For the most part, LGBT politics has become solidly pragmatic. Not so our political adversaries, which renders them a liability to wary centre-right parties.

Let’s put it this way. With a few honourable exceptions like Marilyn Waring and Nigel Christie, the New Zealand LGBT communities signed up for civil unions instead of going straight for same-sex marriage, which would have aroused more opposition at this point in time. We got a pragmatic and incremental compromise, as well as substantive relationship equality. I acknowledge the Greens eagerness when it comes to inclusive adoption reform when it came to the Relationships (Statutory Reference) Act too, but that would have been too much for the general public to digest. Nevertheless, it’s good to know they’re a reliable social liberal voting bloc.

When Australian and US LGBT communities went straight for same-sex marriage, they may have aroused opposition that might not have otherwise existed if they’d chosen civil unions as an interim step. Still, I acknowledge that Australia must be made to face the reality that its same-sex marriage ban is costing it strategically skilled LGBT professionals who won’t settle in a country that still condones relationship discrimination.

New Zealand’s Christian Right has never been terribly pragmatic. It has always focused on the prospect of total prohibition (of abortion, sex work, homosexuality per se and same-sex marriage) without incremental compromises, and it weakens them. Right to Life New Zealand still believes in the total prohibition of abortion through the Status of the Unborn Child Act 1983, which lacks feasibility.

When they fought homosexual and prostitution law reform, they didn’t have fallback or compromise positions either. When it came to the New Zealand general election back in 1996, they antagonised the disability rights movement through threatening wholesale repeal of the Human Rights Act.

Similarly, they lost the civil union debate precisely because that wasn’t perceived as same-sex marriage proper, and when they tried to pre-emptively ban same-sex marriage, they went too far when they tried to mangle the Bill of Rights Act 1990.

The fundamentalist parties are an example of the same malaise. Tamaki, Lewis, Adams and Mortlock are too far outside the political mainstream, and the Family Party and Kiwi Party are unelectable as a result. Gordon Copeland is far too close to extremist, fringe Christian Right organisations like Right to Life New Zealand and SPCS, so pays the price.

Could the New Zealand Christian Right change strategy? It’d be difficult when it comes to same-sex marriage proper, because same-sex marriage is still civil marriage, and refers specifically to a secular order of ceremony, and is without religious significance. Religious institutions will still be free not to perform same-sex religious weddings, but some liberal Christian denominations might well decide to do so.

Similarly, adoption law reform is also an incremental step. Reproductive technology access, fostering and guardianship reform have all been fought and won as incremental steps, and while this is our last remaining issue of substantive same-sex parenting equality, it is a minor one, as only about three hundred adoptions occurred in New Zealand in 2006. It helps that Britain and Canada have been there before us, as has Western Australia. As long as the social conservatives foolishly avoid pragmatic compromise, we will continue to reap the benefits.

So, what is the dominant Christian Right political tactic? It can be described in a word- populism. I had a quiet chuckle to myself when I heard TVNZ’s Agenda commentators argue that populist politics would cease to exist when Winston Peters and New Zealand First are ejected from Parliament.

Oh, really? Summarised succintly, populist politics is that which is antagonistic to evidence-based public policy based on professional research. Populism likes to present itself as the ‘voice of the average citizen,’ whereas this is a false ‘universality’ or ‘normalcy,’ for the ‘average citizens’ tend to be social conservatives.

As well as Winston Peters, one thinks with loathing of the late Sir Robert Muldoon (1975-1984), and outside Parliament, Family First’s attack on Section 59 Repeal is a striking example of recent populist political tactics.

Let’s see how this could work out in practice. Take inclusive adoption reform. As I’ve previously argued, we will be able to cite numerous evidence-based papers from professional associations and peer-reviewed research journals that deal with pediatrics and developmental psychology to prove our position.

Family First and the Christian Right will parrot overseas US Christian Right and social conservative junk scientists whose research methods have been either censured or faced thorough rebuttal in the courts. However, that is mere garnish, because looking more closely, one will encounter rhetoric about ‘average’ New Zealand ‘mainstream’ families as well as attacks on pro-reform professional figures.

Obviously, the Christian Right are not ‘average citizens.’ They are disproportionately rural small shopkeepers and farmers from provincial city and rural families, with fundamentalist religious views that only represent a minority of the electorate. They are patently not ‘universal,’ nor do they represent any ‘norm.’

One might go so far as to argue that the New Zealand Christian Right has a fatal addiction to right-wing populist tactics, and if any of their organisations became legitimately professional, they’d start to lose their fundamentalist identity- as, arguably, is occuring with the Maxim Institute at the moment.

In the long term, populist politics fail, especially if they’re the province of the elderly and poorly educated. One witnesses the steady decline of SPCS and the anti-abortionists as an example in our own context, or even more strikingly, the total failure of anti-gay politics since the mid-eighties.

Are there left-wing populists? These tend to be social movements that haven’t formed strategic alliances with amenable professionals, and New Zealand movements for cannabis and euthanasia law reform tend to fall into this category. These movements tend to be fragmented and strategically divided.

Populists are wedded to rhetoric about their allegedly representative nature, and it is easy to call them on such claims. They may refer to subcultural sources like Paul Cameron or Judith Reisman, but at their core, their rhetoric consists primarily of subjective sectarian religious assertions.

With the above in mind, if we keep stockpiling evidence from medicine and social science to buttress our cases for remaining law reform issues, ultimately, we will prevail.