‘I’m sick of hearing straight people discussing same-sex marriage’
HAVE you ever had someone talk about you behind your back? What about a group of people discussing your relationship?
Well, have you ever experienced an entire nation discussing your relationship, not behind your back, but openly, aggressively and with little consideration for your privacy?
This is the experience of the entire LGBTI community in Australia right now.
Our relationships and our lives are being discussed right in front of us: on breakfast TV, on blogs, on radio, on The Project, every Monday night on Q&A. Flyers are being handed out at sporting events. Total strangers on the street are discussing the intimate and personal aspects of our relationships.
And it’s the same discussion, the same questions, the same script, over and over again.
Whether or not people of the same gender should be allowed to marry. Whether same-sex couples should be allowed to have children. Whether members of the LGBTI community are too promiscuous to deserve marriage. Whether or not marriage equality will undermine marriage as it currently stands.
These discussions are happening constantly, and, if you watch any of these panel shows discussing marriage equality, you’ll probably notice the LGBTI community are rarely asked for their input.
But sometime soon, perhaps in February, perhaps later than that, over 15 million registered Australian voters will be asked to use their opinions formed from these discussions, and turn them into a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ vote on a plebiscite. Can you imagine if it were you in this situation?
Knowing that the ins and outs of your relationship had been haphazardly dissected by an entire nation, and now, 15 million people will be deciding whether or not you should be granted permission to get married…
It’s offensive when one or even a small group of people cast their opinions of your personal relationship. But to have 15 million people, almost all of them complete strangers, go to the ballot box with their personal thoughts on the lives you and your partner have built together? I wish it were only insulting. It is damaging. It is invasive. It is nothing short of an assault on the each member of LGBTI community.
In truth, it doesn’t really matter how many people proudly announce they’ll vote ‘yes’, or what the result is in the end, the damage will have already been done and felt across the community. The LGBTI community has long been a target for intolerance, and now, we are experiencing the indignity of seeing our personal, private relationships pulled apart and analysed for the purpose of national discussion and debate. Unfortunately, with 2016 being The Year of the Unqualified Opinion, it seems every Australian feels the right to express their thoughts, no matter how uninformed and how divisive they may be.
And after the votes have been cast, and the parliament has voted on the issue, will we be able to embrace true equality? How could we possibly be equal to the wider community after the most intimate aspects of our lives have been pulled out and paraded about for the sake of an argument? How are we to feel accepted and welcome in modern Australia after months of being informed we are not worthy of equality by the Australian Christian Lobby and their friends? How could we celebrate the right to marry the person we love, while simultaneously mourning the loss of those for whom the mental burden of hate grew too heavy?
Quite simply, we can’t. We may be granted permission to exercise our right to marry the person we love, but it may also come at the expense of our dignity, and with a cost of human lives. Instead of bringing about equality as some naively expect, this plebiscite can only result in further divide and inequality for the LBGTI community.
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there can be an ignorance factor with some heterosexuals regarding same sex marriage…
@nespa: that would have been a nice post IF mariage had been a Christian construct or invention. It’s not. Endof.
Well now it looks like that marriage equality will not happen until 2019! Don’t blame me, I voted Labor!
Well said Rob. Thankyou for this article.
All Australians should be heard – the fact that the debate is being shut down by the left is frightening for the rest- expect a fight back from the rest of Australia. Attempts to pass this without proper discourse will fail. An open adult discussion with set parameters needs to happen.
I don’t know what Q&A panels you have been watching, but I have seen the LGBTI Community have always had the opportunity to voice their opinions, loud and proud and have been overwhelmingly represented in this debate. In fact, anyone who says otherwise is immediately and grossly (and unfairly) painted as a homophobe. I understand your point about having your intimate lives being dissected across the nation – something I know I wouldn’t feel comfortable about either… but at the same time you have been advocating to appropriate something that does not belong to mainstream culture, but to Christian doctrine, for something it was absolutely never designed for and so you can’t be surprised if Christians are up in arms about that. I don’t condone hate crimes but I do condone their right to fight for something they believe in, which belongs to them in the first place! If marriage was an Islamic concept – would you be surprised if Muslims everywhere were fired up about the LGBTI community appropriating it for themselves? Is it because they hate the LGBTI? No! It is purely because they are protecting something that is sacred to them from becoming something it was never intended for and thereby desecrating it. If the LGBTI community had advocated for civil union this would have been a completely different story. Straight Christians are talking about Gay Marriage because it was only ever intended for Straight Christians! They have every right to speak on this issue. It affects many people in more ways than you can imagine both in your community and the Christian community. Both have felt attacked and just as you have expressed how the ‘intimacy’ of your lives has been put on public debate, many Christians feel that something they consider to be an intimate value originating from their doctrine is also on public debate. A public it was never designed for.
I think that this comment highlights the main problem with this whole debate, a fundamental misunderstanding of what the issue is.
The LGBTI community is, and has only ever been, advocating for the right to have civil unions. In Australia, civil unions are covered by a piece of legislation called the Marriage Act which was changed in 2004 to specifically exclude same sex couples.
No-one is asking for any religious institution to be required to marry same sex couples. When marriage equality is finally achieved in Australia, churches will be free to refuse to marry same sex couples just as they can currently refuse to marry inter-faith or inter-racial couples today.
So sorry to say but you are right. Disgraceful. One of the 15million for whom this is none of my business, no matter how enthusiastically I vote yes. Well articulated article. Im still hoping the BS plebiscite will be squashed.
I couldn’t have said it better myself.
It is inevitable that some vulnerable members of our community, particularly youth who are still coming to terms with their identity and who feel isolated, alone and frightened will attempt suicide and some will succeed. The vile, vicious and deceitful propaganda of those opposed not just to marriage equality but our very existence will see a rise in gay hate crimes and some members of our community will pay the ultimate price at the bloodied hands of those who go from hating us in thought to hating us in violent action.
Any of us who lived through the trauma of gay law reform already know the storm of hate that will gather and break upon us. For the most part I have blocked those memories out. You have to as a survival mechanism, you don’t want to carry that anxiety with you, but I also naively believed all that open and strident display of hate in the guise of public debate was A distant painful memory. But here we are again, the storm is gathering and this will be like nothing we ever seen before, beyond our worst nightmares.
I’m left wondering if I’ll be strong enough this time around.
I don’t have any issues sticking up for same sex marriages, or same sex relationships of the non marrying kind.
This debate that John Howard initiated has been a fruitful one for shifting public opinion. We’ve come a long way since 2004.