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 Doug Pollard looks at the roles played by politics, law and the entertainment industry in our struggle for equality, and asks, are we running out of steam?
When Kevin Rudd was elected on a promise to enact all the recommendations of the HREOC report ‘Same Sex Same Entitlements’, and then when the government went further and said it would amend 100 discriminatory laws in total, it seemed for a moment as if the world had changed.
Since then, reality has set in. The opposition began to obstruct the government’s reform efforts,and - as many of us had warned - tackling discrimination against same sex couples law by law meant battles have to be fought afresh each time.
Neither the government nor the opposition supports the ultimate goal of same-sex couple recognition - namely same-sex marriage - claiming it would be political suicide. The Australian public is apparently ‘not ready’ for such a move.
Polling seems to show a clear majority support ‘equality’ (so long as no-one spells out exactly what that is), but only the barest majority support gay marriage.
Ranged against us are the Catholic church, which wields enormous influence within both the Liberal and Labor parties; the Australian Christian Lobby, which has the ear of both the present and previous Prime Minister; and most if not all Muslim clerics.
The Australian Christian Lobby is extremely well-funded, well-organized and disciplined, with a highly motivated membership. They can and do mount mass letter-writing campaigns in support of their viewpoint. They have a very simple message - no gay marriage, no gay adoption, and no gay IVF - which has been taken up by Brendan Nelson.
The message from the gay lobby is not so simple. We agree we want equality, but we don’t agree on what equality looks like. Some want gay marriage, some don’t. Some will accept registration, others hate the concept.
This puts us at a disadvantage.
Nor do we speak with one clear voice. Instead we have a mosaic of state-based and issue-based organizations.
The message coming from Canberra says the public will accept ‘equality’ but ‘isn’t ready’ for same-sex marriage – ‘maybe in ten years time’.
Activist Rodney Croome says: “That is what many people are saying. However, the experience overseas is that marriage equality is the type of reform which actually is much closer than it seems. The conditions in Australia are far more favourable at the moment then they were in Holland, Belgium or Spain when reform occurred. Ten years is a very pessimistic view. With consistent campaigning I'd say five is more likely.”
And let’s not forget that even if we do achieve same-sex marriage, that’s not the end of the equality battle. Many other areas of discrimination against individuals will still need to be tackled.
So much for politics. What about the law?
The British philosopher and political economist, John Stuart Mill, in his famous treatise On Liberty, wrote that society must have a means of protecting minorities against ‘the tyranny of prevailing opinion and feeling’.
Such limiting mechanisms are either absent or severely dysfunctional in Australia, making it hard for us to achieve progress towards equality via the courts.
In the US, protection is afforded by the Constitution, the Bill of Rights and the Supreme Court. Using these mechanisms, Massachusetts and California achieved gay marriage, and the state of New York passed laws recognising overseas same-sex marriages. And because California does not have a residence requirement for same-sex marriage (unlike Massachusetts), other US state courts will soon be full of couples who were legally married in California and want recognition back home.
We have no such mechanisms in Australia. We do not yet have a Bill of Rights or a Human Rights Act with which to override ‘the tyranny of the majority’, as Mill called it.
Court action on marriage is blocked. When same-sex couples who married overseas attempted to use the Australian courts to have their marriages recognized here, John Howard moved swiftly to amend the Marriage Act to specifically exclude gay couples.
An Australian Bill of Rights could provide a means to strike down laws – like the amended Marriage Act – if the courts found them to be unjust. There’s no sign of one any time soon.
So how about the arts - specifically mass entertainment, and in particular television - as a means to press home our agenda?
Gay characters on film and TV used to be sinister villains, or camp figures of fun.
From 1972-85 John Inman had huge success as Mr Humphries, in Are You Being Served? The show was the most popular on British TV for many years, and Mr Humphries the most popular character, but the writers always denied he was gay, saying he was ‘just a mother’s boy’.
An avowedly gay character who reached a huge mainstream audience was Jodie Dallas, played by Billy Crystal, in the sitcom Soap, which ran in the US from 1977-81 (and screened here on Nine). Its premiere episode was seen by 39% of the US national audience, and the character launched Crystal’s career.
But in those early days it seemed as if realistic gay characters were a turn-off. Jodie Dallas eventually turned straight. And when Ellen De Generes (and her sitcom character) came out in 1997, her show was dropped, and her career went into a tailspin.
Then things began to change. Hard on the heels of Ellen came the hugely successful Will & Grace (1998-2006), which had a bet each way. A non-camp non-stereotypical gay man, with a stereotypical, camp, unstable, promiscuous mincing queen for a friend. Never mind that Will a) lived with a woman and b) didn’t seem to actually have a gay life; the show improved our image enormously.
Researchers at the University of Minnesota reported that the show was effective in lessening anti-gay prejudice – the more episodes people with no gay acquaintances watched, the less prejudiced they became. If people had gay friends already, it made little difference.
Still, commercial television remained afraid to upset audiences and advertisers, preferring their gays to be either sexless or stereotypical.
The big change came through cable television. Freed from the necessity to pander to a mainstream white-bread audience, and freed also from the stifling censorship of free-to-air broadcasting, gay characters could at last really come out of the closet.
And they came out with a bang in Queer As Folk (based on the 1999 UK series), The L-Word, and the crossover hit ‘reality’ show, Queer Eye for The Straight Guy, which was based on the premise that gay men are inherently more stylish, intelligent and cultured than their knuckle-dragging straight counterparts. Suddenly we were back to queeny and campy.
There isn’t space here to mention all the gay characters who have popped up on television since then; nor the real gay women and men who have appeared in reality TV shows such as The Block, Big Brother and The Amazing Race; nor the important films, notably Brokeback Mountain; or the out and proud actors, musicians, sportspeople and others who have all played their part in reducing prejudice and building the mainstream support that we need if we are ever to achieve equality.
But 2005/6 seems to have been the high water mark for gay and lesbian characters on television, with no new gay shows and fewer gay characters since.
“Certainly a few years ago television discovered, and indeed celebrated, the openly gay man in reality, lifestyle formats,” says critic David Knox, of the influential blog TV Tonight. “Now they are effectively a cliché often sought for the witty quip. [Only] a handful of dramatic roles (The Circuit, Skins, Torchwood) delve deeper.
“But at their expense are many sub-groups still lacking representation: where are the women, seniors, ethnic gays, transgenders and anyone who isn't upper middle class? TV still hearts pretty, young, white males.”
Meanwhile Carson Kressley has turned into Mr Humphries, New York style.
The last remaining bastion still to fall, and probably the most important for our acceptance in Australian society, is sport. This is one area where the lesbians are well ahead of the boys, with players in many sports coming out mid-career, like Amelie Mauresmo.
The men lag behind. Despite Ian Roberts’ example, no rugby player has come out since, and we still don’t have any gay AFL icons. The football codes are slowly beginning to address anti-gay attitudes in their ranks, but they’ve a way to go.
What does all this mean for our prospects in the next few years?
It’s looking increasingly likely that the government’s push for same-sex equality will get watered down in deals to get it through the Senate.
A Bill of Rights, which would open the way to improve our status through the courts, looks a long way off.
And popular culture seems to have decided that we’re not so interesting just at present.
In our own community, the momentum that drew thousands onto the streets for the first Equal Love Rallies has dissipated – though that may change when, as I suspect, the government ends up delivering rather less than we expect of them.
We can but hope.
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Hitting the buffers
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