An anti-gay mailer in Australia uses seatbelts to explain why marriage equality is bad.
The mailer was sent to households to sway voters to vote “no” in a national, non-binding referendum on marriage equality.
The flyer shows images of three sets of seatbelts. Two of them are pairs of the same side of a seatbelt, and therefore wouldn’t click together. The other uses one of each side. Opposite the seatbelts are stick figure couples – one with two male stick figures, one with two female figures, and one with a male and a female stick figure.
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The text says, “Only one of these is a REAL seatbelt. Only one of these is a REAL marriage. It’s biology not bigotry.”
Oh. My. God. They actually whipped out the seatbelt analogy. Received in letter boxes of Victoria this morning. Actually. Just wow. pic.twitter.com/1nOoZgT6of
— BM (@macleanbrendan) September 3, 2017
The images were taken from a KLM ad for pride that was meant to be pro-LGBTQ.
It doesn't matter who you click with. Happy #PrideAmsterdam ?️? pic.twitter.com/ZTBHvCx1Pp
— Royal Dutch Airlines (@KLM) August 5, 2017
Since there is no logical argument against marriage equality, the “no” campaign is trying to make homophobia seem like a reasonable political position instead of something shameful.
At the same time, mainstream politicians and pundits in Australia are wringing their hands about how the discussion might not be “civil.”
But that was obviously not going to happen, since support for marriage equality is just a proxy for tolerance of LGBTQ people. And there really isn’t going to be a civil discussion when the government is challenging a one part of the population to make everyone hate another part of the population.
