“They [constituents] phoned my office and said … that we support Julia Gillard.”

[is there any chance that these calls will sway you one way or another?]

“No, no not at all. … When it comes down to it the leadership is decided by the members of the Federal Parliamentary Labor Party.”

…

“A lot of the traffic we’ve got, especially on the email, has been emails sent to every MP … I’ve had quite a few individual ones and … the individual ones are mostly in support of Julia Gillard. It seems to be the chain emails we’re getting from other places [that] seem to be backing Kevin.”

Obviously he didn’t care about my call, and perhaps didn’t see my e-mail (although that may have come in after this interview was recorded).

Source: http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2012/s3439154.htm

Jeremy and I had a good discussion over Twitter last night. Anyone interested can see it here:
http://twitter.com/#!/search/realtime/%40jeremysear%20OR%20%40tdmalone%20from%3Ajeremysear%20OR%20from%3Atdmalone

Yes, in that sense, it is discriminatory- but “discriminatory” is usually used in a negative sense which people like the ACL would argue is incorrect.

So, not allowing black people on Alabaman busses is discriminatory (negative sense) but choosing one footballer to play in the team over antoher footballer who is dropped is also discriminatory. But we don’t jump up and down (unless we like that footballer! )

The difference is that one is a discrimination which is not acceptable, and the other is one that society does accept.

Tim’s point is that everybody should be allowed to argue what is and is not good for society. The logic that “I should not respect them because they do not respect me” is ultimately ugly because if someone like Jim Wallace/ACL applied that logic to your comment, they would say, “He doesn’t respect our views, so we won’t respect his”.

And suddenly nobody respects anybody’s ideas and we spend all our time shouting homophobe or sodomist at each other. I agree with Tim, we should respect each other enough to respond with logic, not disrespect, viterol or hate.

Second, saying that opposing marriage equality is discriminatory is not “shutting down debate”. It’s calling a spade a spade. If you do not support equality, if you say that the law should discriminate between a man and a woman in the Marriage Act (which is what the present version does – I’m allowed to marry my fiancee because I’m a man, but I’d be stopped if I were a woman), then you are supporting discrimination. The government is discriminating between people on the grounds of gender.

That’s what the word “discrimination” means.

And as for the anger – well, imagine you were told YOU were not permitted to marry the person you love because of your race, or your religion, or your gender. You’d be pretty pissed off too.

There’s no equivalence here. Nobody is calling for Christians to be denied their most basic human rights – but people like Jim Wallace ARE demanding the same in reverse against gay people.

That position is a hateful, cruel one. It does not deserve respect. Because it is founded on a fundamental lack of respect for other people.