Love and an electoral boundary

They might live and love in country NSW, but there’s no Brokeback Mountain-esque angst in the lives of Ray Goodlass and Peter Carruthers.

The couple are both happily out and proud gay men, and now they’re standing side-by-side as Greens candidates for the neighbouring electorates of Wagga Wagga and Murrumbidgee.

Peter and I have been together for a couple of years, and he lives with me after moving from Sydney to Wagga, Goodlass, the NSW Greens spokesperson on LGBTI issues, says.

He got interested in the campaign, and when we were looking around for a candidate he put his hand up.

Goodlass, a union organiser and former university lecturer, was a Greens candidate in the last federal election, in which the local Greens vote doubled.

He said the neighbourhood reaction to the couple’s candidature had been mostly positive.

But it’s also really been funny, he said.

When we put out our candidate statements to the local media we both said we were in a same-sex relationship with each other, and all the local media ignored that.

They just focused instead on the Greens policy, which in one way is good. But I wonder whether they were being polite, or they were embarrassed, or confused. Or didn’t read it carefully enough.

Goodlass said he and Carruthers were attracted to The Greens because of the party’s commitment to social and environmental issues.

The Greens are about more than social issues, but social issues are very high on the party platform. I guess we’re a poster couple for that, he said.

Although there were some homophobic responses to his last election challenge, Goodlass said it was a good thing for the gay and lesbian community to have openly gay candidates in regional areas.

It definitely does a huge amount to raise awareness, he said. But whether it does anything to increase votes is another question.