Gay community’s honeymoon with ‘sinner’ Gillard over before it starts
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Julia Gillard has ended the honeymoon with the gay community before it’s even begun. Instead of softening Kevin Rudd’s stance on gay marriage, as many had expected, she has hardened it. When asked if she supported same-s-x marriage on Kyle & Jackie O, she could have said something to the effect that this was presently the party’s policy, and as leader she was bound by party policy, but that she was open to revisiting the issue in the future. After all, she must have known she would have been asked the question — it’s a staple of the show — so her answer must have been prepared in advance. A pollie this careful does not make ex cathedra statements such as this off the cuff. It would not have made any difference to the party’s stance, but it would have held out an olive branch to the GBLTI community, who had been repulsed by Rudd’s constant pandering to extremist religious elements in his own party and the wider electorate. But instead of embracing the gay vote — which is more than willing to hug a feisty unmarried female PM back — she decided to chuck it away. It’s something we (reluctantly) accept from a rusted-on Catholic such as Tony Abbott, but not from an ostensibly liberated woman with no intention of getting married herself. Many gay voters, who were lining up to gratefully return to Labor from the Greens with the exit of the chilly prig Rudd, were shocked and affronted by the new Prime Minister’s assertion that not only does she support the party policy, but it’s her personal view as well. The door was slammed in our faces, again — and for little or no real gain. A poll in the Sydney Morning Herald, which drew thousands of responses in a very short time, told her 75% to 25% that she had got it wrong. The PM is herself happy to “live in sin”, but she could marry if she chose. She will not extend that freedom of choice to the gay community. Presumably she is hoping that a national system of relationship recognition will suffice to keep us onside. She is about to find out that we do not take kindly to being relegated to “separate but equal” status — because separate but equal is never equal, as we know from the history of South Africa and the US Deep South. With her cave-in on the mining tax as well, we should look for all those pale Green voters — gay and straight — to head back into Bob Brown’s tender embrace. The shortest political honeymoon is history is over before it began. |
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12 Comments
Black people had seperate drinking fountains.
Gay people have seperate legal relationships.
Perhaps in 50 years time people will look back and shake their heads at how governments could support such open discrimination the same way that we look back at the USA before Martin Luther King and South Africa before the end of apartheid.
It would have helped this piece if the author had given the exact quote from Gillard.
I suspect Gillard doesn’t support marriage even for heterosexuals (many of us don’t) but it would take a very gutsy politician to admit that.
It now seems more likely that equal marriage will wait until Labor adopts it as opposition policy and legislates as a government with a mandate.
This could be 10 years away. Australia might be one of the last countries to board the train.
Sort of conjures up visions of (the original) Magenta and friends, “Doin’ the time warp…..
It’s just a jump to the right
Another step to the Right,
Put your hands on your lips
You bring your knees in tight
But it’s the pelvic thrust
That really drives us insayayayayane
Let’s do the time warp again……
It’s so dreamy, oh fantasy free me
You very nearly, can’ t see me
No not at all
In another dimension……”
Well said Doug!
What with this stupid discriminatory policy and Conroy’s daft internet filter, one wonders who is running the show up there in Canberra?
Hmmm, why do you want marriage? Zut Alors has it right. It’s of benefit if you want to have kids, (maybe)
Me Ski, I think people want marriage is because it is contained in vitually every cultural artifact and experience we have. From our movies/ literature and songs to many of our parents relationships. It is like being promised something and then told you can’t have it when you front up for it. Just goes to show folks these pollies have an eye for the vote and nothing else.
@Sparky: could be, but sign me as a happy single. I can’t see any good reason for not allowing it, BTW.
Minority issue which polling has shown doesn’t play well in marginals. Not a good look philosophically, but that’s electoral politics.
@Holden Back
Gay marriage has quickly been accepted in every jurisdiction in which it has been introduced.
The marginals will accept it here as well.
75% support in opinion polls versus 25% against is pretty strong stuff, even allowing for marginals.
Marginals might be slower to convince because it is not a first order issue for them, but they are not bigots.
Even the hardline Christian constituency is a lot smaller than the ACL, Peter Jensen and Cardinal Pell would like to claim.
The true level of anti-gay marriage feeling can probably be judged by Steve Fielding’s primary vote — less than 2%.
@John
You don’t have to convince me of those issues. Just laying out the reasons for the position.
How the argument is actually made electorally rather than by berating someone for not doing what you want is the real question.
The reason the opinion polls shifted is because gay activists educated public opinion. Politicians are the last to realise the ground has shifted beneath their feet. The machine men in political parties are frightened of their own shadows.
The way you convince politicans is to get ordinary heterosexual voters in marginal electorates taking up this issue on behalf of their own family members. That is happening in most states and territories already. It is happening in the outer suburbs and in country towns.
Julia Gillard needs to call the bluff of the less than 2% of bigots. She has never had their vote, so she won’t lose it.