Well, the ratfucking has begun.
Yesterday, this little gem of a flyer landed in letterboxes around Melbourne:
The Australian Christian Lobby flyer that landed in letterboxes around Melbourne yesterday.
The front of the flyer reads, in screamingly large capital letters, “THE GREENS! EXPERIMENTING WITH BIOLOGY AT YOUR EXPENSE!”
Gasp! Such a scary notion! What are the Greens doing?
Well, apparently they want free “gender transition surgeries”, more gender clinics, and greater access for young people to “body-altering medical interventions”. And they want to make you – the hard-working Aussie battler – pay for it, and thereby take away funding for urgent care and emergency medicine for everyone else. This must not happen! The sky will fall! “Biology is not bigotry!”
Except that nowhere on the Greens website is anything that even remotely resembles these accusations.
Leaving aside the notion that improved access to gender-affirming care might actually attract voters to the Greens, the intent of this flyer is clear. It’s aimed squarely at triggering people into feeling that the Greens want to rob them of their basic right to healthcare, in order to pander to a fringe movement that defies “biology”. It also pushes the completely untrue idea that a government might be capable of doing more than one thing without penalising someone. This particular tactic was also used to argue against same-sex marriage – basically, that we have better (read: “real”) things to spend our time and money on.
And it takes a tiny grain of truth – that the Greens have historically been vocal in their support for trans folk – and buries it in lies in order to panic people.
There’s a name for this. It’s called ratfucking. The deliberate attempt to discredit a political opponent through misinformation and dirty tricks.
So who’s behind this particular piece of ratfucking? Why, it’s our old friends, the Australian Christian Lobby. You know, the group that claims to speak for every Christian in Australia, but who are, in fact, representative of a narrow, bigoted religious worldview that has its roots in the kind of American fundamentalism that thinks picketing funerals is a great way to push their hateful message. The ACL is homophobic, anti-choice, anti-secular education and little more than a mouthpiece for these fundamentalist groups. And it has, in the past, had a level of influence on political discourse that is completely out of proportion to its actual membership.
The ACL just loves to dress up lies and present them as truth, especially in relation to LGBTQIA+ issues. It was a driving force behind opposition to marriage equality in 2012, even going so far as to commission an unconscionably biased study to “prove” that gay men were child abusers. Its website is positively awash with transphobia, attempting to hide its bigotry behind “science”. The wider queer community isn’t spared, either. The ACL calls for Mardi Gras to be ended, or at least defunded, because it’s mean to Christians and “sexually explicit”. It wants books that present a positive queer message to young people taken out of libraries altogether or confined to a closed “adult” section. And it’s really upset at the notion that laws might be passed to constrain it from spreading its hateful lies.
For this election, the ACL appears to be really dedicated to trying to turn the Australian community against trans folk. For this, it’s joined forces with the virulently transphobic Kirralie Smith, the spokesperson for hate group Binary. Smith is promising to blanket Western Sydney with her organisation’s transphobic lies, and Lyle Shelton of the ACL is enthusiastically aiding that effort.
This flyer with its nonsense about the Greens ripping money away from emergency medicine is just the first salvo. The ACL has put up a new website, with the apparently neutral name of Australia Votes“. It purports to be a thoughtful overview of the major and minor parties’ policy positions, and at first glance, appears to be just that. It’s only when you start reading a bit further that you realise just how distorted the ACL’s representations are.
Take the page dedicated to the Labor Party. The ACL gives a short general summary of policy positions, but immediately follows it up with “context”. And by “context”, I mean “how Labor is being mean to Christians and threatening Our Way Of Life by suggesting LGBTQIA+ people have rights, too”. It’s all very tiresome, religious bigotry masquerading as fact.
There’s also some undoubtedly unintentional hilarity to be found. In the section on Labor titled “Diversity, Equity & Inclusion in the Australian Public Service”, is this little gem aimed at discrediting queer advocacy group ACON:
“It is highly improper that any third party, let alone a lobby group, should be able to significantly impact Government processes and policies.”
Just let that sink in for a moment. The Australian Christian Lobby is … upset that a lobby group might have an influence on government.
Every election, the ACL sends questionnaires to the parties demanding to know their policies. It holds “information evenings” and invites party leaders to kiss up to its supporters by misrepresenting how much influence it actually has. It regularly meets with politicians, and has unfettered access to governmental agencies to push its agenda.
It’s the very definition of a lobby group.
I mean. Seriously. I don’t know if this is rank hypocrisy or just stupidity – both seem equally likely – but this may be the single most ridiculous statement the ACL has ever made. It’s literally arguing against itself. The clue’s right there in the name, Lyle.
But of course, the point is that the ACL is perfectly comfortable with it having free access to bend the government’s ear. It just doesn’t want anyone they don’t like to have the same.
Unsurprisingly, it’s the Greens that come in for the most egregious treatment by the ACL on its “policy overview” site. Their policies aren’t even presented using the party’s own words. The ACL has deliberately misrepresented Greens policy. Take this, which the ACL presents as the Greens’ own stance on “Competing Rights”:
“The Victorian branch of the Greens Party has approved a “code of conduct”, which prevents its members advocating for women’s sex-based rights on the grounds that such advocacy constitutes “transphobia”.”
Of course, nothing of the kind is true.
First, there’s that catchphrase, “sex-based rights”. This one is trotted out by transphobes who try to mask their bigotry with the claim that really, they’re just feminists protecting women from all sorts of terrible things that will happen if trans folk are allowed to exist. Any group with even a modicum of support for trans rights repudiates this phrase, and the Greens are no exception.
Then there’s the claim that the Greens are sacrificing women on the altar of slavish devotion to the defiance of “biology” – and that if you’re a Greens member who doesn’t like that idea, you’ll be shown the door. This, not to put too fine a point on it, is horseshit.
Here’s the real policy of the Greens regarding sexual orientation, gender identity and intersex. There’s not even a hint that the party has institutionalised some sort of misogynistic suppression of “women’s rights”. None of that matters to the ACL, however, and here’s why.
The Greens are vocal in their opposition to discrimination. In particular, they are strong advocates for:
“The removal of religious exemptions from anti-discrimination laws.”
That makes them a direct threat to the ACL, which has long championed the idea that if you happen to be religious (even in name only), you should be allowed unfettered hate speech. They have campaigned for decades to push what they say is their “right” to say whatever they want, whenever they want, and to target whoever they want with their lies and their bigotry, because they are Christians. Naturally, this “right” doesn’t extend to anyone who wants to call them out on their behaviour, because the ACL also argues that “Christians” (read: bigots) must be protected from criticism at all costs.
Here’s another one of the ACL’s gross misrepresentation of Greens policy, this time on the National Curriculum:
“Greens policies clearly advocate for inclusion of material in education and/or the curriculum which reflects an overwhelmingly negative representation of Australia’s Christian heritage and values …”
Again, this is patently and provably untrue. You can find the real Greens education policy here. It contains such dangerous ideas as equity of access, teaching of First Nations history and languages, and zero tolerance for bigotry. Apparently, for the ACL, this is “really” an attack on Christianity.
No, Lyle. It’s education that calls out the notion that Australia was ever a “Christian country” for what it is – a lie. No wonder you and your fellow bigots hate it.
I could go on, but you get the picture. The ACL despise the Greens, and everything they stand for. It’s cast the Greens as the Evil Arch-Nemesis in their persecution fantasy, and as such, it’s willing to engage in really dirty political tactics as a desperate attempt to negate their influence.
The “EXPERIMENTING WITH BIOLOGY AT YOUR EXPENSE” flyer is one example of their ratfucking tactics. The “Australia Votes” website is another. There’s no doubt that this is just the beginning – the ACL has decided that anti-trans bigotry is its battleground for this election, and it’s determined to take down the party that is most vocally supportive of trans rights, and of LGBTQIA+ rights in general.
The fundamentalist base of ACL supporters, of course, will swallow these lies whole. The people the ACL wants to convert, however, are another story. You probably know these people. Maybe you are these people. Good, sensible Australian Christians whose understanding of religion doesn’t start and end with unreasoning hate. These are the ones that the ACL wants to deceive, because it wants to be what it claims it already is: the voice of Christianity in Australia. But these are also the people who are in the best position to understand when they are being lied to.
The truth is easily available, and I think it falls to all of us to counter the narratives of the ACL (and any other ratfucker) with this proof. So don’t just bin these flyers when they land in your letterbox. Ask your neighbours if they read them, and what they think. Direct your family and friends to websites where they can see what the ACL’s targets are actually saying. Don’t try to meet the ACL on its preferred ground of religious freedom – just call it out for the deceptive hate mill that it is by letting the facts speak for themselves.
I can’t stress enough how important it is to call out ratfucking, and to do it smartly. Without exposure, these tactics are a creeping poison that undermines actual political engagement. The ACL doesn’t want us to consider policies for ourselves – it wants us to be so completely misled that we are driven entirely by emotional panic when we come to cast our votes. That’s how it wins, and enforces its vicious, controlling agenda.
Don’t let the ACL get away with it this time around.
