The poll has been announced, and people outside the Victorian State Library are dancing on lawns covered in rainbow glitter. There are celebrations across the country, as the poll very few people wanted has produced a result better than most of the equality movement dared hope.
The no case had organised no street parties: had they ordered sackcloth and ashes to rebut the rainbow flag? Matt Canavan was already on television saying he expected same-sex marriage, but with “protection for human rights”.
The battle now moves to the Senate. Senator James Paterson has given up on his bill for same-sex marriage, conceding there was more support for the one drafted by Dean Smith. My hunch is that there will be a few days of posturing, but the parliament will adopt the Smith bill with few amendments.
The right are bad losers. 61.6% of respondents voted for a simple proposition: “Should the law be changed to allow same-sex couples to marry?” Most people have doubtless been to a wedding in the last decade where the minister or celebrant read out the statement that defines marriage as between a man and a woman. Removing that one phrase was presumably what the majority of yes voters thought they were agreeing to.
As the no case made concerns about “religious freedom” central to their campaign, one assumes that those who voted no did so in part because they wanted to preserve the already privileged position of established religions. The full-page advertisements featuring John Howard made protection of “parental rights, freedom of speech and freedom of religion” central to the no case.
No one on the yes side has argued for our right to refuse to bake cakes for heterosexual marriages, or to prevent people arguing for their version of marriage. As Frank Brennan, a Jesuit priest, made clear, this is about changing civil law, which leaves religious beliefs untouched. Australia allows almost unlimited freedom to parents to impose their views on their children, often through our extensive system of religious schools, but that is not related to marriage.
Despite the celebrations, the campaign has left deep scars on many people who felt their most basic identities were being exposed to debate and criticism. “This has been two of the hardest months I have experienced” said singer Deborah Cheetham speaking of the marriage poll on The Drum. “It’s unleashed the hounds.”
Her experience seems supported by evidence from counselling services, which reported a surge in calls for help from people identifying as LGBTIQ during the past two months. In ways that most of us thought had passed, queers felt their lives were under scrutiny, subject to disapproval, hate and ignorance.
The marriage debate was never going to be just about amending the Marriage Act: its opponents very quickly diverted attention to recognition of same-sex parenting and the safe schools program. For its supporters, the marriage poll became a test of basic acceptance.
The saddest aspect of the “respectful debate” that the prime minister had promised was the lack of an intelligently coherent case for no. It was impossible not to hear echoes of homophobia in the no case, despite their sometimes tortured denials (for an example of how the noes struggled to deny any prejudice, while insisting that the definition of marriage could not be changed, see the performances of Archbishop Glenn Davies and Liberal lawyer Karina Okotel).
But there was a deeper problem: the two sides in the debate came from very different starting points. A debate implies a certain equality between opponents, which is almost impossible to achieve when the very legitimacy of one side is in question. A “respectful debate” would require an equal problematising of heterosexual relationships, rather than taking that as the starting point for discussion.
Psephologists are already mining the results, which suggest rural and regional Australia is less socially conservative than is often assumed. In the two NSW seats now being contested in byelections there was more support for yes in rural New England than in middle class metropolitan Bennelong.
Across the country the strongest no vote came from the most ethnically diverse electorates, above all in western Sydney. Probably this reflects very effective campaigning in certain ethnic and religious communities. It is also a reminder of the real struggles faced by young queers who come from an increasingly diverse set of backgrounds.
Yes, we probably will have legal same-sex marriage by Christmas. But the tensions and divisions produced by a year of bitter, costly and emotionally exhausting conflict will not magically disappear because a few thousand couples can now claim the blessings of the state, if not, in most cases, the church.
- Dennis Altman is Emeritus Professor of Politics at LaTrobe University
