‘Don’t exclude Liberals from Mardi Gras’: a response
Image: Image: Ann-Marie Calilhanna.
Jessica Ison’s recent piece ‘Our community has a short memory: why Liberals shouldn’t have marched in Mardi Gras’ caught my eye.
As a gay man who also happens to be a member of the Liberal party, I guess that was inevitable.
In her article, Ison applauds the action of the activist group ‘The Department of Homo Affairs’ for “disrupting” the parade, and protesting the inclusion of the Liberal float.
She goes further, arguing that Liberals should be excluded from Mardi Gras and expresses the hope that next year we “are not there at all.”
It is not clear if Ison is simply asking us to not turn up, wants the Liberal float banned, or is advocating for a kind of McCarthyist inquisition for anyone registering for the parade: ‘Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of the Liberal
Party?’
In any case, she appears to believe that we do not belong at Mardi Gras, and has taken it upon herself to tell us so.
I was not at Mardi Gras this year. I have taken part in the parade with Liberal Pride before, and always found it be a great experience.
They are a supportive, fun, and inclusive group.
In the past I have found the crowds to be mostly glad to see us, and apart from some fairly gentle joshing, the vibe from the other groups is usually positive.
Personally, I enjoy the interaction. From what friends and colleagues who were there this year tell me, The Department of Homo Affairs was not especially disruptive.
For what it is worth, they sound to me to be totally in keeping with the subversive nature of Mardi Gras, and I support their right to be there and to protest peacefully.
Ison is right about Mardi Gras being a political event with protest at its heart. But this is exactly why Liberals should be there.
It is entirely appropriate for the policies of the Liberal party, and indeed of any other parties, to be protested at Mardi Gras.
However, excluding a legally registered political party from the event is something else. Missing from Ison’s piece is any acknowledgment that LGBTI Liberals actually exist. We do. We are part of the community that she speaks of, but seeks to exclude us from.
We, like you, were at the coal face of the struggle for equal marriage.
Between 2015 and 2017 there were a range of views on the wisdom of holding a marriage plebiscite within the party and within Liberal Pride.
I strongly opposed because I felt it went against liberalism itself, which holds that a minority groups rights should never be subject to the electoral whim of the majority.
I had plenty of debate with colleagues over this. Some shared my view, many did not.
Despite this disparity in views we never lost sight of the fact we were working towards the same goal.
Once it was clear the vote was going ahead I campaigned strongly for Yes because it was the right thing to do.
I don’t need to be lectured by anyone on the pain caused by the plebiscite because I lived it too. We all did.
I know there is still pain out there and I would not try to dismiss it. However, I also see a lot of joy particularly among couples marrying and making plans to marry.
Some Liberals have struck an overly triumphant note in characterising marriage equality as purely a Liberal victory.
There is some frustration at this among the broader LGBTI community. I understand that frustration, and I say to my Liberal friends that in claiming our rightful share of the achievement, we also have to own our share of the process, which was at times extremely ugly.
Certain sections of the Coalition and the ALP alike allowed the issue to become politicised.
However, the fact remains that the reform was achieved under a Liberal-National government.
The highest Yes votes were recorded in Liberal voting electorates, with the highest No vote being recorded in Labor held electorates.
The bill that made marriage equality possible was drafted by Liberal Senator Dean Smith, a constitutional conservative and gay man.
Is Ison seriously arguing that he should not march? What of Tim Wilson, Trent Zimmerman, and Christine Forester?
What of our straight ally Warren Entsch who was supporting this issue long before the Greens? Should he be excluded from Mardi Gras?
And what of LGBTI young people of conservative and liberal persuasion for who Liberal Pride provides a safe environment to encounter Mardi Gras for the first time – should they be excluded?
Another quality absent from Ison’s analysis is consistency.
If the Liberals should be excluded from Mardi Gras what of Labor? The ALP had years in government to legislate marriage equality, but failed to do so.
One could extend this point to Ison’s criticism of the government’s asylum seeker policy.
By all means protest it, but seeking to ban Liberals from the parade is a little rich when you remember that Labor also supports offshore detention and boat turn backs. Is the ALP to be excluded too?
As Ison herself writes, “Mardi Gras started as a protest as well as a celebration and that is what it should still be.”
Like any Liberal, I support the right of peaceful protest. Both mine and yours.
However, protest ceases to be peaceful when it calls for the exclusion of others because we happen to disagree with their point of view.
Let’s go to Mardi Gras and protest our rights. Let’s talk to each other to find areas of agreement. Where we disagree, let’s do so without being disagreeable.
Above all let’s not seek to exclude each other either from the parade or from our shared community. Let us also celebrate what we have achieved together.
Cam Hawker is a Canberra-based academic and Liberal party member. These are his personal views.
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I suspect many LGBTI who support the Liberals are very politically naive. Virtually all gay law reform was enacted by the ALP, thats a fact.
The Dept of Homo Affairs wasn’t about the yes vote and the Liberals’ plebiscite: it was about heinous refugee policy, which both the Liberal party and the ALP have a hand in, but at the end of the day, only one float could be chosen. You totally missed the point on refugee policy, did you not see what the banner said? What a waste of an article.
I’m with the last cooment – the liberals undertook a process that is one of the most disruptive to any community I’ve seen in my 52 years (although there are others, like the NT intervention and other generally Lib policies).
I’m not saying never march, and I think we have a special place for Dean who was so vocal publicly against the opinion poll.
The rest of you should not have marched. Not because you should never march. But because you are signed up members of an organization that put us through hell when there was ZERO reason to do so, and now try to claim a victory after spending unnecessary millions.
For this parade you should have hung your heads in shame and stayed well away. I don’t care what you did personally. You choose to be a signed up member of a party that treated us like shit. you don’t get to redeem yourself by campaigning for yes. And you certainly should have had more compassion and emotional intelligence than to think it appropriate to march this year.
The ALP has done more overall in our lifetime to support LGBTIQI people, legislate for them, understand them and support them. The Liberals have done nothing. Ok there are gay Liberals around – live with it.
It’s a bit of a mixed bag with Labor, like the Liberals. Don Dunstan was an outstanding reformer in the 1970s, on the other hand PM’s Rudd and Gillard showed zero leadership other than Gillard supporting a conscience vote. Labor could have adopted marriage equality as binding but that would really have politicised the issue in an environment where the Liberals just flat-out opposed marriage equality in their platform.
But if the pro-individual-rights Liberals had allowed a conscience vote at any time between late 2011 and late 2017 then we’d have had marriage equality without a plebiscite based on everyone’s best read of the numbers across the Parliament.
And that’s the problem with this article. The fact is that in the UK reforms like decriminalising homosexuality in the late 60s, a full generation before the last Australian state, came about thanks to BIPARTISAN support and conscience votes. Marriage equality happened under conservative rule in NZ and the UK precisely because it was depoliticised. The Australian Liberals were the last hold-out, no matter how hard this article tries to pretend otherwise with partisan bullshit and half-truths and irrelevant talking points about which electorates voted No while ignoring which Coalition politicians had pro-SSM electorates but abstained from the Parliamentary vote.
So who brought in anti discrimination laws? I know in Victoria that it was the Liberals. Maybe that was not ‘in your lifetime’? And Labour was in power for many years, and did not change the marriage law. Who cares about free vote, if they did not amend the law. I will vote for either party, and usually gay policies have a lower priority than economic policies…..
I’m not Victorian but from my reading of the Victorian Equal Opportunity Commission website sexual orientation didn’t become covered under anti-discrimination legislation until 2000. (https://www.humanrightscommission.vic.gov.au/home/the-law/equal-opportunity-act/35-years-of-equal-opportunity-law-in-victoria). Steve Bracks was Premier from 1999. Was he a Liberal? Only you seem to think so. Or perhaps you’re too young to remember.
The point is not which party is better. Both have good and bad. But as we have seen throughout the last 50 years all over the world, gay rights are best advanced when bipartisanship and conscience votes are allowed. Labor didn’t allow a conscience vote prior to 2011, sure, but it was the release valve which would have opened the way for the Parliament to have resolved it at any time between 2011 and 2017 with no damaging public No campaign. The Libs, who constantly remind us they are the party of individual liberty, refused to take part in a conscience vote until an unprecedented plebishite had occurred and even the Liberal author of this article agrees that was a crappy move.
If you think Labor should have changed the law without the support of any Liberals (and this could have happened if the ALP had a binding position and the Greens were on board) then fine but ask yourself what would have happened next. What would have happened is then-opposition-leader Tony Abbott would have taken the Libs to the 2013 election promising to reverse this “political correctness gone mad” and the gay community would have been a political football at an election where the anti-Labor swing was definitely on. It would have sucked.
Unlike some, I respect that many Liberals supported marriage equality and broader LGBTI rights. But there are some really stupid claims in this article which just need calling out.
For someone who opposes the politicisation of marriage equality, Cam Hawker immediately succumbs to hypocrisy in trying to make the political point that Liberal electorates recorded more Yes votes than Labor electorates, while trying desperately to completely ignore that many coalition MPs then failed to back up their own constituents by voting Yes in Parliament (ie they abstained). The Labor MPs whose electorates voted No largely voted Yes in Parliament with few abstentions. The Liberal Party should have criticised Tony Abbott for gutlessly abstaining in Parliament despite the country and his own electorate voting Yes, instead they just let him off the hook. Again.
And again more politicisation with the claim that Labor should have done more in government – THEY FUCKING DID – they allowed their members a conscience vote UNLIKE THE FUCKING LIBERAL PARTY.
So defend Liberals right to be involved in the Mardi Gras but COME UP WITH AN ARGUMENT WHICH ISN’T FULL OF SHIT. No, just too hard for Liberals.
What complete and utter BS!!! That damn survey caused so much devastation and hurt! What in absolute hell makes you think that the gay community – who the LNP completely hung out to dry – would ever be okay with seeing the instigators of their pain at pride, a place that is supposed to be safe and welcoming for them?
Should we let One Nation march or Aus Conservative/Family first? No! So why should we let the LNP? People don’t want to see the LNP at pride for the same reasons nobody wants to see ON and AuC. Despite the obviously transparent lip service that Turnbull and the LNP apologists pay towards the GLBTI community, they aren’t fooling anybody (except you of course); the LNP is homophobic to the core.
And don’t use Smith, Wilson, Zimmerman or Forester (who all opposed the survey) as an excuse to pretend otherwise; being a party that’s more than willing to uses GL people to champion itself but refuses to acknowledge their rights just further proves my point.
So yes, they can march at pride for their advocacy, but don’t expect the gay community to be okay with them or you or anybody blatantly promoting the homo/transphobic LNP during GLBTI events. We don’t want to hear you/them defending the LNP; it’s too little, too late.
And don’t try and use “liberal” young people (who are few and far in-between after what the LNP did) as an excuse to justify why the LNP should be able to march like nothing has happened. The LNP didn’t seem to care about “providing a safe environment” for them when they chose the path they took. Nobody is banned from attending pride. What about the young GLB people at pride whose family and neighbours were asked to vote on their rights and sided against them by choosing no? Do you think they would feel comfortable seeing the party responsible for creating a painful divide between them and their loved-ones and who showed nothing but contempt and apathy towards them at an event supposed to support and celebrate them? Talk about salt in the wound.
You don’t want to be lectured about the pain felt caused by the survey (not plebiscite)? Then don’t go defending or promoting the party who created that pain to its victims. If you think you were hurt during the survey too, you only have your own party to blame. The LNP showed its true colours, and those of us who really suffered during the survey would never vote for, let alone be a member of, the LNP ever again!
And your right, the LNP should own their share (the only share) of the process; but instead every LNP pride banner I’ve seen has boasted about how they’re supposedly responsible for marriage equality, like we should be thanking them for initiating that wretched survey. Nobody cares that we and your colleagues who supported the survey were “working towards the same goal.” The ends don’t justify the means.
And so what if the highest yes vote came from a liberal electorate (which btw it didn’t; Sydney and Melbourne are Labor/Green)? Is that supposed to make us fell better? Is that supposed to excuse the LNP from ramming that survey through parliament and onto Australia to vote on our personal lives? Does that somehow excuse the homo/transphobic comments and campaigning from many of the LNPs senior ministers? Or excuse how those tasked with overseeing the survey turned a blind eye to all the vile homo/transphobic propaganda disseminated during those three months? I think not.
Btw, you might want to do some research; the bill introduced to parliament wasn’t drafted by Smith, it was borne out of a multi-party senate inquiry committee; it was just introduced into the senate by Smith (with Labor support) and was certainly not done by his or the LNPs hand alone.
What’s more, this isn’t just about the survey. The LNP has a long history of homophobia that still lives on to this day, and we’re sick off it. E.g., in 2016, the vic Labor government attempted to amend and remove the laws that allowed private religious schools to expel LGBT students, and the liberal opposition just managed to shoot it down in the final stage of proceedings. As a student at a conservative Christian college at the time, I was devastated when I heard this. And there are plenty of examples like this, not from 20 years ago, but occurring recently.
And with the Ruddock review due back soon, I think we can all hazard a guess what policy they will adopt with regard to discrimination against us in precuring goods and serves as couples. We’re not out of the woods yet.
So before you and your (neo)liberal friends think to “claim our rightful share of the achievement” of marriage equality in the name of the LNP and start decorating your floats for Mardi Gras, know what it was achieved despite your party, not because of them. Don’t ever expect the gay community to just forgive and forget, and don’t expect the LNP or Turnbull to be welcome at pride after what they did. Remember that. And if you truly appreciate the pain and fear they inflicted on us, respect that.