Orlando and Australia's Marriage Equality Plebiscite

Matt Glover - used with permission

The slaughter of the innocents in Florida has touched us all. With Orlando searing into our minds; the merciless death, the unspeakable horror, the unnecessary loss of beautiful lives and remarkable futures, the unutterable anguish of those left behind, the deep trauma to a community, and an LGBT community world-wide feeling once again set upon, Australia’s LGBT community stands in solidarity and profound grief with our brothers and sisters in Orlando as we know only too well that it could have been one of our loved ones had circumstances been just a little different. Circumstances were different when we lost one of our own from the Lindt café siege. Gay hate knows no national boundaries.

But this heinous action has come for Australia in the middle of a marriage equality debate; the next logical step in the long road to freedom of LGBT people in this country. By far, the most important and hotly argued topic of this issue is the Tony Abbott plebiscite that was designed to forestall a vote in the Parliament. We all know that that Malcolm ‘I haven’t changed one iota’ Turnbull has agreed with the conservatives of his party on this issue and acquiesced to their demands in order to obtain the Prime Ministership. A deal was done. Even one of their own, John Hewson, admitted that. A sordid deal was done. We all know that Malcolm Turnbull spruiks the need for democracy, for giving the people a voice, whenever he is asked about this issue. That is his serpentine excuse for putting the country through this demeaning plebiscite. I note that never once have I heard him advocate for marriage equality or prosecute its merits. He simply declares that he agrees with it but then says or does nothing about it. To use a powerful Australianism – it is a piss-poor response from a Prime Minister who could wield immense influence but chooses not to. His agreement with marriage equality is frankly worthless if that is all there is to it. Legislation could pass the Parliament today without his vote.

While Malcolm Turnbull declares disingenuously that it will be an ordered respectful affair, those of us on the receiving end of such debates know better. America is already reeling with the tweet of the Texas Lt. Governor quoting the “God will not be mocked” scripture implying that gay people dancing and enjoying a night club is a mocking of God. Then you get the religious nutters like Westboro Baptist congratulating the shooter, and the pastor who advocates that, though he would never take the law into his own hands, gay people should be legally executed by the Government. That guy is happy the shooter murdered these people so that the world will have “50 less paedophiles”. But don’t for a minute think that this kind of thing is only done in the mad Bible belt of America. Not so.

Only a few weeks ago, the president of the Australian Christian Lobby, Lyle Shelton, likened the advent of marriage equality here to the rise of Nazi Germany in the 1930s saying, “The cowardice and weakness of Australia's 'gatekeepers' is causing unthinkable things to happen, just as unthinkable things happened in Germany in the 1930s” (my italics). Christian fundamentalists here never tire of telling us all that being gay is unnatural, against the order of nature, an intrinsic disorder, an inclination toward moral evil, an abomination, a rejection of God, a profanity, a sin, and worthy of eternal punishment. Why, only three days ago, I endured a pentecostal pastor on a Facebook post about asylum seeker policy, and read by many LGBT people, declare, “gay marriage – Abomination – black and white opposed to God”.

All the arguments that marriage equality will destroy marriage and harm children and hurt the nation are all just so much hot air and have been thoroughly and convincingly debunked by facts and sound logic for a long time now. 

There are bigoted reasons why Australians should reject marriage equality, 

but there are no good reasons.

We are a non-discriminatory pluralist secular nation that is not a theocracy and that is not governed by popular plebiscite.

But the Abbott plebiscite will allow every antagonist, every opponent, every religious fundamentalist, every bigot, every homophobe, every hate-filled rogue element, a tax-payer funded free kick to say whatever they like and do so with virtual impunity. The plebiscite debate will demean gay relationships by preparing the ground for ‘a frank and firm public evaluation of our relationships’ and creating a context for hate-speech and calumny of every description. It will be argued strongly that our relationships are not of the quality that should be attached to the word ‘marriage’ and every nasty trick in the book will be brought out by some who do not mind getting down into the gutter. How utterly demeaning! While we’re at it, just to be fair, should we not throw Malcolm and Lucy Turnbull’s as well as Tony and Margy Abbott’s relationships into the plebiscite for public evaluation too?

Orlando is the polar end of the spectrum. Hatred, violence and murder. The actions of this lone gunman have been shaped by historical forces that prepared the ground for his murderous rage and found voice and took shape in either his neurosis or his ideological affiliation. At the other end of the spectrum are the little question marks over the morality of gay people that the pentecostal minister might ask, or the speculation about paedophilia made by the conservative politician, ever so politely, linking it with gay people, or the declaration of God’s judgement on our land made by a Fred Nile or a Lyle Shelton quoting 2 Chronicles 7: 14 and equating gay people with the “wicked ways” that God will heal us from if only we would repent. 

Orlando does not happen in a vacuum. Orlando does not happen free from powerful social and psychological forces that should have been challenged. Gay hate, prejudice, bigotry and homophobia do not happen in a vacuum. They happen in a social context, where push-back against change occurs out of fear and ignorance and goes unchallenged.

In this context, it is wrong to push ahead in Australia with a marriage plebiscite.

It should be abandoned - totally, utterly and unequivocally.

Let the opponents of marriage equality jump up and down and scream blue murder all they like, but this invitation to public bigotry should be abandoned. It is unnecessary, harmful, costly, and very unwise, given that it has the potential to fuel the rage of the deranged or the dogma of the religionist. Turnbull’s ‘what could be more democratic than giving people a say’? is disingenuous and dangerous. The numbers are already there in the Parliament to pass proposed marriage equality legislation and with over two thirds of the population backing it in support, this is a no-brainer.

We have seen public racism get a foot-hold in this country with hooded bands of racist thugs marching in our streets equating their perverted ideology with love of country. The modern version of this started by allowing Pauline Hanson’s words to go unchallenged in the 1990s. The genie was let out of the bottle. The same mistake cannot be allowed to be made with homophobia and gay-hate. It must be challenged at every turn and certainly not given a respectable platform in the guise of a national plebiscite. Conservative and religious voices overstep the mark when they start playing with this kind of rhetorical fire. Good people get burned. You only have to look at Orlando.

The plebiscite is immoral and demeaning. It is wrong to pursue it. It must be abandoned.

Into The Long Grass - Conservative Treachery

On a major social issue, Australia is now in the grip of the worst joke since the White Australia policy, and it’s just about as funny. Gay people are not equal before the law and are still not allowed to marry our partners in this country, despite many of us having gone to the expense and inconvenience of leaving these shores, travelling overseas and getting married in other more enlightened jurisdictions where marriage equality is a reality. Australia ostentatiously lags behind the rest of the Western world on this issue. And what is the cause of all this? Two words: the conservatives.

Prior to 2004, the wording of our Marriage Act did not specify gender at all. Stand up John Howard. He changed the wording to specify man and woman solely, after seeing marriage equality slowly but surely becoming a reality around various states in the US world and in Europe, and so, rushed the legislation through the Parliament, thereby blocking any possibility that same-gender marriage could evolve in this country. He didn’t take it to a plebiscite, just to the Parliament. Interestingly, unlike his present-day descendants, he had this remarkable thing to say.

“We've decided to insert this into the Marriage Act to make it very plain that that is our view of a marriage and to also make it very plain that the definition of a marriage is something that should rest in the hands ultimately of the parliament of the nation. (It should) not over time be subject to redefinition or change by courts, it is something that ought to be expressed through the elected representatives of the country.'' Oops, it looks like the present crop didn’t get that memo. Interesting, don’t you think?

Fast forward a decade or so and the infamous love-child of Howard and Bronwyn Bishop, Tony Abbott, an even more conservative backward looking monarchist 50s man than Howard, is in office as Prime Minister. Apart from rusted on arch-conservatives, he is near universally disliked and by many, despised. He was only voted in because he wasn’t Gillard or Rudd; hardly a ringing endorsement. There were no palm fronds cast onto the road in front of Abbott’s entourage as he slipped into Canberra.

This is a man who on 7 March 2010 told a 60 Minutes interviewer in response to a question about homosexual people that, despite having a gay sister himself, he "probably [felt] a bit threatened ... as most people do." He defended the assertion on the ABC’s 7.30 two nights later as a “spontaneous answer” and went on to say, "there is no doubt that it [homosexuality] challenges, if you like, orthodox notions of the right order of things." This is the guy who subsequently becomes Prime Minister of Australia; a man who has not the first idea about LGBT people and our lives and who is implacably, rigidly and unwaveringly opposed to marriage equality. If gay marriage were ever to get up during his term of office, it would be over his dead body.

Just before he lost power due to the relentless abysmal polling he received in over thirty consecutive polls, and with the Government looking more and more like a one-term government because of him, the marriage equality issue came once again to the fore due to the submission of a suggested bill put up by one of his own, Warren Entsch. Abbott had already pronounced only a week or so before, that no party would own marriage equality and that if it were to become reality in this country, it would do so as a result of the whole Parliament. Sounds a lot like John Howard’s stated position, doesn’t it? But don’t be fooled. It’s all smoke and mirrors. There are a lot of them in this debate. Instead, because of the Entsch bill, a hastily called party room meeting was announced and all party members had to stop their work to attend the Tony Abbott Marriage Equality workshop for the day. At the end of it, the Parliament was superseded and forgotten and Australia was to have a plebiscite on the issue instead; a non-binding poll. And not at the next election, but sometime after the next election; say six to twelve months after. Abbott’s conservative mates like Abetz, Andrews, Bernardi and Fierravanti-Wells, to name a few, were enough to carry the day. Abbot got his way and fudged the whole the thing, proudly rejoicing in democracy because now, everyone would have a say.

Conservative religious folk, also implacably opposed to marriage equality, thought all their Christmases had come at once. The issue had been kicked down the road, off into the misty future, and reframed by marriage quality public enemy number 1 as a vox populi democratic issue. The Australian Christian Lobby’s President Lyle Shelton wrote on an American blog: “Instead, a people’s vote known as a plebiscite would be held sometime after the 2016 election, kicking the issue into the long grass (putting the issue off) and blunting the momentum of same-sex marriage lobbyists” (my italics).

No doubt embarrassed that these words have found the light of day, they have belled the cat and tolled the truth of this plebiscite. It is nothing but a ruse, a tactic, a way to delay, to obfuscate, to impede and to push the issue off the front pages. Abbott knew it. The ACL knows it. Turnbull knows it. All of Australia knows it, given that over two-thirds of us are supportive of a change to the Marriage Act already and have been for some time. It is a transparent tactic; worthy of Lao-Tzu.

Now, a human rights issue was going to be voted on. In any domain of Western jurisprudence, that is a no no. It is an absolute. You don't vote on human rights. They are not for the vote. Human rights are never to be given. They are only to be recognised. They belong to us all; as human beings. They do not lay in the purview of any man to give. And they do not lay in the voting intentions of an entire nation. Human rights are of a different order than say, education policy or health policy. They are over and above such quotidian issues, important though they may be. In a Western representative democracy like Australia’s, it is Justice 101 that all are equal under the law. Human rights are to be respected. And where we are found wanting occasionally or could do better, we adjust and change our ways to conform to the higher good, that of human rights.

Professor Gillian Triggs, President of the Australian Human Rights Commission wrote in an opinion piece in The Age. “Under article 26 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights all people ‘are equal before the law and entitled without any discrimination to the equal protection of the law’. The Australian Human Rights Commission considers that this principle of equality means that civil marriage should be available, without discrimination, to all couples, regardless of sex, sexual orientation or gender identity. - - - Of immediate relevance to Australia's proposed plebiscite, is the [US] Supreme Court's view that fundamental rights may not be submitted to a vote. Rather, ‘they depend on the outcome of no elections’. In principle, why should the right to equality in marriage depend upon a plebiscite”? Indeed, it shouldn’t.

As a result of this farce, my relationship and tens of thousands like it around the country, will be judged and voted on by bigots and homophobes and the ignorant who despise us. Our status in the nation will be evaluated by other Australians; something I dare say, not one of them would be comfortable with. Conservative politicians and religious folk who confirm our relationships as being of second-class worth see this exercise as something good and noble.

I have already written a piece about the plebiscite and you can read my argument against it here.

Since Malcolm Turnbull unseated Tony Abbott and took the prime ministership, he has been lumbered with almost all of Abbott’s far-right policies, including the plebiscite; the $160 million waste of money that even now, conservative politicians are saying they will not abide by regardless and will still vote against marriage equality though their electorates be supportive. It’s the usual suspects. Abbott should be counted among them. Then there will be Abetz, Andrews, Fierravanti-Wells, as well now as Bridget McKenzie who told the media this week that she will vote against marriage equality no matter what the plebiscite turns up. And oh, it was like getting blood out of a stone for her to admit this publicly. Seems she didn’t want to own her own intentions on the record.

These conservatives and others not so public are said to be voting with their consciences. 

Apparently, their consciences are perfectly okay with inequality before the law (one law for straight people and a different law for gay people), consciences just fine with the hurt and pain caused by relationships deemed second-rate, consciences just peachy with young gay people getting the message from Government that ‘we don’t care what you want’, consciences that sleep well at night knowing that over two-thirds of Australians disagree with them but they don’t give a stuff anyway, consciences that are jim dandy with depriving gay couples the affirmation of acceptance and celebration by society even when society has said it is perfectly happy to offer that affirmation. You gotta love the conservative conscience. These people alone stand in the way of Australian marriage equality.

So what of Turnbull? He is increasingly looking weak. Abbott does not hesitate to prosecute his own case. He’s out and about everywhere. This week, he’s in America telling a right-wing homophobic lobby group that marriage equality will “erode” the family and “damage” marriage. Rubbish I say Mr Abbott. Show us how that is to happen. The burden of proof is on you. Show us the evidence of erosion and damage.

But in all this, where’s our great enlightened moderate Liberal hope Malcolm Turnbull? Silent as the grave. Just mouthing the party line. Inanities about plebiscites and democracy. Repeating the words and policies of his political nemesis. It’s pathetic and he is looking more and more pathetic every day. Turnbull looks and sounds weak; a pusillanimous puppet of the Right. If he truly believes in marriage equality, then let him advocate for it and stop vacating the field to the likes of Bernardi and Abetz and Abbott. Let him use his considerable influence as Prime Minister to do some good for the country on this issue. Let him not be like Gillard who squandered her chance to do something when she had the power to do so. Turnbull really needs to grow a spine. He might be moderate, but if he presides over a far-right government and allows that discourse to fill the conversation, then his moderate credentials amount to zero. He is moderate in name only and will ultimately become a laughing stock. When a leader loses the respect of the nation, he or she is in deep trouble.

What a farce this has turned into. We have a weak pathetic Prime Minister who is scared of his own party and who won’t even advocate the issues he believes in. We’ve got an inordinately expensive unnecessary plebiscite which will be ignored by some conservative politicians anyway. We ‘ve got the unedifying spectacle of Australians being asked to vote on human rights. We’ve given bigots and homophobes equal standing in their views about gay peoples’ lives as us ourselves. We will still have to have a vote in the Parliament. And the whole thing is off in the never never somewhere.

What an utter disgrace! This is how we do social policy in Australia. This is how we treat people in Turnbull’s Australia.

If Turnbull fudges this, it will never be forgotten.

  

A Way In A Manger

I’ve been thinking a bit about Christmas and what it means to me these days. The Christmas story is so well-known and so re-told that it has pretty well lost traction with most non-churchy Australians now. While they may know the bones of the story, we have probably come to a generation or even two, who don’t know much more than those bones and have never thought much about it. But rather than me fleshing out the skeletal remains of the Christmas story here – others can do that far better than me – I thought I might just say a word or two about some of the metaphors in the story that are there to be found without too much analysis and what they might say to us today.

First, notice how according to the account, Mary and Joseph are to give birth to this child who was conceived in a miraculous way. This is not the only story that has such a phenomenon and it goes to the notion that this boy will be special. That he will be a gift, maybe from God, to humanity. As a special boy, he is certainly one to be watched as he grows. As a boy born in a special way, he is to be watched to see what he will do and what he says. Even the heavens seem to bare witness, in the Star of Bethlehem, that this is a special birth and that we should take notice.

But second, despite the specialness of his birth, we notice how even at this neonatal stage of his life, goodness even while he’s still in the womb, he is rejected and no-one wants to know him. There is no room in the inn for the likes of Jesus. He doesn’t fit in. Never did. Still doesn’t. I felt like that growing up. In fact, lots of people do. Instead, he gets shoved out the back with the low-lifes and the animals and gets born in a barn. He doesn’t get born in a hotel or a palace, with comfort and trappings and honour. No, not for this one. His birth will be mired in dishonour and disapproval.

In this, this little baby would set up a life-long custom of associating with such people. The marginalised we call them today. Undesirables, like tax collectors, sinners, prostitutes, Roman collaborators, unclean people, the sick, the lame, the demon-possessed. It’s not so difficult to translate that lot into modern language; the down and outs, the drug addicts, the alcoholics, people in and out of gaol, sex workers - but also the ordinary people who don’t fit in, like the gays and the trans people, the eccentric, the geeks, the ordinary looking, the uneducated, the selfish, the ego-centric, the poor, the HIV AIDS folk, the person of colour, the foreigner, the refugee. A little later, this boy and his family would become Middle Eastern refugees themselves and flee tyranny and persecution. Ring any bells for those who want to block the refugees and asylum seekers today?

I cannot also help but note the absence of religious figures from his own tradition at his birth; no rabbis, no priests and no religious piety or ritual – just some ratty-looking smelly shepherds and a couple of astrologers from another land and a different tradition who seem to recognise something in him. It was always going to be these people, the ones not in charge, whom this boy would associate with. And he would do it for the rest of his life. Even to the point where later on, the privileged would mock him for it.

It was these people that he would later say that to such belonged the Kingdom of Heaven. Apparently, he thought that God was somehow connected and concerned with such people in a special way. And because he himself associated solely with such folk, it really didn’t take too long before he became one of them. Or as I like to think of it; one of us. If incarnational theology has any truth to it, then it is that this boy was one of us. In other words, he was not an elite; he was like me.

As a gay man, I belong to a group which has traditionally been relegated to the ‘other’, to ‘less than’; a group of marginalised people who have been judged by the mainstream. Gay people have been discriminated against and oppressed for centuries by society and the Church, yet we are still here asserting our claim to our fair share of human dignity.

This boy, Jesus, came in a long line of prophets who acted this way and taught this stuff; that the essence of spirituality is looking out for the widow, the orphan, the poor person, the person in need, the destitute and the despairing. It’s about loving your neighbour. Any God stuff without this, is pretty vacuous. That’s what he taught later on when he grew into manhood. It seems that his brother James was one of the first to get this, and he tried to write about it and spell it out in his eponymous book.

Being a member of a minority group gives you a prophetic voice like Jesus. Minority groups don’t have the power. That’s why they’re the minority. The power rests in the mainstream and in the privileged, who protect it and resist change with all their might, sometimes even with violence of one kind or another. But you can say all kinds of stuff when you’re in a minority group. You can speak to your family, your friends, your society, your nation and offer something different. You can offer an alternative position to that of the mainstream and maybe even help to correct a great wrong You can show by your life an alternate way to live and see things. You can be prophetic, just like Jesus.

This Christmas, I welcome the birth of this boy in a shitty old barn with just his parents and a few no-bodies there to greet him, and appreciate more what the symbology around his birth, life, teaching and death mean for how we can live our lives and treat each other and make a better world. I think he really was a special boy.

Respect? Respect For What?

Aretha Franklin sang about it. Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King spoke about it. We hear the word all the time. Respect. You are to show respect. You must respect your elders, respect your teachers, respect your pastor or priest, respect the Parliament, even respect your opponents.

This week has brought into stark relief the notion of respect again for me. Once again, it is over the marriage equality debate in Australia. That snail-paced item of social progress that it seems forever is just out of reach, just beyond our grasp. For the first time in history, Australia has full agreement and full support of the leaders of all our political parties. Even the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition are feuding friends over marriage equality. They are in concert that Australia should allow its gay and lesbian citizens the right to marry our partners. But still, we cannot get there! It is incredibly frustrating!

We are faced now with the idiotic imbecilic situation that despite over two thirds majority of Australians consistently supporting the change, the leaders of the Parties in support of the change, the majority of Parliamentarians in support of the change, and the High Court of Australia saying that it is in the purview of the Parliament, and nowhere else, to make decisions concerning the Marriage Act, we are not able to have a free vote in the Parliament but must take the country to a monumentally expensive and divisive plebiscite on the matter, only to subsequently return to the Parliament to have the vote we're not having now.

It begs the question. Why?

It would appear that the price of the National Party's and conservative Liberal's support for Malcolm Turnbull in the recent Prime Ministerial dumping was that Turnbull inter alia hold the line on marriage equality. In other words, while he himself is totally supportive of the change and is local Member of an electorate that has one of the largest populations of LGBT people in the entire country, he has tied himself to Tony Abbott's backward and obstructionist policy; a policy that Turnbull himself spoke out against when he was still Minister of Communications before his ascension to the big office.

The plebiscite itself was Abbott's idea alone; an idea designed to impede progress of the issue while the opponents lined up and spent millions of dollars in order to attempt to stop this change from happening. For them, on the issue of marriage equality, they would wear it as a badge of honour to be the anomaly of major Western countries who have comfortably lived with their LGBT people marrying without civilisation or the Church falling into a chasm. They would comfortably and happily deprive gay and lesbian people of their right to be treated the same as everyone else and the happiness they would derive, against the clear will of the majority. These people will not hesitate.

In the Parliament yesterday, Malcolm Turnbull vomited out a whole lot sweet and saccharine statements about Australians having the ability to have a sensible conversation, to bring their collective wisdom to this, to have a respectful and open dialogue as we have the discussion over the lead up to the plebiscite. He placed much weight on the wisdom and grounded nature of Australians as the discourse would develop.

Not for me! From my experience, I've never heard so much rubbish and I think Turnbull is smart enough to know it. Have you seen the comments sections in newspaper articles and blog posts around marriage equality? Have you ever been in a Facebook thread where marriage equality is being discussed and some opponent lobs in one of the well-known hand grenades they are so fond of? Have you heard Eric Abetz talk about marriage equality? Have you heard Concetta Fierravanti-Wells tell us all that non-Anglo Australians are all opposed to marriage equality?

Have you heard what the Catholic Church still officially teaches and proffers by Australian Catholic apologists about gay people? That we are intrinsically disordered, we are  inclined to moral evil and are against the natural order. Have you heard what Lyle Shelton of the Australian Christian Lobby or Fred Nile from the Christian Democratic Party say of gay people? Here's a basic off the top of my head list of what Bible-believing [read: fundamentalist] evangelicals think about gay people. Being gay is a choice. Being gay can be changed. Being gay is not part of the identity. Being gay is a sin. It is a behaviour that can be stopped and should be repented of. It is an abomination. It is a rejection of God. It is base. It is disordered. It is anti-scriptural. Gay people will not see God nor enjoy eternity with God. God will punish gay people. Being gay itself is a punishment by God for godlessness. And if you happen to be Pentecostal, you will throw in that being gay is caused by a demon and that we are all possessed.

Now, let's go back to where I started. About respect. I understand and accept the maxim of  "I do not agree with what you have to say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it". I understand why this is right. It is because the only logical alternative to this is epistemological coercion ie., I force you to think the way I do. Some have tried this: Fidel Castro, Lenin and Stalin, Mao Tse-tung, the Kim dynastic dictatorship of North Korea. All have attempted to coerce thinking and to enforce knowledge. A strong belief in the maxim above protects against the worst excesses of coercive thought. BUT, while I agree with the right to express thoughts freely, with the caveat that you are not expressing hate speech or inciting violence, it does not mean that I respect your views.

You can be racist. I can't stop you. But don't ask me to respect your view.
I don't respect you.
You can be sexist. I can't stop you. But don't ask me to respect your view.
I don't respect you.
You can be homophobic. I can't stop you. But don't ask me to respect your view.
I don't respect you.
You can be a religiously motivated bigot. I can't stop you. But don't ask me to respect your view.
I don't respect you.

The fact of the matter is that a plebiscite on marriage equality gives equal and equivalent weight to those who are implacably opposed to my being married to my partner of fifteen years. Can you imagine the outrage if the situation were reversed; if Australians were being asked to evaluate straight relationships to see whether we would approve socially? A plebiscite gives equal weight and moral equivalence to those who are only too willing and eager to judge me according to unscientific standards that are outdated, unjust and harmful, to those who are conservative Christians who believe that intrinsically I am a sinner, a rejecter of all that is good and encumbered by a willful opposition to the natural order only to be judged by a God who will cast me into the fires of hell for eternity for my wickedness. A plebiscite allows such as them to evaluate the morality and praxis of my relationship.

Malcolm Turnbull could not be more wrong. A Government-funded No campaign in a plebiscite will draw out the opponents of marriage equality who are not only quiet and inoffensive, but will unleash a flood of derogation of gay people by the conservatives, the crazies, the nutters and the Christians who believe we're all filthy sinners and possessed. He is deluded if he thinks otherwise.

But the right thing to do is not a matter for the democratic voice. Sorry, but it's not. Discriminating against gay people because of our sexual orientation is just wrong; no matter whether one disagrees with me or one hundred million disagree with me. Treating gay people as second class citizens will never be right. We shouldn't vote on whether racism is okay or homophobia is okay within limits or sexism is okay. They're not. And they never will be. It' s not a matter for a vote.

We should have the right to marry our partners and Turnbull should use his undoubted oratorical skills, his numbers in the Parliament, his place in the polls and his stated personal position to stand up and do the right thing and to stop being so cowardly by being frightened of the Nationals. He is looking pathetic.

I will respect anyone's right to think however they damn well please within the caveat mention above, but don't ask me to respect clearly wrong discrimination and the bigoted ugly language that goes with it.

Prime Minister Turnbull, stop being such a wus and get this to the Parliament and bring the damn thing to a vote.

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.