A Plebiscite for Marriage Equality is Wrong

Australia has a new Prime Minister, the fifth in five years. He is a moderate of the Right; intelligent, successful, charming, articulate and a very smooth operator. Being a member of the Liberal National Coalition, he does not espouse the same values as I do. He is not of the Left. Don’t be fooled.

At the first hurdle, not 24 hours in the job, he fell. He declared that he would continue on the exact same policies on climate change and marriage equality as his predecessor. Tony Abbott saw that he was losing the battle on marriage equality, so he used the considerable power of his position, and stated to his party room that there would be a plebiscite on marriage equality. Despite one week earlier declaring that the decision belonged to the Parliament, he ‘moved the goal posts’ in a hastily called, and many of his colleagues thought ambushing joint party room meeting, and declared the decision would be delayed until six to twelve months after the next election. At the time, that meant another two years from August 2015. Now, Malcolm Turnbull has stated to the Parliament today that he will continue in this vein, despite his being supportive of marriage equality and having a huge LGBTI population in his own electorate of Wentworth. Pretty silly move, I would have thought.

So let me lay it out again. This plebiscite business. For Abbott, it was a ruse; nothing more. A strategy to forestall progress. For Turnbull, it is a placation of the conservatives in his party; the very ones he is supposed to be pulling into the twenty first century. I am not in favour of a plebiscite. And here’s why.

1. A plebiscite is only a snapshot poll of the electorate; nothing more. We already have polls on marriage equality and over the last years, they have only been going one way, no matter who the pollsters are. Support has been growing and growing, increasing year by year. It is absolutely clear. The trend is unmistakeable. We now have the ironic situation of the Coalition’s favoured pollster Crosbie Textor polling results with 72% of Australians in support and the LNP ignoring them. It is over two thirds of Australians. Name one other single issue where there is more than two thirds support. Business supports, the media supports, health associations support, sport supports, even many of the churches support and there are a majority of Christians who support. The simple unadorned fact is: we don’t need a plebiscite - we already know.
2. Plebiscites are hideously expensive. The Australian Electoral Commission has stated that a plebiscite not held concurrently with an election would cost $158 million. Imagine what we could do with $158 million. I would much rather see twenty million go to early psychosis research, thirty million to go to indigenous health, twenty million to go to MS and autoimmune disease research, twenty million to go to dementia research, twenty million to homelessness, ten million to go to drug education, ten million to go to educational services for the bush, ten million to funding shelters for domestic violence, ten million to go to anxiety and depression research, and eight million to go to obesity research, just as an example. But not to a plebiscite to tell us that over two thirds of Australians support marriage equality. We got that already.
3. We do not have a history in Australia of deciding issues by plebiscite. We have a Westminster system of responsible government and a perfectly good working parliament with members and senators we all elect to make these decisions and to show leadership. And the High Court has strongly stated that it is in the purview of the Parliament to decide on questions of marriage. We have not called a plebiscite to take Australia to war in Iraq and Afghanistan or to bomb Syria. But apparently we need one to tell us that it is okay for gay and lesbian people to marry our partners. 
4. Plebiscites are not binding. After all that effort and all that money, no-one would have to take any notice of it. The decision would still then have to go before the Parliament for a vote.
5. Most worrying, a plebiscite would let loose the crazies and the bigots and the fundamentalists who would have this question decided based on the book of Leviticus and their unstated aversion to gay and lesbian sexuality. It would be acrimonious and very very hurtful to LGBTI people. Do not think for a moment that our better angels will be released as we gently discuss marriage equality over hot cocoa. The opponents of marriage equality are cashed up and belligerent. They fill the Comments sections of articles on the topic with judgement and vitriol. They are already out there at every opportunity to stop marriage equality.
6. Marriage equality is the right thing to do regardless of the vote count in a plebiscite. Every Australian in the country could hypothetically vote against it and it still wouldn’t make that decision right. It is discrimination that stops gay people from marrying. Gay people are treated differently to other people in this respect and are not equal with our straight fellow citizens before the law. Get that: as things stand, we gay people are second-class citizens. We keep the social contract and pay our taxes but are treated unequally. This sticks in our craw and will never ever be okay, which means that this issue is here for keeps. It will never ever go away until gay and lesbian people are not discriminated against in marriage. And the converse is true for me too. If every Australian voted in favour of marriage equality, although I would be hugely chuffed, that decision would not make it right. It is right, because it is the right thing to do. Jettisoning discriminations against people in our type of Western society is the right thing to do. Treating people equally is the right thing to do. Treating people unequally is immoral.
7. The LNP would have the opportunity of framing the question. When you frame the question, you can skew it one way or the other, as did John Howard in the Republic referendum. You can say something like, “Do you agree or disagree with the notion that marriage has always been throughout history between one man and one woman and that Australia should retain this time honoured definition”? It’s not hard to do. And if there is a plebiscite, conservatives in the Government will try to do it.
8. Talking up a plebiscite as being democratic is disingenuous. It is merely a cover statement for a poorly hatched idea that was essentially borne of one of Tony Abbott’s ‘captains’ calls’. The party itself did not decide. Under new leadership with a supportive Prime Minister, one would have thought that he could have pushed for this as a first salvo into bringing his party, taken over by conservatives, back to the liberal centre of Robert Menzies and into the twenty first century. But at this first hurdle, he fell.
9. No amount of Shakespearianesque rhetoric will ever take away the fact that my relationship and that of every other gay and lesbian person in the country would, by means of a plebiscite, be offered up for evaluation and appraisal by bigots, homophobes, rednecks, religious fundamentalists and opponents of every kind, people who are implacably opposed to marriage equality. A plebiscite invites everyone to discuss the gay and lesbian community as though we are objects. A plebiscite objectifies us and opponents will not hesitate to declare that our relationships are inferior and not worthy of being admitted to the halls of the married. These people do not have the right to evaluate our relationships. If the situation were reversed, there would be marching in the streets.

So we are left with a society at large that is absolutely supportive of marriage equality, a parliament which probably already has a majority of supporters were LNP Members given a free vote. There is plenty of will in the community for change. It is only a small group of people stopping this for the whole country: conservative Liberals and Nationals in the main, many of whom themselves will have a sizable support for marriage equality in their electorates but are just refusing to budge or ignoring their constituencies. Full credit to Nationals Member for Gippsland Darren Chester who has changed his position to support for marriage equality and has overwhelming support from his electorate. He cannot be the only one. So you have to ask in the face of clear and patent broad community support, what are these LNPers actually doing apart from just being bloody-minded? Is this new shiny Prime Minister, the darling of the moderates of the Right, going to pull his party back to the centre? Or not?

With Tony Abbott gone, we have the paradoxical situation of having both a supportive Prime Minister and a supportive Leader of the Opposition and yet we still cannot get this reform through. It really is just unbelievable. Is it any wonder that people are turned off politics in this country?

I still see the choice now as being stark: a party, the ALP, who will take marriage equality as its platform to the next election and present a bill to the Parliament within one hundred days of winning the election, and a party, the LNP, many of whose Members will oppose this reform to the death and who will make the country go through a very divisive and destructive costly plebiscite six to twelve months after the next election.

Bigots and Homophobes: Name-calling or Calling Out Prejudice?

The Australian Senate has recently held hearings from various parties on the subject of marriage equality as a forerunner to a public vote (or plebiscite) on the issue. This plebiscite is unnecessary, costly, divisive, and the result of a strategy by Tony Abbott to delay its adoption. One particular presentation is of particular interest here from Australia's most powerful conservative Christian group, the Australian Christian Lobby (the ACL). This group does not represent Australia's Christian population but they market themselves as such and have strong connections in Canberra. I watched their presentation recently in which they suggested that the real barrier to progress in the debate over gay rights is the fact that people keep 'name-calling' each other with the putative insults 'bigot' and 'homophobe'. According to the ACL, these words are unnecessary and are holding the debate back. One of my former Church colleagues recently promoted the ACL's speech on social media with the endorsement: “here here, don’t like the name-calling”.

So I want to ask this question: 

When is it okay to use the word bigot or homophobe or their derivatives?

Or are these words off limits?

Is using these words really the same thing as ‘name-calling’?

I think I will know what most LGBTI people will say. Almost all LGBTI people have suffered the effects of homophobia: rejection, humiliation, intimidation, harassment, threats of violence, and in many cases, actual violence. We also suffer micro-aggressions on a daily basis such as being made fun of, the butt of jokes, the whispered message behind the hand, the giggle after we pass by. The word 'gay' is still used as an insult and a derogatory term. Youth suicide in the LGBTI population is six times higher than in the general population for the same age-group. Further, most LGBTI people will know that the ACL believes our lives to be lives of sin, a rejection of God, against nature, decadent, self-centred, and that our relationships do not have the same existential equivalence as heterosexual relationships. They also know that the ACL and people of their ilk will do anything and everything they can to stop us from being able to legally marry our partners.

But I also wonder why it is that the ACL wants these two words to be inadmissible in the marriage equality debate. One of the things we know is that prejudiced people are supremely uncomfortable in owning up to their prejudice. They will turn mental and linguistic gymnastics to remove themselves from the idea they might be prejudiced in some way. "I'm not racist but - - - -" is the classic example. Following on from such a statement is invariably a racist statement. So with homophobia. "I'm not homophobic but - - - -". And thence follows a homophobic statement. It seems that even when people are being overtly prejudiced, they want to cover it over or hide it in some way. The last thing they want, is to be exposed. I would suggest that this is the very reason the ACL wants the words bigot and homophobe expunged from the Australian psyche while the marriage equality debate progresses its murky way up to Abbott's plebiscite. This way, they can say what they want and not have to answer the charge of bigotry and homophobia. They want total freedom to hurl insulting and offensive social comments and theological teachings at the gay community with total impunity; pure as the driven snow are they. And should we dare attempt to call them out on it, well then, aren't we a nasty and uncaring and insensitive group of irreligious people bent on wrecking society.

So, a couple of dictionary definitions suggest that this word 'bigot' is not as offensive as what the ACL would like us all to believe. 

A bigot is:

“a person who is obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices; especially : one who regards or treats the members of a group (as a racial or ethnic group) with hatred and intolerance” Merriam-Webster Online

“a person who has very strong, unreasonable beliefs or opinions about race, religion or politics and who will not listen to or accept the opinions of anyone who disagrees” Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary Online.

Now Western society has generally moved on from the ACL/fundamentalist view of gay sexuality. And frankly, so have many people of faith. The Christian Church in many quarters has begun the journey of re-visiting its centuries old traditional teachings on human sexuality as I urged in my book Being Gay Being Christian. This shift in society is why so many countries have already legislated against discriminating against gay and lesbian people and celebrating the wonderful binding feeling that equality brings. Marriage has been extended to gay and lesbian couples and the devastation and mayhem predicted by the opponents has not come to pass.

So for me, there is an absolute. It is not okay, and by that I mean totally unacceptable, to not ever, not anywhere, not by anyone, no exception, by priest, prelate, prince, or pauper to denigrate, put down, discriminate or derogate LGBTI people, any more than it is okay to the same to women, people with non-white skin, non-Anglo ethnicities, the disabled, the indigenous or the poor. Such prejudice is bigotry. If you hear it, you will recognise it. And you will feel its ugliness.

If you do this on the basis of skin colour or ethnicity, you are racist. Calling someone out for racism is not the same as name-calling. I care more for the victim’s sensitivities than I do for the perpetrator’s. If a racist is offended by our calling them out, then bad luck. Wear the shame.

If you do this on the basis of opposition to gay and lesbian people, you are homophobic. Calling someone out for homophobia is not the same thing as name-calling. I care more for the victim’s sensitivities than I do for the perpetrator’s. If a homophobe is offended by our calling them out, then bad luck. Wear the shame.

Now attacking gay and lesbian people the way the Australian Christian Lobby does is bigotry, plain and simple. They tell untruths, they fear-monger, they predict the destruction of society, they predict the desolation of families, they predict devastation to children. And they do all this just because we are gay. They do not do this to single mums or single dads or divorced people marrying a second time, or the older generation marrying late in life after a life-spouse has passed away and love is rediscovered, or to the disabled who marry, or even young couples who choose not to have children; no. They only do it to gay people.

Sometimes they use social rationales; all bogus. Sometimes they use theological rationales; all weak, conservative and out-dated. They are evangelical and pentecostal fundamentalists who control this group and they promulgate the platform that gay sexuality is a choice, a sin and, for many of their adherents, a psychological sickness or caused by demonic oppression. They all believe that our relationships are inferior.

So I don’t really care how many Bible verses they quote.  And I don’t really care how softly spoken they are in Senate hearings and how utterly reasonable they sound when they suggest that name-calling should have no part in this debate. It is bigotry and it is homophobia. And it is not name-calling to call them out.

Name-calling is for kids. It’s juvenile behaviour. It’s to be found in the playground. The ACL’s pronouncements and the money they intend to spend on militant advocacy against marriage equality needs to be met with the same strength as they themselves put forth.

There is some resonance for me today as I listened to Anote Tong, the President of Kirabati, in answering Tony Abbott with regard to Pacific islands being inundated by the sea due to climate change and Australia’s refusal to have greater emissions targets thus effecting those same islands, where Abbott stated that Australia had to protect its economy. President Tong shaking his head said, ‘this is not our economy we are protecting; this is an existential threat, we have to protect our future’. Marriage equality is up for grabs in Australia at the moment. We are the last of the major developed countries in the world to legislate for this. We have a Prime Minister implacably opposed and who is working behind the scenes to ensure this never happens. The ACL is there right beside him, resolved to use fair means or foul, including bigoted and homophobic declarations. For gay and lesbian people, this is not about a nasty Christian fundamentalist group whom most sensible people ignore anyway, but an existential threat to our place in Australian society as equals.

Bigotry and homophobia both exist and they are equally ugly no matter whose mouth they come from.

PS. I have written three articles on homophobia in my BGBC Blog if you are interested: 

IDAHO Day 2012    http://beinggaybeingchristian.blogspot.com.au/2012/05/idaho-day-2012.html     

IDAHO Day 2013    http://beinggaybeingchristian.blogspot.com.au/2013/05/idaho-day-2013.html      

IDAHOT Day 2014  http://beinggaybeingchristian.blogspot.com.au/2014/05/idahot-day-2014.html      

Kim Davis and the Freedom of Religion

I haven’t said a single word about Kim Davis, the Kentucky county clerk who started out illegally refusing marriage licences to gay and lesbian couples and then expanded it to all couples; 'because if I have to let gay and lesbian couples marry, then I won't let anyone get married - so there!' As you know, Federal Court judge David Bunning sentenced her to gaol time for contempt. Now, we have a whole bunch of moral crusaders, Christian fundies, opining stridently that freedom of religion is at stake. I call BS on that and here’s why.

The U.S., like Australia, has a separation of church and state. The statutes on which this convention relies have been there from the beginning: in the U. S. in the 1st Amendment, and in Oz, in s116 of the Constitution. These effectively bar any religion at all from being the ‘established’ or official religion of the state. Everyone’s free to worship as they wish, but no official favourite faith for the nation. As well, this convention makes sure that to hold a Government job, in either country, you don’t have to pass a religious test. There is no religious pre-requisite you have to attain before you can hold down a Government job. The State remains neutral or secular. This is as it should be.

Kim Davis, I suspect, is a simple woman who has not long ago had a conversion experience in a pentecostal type denomination. She will not have done the reading that say, an average gay person of faith would have done around issues of spirituality and sexuality. She will have been taught that homosexuality is a sin, and more likely, an abomination. She will not know any of the science around human sexuality. She will have been indoctrinated into conventional religious homophobia and LGBTI bigotry that have plagued the Christian Church and harmed so many millions of people for millennia. But she is in a position of power. This is her moment in the sun; her fifteen minutes of fame.

But her statutory power over these matters was curtailed, as was the power of Federal Courts and State Courts and lower district courts, once the Supreme Court of the U.S. decided that marriage between two people of the same gender cannot be banned by any State in the Union and that to do so would breach the anti-discrimination aspects of the U.S. Constitution; effectively saying that there is a Constitutional right for two people of the same gender to marry. Once that became law, there were consequences for every Government department and employee in the land. Now, whether you like it or not; it is the law. Whether you hate homosexuality or not; it is the law. Whether you believe that God will punish all homosexual people or not; it is the law. Whether you read the Bible literally and interpret its clearly historically contextualised passages as being absolutely pertinent to today (except for the bits about menstruation, barbering, agrarian practices, polyester and stoning people to death), or not; it is the law. It is the official legal understanding of what the Constitution means.

Given the historic and utterly clear mandated legal status that there is no established religion in America (or Australia) and that Government employees must do their jobs without fear or favour to ALL citizens and bring no discriminatory practice to the workplace at all – no exception – then Kim Davis must either begin to issue marriage licences to gay and lesbian couples or, if she is unable to do so, resign her office. What she cannot do, any more than anyone else in the United States can do, is discriminate in the administration of her statutory duties on the basis of her own personal beliefs. She cannot have it both ways. No Government employee in the entire U.S. nation is permitted to do that. No-one!

As I read the commentary of what happened in Judge Bunning's Federal Court, it is plain to see that Kim Davis was given more latitude to change her behaviour than most. The conservative judge, whose own views on gay marriage are understood to be non-supportive, was very accommodating of her, but she refused to co-operate and just stood dogged. He offered not to gaol her for contempt if she would go back out there and do her job lawfully. She refused. He even tried to help her understand that she was not being asked to agree with gay marriage or to support it, but to merely sign the appropriate documents as county clerk to say that the paperwork had been attended to properly, carefully, responsibly and legally; all i's dotted, all t's crossed. She refused. He then had no choice to but to gaol her as he had already made orders that the county clerk’s office perform its statutory duties according to law. Now, she was continuing to defy his existing orders to his face. And she had even tried to go over his head and sought leave to appeal to the Supreme Court but the Justices of the Supreme Court wouldn’t touch it.

She now has no choice but to resign if she will not change her behaviour. Or, if she will not resign, be removed by whatever means is prescribed for such a removal.

Now as for this being a breach of freedom of religion; sorry, an emphatic no. Kim Davis is free to worship wherever she wants, to believe whatever she wants and to practise her faith in whatever way personally she sees fit. No-one is stopping her. And neither should they be able to. She has the same rights as all Americans in this regard. But like all other Americans, that right does not guarantee her immunity from the law should she discriminate in her statutory duties. Such discrimination is a crime. And defying Court orders is also a crime. No-one takes any joy in seeing a woman of her age being punished behind bars. From what I understand, Judge Bunning was none too thrilled at having to impose a custodial sentence on her. But don't forget: she didn't have to be there. She resolutely chose to continue to defy a Federal Court Judge. She is being characterised by the Christian Right figuratively as a martyr. But Kim Davis is clearly NOT a martyr.

Mike Thompson 2015 Detroit Free Press

The U.S. and Australia live by the rule of law. Each of us is a nation of laws. They are carefully calibrated. Our rights have limits and we all understand this. We have a right to a free press and free speech and free movement and a right to associate with various groups. But the press cannot knowingly write falsehoods about people and free speech is curtailed at the point of hate speech or the inciting of others to violence. Freedom of association is curtailed at the point of joining proscribed or criminal groups. Freedom of movement is curtailed at defence base and gaol perimeters, for example. Freedom of religion is also curtailed when your rights to worship impinge upon my rights as a citizen. All rights have delimitations. People’s mainstream or wacky idiosyncratic belief systems get trumped by our constitutions and conventions and our laws when it comes to established religion and no religious discrimination by the State. This situation in the U.S. is not remotely a freedom of religion issue. It is a rule of law issue. Imagine if strict orthodox Jews or strict Moslems in Government jobs decided by some stricture of their food or dress codes to no longer assist people who did not adhere to their belief. There would be an enormous hue and cry. So too for the likes of Kim Davis. The Bible belt is still bleating that America is no longer living that ‘ole time Gospel’ type Christianity; or they do when it suits them. They are just going to have evolve.

Kim Davis has in one sense, done America a favour. She has reminded the whole nation of the 1^st Amendment to their Constitution and how rights have culturally-imposed limits. She has reminded us all why the separation of church and state is so important.

PS. If you're interested, I did write another piece with a similar theme, called Of Church and State and Marriage Equality on this blog.