Same-Sex Marriage; or, The Gentrification of Lesbian and Gay Radical Politics, by Caroline Norma. Here’s a viewpoint that has not been seen much in the media.

In the interests of Australian democracy, right-minded citizens must participate in September’s postal plebiscite on same-sex marriage, and they must vote “no.”

For the issue under contest in the plebiscite is not same-sex marriage at all, but the survival of an historically autonomous and progressive social group.

Lesbians and gay men in Australia these days are mostly thought of as conspicuous consumers, oversexed club-goers, or champions of liberalism in the manner of Michael Kirby or Kerryn Phelps.

In either case, we are kindly understood as having been “born that way,” but nonetheless persevering with our lot and admirably trying to fit in. …

But once we were different, and progressive. We were overrepresented among unionists and feminists, and active in the Aboriginal rights and peace movements. Practices of radical environmentalism and collectivist living were forged first in lesbian and gay communities, and new political critiques and international alliances often fermented in the same circles.

Always, though, this radical faction was small and marginal. The lesbian and gay community as a whole was capitalistic, liberal and eager to mimic heterosexual ways. Whether they did this in the twenty-first century way of ostentatiously “coming out” or in the old twentieth-century closeted way, they were always at odds with their radical sisters and brothers.

“Marriage equality” has catapulted the most unthinking, conforming and self-serving lesbians and gays into positions of leadership and profile, and given their heterosexually aligned values far too much influence in our community. These new stars were always the ones destined to have babies and attend wine-soaked dinner parties, but now the same-sex marriage issue gives their ilk an external source of power to laud over others trying to swim against the tide. …

Heterosexual Australia has little reason to be interested in these internecine politics of a relatively small community within our society. But it should be interested in the capacity of our society to generate the radical politics and practices that are essential to democratic innovation and social progress in any country.

This seems to be a complaint by leftist LGBTs that they have been swamped by more mainstream people.

hat-tip Jeremy