The new Senator on the block is the Liberal Democrats David Leyonhjelm.
He believes that he is a classical libertarian.
And with those words echoing in your mind, note that yesterday this ‘libertarian’ claimed that he was going to put forward yet another marriage ‘equality’ bill. The big difference between this one and the rest is that Senator Leyonhjelm has also made it clear that he is not asking for approval this time.
In fact, that’s exactly what he said when he addressed Australians from Parliament House: “We’re not asking for your approval…”
Senator Leyonhjelm is just expecting that his bill will be passed, regardless of what voters voted for the last time they all went down to the voting station and voted in a government.
In case you don’t remember, the party that did not get elected was the one campaigning for homosexual marriage. And the party that got the big thumbs up was the one that opposed this notion.
Furthermore, in the frenzied rush to replace pro-gay Labor with Liberal at the polling booth, it seems that a bunch of people accidentally voted for the wrong Liberals. No self-respecting political pundit believes that David Leyonhjelm would actually be a Senator except for the fact that the Liberal Democrats won the electoral lotto and secured top spot on the New South Wales Senate ballot. This fortune enabled him to gain a massive donkey vote from those confused between the ‘Liberal Democrats’ and the ‘Liberals and Nationals’, positioned 24 columns away at the other end of the ballot paper.
The arrogance of Senator Leyonhjelm is breathtaking. While claiming to be libertarian, he is demanding that Australians be ignored when it comes to marriage.
That doesn’t sound very free to me. Nor does it sound like ‘small’ government. Instead, it sounds like big intrusive government getting all involved in redefining morality so that it doesn’t exist at all.
And that’s exactly what Libertarianism is. It’s not about freedom at all, it’s about creating a state free from morality altogether. That’s usually known as chaos. And when chaos reigns supreme, only bad things happen.
The chaos has already shown itself clearly in the mind of Senator Leyonhjelm. He’s arguing that we should respect the privacy of homosexuals by making their affairs an issue of state.
He’s also gone on to say that it’s not the role of government to define relationships. He made that claim while simultaneously announcing his new bill to define all the different types of relationships that the government will and won’t recognise as marriages.
These are not coherent ideas. They are ideas that are inherently contradictory and illogical. It’s all part and parcel of the territory that goes with an idea as corrupted as homosexual marriage.
As such, it’s not surprising that the Senator behind these chaotic expressions does not really have much intellectual substance to him at all.
After making his announcement, Senator Leyonhjelm was interviewed by a gushing reporter at the Sydney Morning Herald.
You can see it here.
Just before the four minute mark of this interview, Senator Leyonhjelm claimed that homosexual marriage did not hurt other people.
That’s debateable.
The World Health Organisation has just strongly recommended that ‘men who have sex with other men’ should take antiretroviral medication every day. That’s a pretty strong admission that homosexual activity does hurt other people. And not just those involved. The rest of us have to cough up so that this medication is subsidised for those who live a dangerous lifestyle.
Immediately after this statement, the Senator went on to say that he would be taking the same approach to ‘lots of things’.
And then he was asked, like what?
Senator Leyonhjelm’s exhaustive list of ‘like whats’ included:
- assisted suicide,
- smoking marijuana,
- an umm,
- a claim that the list is endless,
- another umm,
- and finally, bicycle helmets.
What a list!
After this Senator Leyonhjelm went all preachy and questioned why the government should tell people how to look after their heads.
That’s great.
Using Senator Leyonhjlem’s logic, it’s also worth questioning why the government should tell homosexual men how to look after their health as well.
If we can throw out bicycle helmets, we can also throw out HIV education campaigns and subsidised medication.
I’m not sure, though, that Senator Leyonhjelm will consistently apply his logic.
After all, he’s the one claiming to be in favour of ‘small’ government while seeking to ‘deregulate’ marriage so that the bureaucracy reaches into more and more lives.
If he was really such a small government kind of guy, he wouldn’t be questioning why government didn’t recognise homosexual marriage. He’d be questioning why government recognises marriage at all, especially as he considers them to be private affairs.
And if marriage is not about children, and if they are private, as the pro-homosexual lobby claims, then there is simply no need for the government to register relationships at all. Full stop.
But marriage is about children. And marriage is public.
Responsible governments take an interest in recognising public commitments that lead to children because these relationships are the future of the state.
That is why governments recognise marriage and provide benefits to married couples: to assist them in their critically important task.
And it is also at this point that Senator Leyonhjelm and those who seek to redefine marriage have lost all understanding of reality. When a couple gets married and starts a family, they are undertaking something that transcends the power of any state. They can do something that no state can: create life. All by themselves. Just like that.
That is why their marriage exists regardless of whether some man in a building in Canberra posts a certificate in the mail. That is merely a secondary action that shows the state submits itself in recognition of a greater power.
But the power to create life is simply beyond the reach of homosexuals and so their relationships are inherently different. They are not the same as marriages and they all know it. That’s why homosexuals are desperately seeking any old external authority to define their relationship in a vain effort to ‘legitimise’ them. It is a fruitless task. States don’t make marriages. They only recognise those that exist. To even get to that point you need both man and woman.
Furthermore, no amount of test tubes and freezers and tweezers and needles and the wombs of ‘breeders’ and the contracts that go with them can give homosexuals this power. All they can do is provide a means by which the power of others is abused.
There is a phrase that describes these ungodly actions to create children that will be raised deliberately without their biological parents. Unfortunately, Senator Leyonhjelm used it yesterday to describe the true definition of marriage: misappropriation of power.
This just shows that libertarians can speak the big words but that they have little idea about what they actually mean.
Just like the word liberty itself. It means the freedom to do good without interference from evil. Senator Leyonhjelm thinks it means free to do whatever he pleases, regardless of the will of the people. That’s not liberty. It’s totalitarian.
And that’s why Senator Leyonhjelm is not asking for our approval.
August 27, 2014
Refreshingly clear logic. Great work Bernard.
July 18, 2014
Your blog is great. Keep up the good, brave work.
July 19, 2014
Thank you.
July 17, 2014
I think Australian may be on track for a French Revolution Day where all the criminal, homosexual, Senators, Ministers and Defense perverts are rounded up and be-headed on the steps of Parliament. So many people are talking of their disgust with the government saturating every form of media with homosexual adds and living in denial that Islam is confronting ‘our way of life’ in Australia.
July 17, 2014
What we need is a traditional Catholic counter-revolution similar to the Cristeros in Mexico.
For those unfamiliar with the Cristeros, here is some light reading…
http://www.traditioninaction.org/History/G_016_Fahey.html
“For Greater Glory” is a movie which gives a reasonable account of this great counter-revolution, and highlights a young martyr who is a personal favourite of our family – Blessed Jose Sanchez del Rio…
http://www.traditioninaction.org/movies/016mrCristeroMartyr.htm
Our battle-cry could be the same as the last words of Father Miguel Pro as he raised his arms in the form of a cross and was gunned by the freemasons – “Viva Cristo Rey”!!!
July 17, 2014
We could all learn from the Cristeros of Jalisco, who prayed the following prayers after their daily Rosary…
My Jesus Mercy! My sins are more numerous than the drops of blood that Thou did shed for me. I do not deserve to belong to the army that defends the rights of Thy Church and that fights for her. I desire never to sin again so that my life might be an offering pleasing to Thy eyes. Wash away my iniquities and cleanse me of my sins. By Thy Holy Cross, by my Holy Mother of Guadalupe, pardon me.
Since I do not know how to make penance for my sins, I desire to receive death as a chastisement merited by them. I do not wish to fight, live or die except for Thee and for Thy Church. Blessed Mother of Guadalupe, be at my side in the agony of this poor sinner. Grant that my last shout on earth and my first canticle in Heaven should be Viva Cristo Rey! Amen
http://www.traditioninaction.org/History/B_012_Cristeros_Prayer.html
July 17, 2014
For all those interested, here’s the official trailer of “For Greater Glory”…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKeOHZ9NWao
Blessed Jose Luis Sanchez del Rio – ora pro nobis!!!
July 16, 2014
Very good article Bernard. Well written.
July 16, 2014
Thank you.
July 16, 2014
Under the badly misguided libertarian ethos, abortions should be legal and available for those whose consciences are not unnecessarily troubled by murdering their own children; divorce and contraception is OK too. Not one peep about bringing a country’s laws in line with the laws of God and His One, True Church. Not one word about enthroning the Sacred Heart or formally consecrating the entire country to the Immaculate Heart! That these laissez-faire liberals can actually call themselves “conservative” is ironic, and proves yet again why we should abandon the so-called right and left – in favour of right and wrong!
July 15, 2014
Why can’t libertarian looney-tunes accept that a Catholic State – under the Kingship of Christ – is a much better option?
July 16, 2014
Seriously? A Catholic state? I think we have done that one before and I am unsure why you would think a ‘Libertarian’ would think that a “better option”. Conservative does not mean Catholic. I am happy to agree with you on the word of God but not the church which has wreaked it’s own form of havoc by digressing from that very same word of God. And this is not a looney assessment as you would like to think. Or would you like the opportunity to once again persecute and even execute those Christian’s who disagree with you through the power of government?
True heart conversion to God comes from liberty not from enforcement, either by govt or by church.
Where David’s idea falls down is that he is saying freedom comes from legislation where really in true form the govt. needs to get out of the idea of controlling marriage. Only when Christian’s are not forced to accept homosexual marriage as ok is it tenable if yet sin. If the definition is changed by govt. then govt has the right to enforce the law (definition) on people and that is untenable.
Ron Paul, a catholic and Liberterian stands by his opposition to abortion because he believes in the protection of life and I hope David can ‘get’ this. You cannot have liberty where a portion of the population is slaughtered without mercy because they are too young to defend themselves.
July 17, 2014
Nathan,
Here is some required reading for you:
“Liberty – the god that failed” by Christopher Ferrara
http://www.amazon.com/Liberty-God-That-Failed-Constructing/dp/1621380068
July 15, 2014
I think you might be surprised just how many people who support the Liberal Democrats also support your plight, especially with regards to the ADF. You might also be surprised just how many classical liberals acknowledge that traditional marriage is different, especially with regards to children, while ardently defending gay rights. Brendan O’Neil, he editor of ‘Spiked’ in the UK, has made this argument a number of times both in the media and online if you care to get examine that libertarian perspective.
Many of those in the LDP, including Senator Leyonhjelm, are very conservative in their outlook and very much understand the value of the family. Classical liberals are simply making the point that the state should not define the nature of people’s private relationships, a point even you allude to in your article above. This value of keeping the state out of private lives, even when we don’t personally like the outcome, is a value we should all hold dear. As a conservative I’m sure you’re aware values are things we consider worth upholding through thick and thin. You could make the same argument about the ADF and your views. It is not the role of the ADF to tell its members the ‘correct’ way to think on personal or political issues, or suggest a perspective like yours is incorrect. This is not the role of the ADF specifically because it’s not the role of the state, and both the ADF and the state must be impartial to differing perspectives which rightfully should be left to contest the battle of ideas in the public sphere.
The western world has been defined in the political arena largely by a conservative-libertarian fusionism that extended from the Enlightenment. This shaped much of the 19th and 20th centuries and resulted in the west leading the free world, creating the middle class from the serfs, and having a standard of living across the board never previously seen. As classical liberalism re-emerges onto the political stage again, it would be a shame if leading conservatives such as yourself didn’t see the potential in the large swathes of common ground that classical liberals and conservatives share.
July 15, 2014
That’s a thoughtful comment, and although I disagree with David Leonhjelm on this particular issue it is true that he is a real breath of fresh air on the political scene, and could end up being quite influential. As long as he puts aside this silly push for gay marriage.
Your phrase “keeping the state out of private lives” leaves a lot of potential for mischief. What about our public lives? Is the state to be given carte blanche to rule in this domain? That is certainly what the Statist would propose. Anyone following American politics would note the way (eg in the recent Hobby Lobby case) that the state seeks to compress any expression of religion into the purely private sphere, leaving the state to define all the rules in the public sphere. Not a great outcome from a Classical Liberal point of view.
July 18, 2014
Don’t know what this comment is about and for example you write “You could make the same argument about the ADF and your views. It is not the role of the ADF to tell its members the ‘correct’ way to think on personal or political issues, or suggest a perspective like yours is incorrect. ” Well I think that’s pretty much what Bernard has written yet your comment suggests he hasn’t thought of it. Kind of patronising I feel. Scratches head but sort of realising where Sen Leonhjelm is coming from, an Alice in Wonderland place.
“Classical liberals are simply making the point that the state should not define the nature of people’s private relationships, a point even you allude to in your article above.” Exactly but then marriage has always been defined pre-state as between complimentary sexes but Sen L wants to create a legal fiction that gender has nothing to do with it. As in the US what we see will be the state star chambers known as Human Rights Commissions prosecute people in the wedding ceremony industry who decline to enter into private business contracts with same sex partners, and same sex partners will often seek out people for the express business of seeing the state come down on them.
Sexual interaction between two people of the same sex involving mutual masturbation or sodomy is, as Pierre Trudeau enunciated when decriminalising sodomy in Canada, none of the state’s business yet the gay lobby which back then argued for the state to stay out of their bedrooms now wants them back in!
The state should only become involved where society has a stake either way and in sexual intercourse between male and female there are public consequences of the highest order. Children will result and with marriage this leads to an ongoing functional society and without it leads to dysfunctional crime and gang dominated societies requiring massive social welfare transfer payments from the married sector to avoid dissolution, as in black society in the US where marriage has collapsed. In other words sexual activity between male and female has public consequences so is not a private relationship one and often throughout history it has been used to not just join a man to a woman but nations to nations with a view to bringing stability to those relations.