To the Editor

Brian Grieg is a failed Australian Democratic Party Senator, who through his antics, helped to drive the Australian Democrats into oblivion.

In February 2002, he was reprimanded by Senate President Margaret Reid for sending an e-mail from his federal parliamentary address to incite supporters of gay law reform to send packages (including phone books, toilet paper and copies of Hansard) to the reply paid addresses of pro-family groups, in an attempt to sabotage these groups.

It seems that his contempt for pro-family and Christian organisations has not abated.

In his most recent tirade, offensively entitled, “On these rights, state must rule the church” (West, p 20, April 21, 2010), Greig claims that “a clear majority now supports same-sex marriage…”

Furthermore, he claims that “When Labor joined forces with the Howard government in 2004 to ban same-sex marriages, it did so purely to appease the religious right.” This is an untrue statement.

There were, and continue to be many parliamentarians from both the Liberal and Labor parties, not to mention the minor parties, who were not operating from a “purely” pragmatic perspective. They believe that marriage—the union between a man and a woman, voluntarily entered into for life—is the cornerstone of stable society. They believe that every child is entitled to be reared by a mother and a father. They believe that mothers and fathers are uniquely different, but complimentary to each other, and together provide the natural and best model for rearing children.

Furthermore, they don’t believe that endless concessions must be given to homosexuals, who only comprise around 2 per cent of the population. Why should they grant marriage rights to homosexuals when homosexual relationships are unnatural, unstable, sterile, risky, and provide an inferior environment for rearing children?

Won’t Greig be distressed to learn that today the Attorney-General Robert McClelland has announced that the government will not introduce a national charter of rights? Perhaps he will have to do a great deal more agitating before his utopia of the state bullying the church will be realised. Or perhaps the pro-family and pro-Christian heterosexual majority will have to insist that way too many concessions have already been made and enough is enough.

An edited version of this letter was published in the West Australian on Friday 23 April 2010.