I’m not apologising for opposing Abbott

If “gay pride” means anything, it means we won’t beg for our rights. It means we will demand equality, but not hide our difference. It means we won’t apologise for being angry. We will not take a step backwards.

Yet, the election of a conservative federal government has led some in the marriage rights campaign to insist that we do just that. This is a mistake.

The Prime Minister is an impenitent homophobe. Homosexuality, Tony Abbott has openly admitted, is one of the things he’s “threatened by.” He’s a “traditionalist” you see, a man who believes in “the right order of things.”

Perhaps, some might say, we should be grateful that he has acknowledged that LGBTI people exist at all. We are a “fact of life,” he begrudges. His advice to each of us if he could have a quiet word? “[A]dopt a sort of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy about all of these things.” “These things,” of course being our lives and relationships.

Abbott’s election has created a more hostile climate for the marriage equality campaign. His is the party that constructed the ban on same-sex marriage. Opposition to equality is Liberal Party policy and Abbott has used every possible opportunity to make clear that our rights are not on his agenda.

Abbott himself is the protege, the political spawn, of arch-conservative bigot John Howard, the very man that enshrined marriage discrimination in Australian legislation nearly 10 years ago.

It is unfathomable that some among our ranks have greeted the election of this man with concessionary words bordering on the congratulatory. While most of us woke on 8 September knowing that our fight just got a little harder, Australian Marriage Equality director Rodney Croome took the microphone, so to speak, telling the world that “marriage equality advocates are encouraged by yesterday’s [election] result...”

In the months since, calls for the campaign to moderate and capitulate have intensified in some corners. Tim Wilson, policy director of neo-liberal lobby group Institute of Public Affairs, has written that we need to re-think even our use of the word equality. Apparently, he explained in a recent article published by the Star Observer, the principle of equal rights jars with many conservatives.

Croome too has been vocal in arguing that the direction of the campaign should be guided by the agenda of our opponents. Protest, certainly of the angry variety, only serves to “frighten off politicians,” he scolds. Self-appointed as the spokesperson of our movement Croome has condemned those who would build active resistance to Abbott.

Instead, he insists we must “give him [Abbott] credit for the steps that he has taken on the issue.” We must quietly and demurely plead our way into the hearts of homophobic parliamentarians across the country. Granted, it has been at least a couple of years since Abbott publicly said he was outright afraid of us. My salutations are in the mail.