Heterosexual Australia pricks up its ears
June 2009 may be remembered as the month same-sex marriage became an issue of genuine concern for mainstream Australia, starting with the release of Australian Marriage Equality’s Galaxy poll showing close to three in five Australians now support marriage rights for gays and lesbians.
Outside Melbourne’s The Age newspaper and The Canberra Times, interest had previously been lukewarm at best, with few SMH columnists taking up the issue and News Ltd relying largely on homosexual Catholics like Christopher Pearson and John Heard to provide both a religious and -˜gay’ opposition to the idea.
However a column by Fairfax’s Lisa Pryor opened a floodgate in Sydney, with discussion of the issue dominating the Sydney Morning Herald’s letters page for almost a week, while a blog on the subject by The West Australian’s Tiffany Fox attracted 177 comments.
The change in tone of the debate shows the Government’s refusal to defend its own policy is backfiring by leaving only religious groups to speak for it.
And being religious, they do so in religious terms, dredging up the sort of 1950s notions of marriage and family that alienate and offend large sections of Australian society -” atheists and agnostics, couples who are childless by choice, feminists, divorcees, adoptive parents and those who have or have grown up in blended families.
Mainstream Australia does not like having morality dictated to it by the churches, let alone in law, so what’s holding progress back?
According to The Times of London, support for same-sex marriage in the UK, which has had civil partnerships for close to four years, is running at 61 percent -” nearly neck and neck with us.
Yet Australia remains at least a decade behind Old Blighty, which is in the process of stripping public funding from church adoption agencies that refuse gay couples, and will soon remove religious groups’ ability to refuse to hire gay staff in all but priestly positions.
Historically, Britain’s Labour Party has had far less of a Papist streak than ours, and the UK’s Protestant churches have moved ahead on gay issues in leaps and bounds, making these changes possible.
Here a much larger and powerful Catholic lobby has a hold on the party, although more and more Labor MPs at a state level are speaking out on the issue.
For us, now that they’re interested, the next step is getting straights involved in the campaign. That means explicitly telling them they’re welcome -” and I don’t just mean the Green Left Weekly crowd.
This year’s National Day of Action, marching to the Labor Party’s National Conference in Darling Harbour, would be the perfect opportunity to have that happen.
Its all a bit too late. With the Marriage Legislation Amendment Bill (2004) passed with both Liberal and labor support.
This Campaign should have been run in 2004!!!!!
I mean ive heard of “GAY TIME”….but this is stupid!
Jason- “Yes the gay community should appeal more to the wider hetrosexual population but we should not have to, The average hetrosexual would have to be blind, deaf and drunk not to notice the prejudiced attitudes that we are facing.”
I think because of the anxiety we often have about straight people sharing our spaces, many well intentioned and sympathetic heterosexuals would feel wary about joining a gay rights march unless a specific call was made for straights to come out or unless they were invited and accompanied by a gay or lesbian person they knew. These days support for gay rights is so widespread that many of our straight supporters may not have a close gay friend or relative to take them along. A million Australians didn’t march over the Harbour Bridge for Reconciliation until they were asked for similar reasons.
At the moment our issues don’t have the sort of media exposure that Reconciliation, or the campaign against the Iraq War did, nor do they have a life-or-death sense of urgency attached to them as those two issues did. It doesn’t help that the popular stereotype is that we’re all successful DINKs.
A lot of our heterosexual allies probably feel as powerless as we do when faced with two major parties who’s support for our rights comes with a very definite “but…” and while the Government has Steven Fielding to contend with in the Senate.
Part of the problem with anti-gay discrimination is that too many heterosexuals keep noticing us. I wish gay-bashing thugs, homophobic comedians and religious fundamentalists would stop noticing us. The 2004 marriage legislation illustrates what I mean. Howard went out of his way to exclude same-sex couples from legally marrying in Australia. I don’t want the kind of attention people like him are giving us.
Last time I looked at a calendar it was 2009, come on Kevin Rudd, just allow the gays the marry mate. My best mate is gay and he deserves the same rights, obligations, benefits, entitlements, privileges as straight people take for granted everyday!!!!
Thanks for your response Andrew. Ok I conceed that not all hetrosexuls are ignoring us, but it just seems like they don’t give a toss, like we dont exist. Yes the gay community should appeal more to the wider hetrosexual population but we should not have to, The average hetrosexual would have to be blind, deaf and drunk not to notice the prejudiced attitudes that we are facing.
Australia is strange. The home of Mardi Gras and huge gay populations in Sydney and Melbourne, yet light years behind Canada on gay rights. I traveled to Sydney just over a year ago, and have never experienced so much anti-gay bullshit in a short time since high school. Someday I hope Australia will ditch its Christian Taliban “leadership” and grow the fuck up.
Jason- I don’t think “the straights” are ignoring us- just their politicians.
That being said, how much effort do we spend lobbying the straight community directly, educating them about our issues? Practically none if you ask me. Many heterosexuals I’ve met are shocked to learn that businesses owned by religious groups can still sack gay staff and expel gay students from their schools- they thought this had been fixed long ago.
The days of lobbyists quietly speaking to politicians behind closed doors are over. The major parties don’t have the guts to take on controversial issues and finish the job and unless there is a sense of urgency coming from the electorate that’s not going to change.
The one appeal to heterosexual Australia to support our rights I can think of in recent years was an ad campaign in The Australian newspaper organised by PFLAG- which itself is largely made up of heterosexual parents of GLBT people.
In the US, the gay community spends millions of dollars on newspaper, radio and TV advertising to get the message out every year. But here in Australia we’re yet to put our money where our mouth is.
If we put ads in mainstream newspapers inviting heterosexuals to protest in support of finishing the job on gay equality I have no doubt they’d do so in their thousands.
The alternative is to wait until so many countries have gay marriage that Australia starts to become a pariah amongst first world nations and the government is shamed into acting. Considering we have a Prime Minister who has said he will never allow same-sex marriage while he leads the country, that could take some time.
Personally I’d be happy to donate $500- maybe more, towards a final push for gay equality targeting mainstream Australia. We could use a provocative slogan like “ARE YOU SICK OF THE GAYS WHINGING ABOUT THEIR RIGHTS?” in big print to get people’s attention, and then below that “So are we- let’s settle this issue so that Australia can move forward and we can all get on with our lives”, and then explain in detail the remaining areas of discrimination with practical examples from life as to how people are effected.
David- you’re right there. And it would be a hell of a lot harder for paedophiles to hide in the Church if clergy were allowed to marry and gay and lesbian clergy could serve openly. The kiddie fiddlers would stick out like a sore thumb.
The Catholic Church is particularly vulnerable on the marriage issue. After all, if so-called traditional marriage is a wonderful God-given institution then many people ask why can’t Catholic clergy get married? Gays, not to mention single mothers, don’t like being dictated to by a bunch of sexist, homophobic hypocrites and reasonable straights are quite secure in their own marriages. They have no fears for their own sake if same-sex marriage is legislated.
Do the straights not realise that ignoring GLBT people is only going to create a dividing line in society ? At the end of the day we should not have to have our own radio stations and newspapers.