Australia now are feeling about Abbott's court challenge to the ACT marriage equality laws. It was written just before the challenge was announced.

We have a government that – even before the debate really got off the ground in the ACT Parliament – decided that this law could not be allowed to stand. 

If the Abbott government carries out its threat to challenge the ACT’s same-sex marriage law, it will not be about tradition, or uniformity, or any other of its usual excuses. 

It will be pandering to a vocal minority of religious lobby groups who feel they have the right to dictate that we should all live by their doctrines. 

It will be vicious discrimination from a government that feels its job is to control how people live their lives, and punish them for who they love. 

It will be narrow-minded pettiness from a government so obsessed with image, to the point that it cannot bear to be seen to lose even one of its self-imposed battles. 

It will be the action of a government that acts like a spoiled child, refusing to let anyone else be happy unless they play by rules that only it can define – rules which it can change on little more than a whim. 

And if – heaven forfend – such a challenge were upheld by the High Court, it would not be a victory. It would be a day of shame. 

It’s not often I urge readers to take to the streets, to sign petitions, to campaign unceasingly and take the fight to the politicians and the media. But there are some things that should be defended, passionately and unceasingly. Marriage equality is one of those. What the ACT did today was take the first, huge step towards true equality, by locking into law the right for same-sex couples to marry. It’s not good enough for us to sit back and watch while the Federal Government acts – again – like a bully determined to get its own way, no matter who gets hurt. It’s not good enough for us to simply complain, or lash out at those who would do this to us, or the ones we love, or even the stranger in the street who deserves the same rights as everyone else. 

We are better than that. And this is only the beginning. more

I certainly applaud and appreciate such eloquence.