4 August

The same-sex marriage debate is brilliantly showing us I think what's really going on in politics, we just have to look. Why are people so prepared to go to the wall on this issue? I think it's because the people so desperate to not allow same-sex marriage are the same people sometimes called 'the culture warriors'. The people who talk about 'the Right' and 'the Left' a lot. But that's a distraction, these people at root aren't really interested in politics, they're moralists (look at Tony Abbott for example, how deeply his Catholicism drives his politics). They're the people who deep down want to remove the separation between Church and State. To reinstate theocracies, government by religion. It's why they turn every issue - terrorism for example - into a great narrative about good and evil. So I think we keep misunderstanding the politics of today as being about this side versus the other side. It's nothing of the sort, it's a battle between politics itself, and religion, for control of our societies. That battle is centuries old, and is just flaring up again. And both sides have their arguments, it's not as easy as saying one side is just wrong.