YEARENDER: Australian gay marriage debate flits the closet

By Sid Astbury Dec 13, 2010, 2:06 GMT

Sydney - Afghanistan, climate change, terrorism, asylum seekers? No, the big issue for Australian politicians these days is whether to allow gay marriages.

'I confidently predict we'll see an end to discrimination in the marriage laws during this period of government,' openly gay Australian Greens leader Bob Brown said.

The idea of joining Argentina, Canada, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, South Africa and Spain in recognizing same-sex marriages has supporters in both Prime Minister Julia Gillard's ruling Labor Party and the Liberal opposition.

What convinces Brown that the country's two major parties will dump their official stance that marriage is just for heterosexuals is opinion polling showing that only one-third of voters are dead set against the institution being opened up to homosexuals.

Paul Howes, a union heavyweight and Labor kingmaker, said gay marriage was an issue that had now jumped the Left-Right divide and had won widespread support.

Its acceptance was inevitable, he said, noting that his son had school friends from homes where there were two daddies or two mummies.

'I think he'd never be able to understand by the time he becomes a voter how there could be discrimination against those people simply based on who they love,' Howes said.

The Greens, holder of the balance of power in parliament, are setting the pace on gay marriage. They have cornered Gillard, who fears that equality is a vote winner in the inner cities but a vote loser in the suburbs.

It is a vexed issue for Gillard, the childless, unwed, atheist who became Australia's first female prime minister in June. She and her partner live on the public purse in a Canberra mansion - not the best vantage point from which to preach about the sanctity of marriage.

Rather than overturning official Labor policy, Gillard could obfuscate the issue by allowing a conscience vote that would probably win the day for change.

Within the Liberal Party, where conscience votes are a tradition, support for the status quo is shaky.

'I hear stories of young people in our smaller country towns where they feel confused and outcast because of their sexuality and I want very much for all forms of discrimination to cease,' the Liberals' Sussan Ley said. 'But I don't know whether it's about changing the Marriage Act.'

Liberal stalwart Philip Ruddock is openly opposed to change. 'It's seen that marriage has been ordained over a long period of time as a basis for ensuring that a union that can give rise to the procreation of children is the subject of some regularity and order,' he said.

But as his opponents have pointed out, in Ruddock's Sydney, as elsewhere in Australia, unmarried couples, even gay couples, can already legally adopt children.

When it comes to procreation, marital status is irrelevant. Marriage, in fact, nowadays confers no benefits that are not also open to those who just cohabit. The government's generous baby bonus goes to all mothers, married and unmarried alike.

Gay marriage campaigners, asked why they don't settle for Gillard- style cohabitation or a civil union ceremony, retort that marriage should be open to anyone.

'If you don't want to get married to a gay person, that's fine,' campaigner Josh Thomas said. 'But why would you want to stop other people from being normal? It makes no sense.'

As some see it, the irony is that homosexual couples who desire the sanctity of marriage are denied it by the leader of a government who herself has no regard for it.

Union leader and Labor party heavyweight Joe de Bruyn is maddened by all the political oxygen that the gay marriage controversy is inhaling.

'I don't think it's an election issue,' he said. 'I think people are, really, 'who cares about it?''

But gay rights campaigners retort that lots of people do care. They argue that society has changed in so many other ways that continuing to deny gays and lesbians a proper wedding is anachronistic.

'I'm convinced that when these laws pass,' said veteran campaigner Rodney Croome, 'people will look back and wonder why it took so long and why there was ever such a fuss.'

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