IF you believe in the core human values of fairness and equity irrespective of your sexuality, then it’s hard to be an Australian these days.
This is a frightened and reactionary nation, which is being left behind countries such as Canada, New Zealand and theUK and the United States when it comes to according fairness to gay people.
What is even more disheartening is that conservative leaders in the form of British Prime Minister David Cameron and New Zealand’s John Key are championing the cause of marriage equality for gay people, whereas in Australia people like Tasmanian Liberal Party leader Will Hodgman are too spineless to stand up to the prejudiced hardliners in his caucus.
That two people, of sound mind and at the age of consent, should be able to marry ought not be a matter of controversy.
It does not matter whether the couple are of the same sex or of different sex.
Just as it is evil to discriminate against a person on the basis of race or colour of their skin, so it is to do so on the basis of their sexual leaning.
To assert, as some opponents of equality in marriage do, that we are underpinned in our value system by the Judaeo-Christian ethic and that it is decreed by that ethic that marriage is between a man and a woman is arrant nonsense and dishonest.
Those who wrote the various books, gospels and letters of the Old and New Testaments were doing so in an era when same-sex marriage was not on the political or societal radar and when wives were told to obey their husbands.
And in any event, Jesus Christ was a man who came to rewrite the narrow and hypocritical Jewish laws and strictures that marginalised minorities.
The real reason for opposition to same-sex marriage is simply prejudice.
It is the same prejudice that saw white America treat African Americans as second-class citizens for centuries; it is the same prejudice that we witnessed in apartheid South Africa; it is the same prejudice that we still encounter today by some in our community towards asylum seekers and indigenous Australians.
For those who oppose same-sex marriage, gay people are “different”.
They are not white bread, picket fence Anglo-European Australians with three kids and a four-wheeldrive parked in the suburban driveway.
Sure the prejudice is dressed up as being a religious objection, a philosophical objection or a politically conservative view of the world.
But just beneath the skin of those who argue against gay marriage from these perspectives is conscious or subconscious prejudice.
It’s opportune to tackle another objection currently raised in Tasmania by those who are prejudiced against gay people and their right to marriage equality.
That is, Tasmanian legislators should not pass a law that the High Court might find unconstitutional.
This is an argument, if one can call it that, of breathtaking hypocrisy.
Last Thursday, Brad Stansfield, Mr Hodgman’s chief of staff, tweeted darkly about the possibility of a High Court challenge to a same-sex marriage law in Tasmania.
As this columnist points out to Mr Stansfield, his party has sponsored many laws that have been challenged in the High Court, some successfully.
Think anti-terror laws, criminal organisation laws, industrial relations laws etc.
Furthermore, it is likely that this High Court, a pleasingly more liberal institution these days, will uphold the Tasmanian law.
The preponderance of constitutional scholarship, as opposed to the opinions of those lawyers with little or no experience of constitutional matters, is that the marriage power in the Constitution is not exclusive to the Commonwealth.
Do not let prejudiced MPs hide behind the constitutional challenge argument.
Do not let them dress up their fear of equality and fairness in a seemingly respectable cloak of legislative conservatism.
Call them out.
At the end of the day the argument in Tasmania about same-sex marriage is akin to the one being had on the right to die with dignity. Both are about freedom of individuals to live without the state interfering in highly personal choices and decisions.
And it is about ensuring that equality and fairness are more than lip service.
Every Tasmanian who cares about compassion and generosity will back same-sex marriage.
There is simply no valid reason to oppose it in 2013 just as there was no valid reason to oppose the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act introduced by the unfairly maligned US president Lyndon Johnson in the mid-1960s.
To oppose same-sex marriage is to endorse inequality.
And it is to ensure Australia’s awful reactionary image is maintained throughout the world.
To supporters of same-sex marriage, the message is simple – do not let the forces of darkness win the day.
Greg Barns is a Hobart-based human rights lawyer.
Author: Greg Barns
Publication: Mercury
Date: 14 October 2013