Rodney Croome . gay advocate

As the earth turns

Saturday's ACT election was a set back for anti-gay campaigners.

Whichever major party forms minority government in the ACT, Saturday's election outcome was a slap in the face to anti-gay groups like the Australian Christian Lobby.

They campaigned hard against the socially-progressive agenda of the Stanhope Government, especially its former, quashed marriage-like civil union proposal.

But instead of votes shifting to the Liberals, they migrated to the Greens who support same-sex marriage without qualifications.

The ACL’s claims to represent a significant swath of voters has been dented.

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The possibility of further LGBT law reform in the ACT now seems likely, especially if the Greens decide to support a minority Labor Government (reform under the Liberals should also not be discounted. Gay law reform in Tasmania occurred under a Green-supported Liberal minority administration).

The impulse will be to revisit the debate about marriage-like civil unions.

If this debate is an honest and informed one that focuses on the key issue of statutory ceremonies, it will be an important development.

If it skirts around the key issues by again drawing idiotic distinctions between civil unions and registries, and banging on about the non-issue of existing and created relationships, the nation will have missed an important opportunity.

It will also be a shame if the gains that have been made in the ACT, albeit inadvertently, are lost.

For example, couples currently have the option of not having a ceremony if they wish. From what I have been told, many are choosing this option.

If there is to be a statutory ceremony in the ACT Civil Partnerships Act, it must also be optional.

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Civil unions aren't only excercising the minds of legislators at the northern end of Commonwealth Bridge.

Independent Senator, Nick Xenophon, has said he quite likes the idea of Australia adopting a UK-style system of civil partnerships as a substitute for equal marriage.

It will come as no surprise to regular readers of this site if I respond, NO WAY!

First, the UK-style civil partnership scheme is a step down from the standards already set in Australia.

Unlike the registries in Tasmania and soon Victoria, it excludes non-sexual partners. Unlike these registries and the ACT’s, it even excludes heterosexual partners. Violating all principles of equal treatment, it establishes a parallel but utterly separate institution for same-sex partners.

Just as bad, it has no statutory or administrative ceremonial component. The ceremonies you see on TV are ad hoc arrangements by local authorities. The ceremonial arrangements in the ACT are stronger, and in Tasmania, no weaker.

As far as civil unions go the UK scheme is not up to scratch.

And as far as being a substitute for equal marriage…well, there’s no substitute for equal marriage.

As this article from the Irish Times reminds us, separate institutions are a form of apartheid.

It’s time for the same message to be heard loud and clear in Australia.

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In other Australian news,

Life doesn’t wait for law reform.

As defacto equity nears, thought is paid to prenups.

The Victorian parenting debate throws up the old question, if we can foster, why can't we adopt?

Anti-gay MPs find their own charming way to express homophobia in terms of the new ideology of gender fundamentalism, while the gender-fundamentalist term for same-sex attraction, “gender disorientation pathology” is traced to its ignominious source.

In other world news,

In death, Joerg Haider reinforces a persistent stereotype about far right wingers.

James Norman takes us to some pleasanter places.

Evan Wolfson could be talking about Australia when he warns how discrimination in marriage can be used “as a sweeping tool to discriminate and undermine all aspects of partnership protection."

Andrew Sullivan and Armistead Maupin get stuck into Californian pro same-sex marriage campaigners for not selling the advantages of equality more overtly, while Sullivan calls on Barack Obama to rescue marriage equality from black homophobia.

And

Speaking of Obama, for a moment put aside any concerns you might have about his personality, policies and nation and imagine what a victory for him will mean.

On Nov 5, as the earth turns and wakes to an Obama presidency the first thought of hundreds of millions of people will be “America has a black President”.

The reason we will all share that one moment of wonder is that humanity will have witnessed the end of a historical era and the start of a new one.

For the US and the world, no other century was defined and diminished by racism and racial conflict as much as the 20th.

An Obama election will bring that century to a close and truly open the next, no less dramatically than, say, the declaration of the Rights of Man in Philadelphia and Paris dated the despotism of the eighteenth century and opened the world to the democratising forces of the nineteenth.