What happened to the lunar right’s hostility to homophobia?

In the aftermath of last year’s Orlando, Florida, shooting, when 49 patrons of the gay night club Pulse were gunned down, some of the LGBTI community’s most vocal “defenders” came from the hard right.

Daily Telegraph columnist Miranda Devine linked the attack to her horror at watching videos of gay men being thrown off buildings by Islamic State soldiers: “You can’t help imagine how the poor man felt as he was dragged to that rooftop, bound and gagged, knowing his fate … This is empathy and is what keeps us human”. Similarly notorious conservative Murdoch columnist Andrew Bolt penned a piece titled “Let’s be tough on all homophobes” (Herald Sun, 16 June, 2016) in which he argued that the Australian government needed to “send a real message” that Australia is “so horrified by homophobia”.

And how, according to Bolt, should PM Turnbull have sent this message? By cancelling the visas of Muslim clerics and throwing out the ambassadors of Iran and Saudi Arabia. Bolt campaigned to have the visa of British sheik Farrokh Sekaleshfar cancelled because he had said that “homosexuality, like adultery and a long list of other things, they are sins … Never do I incite violence against them [homosexuals]”.

So where are Devine and Bolt today, when some home-grown homophobic religious zealots are preaching hate and intolerance towards LGBTI people? Surely they are now calling for the deportation of arch-reactionaries such as the Australian Christian Lobby’s Lyle Shelton, who compared same sex marriage to the Holocaust, or Margaret Court, who similarly compared the issue to Nazi brainwashing?

Quite the opposite. Marriage equality activists are now the ones condemned as “bullies”, and it’s the homophobes who are “persecuted”. In a recent piece for the Daily Telegraph, Devine lists example after example of such “persecution”, like a US florist who was sued for refusing to provide flowers for a same-sex wedding. “Wherever same sex marriage has been legalised, defenders of traditional marriage find themselves beyond the pale and at the mercy of the law”, Devine wrote.

Of course, no-one would have suspected that the likes of Bolt or Devine were ever truly our allies in the struggle for LGBTI liberation. Their defence of our rights exists only to the extent that it’s a weapon to further demonise Muslims and attempt to undercut the expressions of solidarity with Muslims against their oppression. This is why it’s encouraging that groups such as Muslims for Equality have sprung up in the wake of the plebiscite campaign, showing that being Muslim and standing on the side of LGBTI people are not counterposed.

But it also shows why the fight for equality is not just a fight for the rights of LGBTI people, but a struggle against the likes of Bolt, Devine and their mates on the right, who will fight to the end to maintain the status quo, a status quo that oppresses Muslims and LGBTI people alike. A win for marriage equality is a win for all of us.