The Prime Minister has likened constitutional change for a race-based Voice to the 2017 change to the Marriage Act.

He is right to draw the comparison but not for the reasons he does.

Anthony Albanese asserts there were no consequences to de-gendering marriage and similarly there will be no consequences to changing the nation’s rule book based on race.

The last time we had a Yes campaign, at the 2017 marriage plebiscite, Yes told us no one else’s rights would be affected.

Yes, PM - the Voice and same-sex marriage are similar but not for the reasons you say

Sound familiar?

That’s because Albanese and Yes23 have reached for the same play book.

In a radio interview this week, the PM said:

“We couldn’t have marriage equality (back in 2017) because it would ruin straight marriages and it would change everyone’s lives. It didn’t. This is about just giving a bit of respect to what is 3 per cent of the population so upside for them, with no downside for anyone else.”
- Prime Minister Anthony Albanese

Now no one said redefining marriage would “ruin straight marriages”.

But as someone involved in the last national No campaign, we did make it clear that everyone’s lives would change if gender became no longer relevant to marriage.

This has especially been borne out in the lives of young girls who may aspire to play soccer, or any other sport, for Australia.

They are no longer guaranteed sport free of unfair competition from biological males.

Since gender diversity was erased from being essential to marriage, LGBTIQA+ political activists have been working overtime to erase women and girls as a biological category.

“Chestfeeders” and “birthing parents” have replaced breastfeeding and mothers.

Children are being groomed in our schools to believe their gender is fluid, putting them on pathways to gender conversion therapies that make them sterile and leave them mutilated.

Christian schools are fighting for their very existence against political activists and law reform commissions hell-bent on making them bow to new laws on marriage and gender which contravene the faith.

Even our Diggers are being forced to comply with “where it purple” directives instead of focussing on defending our nation.

Anyone who works for a government bureaucracy or woke corporation is under forced speech requirements regarding pronouns, regardless of whether those pronouns are congruent with biological reality.

I could go on.

So no, Albo, you are quite wrong. Everyone’s lives did change when so-called “marriage equality” became law.

The similarities with the Voice Yes campaign and the 2017 same-sex marriage Yes campaign are striking.

Both are trying to persuade people to vote yes based on a vibe – on “love”, on “generosity”, on “doing the right thing”.

The message was clear in 2017 – vote No you are a homophobe. In 2023, you are a racist.

It suits their campaign to keep it simple and not focus on the detail.

It’s easier to achieve change through sleight of hand, rather than tell people their kids will be indoctrinated into queer theory at school.

During the marriage plebiscite we were told the Parliament would protect our freedoms. But it didn’t and people like me have faced lawsuits dragging on for years and costing hundreds of thousands of dollars simply for speaking the truth about gender.

Noosa-based indigenous leader Noel Pearson says “detail is up to the Parliament”. But in the case of a constitutionally enshrined Voice, how that detail is interpreted will be up to the High Court.

Get ready for lawfare from angry activists if politicians or bureaucrats disagree with the Voice. This is no modest proposal.

The same-sex marriage activists did a better job of keeping their radicals like Rodney Croome locked up in basements during the 2017 plebiscite.

Although the ABC’s Benjamin Law did pop up towards the end, prophesying that same-sex marriage was “not the final frontier”, which of course has been proven right in spades.

It’s a measure of how emboldened the radical left is in 2023 that they haven’t even bothered trying to sideline their radicals.

Self-declared communist, Thomas Mayo, remains a board member of the official yes campaign, Yes23, and has been widely praised by Albanese.

This is despite asserting the voice is about treaty, reparations and punishing politicians who don’t obey the Voice.

The PM has been forced to contradict Mayo. “It’s not about treaty”, Albo had to tell 2GB’s Ben Fordham four times. But Mayo remains at the heart of the campaign.

The only person denying the Voice is about treaty and reparations is the PM.

This is 2017 all over again. The same lies are being told, often by the same people.

Lyle Shelton is National Director of the Family First Party and the spokesman for Christians for Constitutional Equality. He was a spokesman and director of the Coalition for Marriage during the 2017 plebiscite.