LETTER TO THE EDITOR:
IN response to the advertisement ‘What is Marriage’ (Gippsland Times 22/8), and the subsequent community reaction, I would like to say the following:
Firstly, no one deserves to be personally attacked for simply doing their job.
My empathy for the situation ends there, however.
The Gippsland Times as an organisation chose to run this advertisement, therefore as an organisation must also be willing to deal with and accept any of the resulting backlash.
Freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequence.
If you put something out there and someone doesn’t agree with you, they have every right to turn around and tell you why they think you’re wrong.
It’s not ‘bullying’ or ‘hysteria’, it’s someone with a different opinion to you expressing their own right to free speech.
What really bothers me is the position the Gippsland Times has taken in stating this advertisement does not vilify anyone.
Not only does it vilify members of the LGBTQI community, it vilifies those who rely on IVF.
It vilifies single parents and widows.
It vilifies couples who simply don’t want children, and it vilifies the thousands of wonderful, loving, caring same-sex parents that are already raising children all over our country.
But the most ironic part is this.
This advertisement, along with the arguments many other conservative and Christian groups put forward, claims to be about protecting children.
The reality?
You are literally furthering the decline in mental health of so, so many children.
Words like these can and have led many to suicide. This is a fact.
You can claim to be coming from a place of love.
You can claim to be an inherently good person.
But here’s the reality once you personally attack someone over their identity, which this advertisement absolutely does, you show that you are neither.
A local newspaper should not be responsible for one single person being vilified, let alone a whole group within our community.
I sincerely hope you take some time to reflect on this point.
Whether it was intended or not, you have deeply hurt a lot of people in the community, and it is because of this they have every right to say, as loudly and publicly as they like, how much they disagree with you.
This is how freedom of speech works.
