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Steve Dow
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Nine years after meeting my boyfriend, we sat on our couch this past week, wished each other a happy anniversary and listened as federal Attorney-General Robert McClelland informed us that Australians in same-sex relationships had been discriminated against “for too long”, and he pledged to fix this situation.
But discrimination wasn’t truly ending in this country, so we weren’t rejoicing. Instead we looked as disinterested as our sleepy jack russell-maltese mutt Oscar, who rolled into a ball and went to sleep. Could it be that our other gay couple friends have married in Canada, or gotten “civilised” in the UK, all with lovely ceremonies?
Don’t get me wrong. Plaudits of course go to the Rudd Government for making good on its election promise this past week: the Howard Government had ignored a Human Rights Commission report that found 58 pieces of federal legislation discriminated against same-sex couples in the likes of tax, superannuation, social security and wills, but Labor dug deep and found 42 more laws in need of, ahem, straightening out.
And what of Kevin Rudd’s stated pledge to progressive values of “equity, community and sustainability”? This week, we see the limits of those progressive values as the Federal Government quashes the ACT Government’s attempt to include in the territory’s same-sex civil unions Bill a ceremony as a formal trigger to legally establish a relationship’s existence. The message: keep your ceremony informal and out of the public eye, gay people.
My partner is a New Zealand national, so we’ll probably have to go to that country to have a civil union. Having left Melbourne for Sydney, it seems we as a couple lucked out on the same-sex relationships register about to be established in Victoria. In NSW, the sleepy Iemma Government shows no signs of following the Brumby Government’s lead in recognising gay and lesbian couples.
But then, Victoria always was ahead in this field, you might be surprised to know. Homosexuality was decriminalised in 1981 in Victoria. In NSW, home to gay liberation’s brashest war cry, Mardi Gras, it took until 1984. It’s just a pity the Victorian scheme doesn’t allow you to attach an official ceremony to signing your names in unison in a registry.
Perhaps we’ll just wait. It makes little sense as working professionals who move between states to sign on for state-based registries that are inconsistent and not nationally recognised. Besides, same-sex marriage is inevitable in Australia.
Sure, amending 100 anti-gay laws makes a nice, round quotable number to help Rudd, McClelland et al build on their substantial social justice credentials already extended to indigenous and homeless Australians, provided Opposition Leader Brendan Nelson’s in-principle support extends through the remnants of the Right-leaning Liberal-National parliamentary rump.
And of course if the debate drags on beyond July 1 – when the Coalition loses the Senate balance of power – the changes will require the endorsement not only of the Greens but also the Christian conservative Family First Senator Steven Fielding and a relatively little-known Canberra newcomer, the independent Nick Xenophon, who supported reforms that ended same-sex discrimination in the South Australian Parliament, but also declared last year he was a “bit more reluctant to support gay marriage”.
Yet Canada, the Netherlands, Belgium, South Africa and Spain all have same-sex marriage. The United Kingdom, New Zealand, France, Switzerland, Germany, Hungary, Sweden and nine other countries all have nation-wide civil unions or registered partnerships. In the first year of operation in the UK, more than 18,000 civil partnerships were registered. And there were more gay than lesbian couples, putting paid to stereotypes that gay men don't want to settle down.
In Australia, the gay and lesbian lobby is energised after more than a decade of being deflated under Howard’s reign.
On the ABC’s The 7.30 Report on Wednesday night, host Kerry O’Brien repeatedly asked Robert McClelland what logic there was in the discrimination of continuing to deny marriage to same-sex couples. McClelland, who had spent the day telling everyone that fixing 100 laws was about “substance” and that same-sex marriage was mere “form”, kept saying that that quarantining marriage to heterosexual couples was “ALP policy”. Logical indeed.
Then McClelland offered the legalese that same-sex marriage would “create a legal relationship” that “mimics marriage”, as though all gays want to do is ape straights.
The legal right to marry and have a ceremony is not about form, or pretending to be straight. None of my straight married friends feel their institution is under threat. Rather, all we want is the very human potential to fulfil our happiness, and that includes active legal recognition.
Steve Dow is a Sydney journalist, www.stevedow.com.au