No sex please, we're Aussies

It’s time to bring sex back into the conversation, says Doug Pollard, writing in MCV.

I’m bored with talking about marriage. I’d rather talk about sex. Sex, after all, is what it’s all about.

But the success of the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission enquiry into discrimination against same-sex couples came because the Commission focused on equality, sidestepping sex altogether. Likewise, the Tasmanian relationships recognition system increased its acceptability by creating near-parity between the sexual partnerships of same-sex couples, and cohabiting elderly siblings, long-term carers and their charges, and other non-sexual pairings.

Warren Entsch, in the days when he was trying to get the Liberal Party to be sensible over same-sex rights, also downplayed the sex.

“Irrespective of ... the gender balance in any relationship, I can assure you that after five or 10 years in that relationship, sex tends to take a back seat,” he said.

Even the Catholic Church has no problem with intense, even passionate friendships between two people of the same sex, so long as it doesn’t involve any ‘homogenital’ behaviour.

It seems as if the only way gays and lesbians can get any rights in this supposedly modern, progressive 21st century country is if we don’t mention sex at all, or brush it aside as something we’ll get over in a few years time.

It’s amazing that we’ve managed to do this, given the tabloid image of gay men as wildly promiscuous shagabouts who love to screw in public and parade down city streets in spangly frocks or with our arses hanging out of leather chaps.

But the moment we put sex back on the agenda – by demanding the right to marry – all hell broke loose. Because marriage is all about sex. It’s about two people deciding to make a public commitment to have sex with each other – and no one else - for the rest of their lives.

Sex is the essence of the institution. You cannot enter into a marriage with the intention of having an open relationship, or a relationship with a time limit. Never mind that straights do it all the time – it’s what makes marriage unlike any other partnership arrangement.

Those conditions are there to try to ensure that the couple’s children will be biologically theirs, and that they will take responsibility for any offspring that result until they are capable of looking after themselves.

None of this is necessarily relevant to same-sex couples, which is why many, on both sides of the debate, think that marriage is inappropriate for us. And nowadays, heterosexuals frequently don’t keep the rules themselves, which makes their opposition to our getting hitched rather hypocritical.

Hell broke loose because letting same-sex couples marry means everyone has to think about two men having sex (they seem to mind two women having sex rather less).

Politicians who support same-sex recognition are deluged with crackpot letters full of disgusting fantasies of gay male sex that say far more about the writers than they say about us – ask Warren Entsch.

Emma Tom, a journalist with The Australian, wrote: “As someone who has written frequently on gay rights, I have been astounded at the x-rated content of the hate mail that invariably arrives in response. I’ve run some of these anal-rific missives past gay friends who’ve blushingly admitted that the florid boy-on-boy scenarios dreamed up by homophobes are a far cry from the relatively mundane reality of their day-to-day sex lives.”

Emails I’ve received in the past combined grudging support for ‘you disgusting perverts’ to have your relationship recognized if it ‘stops you spreading AIDS’; with trenchant opposition to parenting rights, because ‘you rich poofs’ only want to ‘buy or breed up babies to abuse’.

Only the crackpots say it in public, but it’s the unspoken nightmare that poisons the minds of our opponents. Because everyone ‘knows’ gay man = sex obsessed = paedophile, don’t they?

Well, frankly, a few are. So are some straights. But when one woman abuses and kills children – see Myra Hindley or Rosemary West – no-one jumps to the conclusion that all women are potential child abusers and killers. They ask: what went wrong with that individual? Whereas when one man does likewise, the tabloids scream ‘keep these gay monsters away from our kids’.

My father always used to say, ‘Listen carefully to what people accuse you of. If it bears no relation to the facts, they’re probably accusing you of what they would do, if they dared.’

So when these foam-at-the-mouth types start up, they’re railing against their own secret desires, not mine.

I said earlier that people have less of a problem with the idea of two women having sex (indeed it’s practically compulsory these days for pop stars and actresses); perhaps because, in the absence of a penis, they think it isn’t ‘real sex’. (I know this annoys all my lesbian friends, but in this instance, dicklessness is an advantage.)

People also have less of a problem with two women wanting to have children, because women are assumed to be maternal. No danger of child abuse (Rosemary and Myra were exceptions, remember?) and again, no pesky penis involved. As a result, the NSW and Victorian governments are moving on adoption and fertility rights for gay women, but not for gay men.

I reckon that a major factor is the omnipresence of girl-on-girl action in straight porn, and in mainstream TV shows, too. Familiarity has made lesbian sex unthreatening; even slightly passé.

We need to desensitize people to gay male sex too. Dr Who and Torchwood’s Captain Jack have blazed the trail, but to make a real impact, we need lots of boy-boy smooching in Neighbours and Home and Away; two-man tangos on Dancing With The Stars; Shane Crawford and Tim Campbell crooning together on It Takes Two – well, it’s only acting, isn’t it?

Forget Mardi Gras; it’s expected there. We need to revive the public kiss-in at big mainstream events, starting with World Youth Day in Sydney. After all, good Christians are supposed to love their neighbours, love sinners, and turn the other cheek - aren’t they?