How would you react if you saw a somewhat naïve and impressionable friend about to step off the edge of a cliff? A shout of ‘don’t do it!’ comes to mind. In fact, such a reaction precisely describes my feelings about same-sex marriage. I don’t think even 5 per cent of the population here have a clue what the whole thing is really about and what is truly at stake. It surely isn’t just about when Harry met Larry.

My recent unwelcome – to me at least – absence from these pages has been due to being temporarily incarcerated in ‘the San’ where surgeons and other dedicated personnel show off Australia at its best. My wife’s maternal great-grandfather was one of the co-founders of the Sanitarium in Sydney. Here is exactly the kind of thing Australia excels at.

The country is not at its best, however, when faced with complex notions rather than simple practicalities: our national approach to SSM is thus uninformed and provincial to say the least. Here, for a start, is a simple question you may care to ask yourself: do you personally believe that all the recent national movements in favour of SSM arose spontaneously in all the various countries involved? Or do you think that somewhere or other behind the scenes there may be an international co-ordinating body or bodies whose real agendas might not be quite what you suppose?

I have always been a voracious reader of non-mainstream publications and it was in the current pages of one such – Australia’s oldest Catholic magazine, Annals – that I came across a book review which should put us all on notice that such hidden bodies certainly do exist, whose possibly ‘neo-Marxist’ aim is to smash traditional Western society.

In truth, the Australian campaign for SSM is simply part of that initiative. The book in question is Takedown: From Communists to Progressives. How the Left has Sabotaged Family and Marriage, by Paul Kengor and I am quoting here from a superb review by Stephen M. Krason which first appeared in The Catholic Social Science Review vol 21, 2016 and is now in Annals. Regarding SSM in Australia no more apposite book can exist, yet its findings are essentially universal.

I first encountered the negative effects of a covertly political program while in pursuit of my original career as a professional painter. Pseudo-progressive art then suddenly flooded the market in Britain and seemed to have no connection at all with any previously known values of art. Suddenly the whole inherent joy of making which had underpinned the notion of ‘the artist in his attic’ for centuries seemed to have disappeared in a toxic haze of ‘isms’. Could the virtual destruction of the practice and teaching of traditional painting just conceivably be connected to the attempted overturning of traditional marriage and the primary importance of the family?

What the review in Annals makes clear is that the assault on Christianity and the traditional notion of the family and marriage were all part of what we now think of as a neo-Marxist plan whose true originators, for once, really were Marx and Engels. For example; ‘When the Bolsheviks took power in Russia they quickly transformed marriage into a mere civic matter, legalised abortion, collectivised all education and suppressed parental authority as they viewed children as the property of the state. The result was catastrophic, with the highest divorce and abortion rate in human history. By the way, this became the typical pattern in communist countries.’ But as Kengor further points out, ‘the Communists were simply a few decades ahead of American liberals/progressives in promoting these and other such matters.’ The American assault on values was, as we know, a bit different in nature in a ‘sex, drugs and rock and roll’ kind of way (remember Woodstock?). Yet fundamentally the whole SSM issue by now has only a minimal connection with the desires of homosexual couples to get married. It is just a small part of a much more sinister picture.

As Kengor asserts: ‘Anyone familiar with the pantheon of the intellectual Left in the early 20th century will recognise names associated with the Frankfurt School; Herbert Marcuse, Wilhelm Reich, Eric Fromm, Theodor Adorno and Antonio Gramsci.’ All needed a university base via which to instil their ideas and most found very fertile soil indeed in America, especially perhaps at Columbia University. Many of these top Marxist thinkers planted themselves at the latter, where they corrupted even the cream of their students. Kengor notes especially ‘the strong support of the millennial generation there for samesex marriage.’ Do you still believe the worldwide campaign for SSM somehow arose spontaneously?

In Western universities I know personally, a myth is invariably encouraged that Communism was a noble idea that ‘just went slightly wrong’ – to the mere tune of 100 million deaths – and that mythical Communist societies really existed, such as Cuba, which were really not too bad in their functioning. Sheer delusory nonsense.

Shortly before Communisim collapsed, the woman who would become my future wife and I travelled and worked in countries such as Estonia, Poland, East Germany, Georgia, Slovenia and the Czech Republic and experienced at first hand what Communism was really about. Our memories are indelible.

We abandon the traditional morality vital to us in the West at our extreme peril.

Might a kind benefactor make a bulk purchase of Paul Kengor’s superb book and distribute a copy to every federal MP? Even they must ultimately get a grip on such matters somehow.