Tried in the court of Twitter

More and more our debates about same-sex marriage resemble the toxic rhetoric of the 1930s. Even before World War II broke out, Fascists and Communists were using vile language to break the spirit of their adversaries.

George Orwell was immersed in this rhetoric while he was fighting in Catalonia during the Spanish Civil War. Communists were attacking Trotskyites; anarchists were attacking Communists. It was after exposure to the hallucinatory language in their newspapers and pamphlets that he composed his famous essay “Politics and the English Language” and his masterpiece Nineteen Eighty-Four.

One of the people Orwell probably had in mind was the chief prosecutor at the Moscow show trials in the mid-30s, Andrey Vyshinksy. He was an expert at browbeating – and beating — his victims into confessing imaginary crimes. Apart from physical torture and threats to the families of the accused, there was the mental torture of his remarkable gift for vituperation. However absurd his insults, they must have stung like a whip.

A stinking pile of human refuse … the most contemptible, the most incorrigible and decayed dishonourable elements … accursed vermin … accursed cross between a fox and a swine … Let’s push the bestial hatred they bear our leaders back down their own throats!

And today? Just look at the treatment given to Australian tennis legend Margaret Court for opposing same-sex marriage. She is an extraordinary sportswoman, who still holds the record for the most Grand Slam titles. Nowadays she is an outspoken fundamentalist pastor who leads a church group in Perth. Late last month she wrote an open letter lamenting that the national carrier, Qantas, was backing same-sex marriage.

I am disappointed that Qantas has become an active promoter for same-sex marriage. I believe in marriage as a union between a man and a woman as stated in the Bible. Your statement leaves me no option but to use other airlines where possible for my extensive travelling.

The reaction on Twitter out-Vyshinskyed Vyshinsky:

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