Politics

Everyone Is Making Fun Of Lyle Shelton’s New “Culture Wars” Book

"Where was this when we had a toilet paper shortage?"

by Rachael Conaghan  20 April 2020
Lyle Shelton

Want more Junkee in your life? Sign up to our newsletter, and follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook so you always know where to find us.

Conservative Lyle Shelton, who led the failed No campaign in the marriage equality postal survey, is apparently under attack again, and this time it’s not from people telling him to eat shit.

The former posterboy for the Australian Christian Lobby is perhaps best known for being very, very, very anti-gay rights and for pretending that getting called out for this bullshit makes him the true victim.

If you’re looking for more pearls of wisdom, today Lyle announced he is releasing a book — called ‘I kid You Not’: Notes from 20 years in the Trenches of the Culture Wars.

I kid you not.

People are now having a very good time making fun of him, and not just for his odd capitalisation choices.

Shelton is encouraging people to buy his book “to find out what’s causing the left to engage in such a nasty and malicious demonisation”.

If you’d rather save your money and your sanity, here’s a quick recap: Shelton has long styled himself as a victim of political correctness and a soldier in the war against freedom of speech.

His favourite pastimes include getting triggered by marriage equality, advocating for gay conversion therapy, and railing against anti-bullying programs designed for vulnerable queer students.

He also claims being called a homophobe is a slur, because the man who has spent years actively lobbying to limit people’s rights is the true victim.

Shelton left the ACL in 2018 to pursue a career in politics, which was over before it started when he failed to get elected.

The term “culture war” is mostly used by rightwing commentators to give the illusion they’re fighting against a legitimate threat to society, rather than railing against a progressive movement that’s just trying to drag them kicking and screaming into the 21st century.

He’s taken some time this afternoon to response to some of the criticism, stating he wrote the book because “the left never engage with our arguments”. (you may recall that we actually had a long, national campaign and vote about Lyle’s argument, and he lost badly)

Apparently he’s under the illusion that opinions like ‘same sex marriage will create another stolen generation‘ have enough credibility that they deserve to be debated.

Lyle’s book announcement came on the same day that former PM Malcolm Turnbull released his memoir, which includes a section on his role in the marriage equality plebiscite.

Lyle apparently got his hands on a copy over the weekend and had some thoughts he decided to share the way he does best — by ranting into the Twitter void.

Stay tuned for the final version of Lyle’s book, which hopefully includes less typos than the cover.