The new campaign against marriage equality is following the trend of being a cliché combination of worn out and false arguments.

Back in March of this year, we saw the premier of a controversial and down right insulting advertisement against same-sex marriage. Put out by the Australian Marriage Forum, the ad ran on channels 7 and 9 and was schedule to run during the Sydney Mardi Gras Parade until one channel refused to show it. The anti marriage equality ad “warned” the public that allowing same-sex couples the right to wed would “force a child to miss out on a mother or a father.”

The advertisement did not air frequently and was met with severe backlash from the public, including a Change.org petition being set up.

Now, five months later, there is another advertisement set to be released in a last ditch effort to stop the inevitable legalisation of same-sex marriage. The Marriage Alliance believes that this campaign will help Australian citizens feel comfortable about “voicing their concerns” over same-sex marriage.

This new campaign, launched on Sunday 2 August,  is nothing more than a scare tactic, and a bad one at that. The slogan is “There’s more to it than you think”, and shows the words “Same Sex Marriage” in the shape of an iceberg. The ad implies that by legalising same-sex marriage children will be affected as well as adults losing certain legal rights. These arguments are the same arguments we have been seeing for years.

Ivan Hinton-Teoh , the deputy director of Australian Marriage Equality, which has been fighting for marriage equality, stated that “This kind of desperate, eleventh hour scaremongering has failed to stop the momentum for marriage equality in other countries and it will fail in Australia as well.”

Australian Marriage Equality has kicked off their own television campaign, releasing teasers and setting up a GoFundMe page. With just two weeks to go until the House of Representatives sees the introduction of a cross-party bill, gaining visibility about the importance of marriage equality is extremely high.