The biggest recent shock for the West’s metropolitan elites, and for the pundits that help form their worldview, was the Brexit vote in the United Kingdom. Almost all the great and the good in the UK wanted to Remain. Abroad, President Obama found common ground with China’s President Xi in supporting Remain (perhaps only coincidentally, Bob Carr and Sam Dastyari shared President Xi’s view).

But despite the indications of opinion polls and the expectations of almost all pundits, the people of the UK ignored the entreaties of their betters and voted to Leave.

Something of the same disconnect between elites and the populace appears to have formed over the issue of same-sex marriage (SSM). Tout le monde supports ‘marriage equality’, the elites’ favoured term for SSM. Of course, their monde doesn’t include the bigots and haters who aren’t on board with marriage equality. After all, who would want to hang out with people like that?

For many years the mantra was that the state had no place in the bedrooms of its citizens. If only the state would leave its gay and lesbian citizens to their own devices, all would be well. This was largely achieved by the early 1980s, at which point the gay lobby decided that the real issue was the removal of sundry discriminatory practices. Anti-discrimination laws were duly enacted. Gay and lesbian couples or individuals who wished to overcome their natural reproductive impediments were given rights to adopt children and have IVF treatment. A key indicator of the state’s new relationship with the gay community was police participation in gay pride marches.

The gay lobby had won a comprehensive victory over traditional society, so wasn’t the war now over? Well, no, not yet. The traditionalist enemy had been soundly defeated, but their surviving partisans, now disarmed and dejected, were still not enthusiasts for the new order. It was now time to deal them a final blow by striking at their most cherished, exclusively heterosexual institution: marriage.

The sudden enthusiasm for marriage in the gay lobby could hardly have been predicted. The gay lobby and their feminist friends had long derided marriage as a form of ‘bourgeois domestic enslavement’, and they no doubt considered themselves lucky to have avoided in their own lives the horror they witnessed their parents enduring. Feminist ideology was also central to the push to make divorce increasingly easy to obtain, and the move for sexual liberation that began in the 1960s further undermined marriage.

Still, there were some practical advantages from official recognition of a domestic relationship, and in parallel with the anti-discrimination moves, civil unions were implemented to give gay and lesbian couples all the financial and practical benefits of marriage.

Here’s an illustration of how far and how fast, we’ve come. In 1996, Bill Clinton, hero of the US Left, signed into law the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) to deny recognition of SSM, then seen as a real possibility in the US. Last year the US Supreme Court displayed world-class intellectual fluidity when it laid DOMA to rest with its finding that the people of the United States had been given the constitutional right to SSM as part of the Fourteenth Amendment, adopted in 1868!

Most other countries in the West have now implemented SSM. No nation in the vast expanse of Asia has implemented SSM, but oddly enough the old cliché that ‘Australia is a part of Asia’ is now little heard, and certainly not in this context. When it comes to SSM, Australia is seen as well and truly a country of the West.

In Australia the Left’s focus has shifted from the desirability of SSM – now taken as read – to the means of putting it in place. In 2013, Bill Shorten was ‘completely relaxed about having some form of plebiscite’ (with Richard Di Natale and Nick Xenophon also advocating for a plebiscite at various points); but in 2016 he found himself positively tense at the prospect. Yet the only relevant development in the interim has been the SSM referendum in Ireland, passed by a large majority. What led to Shorten’s sudden loss of enthusiasm for a popular vote?

The first explanation for Shorten’s new position (now ALP policy), that a plebiscite would be an unwarranted expense, can safely be dismissed. The idea that the ALP has embraced fiscal rectitude, especially when a historic social reform is in prospect, is ludicrous. The second, less implausible, explanation is that gay and lesbian Australians will be subject to an intolerable rain of abuse in a plebiscite campaign, leading to the risk of suicide. For the sake of their health, let’s have a quick vote in Parliament instead.

The absence of a wave of suicides at the time of the Irish campaign last year somewhat undermines the credibility of this argument. Of course, Labor may consider that the Australian people are far more vicious and hate-filled than the Irish, so perhaps Ireland can’t be used as a guide. No evidence has been produced to support this suggestion, but then the whole push for SSM is rooted in emotion rather than fact. At any rate, it is widely assumed that a popular vote would be successful, and the opinion polls give support to this view. In light of this, the rapidity of the retreat from the only current option to produce SSM is puzzling. Is it possible that some of the harder heads of the Left, including the leadership of the ALP, actually fear losing a popular vote?

It’s certainly a very real prospect. Turning back to Brexit, polling showed a strong advantage to the Remain camp for more than a year until shortly before the referendum. It’s a funny thing, but people can change their minds when exposed to considered arguments from both sides of an issue, rather than being bombarded constantly with propaganda from just one side. People also regard real votes as different to opinion polls. Indeed, in the privacy of a polling booth, without a sneering media class accusing Australians of homophobia or bigotry, it’s a very real prospect that the current institution of marriage would be reaffirmed. It therefore seems clear that the prospect of defeat is the real reason for Labor and the SSM lobby’s extraordinary decision to try and deprive Australians of deciding this difficult issue via a plebiscite.

The post The prospect of defeat appeared first on The Spectator.