 So, we are now equal! Thirty-six years
after South Australia
became the first Australian state to decriminalise homosexuality, a federal
government agreed it was about time to address discriminatory laws against
same-sex couples.
Hooray, I think?
There’s no denying it’s a huge victory.
Given that it’s thanks to a handful of people who spend their downtime nutting
out strenuous campaigns and wrestling with politicians for relatively little
thanks, it’s probably more of a miracle. Thank God for the activists who make
this a better world for you and me to live in, but when you heard the federal
Attorney General’s announcement, did the earth move for you?
It was something of a flat moment for me
because it sounded like this: Ok,
we will remove same-sex discrimination, BUT YOU CAN
FORGET ABOUT GETTING MARRIED AND JUST IN CASE YOU DIDN’T GET IT THE FIRST TIME
DON’T THINK THIS IS ABOUT MARRIAGE, AND BY THE WAY YOU-ARE-NOT-NOW-NOR-EVER-GOING-TO-GET-MARRIED.
Oh really? Excuse me while I lift the
weight of those words off my chest; it’s a little hard to breathe.
The emphatic and repetitive tone taken by
the Attorney General preemptively calming the ‘masses’ who apparently have to
be overwhelmingly reassured that the gays will never be able to wed was, to say
the least, a little harsh. It was reminiscent of Brendan Nelson’s back-handed
performance after Kevin Rudd’s apology to the Stolen Generations; it was
inappropriate and unnecessary.
We are all painfully aware of Rudd’s stance
on gay marriage: he’s not into it and never will be. He doesn’t even want
something that ‘mimics’ marriage, like a civil union with a legal ceremony for
instance. A tiny little ceremony, a vow here, an ‘I do’ there, is being denied
to us because apparently the sky would fall in and heterosexuals would no
longer want to be part of a sacred institution because it would have been
bastardised by the gays. It’s astounding how much power you have just by sleeping
with someone of the same sex!
And the church is once again proving itself
to be a bitter old cow. Church leaders say they too agree to the reforms (gee,
thanks) even though they’re a little concerned about the cost. I know, equality
is so expensive; but they welcome the
government’s decision to refuse same-sex couples an official ceremony.
Now, I’m not sure how that’s meant to make
me feel, but homicidal is a word that springs to mind.
And Kevin’s little echo, Brendan, loves
Kevin’s work too, but goes slightly harder on the anti gay marriage approach.
He’s like a dominant bottom to Kevin’s submissive top. He’s charmless, and
appears to like it that way. Kevin likes it that way too. They’re achieving
what Bush and Howard could only dream about, given that they were divided by
geography and not just a party line.
However, some gays don’t want to get
married, and don’t seem to realise that it wouldn’t actually be compulsory. The
fundamentalists love gays who are opposed to marriage. In fact that’s one of
their key arguments when they’re lobbying governments about why gays shouldn’t
be able to marry. “Many gays don’t want it,” they say, and the government
listens.
It’s an unfortunate fact that the last
thing the Christian lobby needs is more ammunition, and it’s a stark reality
that the last thing we need to be doing is handing it to them.
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