THIS week I was asked a set of insightful questions by journalist Daniel Seed in his interview about my non-fiction debut Questionable Deeds: Making a stand for equal love. Check out the video, which is also available at The Headline Act.
Category Archives: LGBTIQ Equality
Marriage equality on the never never
TONY Abbott has knocked Australian progressives and moderate Liberals into motionless disappointment on marriage equality.
The biggest political football of his government has been booted around by parliament again. There’ll be a few free kicks when the cross-party marriage equality bill comes before parliament, but Abbott’s moved the goalposts already, so none of the players will score.
The Australian with the highest hope for the Liberals on this issue – and at the greatest risk of being disappointed by her party – is Tony’s sister Christine Forster, a Liberal councillor for the City of Sydney.
She optimistically submits to interviews whenever she feels we are approaching a breakthrough. She’s also good-natured enough to engage in jokes about her brother, yet not hide her disappointment.
“It’s clear marriage equality will remain just a high hope.”
But it was Christopher Pyne who was this week’s highest-profile and most confident Liberal when it came to marriage equality, although his hopes for a free vote blinded him to a classic Abbott battle manoeuvre.
When the Prime Minister opened the discussion to the entire Coalition party room, including a wall of National Party MPs whose homophobia was guaranteed to bring out the same in everyone but moderate Liberals, Pyne’s reported response was shock. He then dashed through the media with the kind of sibilant schoolboy anger that often stereotypes him as gay.
As the dust settles, it’s clear marriage equality will remain just a high hope on the never never, that place where Australians know nothing will change in the short term.
I could analyse the chances of any of the dangling carrots – referendum, plebiscite, binding or free votes – but that would be to engage in the kind of hope Tony Abbott wants from me.
Progressives and moderates are good at hope, and at home in the southeast Queensland electorate of Bowman, there’s been plenty of it ever since Liberal MP Andrew Laming started filling letterboxes with his annual survey back in June.
Only one person per household could fill it out, and it didn’t mention marriage equality, just it’s poor cousin so beloved of right-wing religious Liberals – ‘gay marriage’ – which presupposes same-sex attracted people want something special, like ‘gay supermarkets’ or ‘gay sports ovals’.
I treated it as harmless until national media outlets started calling it a same-sex marriage survey. Long-term Bowman resident and LGBTQI activist Adele Fisher also had mixed opinions.
“I was aware, in previous years, people had reported not receiving the survey and had questioned both the statistical significance and accuracy of the results,” she said.
“A couple of friends and I decided to encourage as many people as possible in Bowman to complete Andrew’s survey and return it. We started a Facebook page. We contacted Andrew and continued to speak with him during the lead up to the survey being released and throughout it being distributed and returned.
“We organised a rally which was well attended and had some fantastic speakers, including community members, clergy and politicians. Unfortunately, Andrew’s schedule changed and he was unable to attend, however, he did provide a statement that was read out on the day.
“The rally was fortunately held the morning after marriage equality was achieved in all 50 states of the USA, and with a quick media release that morning we had a number of media outlets contact us on the day,” she said.
“With the assistance of Australian Marriage Equality we were able to run a full-page advertisement in the local newspaper and received other excellent support from them. We attended markets and spoke with hundreds of people in the Bowman electorate.”
I felt the same wave of hope across the region. My husband filled out Laming’s survey and duly posted it off, which meant our household was only half represented, but after the leaks about Warren Entsch and Terri Butler’s cross-party marriage equality bill, there was a sense that moves were afoot to deliver marriage equality by the year’s end, so my omission didn’t seem to matter.
Laming fuelled the hope by predicting he could be given a conscience vote on the bill as soon as parliament returned, but he did not bend over backwards to get his constituents to vote in the survey he promised would decide his vote.
“Unlike his fellow MPs such as Natasha Griggs (Liberal MP for Solomon, Northern Territory) and Ann Sudmalis (Liberal MP for Gilmore, NSW), Andrew did not offer an online option, an email option, a phone option or even a photocopy of the form for people to express their individual views,” Adele said.
“Questions have been raised regarding the validity of the survey process used. There are a large number of the electorate who are reporting that they did not receive the survey in the mail.”
According to Adele, Laming announced that people who had not received a survey could attend his office on one business day – August 6 – show their identification, and cast a vote.
Crunch time came so swiftly by August 11 that even the social media had trouble keeping up with events.
Not accustomed to being consulted on anything, even issues important to their rural electorates, like CSG, mining and native vegetation laws, National Party MPs may well have been stunned at being asked to have a say on marriage equality at a six-hour special Coalition meeting.
Late in the evening, when Tony Abbott made his captain’s call that there would be no free vote for Coalition MPs on marriage equality, Laming’s survey – and his support for a free vote – were rendered instantly redundant.
When he announced the results on August 12, they barely registered.
According to Laming, 58 per cent of respondents disagreed with gay marriage. To put that result in context, only 23pc of individuals in Bowman households responded.
“I have followed Andrew’s statements on marriage equality for in excess of five years,” Adele said, “since first attending a forum he held in Bowman, and have attempted to engage with him many times on the topic of marriage equality, in person, online and via email. Unfortunately, I cannot say that these have been productive.”
Adele and I have similar hopes on the future of marriage equality campaign.
“I think the events of this week were anticipated in part by many involved in the marriage equality campaign,” she said.
“Further plans and contingencies are in place for all of us who are campaigning for marriage equality. It has been a long journey so far and it doesn’t stop here. The campaign will continue and I’m confident will go from strength to strength.
“People are hurting though, and I have seen an outpouring of support for those people impacted by the decisions this week. Let’s never forget at the heart of the matter are real people, children, youth, adults and elderly.
“I think it is extremely important no-one loses sight of this.”
“Laming’s survey managed to get him squarely back in his leader’s good books.”
Even though the likes of Abbott and Laming say they understand there are strong feelings in the community on both sides, marriage equality supporters are too easily written off as attention seekers and bleeding hearts. This is the first week in years I have been labelled a deviant.
Some say the increase in vitriol means change is imminent, but I completely disagree. Without someone in the Liberal party rolling Abbott, or the electorate caring enough about the issue to vote him out, marriage equality is now years away.
And Laming’s survey managed to get him squarely back in his leader’s good books after February’s backbench revolt. Conservatives tend to do that sort of things while progressives hope.
© Michael Burge, all rights reserved.
Lives at the crossroads
A COLLECTION of ten stories, all variations on the same theme: hiding from the truth.
The matron who interprets her sexual desire as physical pain, obsessed with one of her nurses to the point of stalking (‘Dirty Nurse’); the father who has liaisons with men at public toilets, and the kid who works out he knows the bloke (‘Last Job of the Day’).
The painter who is out but not too proud, and the Auschwitz survivor she must care for in her day job (‘All the Worst Jobs’). The mother who tries to find ‘the right girl’ for her son, only to come face-to-face with his male partner (‘Hilda’s Dance’).
The daughter who finds her gay uncle on Facebook and confronts her christian father about his homophobia in one insightful email (‘A Quick Fix’) …
Captured at the crossroads of their lives, these people face choices between extraordinary heroism and cowardice.
An extract of ‘Dirty Nurse’ from Closet His, Closet Hers.
The office was a reward for attaining the position of Night Supervisor by the age of thirty, the youngest promotion of its kind in the hospital’s history.BY the time Marilyn had her own office, it was much like her bedroom – isolated at the end of a verandah and damp, since Maintenance never finished the guttering.
There was no new uniform to expand into, only a chrome-plated badge which Marilyn ordered from the town jeweller and collected on her day off.
She was unprepared for the grizzly smile of the young man she’d been a year ahead of in school, who looked at her through the smoky glass of a recent refurbishment.
It was an unusual look which Marilyn did not recognise, and and read as a slight retardation.
He fetched her badge, which had been sent away for engraving, and proudly held it up for Marilyn in his gloved hand. She checked the spelling, retrieved her purse, and curtly said: “Yes please” to the plush velvet drawstring bag he proffered with his other hand.
‘You’ve done well,’ he said, ‘out of everyone we went to school with, you’ve done the best,’ he added, sniffing at the last minute, signalling that he didn’t much like taking on the family business that had been in town for sixty years.
Marilyn thought of something to say, but stifled it, then another thought popped into her head, and she left that alone too, game show-type retorts which she’d never used anywhere other than the hospital. All she could get out was: ‘Thank you, Brian Ward,’ as though naming him would thwart his unwelcome familiarity.
As she walked away he wondered how much arse any woman had a right to. Still, he thought, she’s more of a looker than Leanne. Leanne was his now ex-wife and the mother of their two children, who’d left for the city last weekend.
Mum had told Marilyn all about it, and she’d had it from Merle at the Bowling Club. Merle was Brian Ward’s godmother.
Driving home, Marilyn remembered what Brian’s look reminded her of. She put it right out of her mind, until at five past eight that evening it came back to her: the face of Pam Cooper, maybe ten years before, in the storeroom where they kept the cylinders of laughing gas.
While running her bath, Marilyn revived the tinny smell of the tanks as Pam handed them to her, only Pam was always slightly careless and had dropped one. It had fallen against a shelf, which twisted the tap and shot a spray of laughing gas over both of them.
“Marilyn had nearly slapped Mum for taking away that chance to hug Pam. Her hands had been so close to both women, but nobody wanted them.”
Pam broke into giggles first, in disbelief more than anything. She’d fallen to her knees, knew to turn the tap off, but hadn’t quite managed. Marilyn had tutted, put her tanks down, and went to help. By the time she turned to Pam the other woman was collapsed over a pile of sterile linen, gripped with silent mirth.
Marilyn hadn’t meant to giggle too, but the gas dragged it out of her. She shook her head, trying to be free of it, but Pam slapped both hands onto Marilyn’s leg in an innocent, jaunty motion which Marilyn recalled like a bolt of lightning running through a feather.
The two women fell about for only a minute, but in that minute Marilyn was touched more than she’d ever been in her entire childhood.
As Pam gathered her wits and stood, Marilyn saw her breasts in the shadow of her collar, right through the join of her bra to the top of her stomach.
The sight haunted her now, as she slid into the bath.
Pam had three kids to a real estate agent. They’d visited because Mum had it from Coral at cards that Pam was ‘going to leave That Man’, and Marilyn had told Mum to tell Coral to tell Pam she was ‘welcome anytime with the kiddies’.
Marilyn had to stop the kids dipping their bikkies in their tea. She’d told them it was ‘bad for their toothie-pegs’, but they still did it. She’d held the little girl and Dad and Mum had a boy each on their knees, but the little lady didn’t like Marilyn’s broad, hard lap.
Pam hadn’t worked since leaving the ward. She’d swapped starched uniforms for an array of stylish polyester outfits purchased during the abundant early years of her marriage.
Marilyn couldn’t get to the wedding because she’d made sure she was rostered on for a double shift to avoid seeing Pam walking down the aisle with That Man.
Around their dinner table, Marilyn waited for news of when Pam was leaving him, but the slightest mention of ‘things’ brought a tear to Pam’s eye, and before Marilyn could go for a hug Mum jumped up with one of her ‘don’t you worry now love’ consolations and Dad had taken the boys out the back to the shed. Marilyn was left to watch the little girl, who insisted on pulling at Marilyn’s shoelaces, the way Maggie had when she was a puppy.
Only Maggie was long dead. Mum hadn’t even given a cuddle or a kiss when they put the little dog in the ground inside an old floral pillowslip.
Marilyn had nearly slapped Mum for taking away that chance to hug Pam. Her hands had been so close to both women, but nobody wanted them. Not even the little girl had wanted them.
That was years ago now. Pam hadn’t left That Man. Marilyn sometimes saw the station wagon parked at the supermarket, and caught glimpses of Pam between the aisles, but her jealousy over that stolen hug always prevented her from saying hello.
So Marilyn slid her head into the searing heat of the bathwater, peeling off the memories she was sure would dissipate in the chilled air long before she surfaced.
© Michael Burge, all rights reserved.
Michael Burge Media 