Bigot Point:
"Marriage equality will destroy freedom of speech!"
Sometimes you may hear bigots cry that freedom of speech will be lost if we allow equal rights in Australia.
This is simply not true. To the best of my knowledge, and i have checked, none of the bills concerning marriage equality have also aimed to reduce freedom of speech laws at all.
Just so your aware of the truly disingenuous nature of this argument, Australia doesn't even really have any free speech protection in our constitution.
We do have a freedom of political speech (protecting our political opinions from governmental prosecution) protected by the constitution, which shouldn't apply to arguments against equal rights, just as it would not be effected by laws embracing marriage equality.
Please be aware that John Howard, (who also changed the marriage laws in order to exclude same-sex couples), reintroduced an antiquated sedition law, reducing Australian rights to free speech.
Freedom of speech in Australia is a complicated topic and i am not a lawyer, we do have an implied freedom of speech here at least. What is important to remember is that marriage equality bills have never and i doubt ever will effect free speech legislation.
If the bigots using this argument instead mean that equal rights will destroy anti-discrimination laws, then again that would be erroneous as no pro-marriage equality bill would address, let alone lessen any existing anti-discrimination laws.
The only way a marriage equality bill is related to anti-discrimination is in the fact that bringing equal rights back into marriage law would make the marriage act non-discriminatory.
It might shock you to learn that religious organisations are already exempt from many anti-discrimination laws. I know i would be uncomfortable if any organisation i was associated with desired or accepted exemption from such things.
Now perhaps the bigots mean that hate speech laws will be destroyed if we allowed marriage equality. The same reasoning goes here, the two laws have little to do with one another, marriage equality bills would not alter hate speech legislation. Marriage equality will neither strengthen nor diminish anti hate speech laws.
I should note that anti-hate speech laws in Australia are rarely enforced, one simply needs to look at the anti-gay hate groups webpages or press releases to see hate speech flaunting the standards of any civilized society.
As you can see anyone making this kind of argument is ether very ill informed or is lying in order to further their own dubious desires. Many of the hate groups that have come out against marriage equality use this kind of disingenuous language and it should offend us all. It personally disgust me, i can only imagine if i were Christian and saw so many of these lairs spouting falsehoods and sowing discord among Australians.
