Gay Marriage?

GLOBE was pleased to be able to host an evening with Rodney Croome at the Melbourne Town Hall.

The evening was a great success, some really positive feedback about the venue and the foo, and then Rodney spoke to the group about Gay Marriage and Equal Rights. What an evening!

However, back to Rodney's speech that was most inspiring. As Rodney pointed out, the Australian LGBT community is under attack and a more concerted attack than ever before. We have experienced and heard this concerted attack through the media in recent days.

The Government is moving to defer the recognition of marriage equality for years and set in place the second rate legal status of gay relationships. Rodney is looking for our support in this crucial debate for the LGBT community being treated as equals with the rest of the community. He is looking for LGBT support in his work as co-covenor of a new national rights network. You can contact Rodney through his website at www.rodneycroome.id.au and you can view the full text of his speech below. BENT TV were also present during the evening and recorded Rodney's speech so watch out for it soon.

Peter Stephenson

The names of hope

This address was given to the GLOBE at the Melbourne Town Hall on 30 April2004 by Rodney Croome.

Tomorrow is May Day, the day we traditionally celebrate, freedom, awakening and new life.

It's an anniversary with added significance for many Tasmanians and many LGBT Australians because it was the day in 1997 when the Tasmanian Upper House finally agreed to decriminalise gay sex without any qualifications or caveats, bringing to a successful end a decade long struggle for freedom and equality which had convulsed Tasmania, shaken the nation and reached around the world.

The nation-wide movement to repeal laws criminalising homosexuality which had begun in South Australia 30 years before had had it's final and most difficult victory. Tasmania, meanwhile, was sending a deliberate message to the world that it had forsaken its closed and repressive attitudes to minorities and had transformed itself into a new tolerant and inclusive society.

But for those of us at the centre of the gay law reform debate May 1st is symbolic of something greater.

Our campaign for equality had faced overwhelming odds. It began in earnest when we established a stall at Salamanca market to collect petition signatures only to be banned by the Council and hauled off by the police. It survived violent anti-gay rallies across the state, and calls for the re-introduction of the death penalty for homosexuality by state MPs. It went from strength to strength despite overwhelming and vitriolic opposition from the Tasmanian establishment.

Through successful appeals to outside bodies like the UN Human Rights Committee and to the generosity and tolerance of ordinary Tasmanians through a statewide community education program, our campaign for law reform was ultimately successful.

For my colleagues and I May 1st means one simple thing, that when a small group of people acting with courage, intelligence and faith in their compatriots sets itself the task of achieving justice, anything is possible.

This message is as important today as it has ever been.

The Australian LGBT community is under attack, a more concerted attack than it has experienced for over a generation.

Every day the far right is gaining in strength and influence.

Once a fringe hate-group, Salt Shakers is now claiming to have convinced major companies to withdraw their advertising from "The L Word". These companies include hip and groovy retailers like Just Jeans, or should I say Unjust Jeans.

The Australian Family Association, also once a non-player in Australian politics, is now having its voice heard on every major social issue. According to recent reports it's even been making submissions direct to Federal Cabinet.

Salt Shakers and the AFA are no longer the bleating and disorganised front groups we once laughed at. Take one look at their websites and you'll see professional, up-market organisations in the mould of their American equivalents. None of Australia's LGBT rights organisations can match the resources these anti-gay groups have at their disposal.

But the threat to our rights and dignity from the far right is nothing compared to that from the federal government.

Earlier this week John Howard announced that he will remove all uncertainty about the legal definition of marriage by ensuring that the Marriage Act and the Family Law Act clearly define matrimony as the union of a man and a woman.

At the moment legislation governing marriage in Australia doesn't actually exclude same sex couples. These laws rely on common law (ie court judgements from the past) to do that.

The Prime Minister has denied the move "targets gay people". He says he is simply writing into law what everyone already expects the law to say.

But the truth is Howard's initiative is a direct attack on LGBT human rights.

The Government's intention is to block all court challenges to the definition of marriage, especially from Australian same sex couples married in Canada , couples like Melbourne's Jacqui Tomlin, Sarah Nichols, Jason McCheyne and Adrian Tuazon who have already announced their intention to take such a case.

Howard's worried that by appealing under the foreign marriage recognition provisions of the Marriage Act, people like Jason and Adrian may well persuade an Australian court to over turn the common law definition of marriage and effectively make gay marriage legal.

By blocking this possibility Howard will not only be denying married same sex couples their day in court, he will cutting off the only judicial path to marriage reform. Unlike Canada Australia does not have enforceable constitutional guarantees of human rights to which we can appeal.

The Government's move will defer the recognition of marriage equality for years. It will set in legal cement the second-rate legal status of gay relationships.

If you're still not convinced that the Government's proposal is aimed directly at us I refer you to an article by far right Liberal Senator, Guy Barnett, in Tuesday's Australian. Senator Barnett is being credited with successfully petitioning the Prime Minister to act against marriage reform, and he makes it clear that what the government plans is all about thwarting the threat posed to a bedrock institution by gay couples.

In his eyes marriage is about social stability and raising children - two things which homosexuals want to undermine, especially those homosexuals who want to persuade "activists judges" (that's code for Michael Kirby) to use "international conventions" to "undermine Australian law" by "importing foreign marriage standards".

A good dose of homophobia laced with populism and xenophobia: it's a fast-acting poison the electorate will be asked to swallow right up until the election.

Sadder still is that the ALP, our alternate government, is not about to offer the electorate an antidote to this poison.

Having learnt next to nothing from previous conservative election wedge campaigns like the Tampa crisis, Shadow Attorney-General, Nicola Roxon, says the ALP will support the Government.

In fact she's gone a step further describing possible court challenges to the definition of marriage from gay couples married overseas as undermining of marriage.

It's border protection all over again, but instead of refugees challenging Australia's sovereignty it's same sex couples - outsiders who are already inside the country!

I am as happy as anyone that Mark Latham has repeatedly committed his party to removing discrimination against same sex couples in important practical day-to-day matters like superannuation. By eloquently speaking out in support of same sex couples adopting children, and about LGBT people joining a widened circle of mateship", Latham has become Labor's best leader on LGBT issues.

But on the immensely important symbolic issue of marriage Labor is nowhere at all. It's left wing is silent, it's LGBT network, Rainbow Labor, is silent. The ALP's Catholic brotherhood rules the roost.

What a contrast to Labor's British, American and New Zealand equivalents which are championing comprehensive recognition of same sex relationships. And don't forget Spain, one of the world's most Catholic countries, where the newly elected left-of-centre government has promised equality in marriage for same sex couples. It's a sad day when a handful of well-placed conservative Catholics in Australia manage to do what the entire religious establishment of Spain can't?

At the very least Labor's left wingers and its LGBT members should be advocating a compromise position, let's say a inquiry into Howard's new law when it hits the Senate. A Senate inquiry would be perfectly appropriate given the wide ranging implications of the Government's radical marriage overhaul. It would also serve to put off debate until after the election when everyone can be a bit more rational about the issue. But as far as I know not even this possibility has been floated.

In the presence of such profound attacks on our rights, and in the absence of support from influential institutions like the ALP, one would hope that the LGBT community itself is willing and able to defend itself.

Unfortunately it isn't. In fact Australia's LGBT human rights advocates are more bitterly divided than, in my experience, has ever been the case before.

True we have a newly-formed national LGBT human rights coalition called the Equal Rights Network. But within the ERN there deep differences about what we should be campaigning for and how, differences which have generated unprecedented levels of suspicion and animosity.

Marriage, not surprisingly is the lightning rod for these differences.

Some advocates believe that we should not be campaigning on marriage reform. They argue that it is not what the LGBT community wants, that it will stir up the far right, that it will jeopardise change on more immediate issues like superannuation and workplace discrimination, that debate is being driven by conservatives, that Australians don't care about "moral" issues, that it's just not the right time, that it's just not right issue.

Each of these objections is wrong.

Many same sex couples may not wish to marry but there is no doubt most believe they should have the right, for the simple and compelling reason that the quality of their relationships is no less than that of their heterosexual counterparts.

Howard may be making the headlines on gay marriage but as I've already explained what's driving the debate are the aspirations of those Australian same sex couples who have been married overseas. I believe it would be reprehensible of us to abandon them or the debate their actions have sparked.

The response of marriage-shy activists to these criticisms is always "think strategically". But not one tactical argument against marriage campaigning makes sense.

If the US marriage debate shows anything it is that, far from side-lining other reforms, marriage actually mainstreams them.

Suddenly American conservatives who once vehemently opposed civil unions support them. Here, the increasingly conservative Australian newspaper, for decades silent on our rights, has twice advocated for superannuation and property reform as an alternative to marriage since the beginning of the year (editorials, 27.2.04, 28.4.04).

Precisely because it will generate so much fuss, debate on marriage reform holds out the best hope yet of clearing Australia's 10 year federal parliamentary log jam on same sex relationship recognition in less controversial areas like super, tax and even the military.

The looming election is a worry for some. Will a fully-fledged marriage debate make life easier for Howard and harder for Latham?

The quick answer is "no". Even when past LGBT rights debates have been at their most vicious have they never had an anti-gay electoral outcome. The US presidential campaign is a perfect example. Kerry isn't losing nor is Bush gaining from that country's vigorous marriage debate.

More importantly, LGBT community advocates who are doing their job properly will not be intimidated by or co-opted into the election strategies of political parties. The history of state-based LGBT reform campaigns in Australia shows we can only expect to be taken seriously after elections if we fearlessly raise all our claims on justice before them.

As for the supposed indifference of the Australian public; it may not get as worked up about sex as its American equivalent, but it's just as sensitive about symbolic reforms. The Republic was a perfect example.

In the 1950s there were plenty of African Americans who said now wasn't the time to sit at the front of the bus, or integrate swimming pools or send black kids to white schools. There were more important challenges for people of colour, like employment discrimination, better housing, an end to lynching. The only thing pursuing hot-button reform would do, they warned, is stir up racism and jeopardise progress on bread-and-butter issues. Who in America, they asked, really cares about the rights of Negroes anyway?

History proved them wrong. The greatest gains African Americans had made in a century, and a transformation in US and global attitudes, came from the pursuit of those very claims which the voices of caution and fear had disavowed.

When marriage reform is so mainstream that it can be endorsed by the Economist, the Guardian and the King of Cambodia isn't it time for LGBT advocates to shrug off our fear and rise to the challenges and opportunities this reform presents?

At this point I should confess that I was also once a sceptic about marriage reform, believing it to be a distraction from more important issues, at best unnecessary and at worst dangerous.

My mind began to change at the end of 2002 as I started to consider what marriage reform actually means and its parallels with my experiences campaigning for the decriminalisation of homosexuality in Tasmania.

In mulling over the meaning of marriage I very quickly rejected conservative gay arguments for equality. People like Andrew Sullivan believe marriage is the cornerstone of social stability and that homosexuals should be admitted to the institution because it will de-radicalise us. To put it bluntly, it will stop gay men rooting around. This argument is as fanciful as rhetoric, popular in the 70s, that the decriminalisation of homosexuality would bring homosexuals into the sexual mainstream and rid the world of beats and backrooms. It didn't work then and it won't work now.

"Gay marriage will make as just like straights" is not a good reason for reform. It shouldn't, it can't and it won't. In grasping the meaning of marriage I had to dig a little deeper.

As the celebrants say, marriage is the union of one man and one women for life to the exclusion of all others. The words are so often repeated we lose a sense of what they really mean.

Marriage means that two people commit to become one person, legally, financially, domestically, physically, emotionally, socially, spiritually and most important of all, selflessly.

Two people becoming one is an inspiring and potentially radical idea. It challenges a society in which extreme individualism is the norm, where the pursuit of one's own pleasure is promoted as the font of happiness, but where that dream too often fails to fulfil, and many people feel isolated and alienated from the world around them. The core aspiration of marriage is that we can transcend the limits of the self, and find happiness in something greater than ourselves. This runs against the grain of modernity's atomisation and self-centred egotism

Of course, this idea of interpersonal union has been so deeply debased and corrupted it is almost dead. Marriage has been used and abused as a means for imposing religious belief, transfering property, forging family allegiances, and controlling sex and reproduction. It has treated women as property, re-inforced ideas about racial purity, been promoted as the only appropriate vessel for romantic love and co-opted as the latest hot consumer must-have. Heterosexuals have been forced into marriage, and homosexuals excluded from it, for all the wrong reasons. In short, for centuries marriage has been used by elites to maintain their cultural, social and economic power. It has been a tool of social control.

But it has changed. Wives are no longer the chattels of their husbands, inter-racial marriages are no longer prohibited. I believe marriage can and should continue to be reformed so that it reflects the needs of contemporary society. One of these needs, as I've already said, is for examples of self-abandoning, interpersonal union. Marriage as I would like it to evolve would be an institution open to everyone who wishes to make the kind of commitment it requires. This commitment would not bring any extra legal or financial benefits to a relationship, and there would be no stigma attached to choosing a non-married relationship and other types of commitment, or for that matter no relationships and no commitment. There would simply be a recognition that for some people marriage is what suits best.

Obviously I believe that amongst such people will be some LGBTs. Call me naïve but in stripping marriage back to its core meaning, I'd like to think LGBT people might have a special role to play. If at least some of us are more sensitive to the ways in which marriage has been abused in the past, perhaps we could help restore some dignity to the institution by modeling committed unions for their own sake. Marriage will not change LGBT people. But it's just possible we might change marriage, and for the better.

This is one reason why campaigning for marriage equality is important. But there is also another, just as important, and much more urgent.

Bec and Lee are two of the most down-to-earth people I know. But when they emerged from the Tasmanian Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages, on January 2nd, having just become one of Australia's first registered same sex couples, their eyes were brimming with tears.

"What's the matter?", I asked. "Was there a problem?"

"No" Bec said. "It wasn't till we were in there that we realised this is the real thing. I never thought it would make a difference, but it does. Now it's like we really belong"

Symbols matter. I learnt this from the Tasmanian gay law reform debate.

In the absence of gay men going to gaol the decriminalisation of gay sex was, like marriage reform, largely a symbolic issue.

The long and heated debate decriminalisation sparked mobilised and then discredited the anti-gay right, while carrying with it and main-lining all the varied aspirations of LGBT Tasmanians.

Decriminalisation became a symbol of which direction Tasmania would take into the 21st century and when it was resolved Tasmania emerged from a chrysalis of hate and ignorance, transformed.

I believe marriage reform can do the same for the nation.

Australia has never had a debate on a keystone country-wide LGBT human rights issue; the kind of debate which locates us firmly within the national story, in a way equal voting rights brought in women and equal citizenship, Aborigines.

Each of these earlier struggles for equality touched on that area of life in which the full humanity of a disadvantaged group was most painfully denied, and in which that disadvantage was most obvious.

The denial of the humanity of gay and lesbian people is most profound when it comes to personal relationships, particularly our capacity to love. Gay marriage will be an issue on which Australian history pivots because, more than anything else, it challenges this denial.

Earlier I mentioned that LGBT Australians today face more aggressive attacks than we have for over a generation. If there is one over arching reason for this, it is that what it means to be an Australian is constantly narrowing under the influence of strident nationalism, parochialism, a fear of difference and a suspicion of outsiders of every kind.

One issue above all holds out the hope that we can reverse this trend, and disperse the LGBT community's many assailants by tapping the river of tolerance and generosity that still flows within the national psyche. Because it promises to set us a valued place at the Australian table that issue is marriage.

As I've already said Australia's LGBT community advocates are still deeply divided about marriage. This makes national coalitions like the newly formed ERN unlikely vehicles for an effective marriage equality campaign.

Instead the LGBT community needs an organisation specifically dedicated to the pursuit of marriage equality, one that can devote all its energies and resources to that one goal, and the long and difficult campaign to achieve it.

On Tuesday I put a note on my website asking people to contact me if they're interested in marriage equality. The response has been astounding. Over 50 responses to that small note alone, from people in every state and territory prepared to devote time and energy to marriage reform.

Tonight I want to spread the word further.

If anyone here believes passionately enough in equality to want to erase discrimination from the institution of marriage, or like me believes marriage will be the issue that will finally opens Australia's heart to it's LGBT citizens, or who simply wants one day to be married to his or her same sex partner, please make yourself known to me.

If you're sitting there thinking "I support marriage reform but the odds are stacked against us, there's just no hope", my response is simple.

Regardless of the indifference and opposition marriage equality faces, both within and outside our community, there is great hope for change. That hope springs from people working together for a common goal, and knowing that one day they will succeed.

For me that hope even has a name. It's called "Tasmania", the land where anything is possible.

It's my dream that one day our hope for dignity, freedom and equality will also come to be known by another great name, "Australia".

Thank you.