Rodney Croome . gay advocate

'Cisgender'

Obama lifts the US ban on...haggis.

In the wake of an Australian Christian Lobby petition against a charter of rights, conservative commentator, Gerard Henderson, writes that such a charter is all but dead*.

His reasoning?...

"In the lead-up to this year's federal election, Rudd and his colleagues do not need an argument with Christian groups - including the Catholic Archbishop of Sydney, Cardinal George Pell, who has expressed concern that the human rights lobby is intent on constraining religious freedom.

"The new Liberal Party leader, Tony Abbott…is capable of running a very effective campaign against a charter presented as giving more power to unelected judges and bureaucrats at the expense of the elected representatives of the people.

"(Attorney-General Robert) McClelland said it was the Government's philosophy that ''the enhancement of human rights should be done in a way that as far as possible unites a community rather than causes further division'."

And just in case there’s any doubt,

"The tone of Australia Day suggests that most Australians are happy with their lot."

In other words, Christians want to be free to discriminate against other people, the Government is too afraid of them to disagree with them and the majority of Australians are too complacent to care.

Prominent human rights advocate, Susan Ryan, and the chair of last year’s national charter of rights consultation, Fr Frank Brennan, couldn't disagree more.

They point out that,

a) two of Australia’s three largest churches support a charter of rights, as does a majority of the broader population (over 80% according to the latest Neilson Poll on the issue),

b) the right wing fear campaign against a charter of rights is full of holes, and can easily be diffused,

c) there is no evidence either the ACT of Victorian Governments have suffered electorally from enacting their own charters, and

d) groups like the ACL are coy about how many people they actually represent.

The Rudd Government may have gone quiet on a charter of rights, but does that mean it's gone off one?

My intuition is that Henderson has made a premature call.

But just in case, click here for information about how to show your support for a charter of rights.

*

I was away in October when the report of the national human rights consultation was released, and didn’t blog on it.

The responses were pretty predictable.

Common sense on one side.

Fear mongering and sniping on the other.

And some interesting commentary in between.

To its great credit the report recommended a national charter of rights, something that was naturally welcomed by LGBT human rights groups.

It also highlighted the absence of national sexuality and gender identity discrimination laws.

Its position on marriage equality was more ambiguous.

While the report respectfully noted and gave a good airing to the large number of submissions it received in favour of marriage equality, it made no recommendation one way or the other.

Although it did recommend a charter include a right to marry, it refrained from expressing a view on how that right should be defined, a critical issue if any future charter is to allow the courts to examine the issue.

Knowing that same-sex marriage is one of the key “hot-button” issues raised by the prospect of a charter, the report declares it to be a matter that “would be best left for parliament to resolve”.

But taken in context, that’s not such as dismissive as it first sounds.

The report recommended a type of charter that would allow courts to look at alleged human rights abuses, but which would leave the final decision about remedying all these abuses in the hands of Parliament.

On top of this, charters generally contain rights to equality and non-discrimination which, unless the right to marry was defined to exclude it, would allow courts to at least consider the issue of marriage equality.

As cautious as it was, the report left open the possibility that a charter of rights will allow marriage equality its day in court.

The job now before those who support equality is to convince the Government not only to act on the report, but to retain in any charter it puts forward the report’s spirit of openness to difficult but important issues.

***

In other news,

Yesterday was a big day for me.

I came across a new word, “cisgender”.

Although my history degree rarely comes in handy, it immediately provided me with a clue to the meaning of this strange term.

“Cisalpine Gaul” was the name of the Roman province in north Italy. It meant “Gaul on this side of the Alps”.

Could “cisgender” mean gender that is “on the same side as” (i.e. conforms with) biological sex?

Yes!

So should we now add “C” to the alphabet soup of LGBTI(QQF...)?

No way!

There should be a moratorium on all new terms until we find another one that starts with a vowel (besides, "cisgender" refers to a discrimination-free majority which sort of defeats the purpose).

And

I played my first ever tune on the bagpipes.

I’ve been learning for 18 months (the last couple of months on the actual pipes, as opposed to a chanter).

It’s harder than I thought it would be. I’ve encouraged myself with the hope that I could master “blow / squeeze / play” just as I eventually got the hang of “accelerator / brake / clutch”.

And yesterday, finally, unexpectedly and happily, I did!

What a great way to mark the Obama administration's decision to lift the 20 year ban on the importation of haggis.

Forget lifting the HIV ban and the whole gay soldier thing...as the Spectator notes, free-trade in haggis is change we can believe in!


*I met Gerard Henderson's wife Anne the other day. She was in Hobart researching her upcoming book on Australia's only Tasmanian-born Prime Minister, Joe Lyons, following the success of her book on his equally ground-breaking wife, Enid. I asked her if Tasmania will be a character in the book. She said "yes", but I was left doubting if it would the major player it deserves to be. I can't wait to find out.