'smoking is healthier than gay marriage'

Now Playing: Safe & Sound by Taylor Swift ft. The Civil Wars (don't you dare look out your window darling, everything's on fire) 

The head of the Australian Christian Lobby Jim Wallace has said that 'smoking is healthier than gay marriage'.

WHAT. THE. FUCK!?!?!?!?

First of all, comparing 'smoking' to 'gay marriage' is not only homophobic, but, um...illogical. Smoking is an addiction that involves inhaling carcinogenic chemicals into your lungs, causing cancer, birth defects, lung infection, strokes and a whole host of other health issues. Gay marriage (which is not even fucking legal yet in Australia) is the legal union between two people who love each other. Quite two separate things, in my humble opinion.

Jim Wallace claims that health statistics among the gay community is worse than those for smokers. Yeah, we get it. Higher rates of drug abuse, suicide, murder...but do you know what causes that? HOMOPHOBIA! Homosexuality is not a disease, it's not a sin, it's a natural desire and a totally normal sexual orientation. Aside from the risks of sexually transmitted diseases (which is a risk in *any* kind of sexual behaviour) homosexuality and homosexual acts don't cause all these bad health statistics. What causes them is the fear, the shame, the humiliation and the stigma society - mostly religion - attaches to these people and what they're doing. Jim Wallace says that we should be ashamed because we teach kids at school 'not to smoke' but not necessarily 'not to be gay', when a gay person's life expectancy is reduced by 20 years and a smokers' is only 10. Fuck off. Seriously. It's bad enough that this blatant discrimination is the major cause of these shocking statistics, but now we're blaming it on the victim! HOW IS THAT FAIR? Smoking is proven to be detrimental to health, and there is lots of support and programs to help people quit. The only way to improve the health statistics of the gay community is just to leave them the fuck alone!

Jim Wallace clearly fails to recognise homosexuality as a legitimate sexual orientation, and instead labels it a 'lifestyle' of drugs, suicide and crime, and blames the high suicide and drug use rates on this so called 'lifestyle'. No. People commit suicide and use drugs for a variety of reasons - most of them stemming from the huge social pressure we put on people because certain thoughts or behaviours or feelings are 'wrong' or 'sinful' or 'immoral'. Homosexuality in itself is nothing more or less than attraction to the same sex. That in itself does not cause natural disasters or financial crises. The stereotype that gay people engage in risky or unhealthy behaviours is just...disgusting. I know a few bi/gay people and they're just *people*, for crying out loud! Why should I pick on someone for liking men? I like men, too!

Jim Wallace claims that gay marriage 'normalises' this 'dangerous lifestyle' and that the legalization of gay marriage has not led to an improvement in these statistics. Firstly, giving people the right to marry won't magically solve all your problems. Women have had the right to marry since marriage existed and yet women's rights are constantly undermined and withheld and abused. Secondly, in most places gay marriage has only very recently been legalized, and so hasn't had much time to have any impact on these statistics. Thirdly, equality before the law is not equality within society - even with gay marriage, South Africa still has high rates of homophobic violence and lesbian 'correction' rape; legalizing gay marriage is an important step towards sex positivity, but it isn't the magic solution to everything. And finally, people are still going to be gay with or without marriage, and people are still going to be shamed into risky behaviour or taking their own life because of their sexual orientation.

Further, Jim Wallace has the audacity to say that gay rights activists are 'bullying' and 'demonizing' the church - bullshit! We're stating the fact, the facts that Wallace states himself - that the church (or the Australian Christian Lobby, at any rate) is blatantly homophobic, and we as gay rights activists - fuck it, as enlightened intelligent decent human beings - say that this is wrong, this is discriminatory, this is a violation of human rights and sexual expression. It's not demonizing to point out that something is bigoted.

This shows just how desperate the ACL has become to prevent marriage equality - to the extent that Jim Wallace has not even cited contemporary statistics, but rather American statistics taken at the height of the AIDS crisis. Legalizing gay marriage won't 'impose' homosexuality on people - sexuality is innate, regardless of what the law or society says you can and can't do. Legalizing gay marriage won't make any changes to anyone who isn't gay, but might mean the world to someone in love but denied the right to have this legally and socially recognised through marriage. 78% of Australians support gay marriage, and 61% of the population identify as Christian - clearly, religion is no excuse for being a dickhead.

The negative press surrounding homosexuality is a result of fear and misconception and misunderstandings about the gay community, mostly as a result of powerful, politically-active religious groups imposing outdated and appallingly discriminatory ideas onto the rest of us. Nobody has the right to impose their own beliefs and values on other people, and nobody has the right to use these beliefs and values to make people feel so ashamed and guilty as to drive them into drug use and suicide - and then blame them for that, too. For non-Christians, we don't really give a shit what Christianity has to say about homosexuality - the law shouldn't be guided by religion in a country of religious freedom. And for non-bigots, we don't really give a shit what Jim Wallace has to say. What I do give a shit about is that idiots like him are preventing social change and sexual equality, and that idiots like him are the cause of so much pain and shame and suffering.