Not the way to go about it

Yesterday I went along to a Marriage Equality march, the second of its kind that I've attended in Sydney as part of the National Year of Action working to legalise gay marriage. Despite a depleted attendance (perhaps a different direction for the next event rather than the same one every few months?) the speakers were much better this time, and included a particularly inspiring young girl whose speech ended with the phrase "and when I'm older I WILL walk down the aisle hand in hand with the person I love". How anyone could wish anything else for her is beyond me. 

Side note: I heard something utterly sickening from one of the speakers; some dickish politician (whose name I obviously neglected to remember) has managed to offend a whole heap of people by suggesting that allowing gay couples to adopt wil result in the next 'stolen generation'. If you don't know much about that, let me give a brief and wholly inadequate summary; a massive ruck of Aboriginal kids in the first half of the last century were forcibly removed from their homes and sent to grow up in white Australia, effectively to kill off Aboriginal culture and resulting in a whole generation of people without any real sense of identity and with residual guilt about their own race. Australia has since said "sorry" for this (and indeed has "sorry" day) but it hasn't got much better. To suggest that placing children with loving parents of the same sex will fuck up a generation as much as this debacle did is offensive to a degree I never thought possible (and I hate the term offensive), and shows the sort of cultural insensitivity that you really don't want from your politicians.

More info here: http://reconciliaction.org.au/nsw/education-kit/stolen-generations/

Anyway, so there I was, happily joining in the myriad of sexual identities coming together to support equality (including Norrie - the first official neuter person in NSW) and as I leaned over to the sign the petition, I realised there were Socialist posters all over the table.

"How do you feel about Obama sending 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan?"

Erm, what? I had up to this point not even thought about that situation (not owning a TV and not having had time to do my usual scour of the Guardian website in the few days previous, I felt totally ignorant) so I went with my gut response: "I think it's a bit shit".

“What do you think about the war.”

“I’m against it.”

“We’re having an anti-Obama rally tomorrow.”

“Well I’m not against Obama….”

At this point I wandered off – I didn’t want to get into an argument about it; I was there to support gay rights.

Five steps away another Socialist girl approached us: “We’re having an anti-Obama rally here tomorrow, would you like to attend?”

(Damn you Louise for being able to just keep your mouth shut; I apparently was raised without this ability.)

“No thanks.”

“So you think it’s ok that he just send more troops to Afghanistan.”

“No I don’t.”

“So you think he should pull the troops out immediately?”

“No I don’t.”

I went on to try and explain my opinion (let me just state that again: my opinion) that pulling all troops out of a country that you’ve been fucking up for 9 years would do more harm than good, especially to the people of that country and the infrastructure which you’ve attempted to demolish. I should have mentioned the proposed 18-month withdrawl policy for both Afghanistan and Iraq, but it was too hot for my brain to think.

She then started on me about how Obama has been in office for a year and not done anything, especially about the healthcare system. I again stated my opinion that a year is not a long time to unfuck a country that’s been very much fucked up for 8 years previously, and in terms of healthcare, a long long time, and that I do actually think that he is working towards restructuring the healthcare system, but he is working against a ruck of companies made rich and powerful by the current way of working, and a country of people indoctrinated to believe that national healthcare would be the first step towards socialism and duly indoctrinated to think that socialism equates with communism and that communism is evil. (Of course I wasn’t nearly as erudite as all that.)

“Well I think that’s bullshit.”

“I don’t want to continue this conversation.”

“Well what would make you come tomorrow?”

“Nothing. I have plans.”

I have 3 main issues with this: 

1) This is a marriage equality rally. What gives political groups the right to aggressively hassle people who have come to show that they are passionate about equal rights for people of all sexual preference?

2) Since when does trying to change someone’s mind consist of getting totally up in their face and using bad rhetoric and ad hominem arguments? It’s people like this who hinder the left more than help it. Good political debate needs to be based on critical thinking, and should allow for different opinions and seek to change those opinions with facts and logic, rather than trying to shout people into agreeing with you.

3) Girl was a dick.

Anyway, I was royally pissed off, and was only placated by chanting a slogan that could be a Ramones song: “Hey hey, ho ho, homophobia’s got to go!” I love whoever came up with that.

Another side note; if you don’t think there’s an ingrained mistrust of national healthcare in America, check out this shocking video – proof that there’s at the very, very least a small but seriously angry pocket of fucking idiots with no sense of ethical decency.

I also have heard stories from my friend from the OC (actual place, not annoying show) about kids my age without health care who are still completely against the idea of free health care, despite the fact that they would benefit from it. The US is still pitiful in a lot of ways.