But they will also need strong faith and convictions, says Gabriele Kuby
FE: In light of the majority yes vote, what advice do you have for Australians who voted no?
GK: We are living in an age of a global attack on marriage and family, and this result only comes about through very severe manipulation of the minds of people. I have been told many instances of how severe [the yes campaign] was, as it was in Ireland. Our opponents receive billions of money from the global network of international organizations, the UN, EU, together with the billionaire foundations: Rockefeller, Bill Gates, George Soros. They are all behind this strategy and they put their billions into this struggle around the world -- along with the media and national governments.
Also, we have a deep human desire to be part of the pack. I think this must be something very deep in us because, in the history of human societies, you had to be part of it or you wouldn’t survive So we want to move with the mainstream, we want to be accepted.
This instinct is manipulated by an ideology that uses concepts that sound good: human rights, equality, justice, non-discrimination, tolerance, and we are all for that, of course, we are all for that.
So it is very hard to resist this battle. It is fought on a very sophisticated level of social science -- how you change the attitudes of people -- and this is the result. In states of the US where campaigns like this didn’t take place, most voted against same-sex marriage.
FE: How are Europeans dealing with this?
GK: In many east European countries there are big movements to carry out referendums for marriage to be as it always has been. In Europe, especially in Eastern Europe, there are something like 13 nations that have actually managed to put protections into the constitution to have marriage remain what it is: the union of man and woman.
Now this is being overturned, but many people are aware this trend is becoming totalitarian. I think many have noticed this in Australia.
We are proud of our democracy, but now we see a strained relationship between democracy and the constitutional freedom to act in accordance with our conscience: religious freedom, freedom of speech, of expression, of business, of education of our children -- we see all this contested. All this is at stake at the moment, and the battle will continue, and the battle for these freedoms must continue.
I just hope there’s an awakening in Australia; that these 38 percent who voted against it become strong and continue this fight.
FE: How do Christian parents explain this cultural upheaval to their children?
GK: I am a mother of grown up children, you have small children. How do we bring up our children in this society? It is very, very difficult, because this society actually steals children from their parents. There was a time when Muslim invaders stole children from Christian families, in the 16th century or so. They stole the children and trained them to become fighters against Christianity.
This, in a way, is happening today. Children are stolen from their families, not with weapons, but by the media, by pornography, by the smart phone. There is huge pressure on our children -- they must have a smart phone. Everyone else has a smart phone. If they do not have one, they are ridiculed.
Once they have a smart phone, pornography gets to them in just a few clicks. And when they see pornography, if that is the first information they receive about sexuality, that is terrible. It is traumatizing to see that, traumatizing. And it destroys the vision of what sexuality, and love, and marriage and family is about. This is what we are up against.
FE: So what can we do?
GE: Firstly, we Christians have to live our faith. If we live our faith, we are joyful. We are the village on the hill, we are the light on the stand, we are the salt of this earth. And people will see, “They have a quality which we actually desire- we desire love in our heart, and they are people who have that.”
And for children of broken families, they are a real apostolate for intact families. Invite children of broken families into your family, so they experience that this can be family: a father and a mother and love in the family.
This is number one: live your faith truly. If that lives in a family, there will be light in that family, and if others see that, if children come into that family they will think, “how wonderful it is here.”
It is a political achievement in our time to cultivate our Christian family life and have the love and joy this imparts to us. Then of course we have to struggle and we have to have a real, loving relationship with our children, who trust us. We trust the people who truly love us.
Children today have to be so strong. A mother spoke up today after my talk and said her daughter’s teacher, not in accordance with what she should actually do, asked the class for a show of hands for pro- and no votes- and her daughter was the only one to vote no. How brave!
How do we strengthen them? Very early on they see they have a mission in this life, and they need all the strength of their family, their parents, behind them.