The politics of gay marriage have shifted radically in a very short space of time. Until 2011, the Labor Party was firmly opposed to gay marriage. The Coalition was firmly opposed just four months ago.
So it's remarkable that a Catholic archbishop in Tasmania is being dragged to a government anti-discrimination authority for opposing same-sex marriage — the position that was until very recently, shared by both parties.
Last September, Martine Delaney, the Greens candidate for the federal seat of Franklin, took a complaint to the Tasmanian Anti-Discrimination Commissioner that the Catholic Church had produced and distributed a booklet which "does immeasurable harm to the wellbeing of same-sex couples and their families across Tasmania".
This Tasmanian case has Australia-wide significance. We've just had a sustained national debate about free speech, and are about to go into a national debate about gay marriage.
Polls show that about 70 per cent of Australians support gay marriage, so you might think the plebiscite is an assured success. Indeed, Tasmania's Liberal-led lower house last week became the third state to agree to a motion supporting legislation of same-sex marriage. But that success is not at all certain if gay marriage is perceived as the thin end of the wedge for a more general attack on the liberties of religious communities and freedom of conscience.
The booklet in question, Don't Mess With Marriage, offers the basic Christian case against gay marriage: families are the founding blocks of society and children need a mother and father.
It's hard to overstate how moderate this booklet is. It offers no fire or brimstone. It's gentle and Christian, of the suburban pastoral variety. There's much expression of sympathy for same-sex attracted people who also want to follow religious teachings that preclude their sexuality. It is a calm explanation of a major position on a prominent political policy issue.
To be offended by the booklet is to be offended by what was, until very recently, the mainstream view on gay marriage, and one still shared by a large minority of the population.
For this reason if nothing else, the complaint ought to have been dismissed as laughably frivolous. But this month the commission decided that the Catholic Church has a case to answer under Tasmania's Anti-Discrimination Act.
The Tasmanian law almost exactly parallels the controversial section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act that the conservative commentator Andrew Bolt was found to have breached in 2011, and which Tony Abbott (in opposition) promised to repeal.
There are, however, two revealing differences between the Tasmanian and the federal legislation.
The first is that the Tasmanian law prohibits offensive and insulting speech not only on race and ethnicity, but on 20 different areas from sexuality to religious belief to political affiliation.
In this sense the Tasmanian act resembles the Human Rights and Anti-Discrimination Bill which the Gillard government failed to push through parliament in 2012, which would have made it unlawful to offend someone on virtually everything (including their political opinion!) in the workplace.
It is symptomatic of the spread of no-go areas in Australian public discourse. Governments increasingly believe that protecting us from being offended — on whatever spurious grounds — is more important than allowing us to speak our mind.
The second difference is that there is no caveat in the Tasmanian act that even purports to protect free expression. Defenders of the federal Racial Discrimination Act often point out that section 18C is followed by section 18D which provides protection for speech made in good faith on matters of public interest. This protection is weak. The court decided in the Bolt case that something could not be considered in good faith if, in the view of a judge, it was too sarcastic and had errors.
However, the Tasmanian legislation doesn't even offer that token concession to basic liberties. In a parliamentary debate in 2013, the Attorney-General dismissed concerns by insisting the bill "does not impinge on free speech; it provides protection from bullying". All words are cheap. The words of politicians — even when they're interpreting their own legislation — are junk.
Both supporters and opponents of gay marriage should be very unhappy with the Tasmanian case. Even if the Catholic Church successfully defends against the anti-discrimination complaint, damage has been done. Free-speech theorists talk about the "chilling effect" when the cost of defending oneself against baseless claims hampers the open expression of views.
And in the event that the plebiscite fails, it will be because voters feel that expanding marriage freedom to one group means limiting the freedom of another. The date of the vote hasn't even been set, but the debate about gay marriage has already moved from the realm of public discourse to legal sanction.
The Tasmanian legislation also tells us something about the ongoing political contest over free speech in Australia.
All those human rights bodies — such as the government's Australian Human Rights Commission — that flaunt the vital protections of section 18D did not lift a finger to protest the lack of such protections in the Tasmanian legislation. Just as they fully supported the Gillard government's 2012 bill until its absurdities became politically controversial.
When the Abbott government broke its promise to repeal section 18C in August 2014, many commentators believed a line had been drawn under the arguments over free speech and offensive speech. Not at all. Watch Tasmania. This is the debate we are all about to have.
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