Rodney Croome . gay advocate

Post mortem

LGBT people in Victoria and NSW be warned, the Exclusive Brethren are heading your way. Here are some practical tips on how to meet the challenge.

Tasmania’s LGBT activists can take heart that we did almost everything we could to avert an inundation of hate during the state’s 2006 election campaign.

We had plenty of advanced warning that a king-tide of anti-gay electoral malice was on its way.

The 2004 Australian and US elections showed that conservative party strategists now have no compunction about stirring up fear and hatred of LGBT people for electoral gain.

The 2005 West Australian state election and 2006 Canadian election showed that this could even extend to rolling back LGBT human rights gains commonly thought unassailable.

LGBT Tasmanians would have to build our levies high and strong to keep this threat at bay.

We began back in 2002 and 2003, lobbing hard for, and achieving, a Liberal Party conscience vote on LGBT issues.

At the same time we travelled the state addressing Liberal Party branches about the importance of equality.

From this flowed support from a majority of Liberal MPs for virtual legal equality for same-sex couples, and the nation’s first partnership registry.

But this was only the start.

~ Shields up!

A new target would have to be erected to keep the hater’s eyes off reforms the Liberals had less stake in, like the Anti-discrimination Act and anti-homophobia policies in schools.

That target was state same-sex marriage laws, an important reform in and of itself, but also a shield taking the heat of other achieved reforms.

It worked. At a Liberal Party room meeting held late last year the decision was made not to follow the lead of the WA Liberal Party by going to the polls with a proposal to roll-back existing LGBT human rights.

Instead, same-sex marriage would become the Liberal’s anti-gay stage.

But that still left open the possibility of conservative strategists launching a high profile crusade against marriage equality that spilt over into other areas of law and life.

To foil that threat, the attention of the Liberals was drawn to a new constituency, immigrant gay entrepreneurs.

Smart progressive Liberals who understood the importance of winning the moral and financial support of this new constituency began courting it even before the election was called.

As a result, the Liberal’s LGBT policy was their best yet, Liberal Party reps attended LGBT community election forums for the first time ever, and same-sex marriage rated only one direct attack from the conservatives during the election campaign (more on this below).

As far as our plans went they worked.

Trouble is, they didn’t go far enough.

No-one counted on Liberal strategists using a front group, the Exclusive Brethren, to do their dirty work.

~ "Socially destructive"

In the name of some of its individual members, the Brethren began their attack in early March with anti-Green ads featuring attacks on transgender and intersex human rights.

In the last few days of the election campaign the attack broadened to include same-sex couple marriage and parenting rights.

By that time the role of the Brethren and the Liberal link had been established.

Academics like Marilyn Maddox testified to what has become a familiar pattern in other parts of the world, Liberal Party officials admitted to meeting with the Brethren before the election, analysis of Liberal and Brethren publications showed a similarity that exceeds coincidence.

LGBT activists were quick to respond with rear-guard action that included incitement-to-hatred complaints to the Anti-discrimination Commissioner and a protest outside Liberal Party HQ.

Together these actions had a significant impact.

LGBT community advocates were met in the streets by people full of praise for our protest slogan “Love makes a family”.

Nothing more was seen of the above-mentioned Liberal flier condemning same-sex marriage as “socially destructive”.

The Brethren removed from their ads and fliers the declaration that transgender and intersex rights will "ruin families and society".

But the Brethren’s new, incitement-free ads and fliers continued to be published, with one mailout reaching tens of thousands of homes.

This material continued to portray basic transgender and same-sex couple human rights as part of a hidden, threatening, radical, Green agenda, even though most of the rights listed have the support of a majority of Tasmanian Liberal and Labor MPs, and are already recognised in state law.

There was only one way the impact of this misinformation could have been pro-actively reduced: widespread public awareness of its origins in a secretive sect and the collusion of that sect with the Liberal Party.

But by the time these links had been established it was too late for the message to sink in.

That would have required two weeks, preferably three. All we had was a week. It wasn’t enough.

There are no excuses.

Tasmanian Green Senator, Christine Milne, predicted a Brethren intervention in the Tasmanian election in the wake of a similar intervention in the 2005 New Zealand national election.

Progressive members of the Liberal Party reported being mystified by the absolute certainty with which their fundamentalist counterparts declared to supporters “we’ll get them" (ie LGBT people).

The ads themselves had the religious right's fingerprints all over them in the form of an excessive number of underlined, italicised and bolded words.

We should have been prepared for this surreptitious, “back door” attack, but we weren’t.

We should have pounced on the ads and fliers when they first appeared, but we didn't.

Which is why I am writing this.

~ Harken brethren and heedeth this: thy moment of judgement approacheth

Victoria has an election in November, NSW next March.

The tide of anti-LGBT hate that is flowing around the world will flow there too.

If precautions aren’t taken, the conservatives, or at least the mavericks in their ranks, will propose a roll-back of LGBT rights.

Given Victoria’s progress on tackling homophobia in schools, and the obsession of its tabloid press with the issue, this may be the issue used to stir up hate in the Garden State.

Given the antagonism to an equal of age consent from high profile NSW right-wingers re-criminalising young gay men could well be the hate-mongers issue of choice in the First State.

Tasmania shows that this can be avoided by erecting another, unachieved reform, like the formal recognition of same-sex relationships, as a political heat shield.

But that still leaves the possibility of anti-gay conservatives hiding behind the Brethren.

So here’s my 13 steps to successfully meeting that challenge.

1. Take note of anti-LGBT ads and fliers as soon as they appear, even if it’s in Mildura or Dubbo. It won’t be long before they appear in Prahan and Darlinghurst too.

2. Scrutinise these ads and fliers for anything approaching incitement to hatred and make official complaints accordingly.

3. Discover whether the individuals authorising them are members of the Exclusive Brethren. If so, expose this to the media immediately (the longer the public has to absorb the message the better). Also ensure the media is aware of who the Brethren really are, particularly that they are not permitted to vote or participate in public debate.

4. Compare the Brethren election materials to Liberal election materials for any obvious similarities.

5. Watch Liberal Party leafleters carefully to see if they are also distributing Brethren materials (as has been alleged in Tasmania).

6. If there does appear to be a link, challenge the Liberal Party and high profile Liberal right wingers to declare whether they have had recent meetings with the Brethren and whether any of the issues dealt with in the ads and fliers were discussed at these meetings

7. Also, challenge the Liberal Party and high profile Liberal right wingers to declare, not only whether they have received money from the Brethren, but whether the Brethren have received money from them.

8. The fact that the ads and fliers will target a particular political party (probably the Greens, and possibly the Democrats and/or Labor) is not an excuse to ignore them. While they may cost the party at which they are aimed a few votes, they will cost the LGBT community much more. LGBT people who live in rural and regional areas are especially vulnerable to the fear and hate they incite.

9. The fact that the ads and fliers will probably not determine the election outcome is also not a good reason to ignore them. Their poisoning of community attitudes will linger long after the election.

10. Don’t rely on normally-supportive MPs from parties that aren’t targeted, to tackle anti-LGBT ads and fliers aimed at their electoral rivals. Anything which hurts opposing parties helps them.

11. Don’t rely on the party that’s being targeted either. It will be ambivalent about directly engaging the Brethren on LGBT issues, particularly in rural areas. Its excuse will be that a response will give the Brethren oxygen, that it’d rather tackle LGBT issues proactively, or that it simply has bigger fish to fry.

12. Ignore all the world-weary, inner-city, late-modern types who are charmed by the eccentric Amish-like anachronism of the Brethren. Behind the latter's rejection of modernity, their head scarves, and their “thees” and “thous”, is a serious engagement in some very contemporary social and political debates.

13. Most of all, be prepared from some classic judo-activism, turning the energy of hate into something positive by having transgender advocates and same-sex couples ready to explain to all and sundry why equality and justice for sexual and gender minorities is crucial for happier and safer families and communities.

There you have it: what we should have done, and what others still have the opportunity to do.

As long as they start work now.