A reform for better, not worse

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This was published 13 years ago

A reform for better, not worse

By Adele Horin

The fairytale wedding is back - and not just for the royals. Thirtysomething couples want to get married in style. Weddings are a hard-edged professional production these days. The big creamy invitation with its complex instructions, including where to buy the gift, is a foretaste of the extravagance to come. The stretch limousine, the reception in a block-booked hotel in the country, the string quartet and the video team are the essential props in making the modern wedding unforgettable. Even churches are making a comeback and brides are changing their surname.

Having lived together for years - like the royals - the typical young couple these days sees marriage as both deeply symbolic, and cause for a celebration costing (their parents) tens of thousands of dollars. They don't have to get married, and the fact that they have chosen to do so in such spectacular style shows how much store they put in the old institution.

Marriage is so popular - the most recent figures show that in 2008 the number of marriages reached a 20-year high - it is no wonder the subject of gay marriage has reared its head. Shock and horror: gays and lesbians are just like other Australians. They are just as conservative as the mainstream, just as influenced by the social currents that have made living in sin till death doth part them so 1970s. They are just as sentimental, just as keen to make a public commitment, and just as fond of a white stretch limousine, a drunken speech, and a big party as other young Australians. Surprise: they want to have the same right to a big brassy wedding as anyone else, and if some choose a retro ceremony in their parents' backyard with strenuously secular vows and a celebrant quoting Kahlil Gibran circa 1980, who's to say they're old-fashioned?

It is amazing politicians cannot see gay marriage as a triumph of conservative values. Far from being a threat to the institution of marriage, that so many gays want in is evidence of how the institution of marriage has triumphed over its detractors. Gay men's reputation for open relationships, multiple partners and having lots of sex is so yesterday. Now they want commitment, domesticity, the state and possibly the church to sanction their unions. Why isn't Tony Abbott cheering?

But more particular, why is Julia Gillard so resistant? At least Tony Abbott's opposition is consistent with his religious values. But Gillard just looks like a phoney. To repeat ad nauseam that marriage is a union between a man and a woman is a slogan, not an argument. It is a description of the status quo.

Slavery was once the status quo, a ban on interracial marriage was once the status quo, and jailing homosexuals for being homosexuals was once the status quo. But times change, enlightenment dawns, human rights are better understood, and progressive governments lead the charge to do what is right, to enlarge freedoms and to combat discrimination on the grounds of race, gender or sexual preference.

Just as Australia is a laggard, not a leader, in tackling climate change, so, too, is it backward on same-sex marriage. Countries that have taken the plunge include Canada, Spain, Argentina, Norway, Belgium, the Netherlands, Sweden, Iceland and South Africa, as well as the states of New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Iowa and Vermont and the District of Columbia in the US.

Before World War I Australia had an international reputation as a progressive social laboratory. Men and then women won the right to vote before their counterparts did in England. Commentators around the world observed our bold experiments in working conditions, and social welfare.

When Gough Whitlam swept into office, the country knew it had a reformist Labor government. It went down in flames over economic policy but its social policy achievements in three years are more memorable than just about anything the cautious Bob Carr achieved in NSW in 10. From abolishing conscription to abolishing the tax on the contraceptive pill, from abolishing the British honours list, lowering the voting age to 18, removing the last vestiges of the white Australia policy and starting a universal health insurance scheme, here was a Labor government unafraid of changing the status quo, and unafraid of social conservatives in marginal electorates. Whitlam did what he believed was right in social policy and most of it has stuck.

Julia Gillard deems even a conscience vote on gay marriage too politically risky. With a Galaxy poll of 1100 Australians last year showing 60 per cent support for gay marriage, the majority is again hostage to the prejudices of a minority in swinging seats.

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Gillard is unusual for a woman of her age, 49. She is living with her partner, and has resisted the path of marriage, unlike most of her baby boomer contemporaries who eventually succumbed. Perhaps she is perplexed why gays are fighting to wed when the Prime Minister herself has demonstrated how superfluous marriage is.

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The great Australian public has not told the Prime Minister how she must live and love. No one expects her to hire the stretch limo and the string quartet and marry in style, or marry at all. The choice to marry or not is up to her. But she and her party are telling Australia's gays and lesbians how to live and love, and denying them choice.

Here is a clear-cut issue crying out for a reforming Labor government to make a difference, to do something bold, memorable and right.

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