THOROUGHLY MODERN The interrelated Modern Family of ABC’s comedy series.
A Writer looks at modern families.
IT was charming and kind of awkward when Australians welcomed the cast of America’s ABC comedy Modern Family (what Aussies might prefer to call a ‘new-fangled mob’) to our shores earlier this year, for the production of a special Australian ‘destination’ episode.
The series has consistently rated highly with Australian viewers and the locally filmed episode was always going to please and offend us.
Did they hit the mark and show us something about ourselves that’s not already apparent from any number of fantastic Australian television families, from The Sullivans to The Moodys?
The answer might lie in comparing the fiction with the data.
“There is simply no mainstream equivalent on Australian television.”
The first major difference is in Modern Family’s portrayal of three family units with kids – it’s simply not representative (what Aussies might prefer to call ‘average’) of this country.
A trio of multi-generational groupings, including biological, adopted, and step-children, is not the Australian way, according to the Australian Institute of Family Studies.
Two out of three Australian families had children in the 2011 census, in fact, couples without children made up the dominant chunk of the pie chart, at 37.8 per cent of family units.
A beloved and core element to Modern Family’s make-up is the male same-sex couple (Mitch and Cam). Despite pushing boundaries in the United States for its honest (and to many, not honest enough) portrayal of the realities of same-sex families with children, this is not Australia’s reality.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics reveals that Australian same-sex couples with children are overwhelmingly female (a whopping 89 per cent).
Australia is undoubtedly ready for Mitch and Cam adopting children on our television screens, but our communities are a long way behind.
The first legal adoption by a same-sex couple in Australia took place in 2007, in Western Australia, where adoption had been legal for same-sex couples for five years prior. Currently, four Australian states and territories allow same-sex couples zero adoption rights.
Racial and cultural diversity is a core principle of Modern Family’s casting. Out of a total of twelve main characters, 33 per cent of the show’s key cast could be defined as racially diverse, including Latin-American and Asian-American representation.
There is simply no mainstream commercial equivalent on Australian television, an issue which continues to plague the industry, while a racially diverse audience of just under one-quarter of all Australians remains barely represented on our small screen.
Modern Family’s Australian episode did not hit the mark with everyone on home soil – The Guardian Australia’s review carried the headline: ‘Modern Family’s Australian episode was a cliched travelogue’.
WE’RE WAITING Jessie Tyler Ferguson and Eric Stonestreet (Mitch and Cam) in their Australian Marriage Equality video.
But there was one sign that the show’s content could drag Australian television content, and our nation, into the 21st century.
Jesse Tyler Ferguson and Eric Stonestreet (who play Mitch and Cam) released a video produced by Australian Marriage Equality, comically expressing (what Aussies call ‘taking the piss’) their astonishment that same-sex marriage is not yet legal in Australia.
So, not until a racially diverse, childless lesbian couple inhabits our television comedies, will Australians become a truly ‘modern family’.
Until then we’ll need fictional outsiders to show us what we could be if we tried.
She declared the debate “interminably dull” and credited lobby group Australian Marriage Equality’s (AME) latest pitch for support – via the small business benefits of allowing same-sex marriage – with triggering her boredom threshold.
This is a world record – even in countries which have already passed marriage equality legislation, community support for same-sex marriage is nowhere near that high.
So, with apologies to Gay and anyone else who’s asleep on marriage equality, here’s why it’s already too late for anyone in the current political spectrum to bring full civil rights to lesbian and gay Australians.
Tony Abbott will never take the free kick
After promising his cabinet would be free to raise the issue of marriage equality “after the election”, nobody in the Coalition party room seems keen to take up the challenge.
“In order to lead Australia to marriage equality, our primary leader, our Prime Minister Tony Abbott, needs someone in his party to lead him to the debate.”
I have an undeniable gut feeling that twelve months “after the election”, if he was ever going to back marriage equality, Tony Abbott already would have done.
His sister Christine Forster and her partner Virginia Edwards announced their engagement after the election. I imagine they’re getting quite impatient to tie the knot on home soil, and it’s Christine we have to thank for the latest news about her brother’s leadership on the issue, when she spoke at a Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG) event in Brisbane last month.
“I have been married, I am a gay woman, a lesbian, but I was married for 20 years,” Forster said, “so I know the significance of marriage and how that speaks to your community, friends and family and what it says about the special relationship you have with your partner”.
THEY’RE WAITING Christine Forster (right) with her partner Virginia Edwards. (Photo: James Boddington)
“My brother is a very good Liberal and a very good leader of the party and if that’s what the party tells him that’s what he will accept,” Forster said.
You read it right: in order to lead Australia to marriage equality, our primary leader, our Prime Minister Tony Abbott needs someone in his party to lead him to the debate.
Even if this somehow qualifies as leadership, even if by some miracle a Coalition minister has the guts a week, a month, a year from now, Tony Abbott will never escape the taint that he left it too long.
Too late, Tone. Far, far too late.
Laboring on equality despite Plibersek’s evolution
Australian LGBTIQ must look elsewhere for our civil rights champion.
But both of Plibersek’s public gauntlet throws to the Coalition occurred while she was in opposition, and seemed designed to highlight the shortcomings of an incumbent government, because that’s the only impact they had.
Labor supports marriage equality without a binding ‘yes’ vote for their MPs, a situation which will not change unless the ALP national conference in 2015 agrees to it, and will not change anything for LGBTQI.
The last time any government had the numbers to do anything unilaterally was under Kevin Rudd’s first suck of the sauce bottle between 2007 and 2010, but the ALP didn’t do anything about marriage equality.
Not as late as some, but still too late, Tanya.
The sky did not fall down
Marriage equality arrived in Australia for a brief time when the ACT passed the Marriage Equality (Same Sex) Act 2013.
After decades of inconsistency between state, territory and federal legislation on everything from homosexual criminality, de-facto recognition, superannuation, adoption and a host of other issues, the High Court suddenly demanded consistency.
STONE’S FRUIT Sharman Stone MP, federal member for Murray. (Photo: ABC)
I knew of this Victorian MP, federal member for Murray, because of the many voluntary sub-editing hours I gave in support of SPC Ardmona, the fruit canning company in Stone’e electorate, during the wave of No Fibs articles filed during the 2014 #SPCsunday campaign.
“But believe me the loss of the last Australian fruit processor would be a human as well as a regional economic and national tragedy.”
But Stone had little such empathy for her correspondent Tilly Rose Goldsmith’s situation, replying that her conscience did not extend to upholding marriage as an option for Australian LGBTIQ.
“The family implications of a marriage are totally different to the outcomes possible in a same-sex marriage i.e. not inferior but DIFFERENT” (Dr Stone’s capitalisation).
Stone’s response fell into the argument-breaking trap which invalidates childless heterosexual marriages, and it ignored how prone young LGBTIQ are to suicide as a result of bullying, a subject Goldsmith had raised in her letter to the minister.
I took a small stand on Twitter after reading Stone’s letter. As far as I am concerned, overseas canned fruit is no longer inferior, it’s just DIFFERENT. Food for thought for SPC Ardmona workers when it comes to election time.
Too late to question my support for Stone’s cause. More fool me for not checking her marriage equality record.
Defining Australian LGBT as “second-class citizens” until we have full marriage equality, Leyonhjelm’s announcement that he would bring on a marriage equality bill nevertheless contained some big qualifiers – he would not bring a bill forward until there was a conscience vote across the parliament, encouraging Coalition senators to tow the line and warning that, with six years as a Senator, he would see his “libertarian” bill through.
“There seems no urgency in Leyonhjelm’s stance on marriage equality.”
Six years could be far too late, Dave. Bring it on.
Pink dollar last link to marriage equality?
Although Gay Alcorn seemed to be chortling to herself at AME’s idea that marriage inequality was hitting the back pocket of Australia’s wedding industry, there is some merit in looking at boycotts as a way to lever the Australian parliament into legislating for same-sex marriage.
Fact is, there are widespread ‘faith boycotts’ encouraged by anti-gay advocates across the world, and Australia is no exception.
Before you write off the idea of the LGBTQI community boycotting anyone, name a single civil rights movement which succeeded without using the only language that moves postmodern communities into action: money.
For the LGBTQI community, their families and friends, those who constitute the 72pc of Australians who support marriage equality, the question is this: is it too late for you to boycott companies that do not support marriage equality?
I’VE written a lot about LGBTQI equality in the past 18 months. It’s no wonder – the marriage equality issue has reached boiling point in Australia, and many are wondering if this country is mature enough to leapfrog civil unions (which were an essential step in UK and NZ legislation a decade ago) and go ‘straight’ to full marriage laws.
Some days I think so, some days I waver, although I do have a three-way bet with some friends in New Zealand about when same-sex marriage will arrive on our shores. My odds are about middling, I suspect.
Meanwhile, I write. This poetic rant first appeared on LGBTicons.
SIBLING RIVALRY Christine Forster and her brother, Australia’s Prime Minister Tony Abbott.
I’m starting to lose it with Australia.
THEY say that I have only two choices here in my homeland: I must either love this place or leave it.
I did try, like many of my brothers and sisters before me, when I took myself to the other side of the world, believing that distance would disguise my self disgust.
But there, in the fold of loneliness, the gay man still showed himself in the mirror when I stopped to look, and so I brought him home.
Oh, the endless fuss that still rumbles from my coming-out homecoming. The silences and the judgements that are held against me behind the smiles.
They wanted me to lie, now they want to punish me for being a liar, but I will not wear it.
No-one asks if you’re gay when you take out a home loan with your same-sex partner.
No-one asks if you feel equal when they tax you at the same rate as those who are free to express their love through marriage.
No-one asks if you’re gay when the bushfires lick every stick in the valley below the rows of precious lives, they only demand, quite rightly, that you help.
And we help. Yet that is never quite enough.
I see the dykes like patient, weathered stones, waiting for this people to realise their help is solid, unflinching and safe.
I see the poofs in caring generations that do not waver, they only want to play when it’s time to play.
I’ve watched us earn our equality. Our stripes are bright and they have nothing left to prove.
But the people elected a man who told them to be very, very afraid of difference.
He has a dyke sister who, we hope, is starting to get very, very angry, the way dykes sometimes can, and while their edge begins to scare you, you know you’re in very good hands, if you’re on their side.
I hope she rips ten colours of rainbow out of him this Christmas, as another year closes on the country he leads, the same country, and the same man, that prevent her marrying her fiancée.
I hope he hides, for even just a moment, in retreat, and has a long hard look at himself in the ensuite bathroom mirror, before he wipes that leering smile back onto his face, and puts on another show for the only people he truly represents: his family.
No more platitudes. No more promises. No more big Aussie smiles to cover our shame.
I am not going to leave this place, until none of its children must leave it in fear.
Michael Burge Media 