Gay marriage has polarised the Australian community.
For many, it's a no-brainer. If you're serious about human rights and anti-discrimination, you can't allow heterosexuals to marry the person they love while denying the same right to homosexuals. For many others, such a radical redefinition of marriage would destroy the institution that has underpinned human relations in most cultures since time immemorial.
In what is fast becoming a witch hunt, public attention is focused on whether politicians and community leaders support gay marriage. Media interviewers are cornering public figures to ask if they support gay marriage, in manner reminiscent of the 'Are you a Communist?' taunts of the 1950s.
Political expediency is driving both sides of the debate. On Friday, union boss Joe de Bruyn told The Australian a change in Labor's party platform to accommodate gay marriage would be an act of 'electoral suicide'. Given the minority Labor Government's need to appease the Greens, it had been looking similarly difficult electorally for Labor to hold to its established position of opposition to gay marriage.
Labor will tear itself apart unless it realises that a 'yes' or 'no' on gay marriage is less important than the process of reaching a position. It can choose to go down the path of political expedience, or it can adopt an approach of moral integrity.
Of course both sides of the debate will claim that their position is one of moral integrity. The problem is that we can make such concepts mean whatever we want them to mean, as long as the opinion polls and focus groups will let us get away with it. Perversely a principle such as moral integrity is used to serve our purposes, not the other way around.
Australian Catholic University theology lecturer Joel Hodge wrote in a blog for CathNews on Friday that 'postmodern … human rights discourse has become skewed, especially because of the sentimental individualism that now defines what it means to be a human'.
We have lost a fundamental understanding of our natural, human rights, which undergirds our democracy and its laws. Instead, the ground has shifted to an ill-defined notion of individualism where the feelings and choices of individuals with power predominate.
Meanwhile political commentator George Megalogenis reflects on Labor's poll-driven 'power without purpose' in the December Quarterly Essay that is titled 'Trivial Pursuit'.
He says Labor's chequered fortunes demonstrate the folly of following the polls: 'A good poll or two from now on can't