As a campaigning organisation, we often get emails from other organisations sharing information about their beliefs and generally 'information sharing'.
Today, we found it necessary to report one such organisation to their Internet Service Provider, and wish to make a public statement about our own views on gay marriage and homosexuality, in the hope that similar organisations will view it as pointless to send us what we consider to be offensive and misleading literature in email form, and to put it in stronger terms, what we consider to be hate mail.
We appreciate that sections of society do not agree with gay marriage. What we do not appreciate, are emails which share details of publications which make false claims, and ones which provide a one sided, extreme, or denigratory view of people who happen to be attracted to others of the same sex.
Examples of content include claims that homosexuality is a mental illness which is 'curable'. To be factual, the maintstream psychological community does not hold this view, 'same sex attraction syndrome' (which these emails claim to be a recognised mental illness) is not recognised in DSMV (the diagnostic manual used by the mainstream psychological profession), and such claims are being published by some members of the fringe and extreme right wing Christian community. Note, we do not claim that all Christians hold this view!!!
Other emails received by us talk of homosexual promiscuity, belief among the gay community that marriage should allow threesomes ("throuples"), infidelity ("monogamish") and various other forms of non-traditional marriage as being promoted by members of the gay community. With no balance in these emails, our view is that they are deliberately intended to mislead, and further, lead to anti-gay sentiment (as well as prompting opposition to gay marriage).
Among the heterosexual community, dogging, fetish clubs, swinging clubs, and a whole host of other promiscuous and fetishistic behaviour is enjoyed by married couples. This does not mean that every heterosexual couple, or married couple can be found in a layby on a Friday night.
The emails from these rather odd organisations fail to recognise that promiscuity is a human condition, rather than one attributed to one particular section of society.
Such is the drivel published in these emails, by either the uneducated, or those who seek to mislead similarly misinformed and unenlightened people.
To make clear our own position. We unreservedly back gay marriage. We do not believe that one section of society should have rights withheld from them on the grounds of sexuality.
We find it bizarre that the churches are exempted from anti-discrimination legislation. Similarly, we find it bizarre that some religions refuse the right of women to hold certain positions, or to sit in certain sections of their places of worship. Aparteid was a 'belief', and one which thankfully our Government viewed as unacceptable. Discrimination, in all its forms, is wrong, when it affords less rights to one section of society than another, on the grounds of race, gender, sexuality or colour.
It is our sincere hope that our Parliament will stop backing aparteid against the gay community and women, and stop granting the legal right for them to do so.
