Now If you’re a New Zealander  reading this I should hopefully not have to give you a background report of what I’m about to talk about. This post is a behind current affairs, but I wanted to see how things shaked out in the media first to make sure I wasn’t covering old ground.

For all of those who aren’t: Recently a bill has come up in parliament about redefining marriage, making us the 15th country to allow gay marriage. Homosexuality was abolished as a crime in 1986. In 2004 we passed a thing called Civil Unions, but it’s not quite up to scratch and isn’t internationally recognized (although we recognize people coming into the country who have a similar contract).
Now I’m not here to discuss the finer points of this debate. I am admittedly conservative, so my opinion of this matter is obviously skewed, as is everyones opinion (apart from maybe an alien who’s come over here to tell us he’s pissed about us dropping an atomically powered RC car on his red planet.)
I consider the internet my home, as nerdy as that may be. So I’m fiercely interested in things that happen on it. I was angry about SOPA. I’m angry about chinas big arse firewall, and I watched with fascination as human beings have been reduced to their base nature as the internet mercilessly mauled them.
I also care about politics and democracy and all that  free speech stuff. I guess that’s kind of apparent by the SOPA/Chinese firewall thing.

So when I heard that the protect marriage site went down due to a DoS attack I was instantly sifting in to see what was going on. It seems that opposition to the site is strong. Or at least strong enough for a dude to do a denial of service attack. In the past I have been sympathetic to the perpetrators of these sorts of things. Like when Anonymous DoS’d Visa, Mastercard, Paypal and Amazon in 2011. They did this because these companies suddenly decided that people couldn’t donate to the wikileaks guy. Effectively telling people what to do with their own money. It’s like your mum locking down your internet banking because you aren’t patriotic enough.

However, in the case of Protectmarriage.org.nz they’re collecting signatures, and creating easy methods for people to get in contact with their MPs to tell them what their opinion was of the situation. The content on the site isn’t hateful. No squealing about how the gay virus is spreading or anything like that. What the DoS attack did was interrupt democratic process, silencing people from voicing their opinions. This is something that can’t and shouldn’t be tolerated no matter which side of the debate you are on. Stopping people from signing a petition is just plain wrong, and who ever was behind the attack is just giving the same sex marriage supporters a bad name. The only reason I bring this up is because no one else seems to have mentioned it, or viewed it in this light (other than the victims of the attack.)

People have a right to say what they think. If you disagree with the redefinition, say something, or better yet, do something. If you are for the change, go tell your local PM that you are behind him 100% of the way (but not behind him in a gay way, more like a supportive way.)