A believer in the ties that bind, Collingwood publican Tom McFeely went to the 25th wedding anniversary of some close friends earlier this year in a great mood – but left in a foul one.
At the party, McFeely recalls looking around the crowd and thinking that aside from himself and his partner of 21 years, Darren Kelly, and of course the friends celebrating their anniversary, mostly everyone in the room was divorced or separated.
And yet they were the only ones legally unable to wed. ”I sort of looked at Darren during the speeches and we thought, ‘yeah, we are the only ones still together’.”
Later that night, when a slow Barry White number was played, two women approached McFeely and Kelly, asking them to dance. ”It didn’t occur to them that we might want to dance with each other,” he says.
So they didn’t dance.
But what really pushed McFeely into the foul mood was when a man – a guest at the party – told him he would have felt uncomfortable watching two men dancing to an intimate song, anyway.
The incident, McFeely says, is part of the reason why he and Kelly agreed to take part in a 2014 calendar filled with loving images of men and women in same-sex relationships.
Earlier this year a photographer, Michael Griffith, set out to create the calendar in protest against the nation’s marriage laws and McFeely liked the idea.
He thought it would be a symbolic reminder that the issue of marriage equality is about having the state recognise that his love is just love, wonderful, complicated and ordinary.
And there was another reason. ”We also wanted to be an example of a committed loving relationship so that young gay people have that … because unfortunately our marriage laws have encouraged promiscuity and we wanted to encourage the opposite.”
Griffith, who is a tram driver by night so he can pursue photography during the day, had the idea for the project in the early hours of the morning after a long shift driving the 109 Box Hill tram.
He says many of his gay and lesbian colleagues had been talking to him about it and he thought a calendar full of photos of gay and lesbian couples in loving relationships could be an effective way to protest unfair marriage laws.
”A lot of Australians, they don’t like to talk about social issues even if they feel deeply about them, and I thought it would be a great way of showing that the laws are wrong,” Griffith says.
Griffith says he wanted to capture old and new love in the pictures. ”It was joyous. People in love, all the out shots are of many couples bursting into laughter.”
He said 10 per cent of calendar profits would be donated to Headspace, a national youth mental-health group. You can buy the calendar on line
Australian Marriage Equality convener Rodney Croome said the project, called Calendar of Love, was ”a breath of fresh air in the marriage equality debate because it is a reminder that this reform is about people not politics, and about what unites us, not what divides us.
”There will be some who say the cultural shift required for gay equality has already occurred and calendars like this are no longer necessary, but I couldn’t disagree more.
”It’s great we have openly gay government ministers and Olympians but the real litmus test for cultural change is whether a same-sex couple holding hands can walk down the main street of Mildura, Mackay or Mount Gambier, unmolested and unnoticed except by those who esteem love.”
Mr Croome said the movement was preparing a post-election strategy to encourage support within the Coalition for a conscience vote and to establish a cross-party working group to ”ensure supporters across all parties are working together”.
But prospects for a change to the law are bleak. Tony Abbott has conceded that marriage equality is ”an important issue” but has not committed to a conscience vote and said before the election that it would not be a priority for a Coalition government.
He appears likely to face an immediate test on the matter, however, with reports that the ACT Labor government was planning to introduce legislation to legalise gay marriage in its next sitting.
Author: Daniella Miletic
Publication: The Age
Date: 15 September 2013