Hello everyone.
In Australia we just had a plebiscite to determine whether we should change the law to allow gay marriage. The result was a resounding YES vote. This was more unusual because people here tend to vote no on any referenda and plebiscites.
This heartened me because most of the people who voted yes had nothing personally to gain. They just thought it was the right thing to do.
Most people will try to do the right thing. At least until it clashes with self interest of a person or a group they feel a part of, then it becomes more difficult.
Most people voted yes because it seems fair. Those who voted no did so because it is a change of tradition and many voted no because it was against the tradition of the religion or country of origin. Generally people were reasonable about the whole thing.
Not so for some on the YES campaign who tried to insult their opponents and stifle debate and even boycott businesses that they disagreed with. This embarrassing behaviour was not shared by the majority of people.
The NO campaign was even worse. As I have said most no voters felt uncomfortable changing tradition. The NO campaign including flyers and TV ads basically gave the argument that gay marriage would lead to children taught to be gay in schools and promotion of the gay lifestyle and equated gays with pedophiles. This is totally insane of course and was not very influential to most NO voters or the undecided.
The reason for the plebiscite appears to be a battle within the Liberal (our conservatives) party. On the one hand is the traditional business people who send their children to the elite schools and want to make maximum profit.
On the other hand is the extreme right wing religious groups, often the fascist end of the Catholic party and prosperity churches. The Prime minister is not very popular in his own party where the extremists hold sway even though their policies of privatization and intolerance are deeply damaging and unpopular with the voters. So he is appealing to the crowd to resolve the dispute.
All this shows is that ordinary people are acting with dignity and fairness which contrasts with the propaganda about how much hatred and selfishness there is currently. It is also in contrast to the behaviour of politicians and journalists.