Far from being a protest on the periphery, the concept of same-sex marriage is winning over the conservatives.
Gay marriage has become an interminably dull issue, one we will have to endure for perhaps another year or two. A year or two of same-sex couples declaring their love for each other and their desire for a wedding with all the trimmings. A year or two of very religious people warning of the collapse of the social order. Another year or two of politicians discovering there’s little political cost any more in declaring their support for same-sex nuptials.
My boredom threshold was reached when the national director of Australian Marriage Equality, Rodney Croome, argued last week that Australian gays and lesbians would spend $700 million on weddings if they were allowed, and all this money could be lost to New Zealand!
The truth is, this debate is over. Same-sex marriage has lost its culture war status.
There’s no wedge to exploit.
Through all the great civil rights battles – ending slavery, women’s suffrage, acknowledging Aboriginal people as citizens – once we’ve reached the point of small business benefits, the heart tends to sink. Business must have the right to rip off gays by charging scandalous amounts for bouquets and soft-focus photos. That’s equality for you.
The truth is, this debate is over. Same-sex marriage has lost its culture war status. There’s no wedge to exploit. It’s just a matter of time before the Australian Parliament amends the Marriage Amendment Act 2004.
Julia Gillard – the law is ”appropriate in its current form” – and Tony Abbott – ”the orthodox definition of marriage as between a man and a woman should continue” – look a little silly, a little last century.
Abbott made a significant shift after New Zealand legalised same-sex marriage when he said it was up to the Liberal party room after the election to decide whether members would be allowed a conscience vote. It was an option denied to them when the Parliament voted on gay marriage last year.
What is astonishing is how quickly this issue has moved. Forty years ago, gays and lesbians were treated abominably in Australia. Gay sex itself was illegal in Victoria until 1980. By 2004, a Newspoll found 38 per cent of Australians supported gay marriage, with 44 per cent against.
This week, Essential Media found 54 per cent in support with 33 per cent opposed. Something considered preposterous a generation ago, then a non issue to all but a few activists, then an issue young people cared about but was too hard politically, now has an air of inevitability about it.
Progressive voters have always supported gay marriage more than conservatives, but the gap is narrowing. Conservatives now seem to be leaping from the closet (excuse the pun) to declare their change of heart. There’s little political courage in it any more.
Essential Media’s Jackie Woods wrote in The Drum this week that the only question left was which political tradition would claim victory. Would gay marriage ”go down in history as a progressive social reform celebrating alternative ways of living and loving, or a conservative affirmation of the primacy of the family unit?”
The conservatives seem to be winning. Many point to gay conservative Andrew Sullivan’s essay in 1989 as a turning point. Sullivan wrote that, at the time, most gay leaders were dismissive of marriage, ”cling[ing] to notions of gay life as essentially outsider, anti-bourgeois, radical. Marriage, for them, is co-optation into straight society.”
I confess to some sympathy with this view. I have never objected to gay marriage, but have been baffled as to why it mattered. That’s easy for me to say as a straight married woman, but it seemed to make as much sense as women storming the all-male Melbourne Club. Fair enough, but why bother? As discrimination on tax, healthcare, superannuation and welfare fell away, why worry about this symbolic thing, why yearn to be admitted into a fraying institution?
But Sullivan goes on: ”For many other gays – my guess, a majority – while they don’t deny the importance of rebellion 20 years ago … there’s now the sense of a new opportunity. A need to rebel has quietly ceded to a desire to belong … like straight marriage, it would foster social cohesion, emotional security, and economic prudence.”
Listen to Barry O’Farrell: ”My view … is that as a Liberal who believes that commitment and family units are one of the best ways in which society is organised, I support the concept of same-sex marriage.”
And David Cameron: ”Conservatives believe in the ties that bind us; that society is stronger when we make vows … and support each other. So I don’t support gay marriage in spite of being a Conservative. I support gay marriage because I am a Conservative.”
The first legally married lesbians in the world, Anne-Marie Thus and Helene Faasen, wed in Amsterdam on April 1, 2001. ”We are so ordinary, if you saw us on the street you’d just walk right past us,” said Thus.
That was it all along, wasn’t it? To be ordinary, to finally, truly ”belong”. The last battle in the gay and lesbian struggle for equality isn’t radical; it’s conservative. To have the state acknowledge that their love is just the same as everyone else’s. Just as conventional, special, complicated and routine. It might take a year or two, but the right for gays and lesbians to be ordinary is won. Soon we’ll be raising our glasses to that.
Gay Alcorn is a former editor of The Sunday Age and a regular columnist.
Author: Gay Alcorn
Publication: The Sydney Morning Herald
Publication Date: April 26 2013