With the Labor Prime Minister staunchly opposing marriage equality, it’s a bit topsy-turvey down under. James Peron writes at the Huffington Post:
Recently, Australia’s ruling Labor Party has been fighting off an attempt to legalize same-sex marriage. The problem was that rank-and-file members, and most voters, support marriage equality, while left-wing Prime Minister Julia Gillard does not. She is quite adamant in her opposition. …
While the opposition coalition in parliament—an alliance of the Liberal Party and the National Party—is supposed to vote against the measure, there is hope. Canadian Melody Ayres-Griffiths, who married her Australian wife in Canada but now lives in Australia, has written that opposition Liberal MPs may still come to the rescue.
She observes that many of the people within the opposition coalition are fiscally conservative, socially liberal libertarians. “These libertarians — some of whom are very powerful inside the Liberal party — may force Tony Abbott [Leader of the Opposition] to allow his MPs to hold a conscience vote of their own,” she writes. This would mean that opposition MPs could support marriage equality, making up for lost votes from Labor’s conscience vote — a repeat of what happened in New York.
New York’s gay marriage legislation faced some staunch Democratic opponents who are fundamentalist Christians. However, some wealthy Republicans, who were more libertarian than conservative, came to the rescue and ponied up big bucks to push for equality.
The lesson is that relying solely on the party of the left, there and here, is not a particularly good strategy.
9 Comments for “Marriage Equality Fight, Down Under”
posted by Tom Scharbach on
The lesson is that relying solely on the party of the left, there and here, is not a particularly good strategy.
True. It is to our advantage to do what we can to ensure that as many elected officials as possible in both the Democratic and Republican parties support equality.
And that leads me to the corollary. If conservative gays and lesbians want to help ensure that at least a meaningful minority of elected officials in the Republican Party support equality, then it is not a particularly good strategy for them to support candidates who are “pledged to deny us basic equality under the law”.
As you pointed out in a recent post, “the GOP has the opportunity to pick a socially moderate fiscal conservative with a proven record in prudent governance and foreign policy” in the presidential race, and I assume that is the case in other races for state and federal office in at least some cases around the country.
I would that expect conservative gays and lesbians who support equality (and I realize that there are those who do not) would actively support “socially moderate fiscal conservative [candidates] with a proven record in prudent governance and foreign policy”.
Is that is what’s happening? Or are conservative gays and lesbians who support equality concluding, with respect to those candidates, as you seem to have done in the presidential race, “Not going to happen.” and throwing their support to candidates “pledged to deny us basic equality under the law”.
The bottom line, in my view, is that the Republican Party has to be turned around, and neither passive waiting nor bemoaning the fact that most gays and lesbians have aligned with the Democrat Party are going to get the job done. Conservative gays and lesbians who support equality have to do in the Republican Party what liberal/progressive gays and lesbians who support equality have done in the Democratic Party — push hard and work hard to move the party toward support for equality.
We’ve seen a recent example of the predicament in which conservative gays and lesbians find themselves.
The free-for-all that has erupted between LCR and GOProud over Tony Fabrizio masks a more basic and more important question: “Why would a gay or lesbian who supports equality support Rick Perry — a hard-core, far-right social conservative allied with the New Apostolic Reformation and the American Family Association — in the first place?”
That’s the dilemma raised by your recent “Political Reflections” post. Conservative gays and lesbians have a choice this year, as they have had every year — to support hard-core social conservative candidates or to withhold support from such candidates.
But this year is different, in one respect, than earlier years.
We are at the threshold of achieving equality. Gays and lesbians have little by slowly brought the American people around to supporting equality, for the most part. The trend is likely to continue in our favor, both in the political and legal environment.
In that context, support for social conservative candidates — candidates who, if elected, will do what they can to block further progress toward equality in the political arena and in the courts — serves to delay equality. I don’t think that it is possible to reach any other conclusion, just as it would have been impossible to reach any conclusion about Barry Goldwater’s vote on the Civil Rights Act other than that the vote would have served to continue segregation had Goldwater been in the majority.
It may be that conservative gays and lesbians who support equality believe that they must vote for social conservatives in order to serve other conservative goals, goals that they consider of more importance than equality. That is their choice, although I think that they are wrongheaded, just as I think Goldwater was wrongheaded in voting against the Civil Rights Act. But what we cannot disagree about, I think, is that support for hard-core social conservatives serves to delay equality, and conservative gays and lesbians who make that choice bear responsibility for creating and continuing the delay.
posted by Zakalwe on
Gillard is trying to appease both the right and left factions in the Labor Party.
And pleasing neither.
posted by Houndentenor on
What Australia does not have is a conservative party whose social agenda is completely dominated by Evangelical Christians. I can well imagine in many countries that headway is being made with fiscal conservatives who are also social libertarians. I don’t see that progress happening any time soon in the US. That said, no one is stopping you from making that case to the libertarian wing of the Republican Party.
posted by John D on
Cool. Let me know who the Republicans who support LGBT rights are, and I’ll support them. Could you provide us with a list?
Recently, 113 members of the House of Representatives filed a brief in support of overturning DOMA. I saw an awful lot of Democrats on the list, but I didn’t notice any Republicans. Did I overlook them?
Who on the right can I rely on?
posted by Houndentenor on
8 GOP Senators and 15 GOP House members voted to repeal DADT. That would be a good list from which to start.
posted by Shadow Chaser on
U.S. Rep. Ileanna Ros-Leithan (R-Florida) is a co-sponsor of DOMA repeal. She is the mother of a FTM transsexual. She also voted to repeal DADT. Her district includes Key West.
posted by Shadow Chaser on
Tony Abbott, leader of the Australian center-right opposition, is bitterly opposed to marriage equality. I think he is a former Catholic seminarian. It will take a huge effort on the part conservative gays in Australia to get Abbott to permit a conscience vote among the members of his caucus. Possibly, if former Nationalists/Liberal leader Malcolm Trumbell would return to lead the center-right coalition, there might be an opportunity for a conscience vote.
Not impossible … Gillard was vehemently opposed to a conscience vote in the Labor caucus. Younger Laborites, women, and those unconnected to trade unions forced her to accept a conscience vote. Still, activists have yet to get to Labor to accept marriage equality as a policy to receive the party’s full backing. However, three months ago, even a conscience vote was almost unthinkable.
Gillard is an unusual character. She claims to support traditional marriage, but she lives without the benefits of matrimony with a divorced father of three (two of his three children were born in a previous marriage; the third child is from another relationship).
Gillard’s party was divided bitterly over marriage equality. She fears losing the “marriage and mortgage belt,” a series of suburban parliamentary seats that Labor now holds but could easily swing to the Nationalist/Liberal coalition.
She also fears alienating the right wing of the Labor Party, dominated by Catholic trade unionists.
Polls indicate that Australians favor marriage equality, but it isn’t a key issue for them. Gillard must deal with economic, labor, environmental, and refugee/immigration problems. She also must deal with her unpopularity, especially among those who backed former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, who she replaced in a coup.
Some of the Australian states and territories governed by Labor have attempted to pass marriage equality, but the national law supersede such efforts. These states and territories do offer civil unions.
I hope Australian readers will correct any errors I might have made concerning my understanding of status of marriage equality in Australia.
posted by Mihai Bucur on
You’re mostly right, Shadow Chaser. The only thing that’s important to note is that, at its National Conference on December 3, the Labor Party voted to officially endorse marriage equality. This means that marriage equality is now party policy, contained in the party’s official platform. However, Labor Party members in parliament will not be bound to vote in favour of marriage equality – there will be a conscience vote. There are quite a few members of the “Catholic Right” in the Labor Party who will vote against any marriage equality bill. Thus, despite the Labor Party officially supporting marriage equality, some Liberal/National members of parliament will need to vote in support for any bill to pass.
posted by e vanstralen on
It is clear from the polls that the general population of australia is overwhelmingly against any change in the marriage act. They have toomuch practical common sense to cave in to this nonsense, Love e