They said there would be no consequences. That was a lie.

Today marks one year since the Australian Bureau of Statistics announced the result of the Australian Marriage Law Postal Survey.

Australians voted 62 per cent to 38pc to change the definition of marriage, erasing an understanding of marriage that dates back millennia.

Marriage now no longer means a union exclusively between two people of the opposite sex. It can now be a union between any two people.

Despite love being deemed the only criteria for marriage, only the gender diversity restriction was changed with the numerical restriction left in place.

The role of marriage in fostering the protection of the primordial bond between children and their biological parents, wherever possible, was deemed irrelevant.

By extension we said yes to the idea that it is okay to deny some children their mother or father to satisfy desires of socially infertile same-sex couples.

Of course, the full benefits of “marriage equality” are yet to be legalised for two gay married men, as Australia bans their most viable way of accessing babies – commercial surrogacy.

But the Australian Human Rights Commission has been working on removing this last bastion of “prejudice” so that there can be a money trade in live babies and a rental market for women’s wombs.

Keep an eye out for State Governments moving to reform their surrogacy laws.

The victorious Yes campaign campaigned on the slogan “love is love” and ridiculed our campaign’s concerns that there would be far-reaching consequences for freedom of speech, freedom of religion and parents’ rights about what their children are taught at school.

Indeed, the likes of Tony Abbott’s sister Christine Forster, NSW MP Alex Greenwich and Irish import Tiernan Brady flat out denied there would be any consequences for the rights and freedoms of Australians who disagreed with the proposed new law.

Our assertions each week on Sky News that there would be ramifications were labelled “red herrings” and “furphies”.

Even long-time activist Rodney Croome, while urging the prosecution of Archbishop Julian Porteous for teaching Catholic teaching on marriage to Catholics, straightened his face long enough to deny there would be consequences.

The strategy was “whatever it takes” not to frighten the Australian community.

It has taken less than a year for Christian schools to become the canary in the coal mine in the post-same-sex marriage freedom wars.

After a barrage of fake news about expelling gay kids and sacking gay teachers, parents who send their children to these schools to be taught their faith and morals now face losing this precious freedom of choice.

Ironically, parents' rights to educate their children in their religious values is a human right enshrined in the United Nations Covenant of Civil and Political Rights.

But even the UN must bow to the rainbow warriors.

The debate has become so toxic that politicians are poised to capitulate to rainbow coercion and leave Christian schools with limited or possibly no capacity to uphold the Christian vision for marriage.

Imagine that. Christian schools criminalised for upholding the Christian vision of marriage. That is where Australia is headed unless the Morrison Government finds the resolve to stand up to this all-conquering political movement.

If a gay married teacher wanted to undermine a school’s ethos by flouting his relationship, his rights may well end up trumping the rights of parents to have their children educated in a community which upholds their beliefs about marriage.

It will be seen as heartless and cruel to deny a same-sex married couple attendance at school events by up-holding the pre-November 2017 vision of marriage.

Parents’ wishes for their children to be educated in an environment which upholds Christian marriage must be trampled.

But we were told no consequences.

Being free to uphold and exclusively teach the pre-November 2017 definition of marriage is not about devaluing other people, it is about the freedom to live out sincerely held beliefs.

The Greens political party are not required to hire people who do not believe in anthropogenic climate change. They can discriminate and suggest that such a person might find a better fit in another political party’s organisation.

The same is for people who disagree with the ethos of a Christian school. They don't have to be there. They are free to choose a school in line with their values rather than bend the values parents expect of a Christian school.

And while ever Christian parents pay taxes, they should be free to exercise freedom of choice in the education of their children. It is nonsense to assert that these taxpayers should be stripped of the right of every other taxpayer when it comes to funding the education of their children.

As John Howard said back in 2011, “changing the definition of marriage, which has lasted from time immemorial, is not an exercise in human rights and equality; it is an exercise in de-authorising the Judaeo-Christian influence in our society.”

Now Christian schools have become public enemy number one, their good name having been dragged through the mud.

Activists can’t abide the idea that schools can exist in Australia that decline to genuflect to the rainbow flag.

But this is just a pre-cursor to further attacks on Christianity and other religions which do not accept the rainbow view of the world.

But it is not just Christian schools in the firing line. Parents who send their children to government schools have also lost rights. It took just months for the link between redefining marriage and the necessity of radical queer theory being taught to children in state schools to be admitted.

Confronted by the media in April about revelations the “Safe Schools”-inspired “genderbread person” resource was being used in Queensland schools, education minister Grace Grace said: “No, it is not political correctness gone mad, this is reality. We have just had the biggest debate about marriage equality.”

Grace apparently didn’t get the memo from the Yes campaign which bent over backwards to distance de-gendering marriage from rainbow gender queer theory being taught in schools.

The Queensland Government also cited the marriage plebiscite result as reason for allowing parents the option of not allocating a gender on their babies’ birth certificates.

Where will the same-sex marriage-inspired gender madness end? Homosexual writer Benjamin Law, who famously last year said he wanted to “hate f….” conservative politicians, wrote in the Quarterly Essay that there were frontiers beyond same-sex marriage.

Welcome to the brave new rainbow world where your children will be indoctrinated.

Because state and federal anti-discrimination law recognises sexual orientation and gender identity as protected attributes, the redefinition of marriage in law has weaponised rainbow identity politics.

The pre-November 2017 view about marriage held by the 4.9 million Australians who voted no in the plebiscite, is now unlawful.

Living out this belief in public must now be punished.

With the Ruddock review of freedoms still under wraps, uncertainty remains - not just for Christian schools, but for anyone who dissents and who wants to stay away from tribunals and so-called human rights commissions.

What is certain is that rainbow activists will not rest until public resistance to their new frontier of gender fluid theory is crushed.

Activists have laced the Australian Labor party's platform, which is binding on MPs and Senators, with gender queer theory policy. If Bill Shorten becomes Prime Minister there will be a LGBTIQA commissioner at the Australian Human Rights Commission. This means a rainbow cop on the beat to police those of us who uphold a biological view of gender and marriage.

Same-sex marriage didn’t just bestow a right to same-sex couples celebrate their love. It redefined the basic group unit of society changing forever the idea that mothers and fathers matter to their children.

De-gendering marriage has also turbocharged queer theory in schools and the wider society, upending what it means to be human - male or female.

But hey, no consequences.

Lyle Shelton was a director of and spokesman for the Coalition for Marriage. He is currently a Queensland Senate candidate for the Australian Conservatives.