Since when, inimitable Australian journalist Jack Marx once asked, did the love that dare not speak its name become the love that just won’t shut the hell up?
As Douglas Murray notes, something changed – and not for the better – in the gay rights movement once it won the war for social acceptance. For decades, gay rights activists had insisted on the sensible maxim that what consenting adults did in private was nobody else’s business. Not any more. Now, it has to be everybody’s business.
When gay rights transmogrified into the “rainbow” movement, it was no longer sufficient to just be tolerated – now, it demands to be celebrated. Feted. Endlessly fawned over – publicly and loudly. The gay rights movement has become a amyl nitrate-amped, 50-foot unicorn rampaging through the public square. Everything, everything has to be about celebrating gay-ness, with all the subtlety of Richard Simmons tripping on acid.
The legacy media, desperate old fag-hags that they are, are only too happy to strap on a sequined posing-pouch and jump in the oiled-up daisy-chain of queer attention-seeking. Big business, besotted by the lure of the supposed “pink dollar”, are no better.
Just don’t let the facts get in the way of a good fairy story.
Tasmania’s tourism industry is seeing the benefits of the state boasting one of Australia’s highest same-sex marriage rates.
In fact, the data shows that this is just a rainbow-hued snow job.
Data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics has shown of the 2500 weddings in Tasmania in 2018, 5.7 per cent were same-sex – the highest percentage of any state in Australia.
Tourism Industry Council of Tasmania chief executive Luke Martin said […]”We have calculated that every visitor who comes down to a wedding spends $1500″.
Ooh, sounds fabulous…until you actually crunch the numbers.
From that data, there were about 150 gay weddings in Tasmania in 2018 (a number which is almost certain to decline as the novelty wears off – in the US, the number of same-sex marriages plummeted sharply after the first year). Weddings in Australia average about 100 guests. Of course, not all of the guests are going to be from interstate, but lets generously assume 80 out of 100 are interstate visitors.
So, that makes for about 15 000 tourist visitors, and an annual contribution to tourism of about $22 million.
Sounds impressive, until you realise that Tasmania receives 1.32 million tourists every year. Those visitors also spend about $1500 apiece, for a total of $2.07 billion.
Gay marriage has contributed barely 1% of tourism numbers and revenue.
Equality Tasmania spokesman Rodney Croome said […]”These statistics are a reminder that the more inclusive and open Tasmania becomes, the more prosperous Tasmania becomes,” Mr Croome said.
“More and more people are speaking of Tasmania as the Rainbow Isle.
examiner.com.au/story/6619241/tourism-benefiting-from-same-sex-marriages
This is bollocks. As many Tasmanians commenting on the Examiner’s website stated, they’ve never heard a single soul use that expression. Tasmanians also seem less than pleased with the perverse outcomes that accompanied gay marriage, such as Tasmania’s contentious transgender laws, which were forced through our parliament as a direct consequence of changes to the state’s Marriage Act necessitated by gay marriage.
Big business and the media might be only too keen to bend over and get a good fisting from the rainbow lobby for a measly 1% extra, but it seems that many Tasmanians might not be quite so starry-eyed about such a miserly trade-off for massive, unasked-for social changes.
At the very least, the Legacy media could at least do a bit of basic research before running glittery puff-pieces and stop trying to blow rainbow-coloured smoke up our arses.
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