Got An Election Yet?

So John Howard wants to take the issue of gay marriage out of politics by banning it in the next two weeks – so it’s out of the way before the election. I wonder what that tells us about his preferred election date?

The Prime Minister made his announcement to a ragbag assortment of Christian Taliban who go under various labels, including the micro-group Australian Family Association, which gets attention out of all proportion to it’s size or relevance, and other groups such as the National Civic Council, with links to fundamentalist groups here in the USA who make a living vilifying homosexuals and women (especially feminists), want to restore traditional gender roles, make divorce much harder, and favour tough educational regimes that include physical punishment – presumably to be administered by cane wielding monks. They are in fact the last mouldering remnants of Bob Santamaria and his gang.

Once again the mantra is “protecting” marriage. Just how does preventing gays and lesbians from marrying “protect” it? Is the Prime Minister afraid Aussie blokes are suddenly going to start telling their girlfriends, “Nah, we’re not getting married: that’s for poofters!” That their girlfriends are going to respond to a proposal from their man with, “What do you think I am,
some kind of lezzo?”

But we do know from experience what DOES damage marriage, and causes it to fall from favour, and that is to sanction alternative types of coupledom for gays and lesbians.

In France, where Civil Pacts are already open to both kind of couples, young people increasingly choose the pact over marriage because of it’s less restrictive nature. In other European countries where gays and lesbians have civil unions rather than marriage, two simultaneous trends are occurring: on the one hand, civil unions are either expanding in scope to become more marriage-like, or they are in the process of being scrapped in favour of gay marriage; and heterosexual couples are asking for civil unions to be extended to them.

In short, where it’s marriage or nothing, people get married, or stay as de facto couples. Where there are alternatives, EVERYONE wants them and marriage suffers.

If John Howard and Mark Latham want to protect marriage, therefore, the logical thing is not to behave like twin Canutes as the tide of marriage evolution sweeps over them, but to extend marriage to include same sex couples, not lock them out of it.