Viewed from the footpaths of Darlinghurst, homosexuality looks like the most colossal fun. But it's not all Bob Fosse hunks drenched in oceans of Reef Oil, you know. On days other than the Mardi Gras parade, homosexuality can, in fact, be fairly dreary.
Between bigoted bureaucrats, unkind relatives and the possibility that one might be savagely beaten on the way to the shops, homosexuality can be a bit of a bore. And, it just got more annoying. As if 100 years of oppression were not enough, now we're supposed to get married.
The principal theme of Saturday's Mardi Gras parade will be marriage. For the life of me, I can't think why.
At last count, 15 floats will take their cue from a withering institution. A matrimonial spectacular featuring bride with bride and groom with groom will be the centrepiece of the annual Long Mince. Apparently, marriage is now the ne plus ultra of the struggle. This is odd and strikes me as no more critical or apposite to the needs of homosexuals than the right of cyclists to ride a penny-farthing.
"Same-sex marriage is clearly the big issue that our community wants to say something about in this year's parade," organisers said last month.
No good can come of this glitzy fight, save for it providing a rationale for me to stay home on the sofa, throw things at the telegenic Ruby Rose and wonder, aloud and alone, when the popular theories of gay liberation dwindled so as to make a song by Lady Gaga seem like the Kinsey Report.
If we don't count the company of the Christian Right, I'll be abstaining from Mardi Gras and marriage by myself. The gays will not join me in considering that the idea of marriage is a bit naff; nor will anybody else. Suddenly, every progressive is banging on about marriage as though it is a breathtaking idea.
Like spinsters ready to receive a bouquet of dog-whistles, the left is lurching to revive the bloom of a wilted tradition. Our Greens, many public thinkers and half of our most attractive performers have raced to declare their support for the right to be wed. Just like in the olden days.
Affirming gay marriage has become a progressive reflex and there is no scope for debate. Supporting same-sex marriage is compulsory, rather like an objection to genetically modified food or a preference for buying organic. One cannot say that marriage, particularly the "gay" kind, is silly without being pelted by (conventionally grown) refuse.
At the risk of upsetting the workers of the world and the biodynamic markets at which they shop, I just can't get excited about the "right" to an institution predicated on some pretty whacko old nonsense.
Of course, we support the right of others to believe in whacko old nonsense. Affianced gay Christians must take every risk so they can to be wed by the myth of their choosing. Where marriage is a matter of faith, the faithful must take it up with their clerics. But they're taking it up with their legislators and no one can really tell me why.
Same-sex couples are, largely, no longer discriminated against in law. In 2009, the federal Labor government passed a suite of legislative changes recommended by the Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission.
The 58 alterations, to real estate, superannuation and sundry other acts, were a great win. I thank the Gay and Lesbian Rights Lobby for the real and practical differences they've made to the lives of myself and others.
There's more to do but now, for example, the simple dignity of compassionate leave is extended to a bereaved same-sex partner. This was a pressing civil equality issue. Getting hitched, expensively and blithely, is not.
This is not to suggest the creation of long-term intimacy is anything short of wonderful. My own partnership of 12 years is my life's central feat. It has been sanctioned by the years, by difficulty and by love. It will never be sanctioned by compliance to the terms of a rickety institution.
But "gay" itself has become a rickety institution. Wedded to the idea of weddings, military participation and cheering on "out" footballers, the visible gay culture retains all the radicalism of a radish.
Marriage equality is not a truly progressive struggle but an effort to privilege one kind of relationship, long-term and monogamous, above all others. I wonder how is this going to play out, particularly for the many gay couples who have spent years finessing a feasible polygamy.
Gay and progressive communities are selling up and buying into a market long since ruined. We are trading in a history rich in difference at the altar of absolute conformity.
On Saturday night the new currency of achievement will be measured in faithful brides and grooms. And I'll be throwing things at the telly.
Helen Razer is a freelance writer.
Follow the National Times on Twitter: @NationalTimesAU
.gif)
144 comments
More comments
Comments are now closed