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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   25227 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 30, 2023

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Absolutely, voted in favour in the referendum.

I was going to tepidly vote "yes" on the grounds that eh, civil marriage, why not? But the "Vote Yes" rainbow-farting campaign (with both our formerly traditional attitude parties going all-in on love, love) converted that to white-hot "Hell NO" vote because of the brain-melting stupidity.

The definitive moment for me when I flipped was when I was on a bus to our local city, the usual ads were playing on the radio, and on comes another one of the endless "Vote Yes For Love Love" referendum ads. And it was [expletive deleted] Mrs. Brown talking about her [expletive deleted] fictional son who does not exist and is not real and is only a character in a TV sitcom and how if he was gay and wanted to marry his partner and so forth and that's why we should all vote Yes for Love Love.

(Mrs. Brown isn't a woman, by the way; it's a character created and played by a guy in the tradition of pantomime dames). If it had been the actor talking about his real-life gay son - which so far as I know, he doesn't have - then I'd have shrugged and tuned it out. But it was the sitcom character talking about a fake child which didn't exist, and that was the same thing as all those real gays and lesbians just panting to march down the aisle (allegedly) and whose lives were blighted because sure they could have sex with whom they liked how they liked, they could live together, they could even be in domestic partnerships, but no - not being able to go down to the council registry office was plunging them into despair and fear, from which only our 'yes' vote could deliver them. Even, apparently, if they were figments of the imagination.

That's the exact moment I figuratively hit the roof and decided that I was definitely going to vote, and definitely going to vote "No". Because the glurge about "we only wanna be free to love" was bad enough, but now they were taking us for such idiots led around by whoever could tug on the heart-strings the hardest that fake fictional not-real characters wanting to fake fictionally not-real gay marry their fake fictional not-real lovers was supposed to convince us to junk all human tradition that "men and women marry" (whether that's one man and one woman, or one man and three hundred women, or one man and one woman in a short-term marriage or one woman marries five brothers or any other combination).

Like I said, the brain-melting stupidity of that just flipped me solidly to "Hell will freeze over before I ever again give in a millimetre on any of this shit".

Hold on, they subject you to audio ads on the bus?

They play radio stations, and the commercial ones run ads. Depending what station the driver picks, it can be "general AOR and talk radio" or "help I am going to jump out of this moving vehicle".

I never encountered that Mrs. Brown campaign, but you're dead right, that's very cheap and manipulative.

You were lucky. I only heard it the once, and couldn't believe my ears. I'd been getting the full "Love Love Campaign" ads on the wireless ad nauseam leading up to that, and my first reaction was "hang on, surely this is meant to be Brendan O'Carroll talking about one of his real life sons?" but no. Mrs. Brown and her fake son.

I went "how. effin'. stupid. do. they. think. we. are." and switched from tepid, didn't really care one way or another 'meh probably vote yes if I vote' to steam out of my ears 'damn straight I am going to vote and it'll be NO with bells on'.

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