Same-sex marriage debate: ‘No’ side a masterclass in debate

The No campaign in the same-sex marriage debate has embraced all the techniques commonly used to muddy the waters when an argument is lost. The hope when doing so is to overcome a bad adjudicator with bluff and bluster and steal the result. On this occasion it’s designed to mislead voters.



I loved my time debating at university. Australasian and world championships gave students such as myself the opportunity to travel all over the world, seeing places and meeting people you otherwise might wait a lifetime to interact with.



One of the fascinating things about competitive debating is the need to quickly mount arguments for positions you don’t necessarily believe in.



Those campaigning for a No vote believe in their cause — for whatever reason they oppose same-sex marriage. But the arguments being used are often deliberately disingenuous, designed to con. Here are five of the best techniques to muddy the waters.



The go-to argument against same-sex marriage is the slippery slope. If same-sex marriage is legalised, next it will be polygamy or, perhaps worse still, the rampant sexualisation of our youth will follow, via the Safe Schools program for example.



The slippery slope really is the tired argument of a conservative with few weapons left in their arsenal. In truth same-sex marriage is the end point of a rights debate that has seen gays overcome many prejudices. To be honestly deployed it needed to be used long before now — for example, to argue against gays receiving equal superannuation rights because doing so might one day lead to same-sex marriage.



Now that we are here, the argument draws on the second debating technique: false equivalence.



Giving gays marriage rights could lead to bestiality, so the likes of senator Cory Bernardi have implied. The false equivalency of comparing gays to animals is as offensive as it is unrealistic.



An even more outrageous false equivalency the No campaign has used during this debate was on display when the Australian Christian Lobby’s Lyle Shelton told a pair of indigenous television presenters that children of same-sex couples could be compared to the Stolen Generations.



Their facial expressions summed up the false equivalency on which one of the most senior advocates of the No case was drawing.



Which neatly brings us to the third debating distraction being used by the No campaign: deploy the red herring. A red herring tends to be a logical fallacy or a literary device used to distract an audience. Most of Tony Abbott’s arguments in this debate have involved the use of the red herring. He has argued that if you don’t like political correctness you should vote no. If you are worried about the rights of children, vote no. The list goes on.



One of the attractions to the red herring technique is that it allows the proponents of it to draw on pretty much anything they want to envelope in the argument, but traditionally conservatives have steered clear of such argumentation outside the bubble of debating competitions. Why? Because it can rebound on them.



If Abbott argues that this survey is a referendum on many and varied issues, which it is not (gays, for example, already have the right to adopt children), according to the warped logic of the red herring if the survey succeeds the conservatives lose many arguments at once. The Yes vote can be interpreted, on Abbott’s own logic, as an endorsement of political correctness, Safe Schools and all manner of other red herrings he has drawn into the debate. It’s a short-term tactic to win a battle, often resulting in the loss of many policy wars to follow.



My favourite debating technique was the straw man: claim the argument your opponents are using is something it’s not and smash it to smithereens. It’s frustrating to your opponents (because they aren’t even making the points you’re attacking) and it allows you to deploy rebuttals you otherwise may not get to raise.



There have been too many uses of the straw man technique by the No case in this debate to mention, but the most common has been to identify anyone and everyone who’s an idiot who happens to support same-sex marriage as part of the formal campaign team.



The guy who allegedly headbutted Abbott and that woman who unfairly fired an 18-year-old contractor for expressing a contrary opinion are classic uses of the straw man. No campaigners such as Eric Abetz have sought to link such idiocy to the Yes campaign, when those involved are just ordinary citizens.



In contrast, formal No campaigners have described homosexuality as an abomination, and run authorised advertisements claiming boys will be forced to wear dresses if same-sex marriage is legalised. The Coalition for Marriage launched a campaign saying that parents need to say no to ­“radical sex and gender programs” in schools, as though that straw man argument is what Yes campaigners are arguing for.



The fifth and final technique, when all else fails, is the ad hominem attack. Trolls on Twitter accuse you of being gay for supporting same-sex marriage (that’s been levelled at me numerous times). The argument that children are at risk from same-sex marriage falls into this category too — never mind the irony of what has been done to children for decades by religious institutions opposed to same-sex marriage, as uncovered by the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.



Ad hominem attacks impugn the character and motive of others, which is what too many arguments against same-sex marriage are designed to do.



Here are a few home truths for No campaigners to chew over: the gay exceptionalism of opposing same-sex marriage for religious reasons by those who don’t equally call out other violations of Bible teachings is utterly galling. What about fornication (sex before marriage)? Shouldn’t a religious baker who doesn’t want to make a cake for a gay wedding be consistent and also refuse to do so for a pair of fornicators? In 2017 they wouldn’t be baking too many cakes, I would have thought, but at least they’d have the virtue of consistency.



As for those whinging about so-called “religious protections” not being adequately thought through, they are the same people who oppose a bill of rights that would enshrine such protections. Not that the Catholic Church’s right to refuse to marry divorcees has been impinged on since the Family Law Act 1975 established the principle of no-fault divorce.



Same-sex marriage isn’t about the various efforts to muddy the waters put forward by No campaigners. It’s about equal rights and freedom — that is, freedom to marry whoever the hell you love and to build a life with them, fully recognised by the state.



Peter van Onselen is a professor at the University of Western Australia and Sky News presenter.