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| Twilight hour. Image by Webdiary artist Martin Davies. www.daviesart.com |
It must be an extraordinarily proud moment to walk your only daughter down the aisle. It must be rewarding to witness the exchange of vows in a house of worship, the bride glowing in a traditional white gown, the groom beaming with anticipation.
It must be an honour to give the young couple your blessing, and ultimately, it must be particularly satisfying to hand down the baton to ensure the sacred survival of the species.
Better yet, marriage doesn’t just mean a blank cheque encouraging a few young tackers on the way, but it also means you can get the best deals on offer in federal legislation.
Not that you need God’s nod of approval for that. Heck no, just a bloke and a sheila residing together in a relationship will crack that.
But dare you find yourself in the “disappointing” dilemma of not being attracted to the opposite sex, and dare you “choose” to adopt an “alternative lifestyle” (whatever that means), well then you can just kiss these same rights normal good bonking hetero folk are entitled to goodbye.
A couple of weeks ago, the Senate threw back the Federal Government’s superannuation package to the House of Representatives with an amendment that would give gay couples the same super rights as heterosexual couples.
The Labor Party finally joined the Democrats and the Greens in a move to allow the partners of gays and lesbians the automatic inheritance of their partner’s superannuation in the event of death.
Crazy stuff indeed. Superannuation rights for gay and lesbian couples have long been a sticking point for both major parties. In opposition, they both talk the talk, but when in government, the issue of equal rights suddenly gets tossed out the window.
It’s also a particular sticking point for the current Government, as the Democrats have continually blocked any reforms to superannuation by adding amendments to acknowledge same sex relationships. This is the twelfth attempt made to end discrimination against same sex couples.
While some states have legislated to recognise same sex relationships, federal amendments are needed because “the majority of lesbians and gay men will continue to be treated unequally as most super schemes come under federal law” (Gay and Lesbian Rights Lobby, 2002).
The Lobby group also calls for changes to taxation law, so that “when same sex partners do receive benefits they are not taxed at a much higher rate than heterosexuals”.
According to the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commissions report into ‘Superannuation Entitlements of Same-Sex Couples’ (April, 1999), the issue at hand is:
The definition of ‘spouse’ in these enactments has been held to be gender-specific, recognising only heterosexual relationships where a man and woman are legally married or in a de facto relationship. The use of the term ‘spouse’ in these enactments has the effect of excluding a surviving member of a same-sex couple from receiving the benefits provided.
The Gay and Lesbian Rights Lobby argues that “all that is needed is a simple definitional change to bring super law into line with many state laws”.
Indeed, definitions are at the crux of the matter. As Treasurer Peter Costello recently noted in response to Howard’s survival of the species comments:
Obviously, people have relationships and they might be long-term relationships between people of the same sex but to have a marriage, it has to be people of the opposite sex. I think that’s the right legal definition.
But ‘marriage’ is not necessarily defined as frocking up in a white puffy gown and waltzing down the aisle.
In 1992, amendments were made to the Superannuation Act to “remove exemptions for funds which operated to discriminate on the grounds of sex and marital status” (HREOC ‘Superannuation Entitlements of Same-Sex Couples’ 1999).
‘Marital Relationship’ was defined as when “the person ordinarily lived with that other person as that other person’s husband or wife on a permanent and bona fide domestic basis” (1992 Amendments, Section 8A). A ‘Marital Relationship’ was also defined as not having to be legally binding.
In 1993, the definitions of ‘husband’ and ‘wife’ were tested after the death of Robert Corva, a clerk in the Defence Department. His partner of ten years, Greg Brown took the case to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal arguing they had lived together in a marriage like relationship.
The AAT ruled:
There is no doubt that the applicant and Mr Corva had a close marriage like relationship and that they conformed to the requirements of [the Act] in all respects except for their gender. Yet the 1992 amendments, which were designed to remove discrimination on the ground of marital status, provide no redress in relation to the form of discrimination which is illustrated by this case.
If Brown had been a woman, he would be entitled to a yearly pension. Following a rejected appeal, the judges who upheld the ruling conceded that “it gives us no joy to do so”.
Like the sentiments expressed by the judges, the law gives the superannuation industry and many other groups no joy either.
In 2000, the peak industry body, the Association of Superannuation Funds of Australia, argued in a Senate submission that “recognition of a same sex relationships within superannuation legislation would address an area where currently a clear and difficult anomaly exists”.
So what’s holding the Government back?
When Tony Abbott was asked by Barrie Cassidy on the Insiders (ABC Television, September 21, 2003), whether he was opposed to long term gay couples having the same entitlements as heterosexual couples, he said:
I’m in favour of human rights but I’m not in favour of putting gay relationships on the same pedestal that you put traditional Christian marriage.
Mental note: be wary of any sentence that begins, “I’m in favour of human rights BUT-” And note to Tony Abbott: Should heterosexual de facto couples be put on the “same pedestal that you put traditional Christian marriage”?
When quizzed further, particularly about previously supporting equal rights for same sex couples, Abbott threw off a line about how it had been a long time since he’d thought about the issue, and “it’s not my portfolio – I’ll just leave what’s said as said”.
So much for the longevity of human rights. And just who is the Minister for Same Sex relationships – Bill Heffernan?
The portfolio Abbott was most likely referring to is Revenue, held by Senator Helen Coonan. Like Abbott, it appears Coonan has also had a change of heart when it comes to superannuation rights.
The Age political correspondent Annabel Crabb reported on September 19 this year:
Twenty-seven years ago, Helen Coonan was a fiery young solicitor, shoulder to shoulder with the gay rights movement demanding equal superannuation treatment for same-sex couples.
Coonan had worked alongside activist Peter de Waal on the ‘Tribunal on Homosexuals and Discrimination’ in 1976. De Waal told The Age:
We were very glad to have the assistance of Helen Coonan at the time, and we thought she was extremely progressive but more recently, we have revised our opinions of her.
A spokesperson for Senator Coonan said that “she was acting as a family lawyer – this is vastly different from amendments to this piece of legislation.” (Margo: After becoming a Senator Coonan, an activist moderate Liberal of many years standing, ditched her values and her “faction” for the right-wing and John Howard’s support in a Senate pre-selection battle. She was such a good girl Howard gave her a ministry, and she’s mouthed his lines ever since.)
In response, Democrats Senator Brian Greig labelled the Minister, “Coonan the Contrarian”. But alas, Coonan’s not the lone ranger when it comes to being oh au contraire.
In 1995, in Opposition, Conservative Tasmanian Liberal Senator John Watson led the Coalition’s push to give same-sex couples the same rights as heterosexual couples.
In the late 1990s with the Liberals back in power, Labor member for Grayndler Anthony Albanese introduced a private members bill pushing to give same sex couples the same rights (Albanese reintroduced the bill for a third time in 1999 after it had lapsed twice without Government debate).
In 2000, responding to Albanese’s bill, Senator Watson wrote the Government’s report rejecting the bill.
The bill was knocked back, according to Watson, because of the oh-so-crazy argument that it would put “same-sex relationships on the same basis as heterosexual relationships”.
Worse still, the report argued the Bill would lead to the “gradual devaluation of the traditional family structure in the eyes of the law and society in general”.
Although he denied it, as Toni O’Loughlin reported in the Sydney Morning Herald on April 7, 2000, the timing of Watson’s turnaround coincided with “a preselection contest in which the stridently anti-gay Tasmanian Senator Eric Abetz is understood to have substantial influence”.
The “devaluation of the traditional family structure” as an excuse ties in nicely with Abbott’s remarks on “traditional Christian marriage”, as it does with Howard’s comments on marriage as being “about children, having children, raising them, providing for the survival of the species.”
God strike you down if you are a Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist or Moslem couple who can’t have children, or God forbid, choose not to.
The party that has never shied away from Christian family values is the National Party.
Responding to Anthony Albanese’s bill, Senator Ron Boswell sent a warning to all the young regional and rural kiddies grappling with their sexuality, when he said:
If we pass this motion today, it will send a message to all Australians young and old that mainstream society sees no essential difference between a homosexual and a heterosexual lifestyle, that society not only condones it but is indifferent to the bonds which make the typical family the fundamental unit of our society. While we in the National Party do not persecute those who freely enter into a minority lifestyle, we do not want to promote it to our children as an equally valid or acceptable way of life.
Like the ol’ traditional family excuse, God also gets a mention in this debate.
In 1999, One Nation Senator Len Harris wheeled out the Bible banter:
“Gods words clearly say to us that the acts of lesbianism and homosexuality are an abomination.” (reported by Margo Kingston, The Sydney Morning Herald, December 10, 1999).
When people (and indeed members of various churches) use the Bible to justify their homophobia, big bastard cathedral alarm bells should go off.
The main book that addresses homosexuality in the Bible is Leviticus, which says:
No man is to have sexual relations with another man; God hates that. (18: 22).
Further, it says:
If a man has sex with another man, both shall be put to death (20:13).
This old testament statement can hardly be held up as gospel for today’s world when a fair chunk of the other content in Leviticus is largely ignored and at best ridiculous. Leviticus also says it is a sin to eat pig and shellfish, to have mildew in your house, to wear two different types of cloth (hmmm, does Senator Harris wear cotton blend?), plant two different types of seed in one field, cut the hair off the sides of your head, and have tattoos.
And if you’re a woman you may as well banish yourself from society because of your period and the time it takes to be “clean” again. But hey, it’s not all bad. According to Leviticus you can buy slaves as long as they are from “the nations around you” or “the children of the foreigners who are living around you”.
Another champion of the church in the Upper House is Senator Brian Harradine.
In Mungo MacCallum’s memoirs Mungo: the Man who Laughs, he refers to Harradine as the “so-called” independent Senator, “because it has long been apparent that Harradine sees his primary role in politics as representing the views of the more conservative wing of the Catholic church”.
Harradine has been arguing that if the current amendments are passed, this would discriminate against people in dependent relationships who are not having sex:
Take two women for example. You’ve got two women living in one household, one of whom is a dependent and in another household you’ve got two lesbians. What is being proposed by those that are putting this forward is to discriminate against the two women who aren’t lesbians. Now how do you get over that? What you’re proposing for us to do is to discriminate against those two women because they’re not having sex. I think that that’s disgraceful if we’re going to be asked to do that.
While the Senator remains staunchly opposed to giving same sex couples the same rights as heterosexual couples, the argument does present another can of worms.
Many single people in “interdependent” relationships would argue these relationships are just as important and just as relevant as people in sexual relationships.
The Australian Democrats, who, like the Greens, have openly gay members of parliament (yes, as opposed to closeted), have long supported reforms to give same sex couples the same rights as heterosexual couples. The Democrats are also proposing an “interdependency” category in superannuation.
Senator John Cherry recently said that “the Democrat amendments will also remove the cruel taxation on superannuation benefits paid following the death of a spouse, de-facto, same-sex partner or anyone else who is emotionally and financially connected”.
Democrats Senator Brian Greig who has himself been in a long-term same sex relationship has been barracking for equal rights on superannuation for some time. Prior to the recent amendment, and only a few months ago, Greig blasted the Australian Labor Party for their lack of support on the issue:
You are no different to the Coalition. I expect anti-gay, homophobic vitriol from the Coalition – that’s where they sit. But I expect more from the Opposition.
Greig has also been campaigning on the wider issue of discrimination against gays. In 2002, he asked Senator Robert Hill:
Given that the Howard Government discriminates against gay and lesbian people and their relationships in and with superannuation, taxation, family law, the Commonwealth Public Service, the Australian Federal Police, the defence forces, immigration, veterans affairs, industrial relations, social security and parliamentary entitlements, and given that the Government and the Opposition have blocked or stymied every attempt by the Australian Democrats to remedy this situation with legislative reform, how does the minister explain the Prime Minister’s recent assertion that the Government is not homophobic?
Senator Hill’s reply was that he had “missed the last few words” of the question, but that laws were made by parliament and not government, and that Greig was part of the process.
The timing of the question coincided with Bill Heffernan’s attack on Justice Michael Kirby.
Despite Howard’s denials, the Kirby farce contributes to a healthy history of homophobia in the Howard Government years.
In the ‘Word is Out’ paper, The Howard Government: gays lesbians and homophobia (June 2002), University of Adelaide Associate Professor Carol Johnson said the main difference between the two major parties is that “while they were electorally cautious, the Labor governments were not openly hostile to gay and lesbian arguments”.
Elected on Mardi Gras night in 1996, John Howard has continually refused to endorse the festival or at least give a message of support to the gay and lesbian community.
Early in his first term, Howard said he’d be “disappointed, even upset” if one of his sons were gay. Reiterating these sentiments, he was quizzed further on his stance on homosexuality by a student on ABC youth radio station Triple J:
STUDENT: So if we had a scale with total acceptance of homosexuality on one end and total rejection and abuse of homosexuality on the other, where would you place yourself?
PRIME MINISTER: Oh I’d place myself somewhere in the middle. I certainly don’t think you should give the same status to homosexual liaisons as you give to marriage, I don’t.
“Total rejection and abuse of homosexuality” easily equates to homophobia. So while Howard denies he or his government is homophobic, these comments suggest he is partially homophobic by being “somewhere in the middle”. Is this what “conservatively tolerant” means?
And notice too how if you are in a gay relationship or partnership, it gets called a “liaison”? As Catharine Lumby so brilliantly put it in the Bulletin last year, “Most of us have a life. But if you’re a gay man, you get a lifestyle.”
Also added to Howard’s list is his intervention following a Federal Court ruling finding the Victorian Government’s restrictions to fertility treatments discriminatory against single women and lesbians.
And more recently, there are Howard’s comments rejecting gay marriages. To allow gay people to marry, you would also be allowing them to have, shock horror, the same superannuation rights.
Like any phobia, homophobia is driven by fear.
In her article “Why gay marriage is a bad idea”, Janet Albrechtsen wrote in The Australian of the evils of divorce, arguing children do better when biological mum and biological dad stay together. “This is why marriage must remain special and why discrimination is not always a dirty word,” Albrechtsen wrote.
Despite Albrechtsen’s amusing musings, there is no evidence that children are worse off when brought up by people in same sex relationships.
The same day, in the Herald Sun, also owned by Murdoch, radio presenter Neil Mitchell went hard on the issue in “OK to be straight, too”, (a headline that surely must be made into a t-shirt).
Mitchell argued that “there are enough examples to make any heterosexual feel persecuted, the Prime Minister included,” citing lesbian mothers groups, the debate within the church over gay clergy and television personalities as examples.
For a gay person reading the article, it was offensive to say the least and actually made Albrechtsen’s piece look like a relatively tame walk down Oxford Street. After his spray, Mitchell ended it with “Persecution of homosexuality has finished. Now let’s understand that straight is acceptable, too.”
Uh-huh. Obviously Mitchell wasn’t aware of discrimination against homosexuals in terms of superannuation, age of consent laws, compensation entitlements, leave and other workplace entitlements, legal recognition of relationships (including marriage), and that lil ol’ issue of vilification and violence because of your sexuality.
He might have also missed the United Nation’s recent ruling that Australia had breached its international obligations after federal law had discriminated against the long time partner of a deceased WW2 veteran by denying him a pension.
The push for equal rights, whether it be regarding defence entitlements or superannuation rights, is not asking for much – just equality, simple as that.
The fear that gay marriage or gay parenting or superannuation rights for gay couples is suddenly going to rip apart John Howard’s “bedrock” that is the family is a load of rubbish. Some heterosexual couples make a mess of marriage all on their own.
What this issue comes down to is how you value people. It’s about how you value people’s relationships, and ultimately it’s about how you value love.
Sincere best wishes to Melanie Howard and Rowan McDonald in their partnership.