Marriage equality: the fight is far from over

Lisbeth Latham

The results of the non-binding voluntary survey on same-sex marriage will be announced on November 15.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics estimated that by October 31, 12.3 million people (77% of the electorate) had returned their surveys – a much higher level of participation than initially expected.

This strong turnout has been viewed as favouring a Yes result in the survey. 

Irrespective of the outcome, we will need to continue to fight not only to achieve marriage equality but to combat the right's bigotry.

The survey was intended to eliminate marriage equality as a source of tension within the Coalition's party room and ensure that legislation was not put before parliament. The hope was that the survey would deliver a clear No vote.

The desire to avoid debating any legislation is reflected in the government's continued lack of clarity on what bill it will support in the event of a Yes majority.

The most likely bill – because it already has the support of Labor – is the private member's bill put forward by Western Australia Liberal senator Dean Smith in August.

The Smith bill expands significantly on existing religious exemptions in the Sex Discrimination Act. It would enable churches to refuse to marry gay and lesbian couples and civil marriage celebrants to register their objection to marrying same-sex couples.

It is objectionable that churches should be able to refuse to marry people on religious grounds. But to allow private citizens performing a secular marriage to do so sets a dangerous precedent in terms of legalising bigotry.

Smith has argued that his bill provides essential protection to "religious freedom". This refrain has been taken up by the Christian right in its campaign against marriage equality.

In late October, ultra-conservative Liberal MP Andrew Hastie called for the Smith bill to be dramatically modified. It is thought that Hastie will put forward more than 100 amendments to the proposed bill.

This is a cynical move, aimed at delaying the legislation and using marriage equality legislation to expand the ability of bigots to lawfully discriminate against LGBTI people.

 If successful, it would not only undermine marriage equality, but raise the level of discrimination and marginalisation experienced by LGBTI people.

The right's obsession with religious freedom is entirely cynical and divorced from the real historic struggles for religious freedom, which were about defending and protecting the rights of religious minorities from laws linked to state religions.

Organisations like the Australian Christian Lobby (ACL), together with various far-right groups, have been at the centre of the right's campaign against marriage equality.

They have actively mobilised fear of polygamy as a reason for opposing marriage equality, despite there being no current push to legalise polygamy from those religious communities, including within Islam, where it is practiced.

These arguments are not just about saying that it is OK to discriminate against some religious beliefs; they actively seek to promote homophobia based on Islamophobic dog-whistle politics.

The right’s push to protect "religious freedom" is part of a broader assault to impose its conservative social attitudes via the state. It is a campaign that is anti-secular while seeking to violate the religious and social freedoms of those whose lives do not fit within the right's view of morality.

There are supporters of marriage equality who view these concessions as acceptable to achieve marriage equality. They argue that the amendments are irrelevant or that, once passed, the bill could be subsequently amended.

The reality is that these amendments will be used by bigots to marginalise and discriminate against LGBTI people. Moreover, once legislation is passed, it will be much harder to mobilise popular support to amend it.

The Christian right will not just rely on right-wing MPs and senators to stop or amend any marriage bill – it will broaden its campaign of vilifying the LGBTIQ community.

The ACL is likely to follow the approach of the US Christian right, from whom it borrowed its campaign against marriage equality, to push for the right to discriminate same-sex couples and amplify the marginalisation and vilification of the transgender community.

In the face of the right’s determination to roll back our rights, it is vital that we continue to mobilise in support of the LGBTIQ community.

Mobilising helps to build solidarity and reassert our right to exist and live our authentic lives.

Mobilising will also help create pressure to ensure that legislation is introduced quickly to parliament and help prevent a situation where Labor and other parties that support marriage equality accept amendments that expand the right of bigots to lawfully discriminate against the LGBTI community.

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Lisbeth Latham is a member of the Socialist Alliance
[This article was originally published in Green Left Weekly #1161]

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Beyond the survey, building the struggle for queer rights

Lisbeth Latham

While the marriage equality campaign is currently focused on maximising a Yes response in the national survey, supporters of marriage equality and of LGBTI rights more generally need to look beyond the horizon of the survey itself.

This is because a majority Yes in the survey will not definitively resolve the question of marriage equality and because there are many other challenges facing the LGBTI community, particularly around legal rights.

The national survey closes on November 7, with results due to be announced by the Australian Bureau of Statistics on November 15. The ABS has said the number of returns in the survey is higher than anticipated. At the start of the campaign there had been a fear of complacency, but the higher than expected returns, along with polls continuing to show high levels of support for marriage equality, are both positive signs for a strong Yes response.

However, a Yes response, no matter how strong, does not guarantee that a marriage equality bill will be introduced to parliament, nor that there will sufficient support in parliament for it to pass.
Importantly, it is clear that the right, aware that the survey has not allowed them to defeat the push for marriage equality, is now seeking ways to undermine the language of any enabling legislation. This push would enshrine "religious freedom" in any marriage equality bill, which would dramatically expand in what circumstances "religious" individuals could legally discriminate against people they believe are in a same sex relationship.

The campaign must build pressure for a bill to be put and ensure it contains no expansion in religious exemptions to anti-discrimination acts.

Moving beyond the fight for marriage equality, there are several important legal rights and protections that need to be won to ensure violence and discrimination against members of the LGBTI community no longer have legal sanction in Australia. These include:

• Ending of the gay/trans panic defence, which remains on the books in South Australia;
• Prohibiting unnecessary surgical or other medical treatment of intersex children, including forced coercive interventions, until they reach an age at which they can provide their free, prior and informed consent;
• Establishing a national standard for gender recognition that has no requirement beyond an affirmed decision of the individual. At present only the ACT and SA do not require trans individuals to undergo surgery prior to achieving gender recognition, but they still require a statement that the individual has had clinical treatment by an Australian psychologist or psychiatrist. This stigmatises and pathologises trans experiences, although not as much as in other states;
• Rolling back the religious exemptions to the Anti-Discrimination laws in all Australian jurisdictions;
• Ensuring that oppression on the grounds of sexuality or gender identity are grounds for asylum and that this is not based on individuals proving that they are sufficiently queer;
• Enshrining the right for trans and non-binary individuals to use public facilities that correspond with their affirmed gender identity;
• Enabling individuals under the age of 18 to affirm their gender at school and have this affirmation respected and protected, without requiring formal gender recognition but giving them the right to change their gender marker if they choose;
• Ending the requirement for transgender minors to go to the Family Court to access hormones. Australia is the only jurisdiction with such a requirement, which creates a significant and unnecessary barrier to transgender individuals affirming their gender in the way they wish. Medical support with informed consent of the minor should be sufficient, as it is with accessing contraceptive pills.

Any victory for marriage equality will see the right push back on other issues concerning the rights of the LGBTI community. This push back must be firmly resisted.

We must demand the reinstatement of funding for Safe Schools and push for its expansion to more schools. Equally importantly, we should defend the rights of gender non-conforming children, including the ending of gender-based uniform restrictions — restricting dresses to "girls" and pants/shorts to "boys" places bizarre restrictions on how children and adolescents are able to choose their school clothes.

The campaign to build the strongest possible support for Yes in the survey is important work.

However, if the horizons of the LGBTI communities and their supporters do not reach beyond this objective then we risk losing an opportunity to make significant strides in the rights and abilities of members of the community to live their authentic lives.

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[This article was originally published in Green Left Weekly #1157]

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What is and isn't wrong with using the word fuck to build a campaign

Lisbeth Latham

Now That's Just Rude!

In mid September a controversy broke over the poster for Community Action Against Homophobia's (CAAH) rally for marriage equality in Sydney on October 12, with both former CAAH convenor Bryn Hutchinson and Australian Marriage Equality (CAAH) National Convenor Rodney Croome writing article in the Queer Press critical of the posters. While I think there are good reasons why the posters can be criticised both Hutchinson and Croome rely on conservative arguments as to what is wrong with the poster reflecting an approach to achieve change based on convincing Abbott and other senior Coalition members of why they are wrong on Marriage Equality which fundamentally misunderstands why the adopts homophobic policies.

Rude?

Both Hutchinson and Croome raise concerns that the posters are rude and will make it difficult to convince Liberals and other Abbott supporters of the need to change their positions.

Fuck isn't really an offensive word - albeit it is problematic to use the same word for sex as you do for forcefully telling someone where to go. This position ignores and erases the anger that many people feel at the election result and the Coalition and more particularly Abbott represent.

Objections to the posters on the basis of how they treat of Abbott places saying the word “fuck” on the same level as the real threats of violence that Abbott and Coalition's supporters have been and are willing to mobilise against Labor, the Greens and other opponents of their policies. The clearest examples of this are the discourse mobilised by Abbott and his supporters against Gillard – and the large number of examples of homophobia by leading members of the Coalition. I’m sorry Rodney but Abbott acknowledging that supporters of marriage equality are genuine in their conviction is meaningless in the broad scheme of things and does nothing to cancel his record of homophobia.

 Abbott and a number of other senior members of the Coalition are hardened bigots who are opposed not only further extension of rights to the LGBTI community but to the rolling back of gains - this is based what they see as being in the interests of the "moral order" but also on a cynical desire to win and maintain the support of the Christian Right - outside of a small section of these forces it is unlikely that we will be able to convince these people of the "error of their ways based on rational argument" instead it will be necessary to mobilise on the street in ever greater numbers those people who support the rights of the LGBTI community and posing a threat to status quo if they refuse to change the laws.

Croome’s arguments that internationally marriage equality has been achieved by building bridges flies in the face of the reality that the fight against discrimination always generates efforts by those who believe they benefit from that discrimination seeking to oppose any movement forward. In the case of the move to legislate for marriage equality the experience in France, which AME has cited as a basis to oppose a referendum on the question, has been met with large scale mobilisation by the right and by an escalation in homophobic violence – this has nothing to do with the tone of the campaign but the hatred that right holds towards our communities.

Attempting to convince conservative forces of the lack of threat posed by and/or acceptability of marriage equality runs significant risks. The first is to limit the campaigns visions to what will be acceptable to more conservative forces and essentially dump other issues affecting LGBTI and Queer identifying community – this approach is reflected in the invisibility of the trans* community in the discourse of the campaign - and a hostility to demands that seek to push the campaign beyond a hetronormative framework. An important example of this is AME's hostility to the call by the Polyamory Action Lobby's call for recognition of poly relationships and the reactions to Bernardi's comments that posed the danger equal marriage of bestiality and polygamy that essentially accept that bestiality and polygamy as equal evils, Croome in a statement released on June 18 2013 said “Not one country that has allowed same-sex marriage has moved to legitimise polygamy or bestiality for the simply reason they’re not linked, legally, socially or culturally.”.

  

Different treatment between Abbott and Gillard?

Croome raises concerns that the language uses against Abbott is different from that used against Gillard and the ALP and that this risks the campaign being seen as being seen as partisan. While Gillard and sections of the ALP have an offensive position with regard to the definition of marriage - which reflects both the bigoted views of a section of the ALP and the desire of other section leave open the possibility of gaining votes and preferences of the religious right. There are very real differences between the orientation of the ALP and the Coalition not only on marriage equality but on the broader rights of LGBTIQ communities and on issues that affect our community such as women, Aboriginal and Torres Strait islanders, people of colour and workers. An obvious example of this are the changes that the ALP moved regarding federal anti-discrimination legislation including removing the right religious organisations particularly in aged care to discriminate on the basis of sexuality - while there remains a distance to go in ending the legal right of religious groups to discriminate the Coalition does not support this and wants to enable bigots like Andrew Bolt to vilify people with impunity.

People won’t support future activities?

Hutchinson raises concerns that posters undermine the ability of the campaign to reach out and engage with the broader community to mobilise in support the campaign. This is a legitimate concern, however in arguing that “high school students and church members often take real risks in speaking out in their communities” however to argue “such groups will most likely be reluctant to support or promote this and future activities – rightly so” is just bizarre. First it poses that it is the allies of the LGBTIQ community who are the real heroes – which is a real problem of the campaign where being a decent human is suddenly something that should be made a big thing of, but the idea that a poster with the word “fuck” on it would put them risk – I’m not sure who the risk is being posed by – obviously school officials might have issues with them being distributed, but high school students themselves wouldn’t – if anything having “fuck” on it would make it more popular. If people decide to not support actions in the campaign for marriage equality as a consequence of the poster then you would have to question their actual commitment to the struggle, and irrespective of your attitude towards the organisations involved in the rally or poster – if you support marriage equality you shouldn’t be celebrating the withdrawal of support from the campaign.

Red-Baiting

Hutchinson’s arguments rely heavily on red baiting. Red baiting, particularly of Socialist Alternative is not new in either this campaign or other movements. While there is nothing wrong having differences and criticisms with how Socialist Alternative and other socialist organisations engage in politics these articles don’t really go into specifics about these concerns instead relying raising socialist bogeymen to mobilise support for making the equal marriage campaign safe for more conservative forces.

What’s really wrong with the poster?

While there is nothing wrong with the idea of saying fuck or even fuck Abbott – I believe that Clementine Ford’s series of t-shirts rejecting the election of the Abbott government and what it represents did a roaring trade – as a rally poster it is problematic on a number of levels. It only relates to people who are at this point of anger and are comfortable expressing it in this way. The point of social movements is not simply to mobilise a subset of the people who agree with it’s objectives, but instead to seek to maximise the extent to which it is able to engage both those who already agree with the campaign and to win others to supporting the campaign and it’s objects – this poster doesn’t seek to do this and that’s what’s really wrong with the poster.

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France: The vote on gay marriage

Gabriel Girard

Originally published in International Viewpoint

April 2013

On 23 April the second vote in the National Assembly passed this proposal into law. The radicalisation of the opponents to “Marriage for all” had continued apace since the article below was written. Demonstrations saw the “parliamentary right” alongside leading members of the far-right National Front, although not Marine Le Pen herself. Homophobia became frighteningly visible, including in attacks on people leaving gay bars in a number of cities. The demonstrations by partisans of the draft law, although supported by the Socialist Party and the other parties to its left (Front de Gauche including the Parti de Gauche and Communist Party, the NPA...), did not mobilise as broadly. This is no doubt due to the general disillusion with the Socialist Party government. International Viewpoint will publish more in the future on the polarisation around this question. [International Viewpoint]

On Tuesday 12 February, a little before 5pm, the French National Assembly voted by a large majority for the so-called “marriage for all” law, which gives same sex couples the right to civil marriage and to adopt children. Although this is a first reading, with the law yet having to be examined and voted on by the Senate, there is no doubt that the text will be definitively adopted before the summer, since the left holds the majority in both chambers.

This vote comes after several months of intense debates within French society between supports and opponents of equal rights. The satisfaction of an old demand of the LGBT movement is an undeniable success. However, the formal equality thus acquired does not end the fight against homophobia and transphobia. The adoption of the law, an indispensable stage on the road to equality, could however accentuate the process of differentiation developing among gays and lesbians. For the better off, a homosexual lifestyle is becoming increasingly one option among others. A banalisation barely detectable in the more precarious fringes of the community (youth, transgender, women, ethnic minorities, the HIV positive and so on), while the economic crisis strengthens dependency on the family, undermining the material conditions of emancipation. Awkwardly, some critical actors in “homo-nationalism” have in recent weeks wished to stress the existence of these fractures, in particular in the popular neighbourhoods and among young people of immigrant origin. [1] Some dangerous positions which have revived controversies on racism and imperialism in the LGBT communities, which run through the movement at an international level. Not a very good climate for a constructive debate on these issues.

Developing an approach of critical emancipation of hetero-normality, which is however attentive to the rhythms of mobilisation and politicisation of the majority of LGBT persons is the challenge for radical activists and the left of the LGBT movement.

The context

Contained in the manifesto of the candidate of the Parti Socialiste, François Hollande, during the presidential campaign of 2012, the demand for the right to same sex marriage has been raised for 15 years by the French LGBT movements.

In 1999, the left government had established the PaCS, a contract of civil union offering a legal framework to same sex couples, but without granting them all the associated rights of marriage. At the time, this first advance, however timid, had raised heated debates on the left, some fearing that the recognition of same sex unions threatened the “symbolic order” of the family. As an illustration of this, the adoption of the PaCS had been delayed for several months by the weak mobilisation of left deputies, who were in the minority in the Assembly during the first vote on the text. For the LGBT movements, the PaCS was a protective gain notably for couples including an HIV positive partner. But it was immediately challenged as a discriminatory law, because it established a legal inequality between homosexuals and heterosexuals.

From 2000 onwards, in a context where the right was in power, equality of rights rapidly became the main demand of the LGBT movements. In 2004, as Spain legalised the right to same sex marriage, a Green deputy, N. Mamère, participated in a marriage between two men, taking advantage of a loophole in the law: the sex of the married couple was not specified in the Civil Code. This symbolic action of disobedience had a high media profile, but remained isolated, with no other elected representative following. In subsequent years, the demand for marriage remained a priority on the agenda of LGBT struggles. But the perception that a victory would not be possible while the right was in power led most organisations to await a left electoral victory. Hence, while equality remained the main theme of Gay Pride Marches, no significant political campaign was waged on the subject.

The weakening of a perspective in terms of construction of a relationship of forces on these issues explains to a great extent the relative disorganisation of activist groups at the time where the right and Catholic Church entered the debate in September 2012.

The forces on the ground

During the debate on the PaCS in the late 1990s, the right and its fringes close to the Catholic Church had already led a heated opposition to the project, organising a demonstration of nearly 100,000 persons in Paris. The emblem of this anti-PaCS right, the deputy Christine Boutin, had not hesitated to brandish the Bible in the National Assembly to support her arguments. In a general manner, debate gave way to a deluge of homophobia. Meanwhile the left and the LGBT movements remained barely audible, and the Socialist Party was divided on the subject.

In 2012, the context was very different. The Socialists had just won the elections; the right was defeated, weakened by an internal leadership race and electorally rivalled by the Front National. The UMP leaders thus sought subjects to oppose the left, since the austerity policies pursued by Hollande left it with little room to differentiate itself. The draft law on “marriage for all” gave it an opportunity. In contrast to the debate on the PaCS, opponents advanced an apparently more “subtle” approach.

Openly homophobic discourse was abandoned, at least publicly, and the arguments centred above all on issues of parenting (adoption, medically assisted procreation, surrogate parenting). The figureheads of the “anti-equality” movement – two gays against marriage and a second rate singer/humorist – sought to offer a less political face to this combat. The critique of the “right to the child” and the defence of family values provided the rhetorical framework for the right. However, without surprise, opposition to the draft law rested on a highly reactionary movement very much anchored to the right and the Catholic networks. And during the demonstrations, homophobic slogans dominated. Two big demonstrations were organised, on November 17, 2012 and January 13, 2013, which attracted hundreds of thousands of people, supported by the UMP and the Front National, as well as the main representatives of Catholicism and other monotheistic religions. The Catholic Church put all its strength into the battle, massively organising the transport of demonstrators to Paris.

Occupying the media terrain, the anti equality forces adopted an essentialist and sexist discourse on gender and the heterosexual family order. They succeeded in polarising the debate around parenting and mobilised deputies opposed to the draft. The confusion reached its target, when Hollande wobbled, evoking a “conscience clause” for mayors hostile to the law. This, coupled with the massive demonstration of November 17, had the effect of an electric shock for LGBT activists and their supports. All the more in that the discourse of the right gave new life to everyday homophobia. On December 16, at the call of associations, trade unions and left political parties, nearly 150,000 people demonstrated throughout France in support of equal rights. The political left as a whole (NPA, Front de Gauche, Socialist Party, Greens) gave its support to the draft law. This demonstration, followed by a new, still bigger, march on January 27, was an unexpected event. They marked the most significant mobilisation for the LGBT movement in the past 40 years, apart from the Gay Pride Marches (which in recent years have attracted nearly 500,000 people in Paris).

However the government continued to send contradictory signals. While stating its determination, it retreated on the issues of parenting, explaining that access to assisted fertilisation for female couples would not be part of the draft law. Meanwhile Hollande personally received the organisers of the anti-marriage demonstrations, and the government unambiguously denounced surrogacy. The law voted for on February 12 satisfied some of the major demands of the LGBT movement but remained short of hopes.

Even if it is still too soon to draw the balance sheet, the mobilisation in favour of equal rights in autumn and winter constituted an important vector of politicisation in the LGBT communities. During these demonstrations, poles of radicalism appeared: the Pink block, articulating anti-capitalism, anti-racism and the fight against hetro normality; or the collective “Oui, oui, oui”, notably around the Panthères Roses, defending a clear demand for equality faced with the hesitations of the socialist government. More broadly, hundreds of thousands of gays and lesbians have gone onto the street, taken part in social networks, in their places of study or work, expressing the force of a daily resistance to the homophobic discourse of the right.

The strategic issues for the LGBT movement

The limits to this mobilisation should be noted however. Strategically, it has at first rapidly appeared indispensable to agree on unifying demands. But with the pro equality movement being established above all in reaction to the right wing mobilisation, and according to the legislative calendar, demobilisation could be strong once the law is definitively adopted. The institutional bodies of the movement (the inter-LGBT in particular) bear a great share of the responsibility for this. At a time when the recrudescence of homophobic discourse and acts observed during recent months has cruelly underlined the need to continue a basic struggle on this terrain.

On the “content” of equality, the recent mobilisation has not allowed deeper debates to emerge. Hence, the feminist critiques of the institution of marriage or the necessary debates on surrogacy have been inaudible. For the left activists of the LGBT movement, a “progressive” strategy has been imposed: to win first on marriage and adoption so as then to push forward debates on family and conjugal norms. However, in the absence of democratic structuring, the potential political space for these debates could be significantly reduced in the coming weeks.

Footnotes

[1] Houria Bouteldja, “Universalisme gay, homoracialisme et ‘mariage pour tous’”, February 12, 2012,.

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