May 03, 2005
Gay Marriage? Why, Don’t Mind If They Do!
WARNING - EXCESSIVELY LONG AND RANTING POST
Last night I’d planned to pop over to the trendy side of Sydney and check out a Same-Sex Marriage Forum being held at the Newtown Hotel, but - and I say this with great shame - I fell asleep and woke up about fifteen minutes after it had started. Boo, me! Of course, it did ensure I got to fully blog the Logies experience and for that I will forever hate myself be eternally grateful.
Turns out the evening was - well, interesting to say the least. According to people at the meeting, the Gay and Lesbian Rights Lobby were rather aggressive when it came to shooting down the idea of gay folk getting hitched.
As I mentioned though, I wasn’t at the event so I won’t presume to describe what went on. Instead, I’d like to publish a letter from Greens member (and tree hugging nemesis of Peter Garrett during the election, bless her!) Hannah Robert, who wrote the following to Lesbians On The Loose, the Sydney Star Observer and SX News and gave me kind permission to reproduce the letter on ausculture.com
(from a placard at one of the New York rallies for Same-Sex Marriage)
I attended the Same-Sex Marriage Forum hosted by the Greens on Sunday night and I was amazed to see representatives of the Gay and Lesbian Rights Lobby arguing against a proposal to campaign for state-based marriage equality. It is a proposal developed by the Tassie Greens, with assistance from experienced lobbyist Rodney Croome and constitutional law expert Professor George Williams and received strong support from the other community groups attending the meeting - Australian Marriage Equality and Community Action Against Homophobia - as well as from the packed audience. So why is it that the NSW Gay and Lesbian Rights Lobby seems to be the only LGBTI lobby in Australia that won’t explicitly support marriage equality?
Much of their arguments seemed to be based on a legal misconception of state-based marriage law as inherently inferior to federal-based marriage. Many people seem to be unaware that until 1959, all marriages were state-based, and marital status created at state level was recognised in Federal legislation. Similarly, there are current legal relationships created under State law - such as adoptions - which are recognised under Federal law. While the fight for federal recognition of LGBTI relationships continues, State-based LGBTI marriages could be an important step along the way, complimenting the State-level campaigns for parenting rights and removal of the discrimination exemptions for private schools and small businesses.
Whether marriages are created at State or Federal level, there is still a swathe of Federal law which contains its own relationship definitions which would need to be amended for full marriage equality. If we did win the battle for State-based LGBTI marriage, we would still need to campaign for Federal recognition, but in the meantime, we would have legal LGBTI marriages with all the benefits that entails at State level. Winning the State battle would further highlight the Federal discrimination, and would increase pressure on the Federal Parliament to amend its recognition provisions in Federal laws.
More importantly, the possibility of state-based LGBTI marriages creates the space for more public debate on marriage and recognition of LGBTI relationships and families. It means that instead of being reactive, and letting neo-conservatives get us on the back foot, we can mount a positive pro-active campaign.
It worries me that some members of the Gay and Lesbian Rights Lobby appeared to feel that because they personally didn’t see marriage as a priority, they would do all they could to prevent anyone else campaigning for it. The LBGTI community has enough enemies without our very own Lobby trying to shut down campaigns for our rights. Marriage remains one of the clearest and most obvious areas of discrimination against LGBTI people - shouldn’t the removal of that discrimination be an important part of the Lobby’s work? Marriage is more than just symbolism - it is a “one stop shop” for the best and most complete relationship rights and responsibilities available under Australian law - including parenting rights at a state level for example. Of course not everyone will choose to get married, and of course we will fight for the relationship rights of people who choose not to marry, but the very fact that we - like interracial couples under Apartheid in South Africa - cannot marry renders us second class citizens under the law and gives homophobes and bigots the impression that the law is on their side.
I know that most of LGBTI people I know share that queasy feeling when we get invited to celebrate a hetero relative or friend’s wedding - being reminded again that we are not considered full people under the law, capable of marrying our partner of choice. Not everyone in our community wants to get married, but we’d at least like to have the option, and the legal status of full personhood which comes with it. Fighting for our rights has never been, and never will be, a battle we win by going “softly softly”. If the Gay and Lesbian Rights Lobby don’t have the guts to fight for our equality on this key issue, can’t they at least let other people who do get on with the campaign?
Word.
Now, I’m no political dynamo, legal eagle or pot-smoking hairy legged woman activist cliche - I’m just a girl, standing in front of a boy, asking him to love her. No wait, that was Julia Roberts in Notting Hill. Ahem.
Where was I?
Oh yes. I like to think of myself as an average sort of gal, someone who is guided through life by a tiny moral compass lodged deep in my bleeding heart. I have no plans to marry a woman (unless that special someone decides to let me woo ‘em - Angelina, I’m looking at you here!) so the following statement is based solely on my perception of all that is fair and good and right.
WHY ON EARTH ARE WE NOT LETTING GAYS AND LESBIANS GET MARRIED?
I’m so very, very confused!
We’ll let teens do it, we’ll let criminals do it, we’ll let the hideously stupid do it, we’ll let the divorced do it, and for Christ’s sake - we’ll let J.Lo do it to her heart’s content. To be fair, J.Lo is America’s problem but still. As many people have said in the past, the sanctity of marriage seem more in need of being saved from heterosexuals rather than for them.
But we don’t save it from them, because hey - it’s their right to love whoever the hell they want, with as many people as they want (though one at a time, you crazy Mormons!) and as many times as they want. They can commit to their beloved in the nude, mid-air, underwater, in a Vegas chapel or even online (though one suspects that last one may not hold water anywhere but an MSN chatroom) and it’s all good.
Put a bloke and a bloke together at the altar though and all of a sudden marriage is a spluttering endangered seal pup looking up at the evil homosexual movement with big brown eyes of sadness as the club of gay marriage prepares to smash its way through its skull for a lark - and maybe a delightfully fashionable fur coat post-brutal bashing.
You’re reeling from my astoundingly stupid metaphor right now, so I’ll give you a moment to get yourself together.
Ready?
I can’t think of one good reason why we should deny homosexuals the legal right to marry in a country they live in and work in and pay taxes in. Not one. It strikes me as rather odd that the conservatives out there froth at the mouth if someone like an Aboriginal gets “special treatment” from the Government in regards to welfare or benefits, screaming that no one group should get special privileges or benefits above another community group and yet apparently if you’re a filthy flaming faggot who wants to hook up with your cock sucking boyfriend, or a dirty man-hating dyke who simply needs to meet the right man, it’s important to ensure heterosexuals - also known as another ‘community group’ - get special treatment. Yeah, that makes sense. Nice work, conservative folk!
Please note that I’m not talking about getting married in the Catholic Church here. In a way, I kind of understand why the Church doesn’t allow gay folk to get married.
Whoa, nelly - don’t get me wrong. My God digs love in whatever form it takes. My God has bigger things to deal with than whether there are two marzipan groomsmen on the top of a wedding cake on someone’s special day. My God shakes his head at half the rubbish that is done in ‘His’ name, and views Christian folk in the US who throw rattlesnakes in the air to prove their devotion and belief in him as the earthly equivalent of a Darwin Awards email forward.
But the Catholic Church does pride itself on following that big ol’ book of fun known as The Bible, and - bless its antiquated heart - said book does explicitly say “Gay are bad, mmmkay?” in the Old Testament.
Yes, if the Catholic Church wants to ensure they follow the Bible to a T, then I guess we can’t really complain. We can think it’s stupid, we can decide to make up our own minds about it and ignore it because it doesn’t ring true in our hearts, but until the day the institution of the Church decides to focus on the bigger message Jesus tried to spread (in short, “Dudes! Be cool to each other! Love is good, and God loves you!”) rather than the fussy details provided by prophets years before The Big J turned up (in short, “He said seven days, he MEANT seven days! Shrimp sucks! Bacon is evil, y’all! Periods are gross! Gays smell! I’ll covet you in a minute!”) I suppose we should just sit back, shake our head with a condescending smile, and get on with our lives.
I mean, really - imagine if some guy from this day and age walked off the street and into a crowded room and announced that God had plans to smite the lot of us if we continued eating pig products. He’d be institutionalised within the hour. Prophets didn’t stop appearing on earth and giving us advice, they just got heavily medicated and transfered to hospitals where we’d never need to hear of their crazy “instructions” from God again.
As per usual, I digress. I guess what I’m saying is that the Catholic Church, for right or wrong, has its reasons for not allowing homosexuals to get married and one day they may decide to look past them, and maybe one day hell will freeze over. Complaining about it, while understandable if you’re a Catholic who longs to take part in the religion you love despite the fact your homosexuality may make you feel like an outcast, is sort of (in a totally different way, really, but whatever) like being a Hindu who likes to eat beef, or a Jew who likes to mix meat and dairy. You’re breaking the rules, and the rules are part of the religion - it’s really up to you to decide whether you want to follow it to the letter or not. You know in your own heart what is right for you.
That said - we don’t live in a country where religious laws dictate our civil laws. According to this snazzy, easy-to-understand-for-imbeciles-like-myself website -
Oh, good. So what all the religions think about homosexuality is irrelevant, right? Our rainbow brothers and sisters are citizens of this country and deserve to be treated equally under the law, right? They should be afforded the same legal rights and privileges as their heterosexual chums who decide to wed civilly with no religious aspect to the ceremony whatsoever, right? It’s not like legalising gay marriage is going to force all the homosexuals who don’t want to “imitate breeders” to get hitched, is it? It’s not like all the straight folk are going to get forced at dimonte-studded gunpoint to marry someone of the same sex, agreed?
I don’t know what I’m missing. It strikes me as a fundamentally obvious thing to allow, and here we are - it’s 2005 and I still can’t go and watch friends who are madly in love and committed to each other get married under the law of the country they live in. And yet you just know Bec Cartwright’s gonna be entitled to at least three or four weddings before Woman’s Weekly expresses even the slightest disapproval.
Gay marriage haters, please explain what I’m just not getting. I know it’s late and I’ve been rambling, but deadset - I just cannot comprehend where you’re coming from. At all.
PS: Potential respondents - please do not interpret my silence during work hours tomorrow as a lack of response to your arguments - I will be reading them eagerly via email (should you choose to attempt to explain your perspective to me) but unable to comment due to the whole work-banning-ausculture.com issue.
Posted by Jess at May 3, 2005 12:32 AM— Filed under Common
Comments / Trackbacks (URI)
Jess Culture, it has really struck me after reading this that we are so lucky to have someone as fervent and smart as you on our side. And your support isn’t even borne of self-interest. Which makes it all the more impressive. Fop salutes you this day.
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yay YOU!
oh you have definitely earned yourself a small walk-on tambourine-shaking role in whatever nuptuals, legal or otherwise, the state allows when el prima and I walk down the aisle!
and i love the bit about the prophets!
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beautifull put, jess.
we’ll make a pot-smoking hairy legged woman activist cliche out of you yet!
waxes legs
please buzz my phone if there are similar conferences you plan to attend in future. i’ll be your date. in a mate’s way. a mate who’s pashed ya!
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You go girlfriend. I’m with you, i can’t fathom the reasons against gay marriage, except for those religious zealots.
I wrote a bit about it on me blog back when Bush was on his gay marriage banning campaign.
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Well put. In fact, magnificently put, Jess.
I fundamentally don’t get it, either. How preventing people from getting married “saves” marriage is beyond me.
Why fundy religious objections to gay marriage should in turn be enacted in civil laws… it’s just horribly, horribly wrong.
In fact, if you get married in Australia now, under Howard’s “reforms” to the marriage act last year, you MUST have the celebrant say “Marriage is a union between ONE MAN AND ONE WOMAN for life to the exclusion of all others”. If you don’t, then you haven’t complied with the Act and your marriage is arguably invalid.
(We added words to ours; we had the celebrant say “or two people” quickly after the “one man and one woman” bit.)
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clap, clap, clap (that’s the intellectual version of fap, fap, fap)
The whole “it will destroy the sacred whatever of marriage” wank peturbs me. I know so many lovely gay people who’d do more for the institution and reputation of the sacred whatever of marriage than a helluva lot of the straight people I know.
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Hi there,
Just discovered you blog. I was one of the Speakers at the Forum on Sunday night. As a person who is getting married to another Man this September in Canada I was rather upset by the NSW GLRL who have made it clear they are not going to even look further into the possibilities of State Same-Sex Marriage.
Yes State based marriage is by no means perfect. However it is a FANTASTIC start and people behind this bill, the Tasmanian Greens and Rodney Croome have worked very hard to find this loop hole.
Thank you for your wonderful blog. If you would like to join to campaign for Same-Sex marriage in NSW or Australia join AME www.australianmarriageequality.com
and come on board the tide of change!
Regards, Luke Gahan
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Not having gone to this forum (minor geographic problem caused by living in Melbourne), I’m equally in the dark about what went on - although Queer Penguin has a useful summary of the events of on his blog.
This is certainly an interesting stance made by the NSW GLRL - and one which will require a lot of hard work to convince GLBIT people not to support state-based marriage legislation - given the amount of sentimentality which is wrapped up in marriage as a concept, and our constant goose-gander approach to legal reforms.
I have some thoughts on gay marriage over on my blog which you might like to comment on.