Dear LL – Needless to say, I expect very little from aspirational, John Howard-worshipping, reffo-fearing, Murdoch-media-consuming Anglo westies. But the inescapable reality that Vietnamese Catholics, Lebanese Maronites, Syrian Sunnis, Orthodox Greeks and, hell, even Chinese Communists in the outer suburbs overwhelmingly voted no to gay nuptials was like a knife in my bleeding heart. I’ve been hearing a lot of excuse-making on the left about how Sydney’s far-flung NESBians were too occupied by five-hour daily commutes, stagnant wages, and a collapsing manufacturing sector to have the mental bandwidth to understand the moral necessity of legalising same-sex marriage but, frankly, I’m sceptical. No matter how right-on the likes of Waleed Aly or Yassmin Abdel-Magied appear on The Project, I’m beginning to fear that the delightfully exotic migrants we Inner West Greens voters want to flood the country don’t share our enlightened values. How can I continue to advocate for open borders when ungrateful, superstition-ridden new arrivals can’t be relied on to vote correctly?
Tim, Annandale
LL replies: No doubt some of my more muddle-headed comrades will label me divisive, even heartless, but I believe the time has now come for social justice to take precedence over ethnomasochism. Much as we white middle-class leftists might dream of a rainbow nation packed to bursting with multi-hued citizens with quaint beliefs about sundry sky fairies, we need the right sort of patriarchy-fighting individuals to become what used to be known as ‘New Australians’ if this reactionary wasteland of a country isn’t going to devolve further into a Gilead-style theocracy. That’s why I’m calling for any future immigration to be restricted to those hailing from high-priced, inner-urban, university-adjacent areas in Austin, Barcelona, Berlin, Copenhagen, London, Montreal, New York, Seattle and Stockholm.