Eight years after the Howard Liberal government introduced the delightfully discriminating Marriage Amendment Act (2004), we’re still rallying for marriage equality.
Magda Szubanski was guest of honour at the Equal Love Rally on May 12, 2012:
Magda Szubanski calling for marriage equality
Carl Katter was there too:
Carl Katter
Adam Bandt, Federal MP for Melbourne and Deputy Leader of the Australian Greens returned to speak out for equality:
Adam Bandt – Deputy Leader of the Australian Greens
Dear Julia, my partner Gregory and I have been in a relationship since November 2008. Gregory is a father of two. We want the right to get married. Why does the government not allow us to get married?
Julia, why can’t Gregory and I get married?
Even gay zombies want to get married:
Even gay zombies want to get married
Enjoy the excitement of the day – photos on Picasa and Facebook. View all my Equal Love Rally posts here. Please contact me if you want to use any of my photos from this event.
STANDING COMMITTEE ON LEGAL AND CONSTITUTIONAL AFFAIRS
11 April 2012
E-mail: mikeybear69 @ gmail.com
Marriage Equality Amendment Bill 2010
I am writing to acknowledge receipt of your submission to the above inquiry, and to advise that the committee has released it as a public document and numbered it as Submission No. a939. Any personal details, such as addresses and phone numbers, have been removed from your submission. Names have also been withheld where this has been requested. You are now free to circulate your submission to other parties should you wish to do so.
Documents provided to Senate committees become committee documents upon receipt, and it is the prerogative of the relevant committee to determine whether and how it will accept and publish such documents. In this inquiry, the committee will not be publishing on its website every submission received from individuals. That is because the committee is anticipating thousands of submissions and form/standard letters from individuals, and it is not physically possible for all of them to be published on the website due to staffing and resource limitations. As time and resources permit, the committee will publish a selection of individual submissions, representing a broad range of views that are indicative of the types of submissions that have been received by the committee. An equal number of individual submissions supporting and opposing the bill will be published.
All submissions received will be provided to members of the committee during the course of the inquiry for their consideration. At the conclusion of the committee’s inquiry, public submissions will be tabled in the Senate chamber as public documents.
Your submission is protected by parliamentary privilege. Parliamentary privilege refers to the special rights and immunities attached to the Parliament which are necessary for the discharge of parliamentary functions. This means that you cannot be prosecuted or disadvantaged because of anything you have provided in evidence, or because you gave such evidence.
In what can only be described as a cliff-hanging turn of events, Rabbi Moshe Gutnick, president of the Organisation of Rabbis of Australasia, has come out and admitted in a submission to the Australian Senate inquiry into Marriage Equality that there has been a fundamental misunderstanding of the Torah that has to this day posed as a religious barrier to gay marriage.
In the Senate submission Rabbi Gutnick stated that the traditional interpretation of the Torah has rendered sex between two men problematic, because the translation of the Torah into English was thought to be that a man should not sleep with another man as he would sleep with a woman, with the penalty for doing so that they both be stoned to death.
He felt that this attitude to homosexuality was deeply troubling and discriminatory and so sought advice from a pool of sage rabbis from around the world. These rabbis looked at the original wording in the Torah and felt that maybe there had been a misunderstanding of God’s word and that there was room for a better interpretation, one that offered a more acceptable outcome.
After weeks of collaboration, these rabbis unanimously agreed to reinterpret the Torah and provided an English translation that now states that a man should not sleep with a man as he would with a woman, but rather he should sleep with a man differently to how he would sleep with a woman. However should he be found to be sleeping with a man as he would with a woman, they should both become stoned to a state of holy happiness, except if there’s a dearth of marijuana.
And this is where Rabbi Gutnick has called upon the government to decriminalise the use of marijuana, for strictly religious purposes, to ensure that two men found having the wrong type of sex with each other are dealt with in a more humane and appropriate fashion. The pool of rabbis agreed that each man should be given a bong and a quantity of marijuana and be instructed to smoke the other man’s pipe until each had reached a state of spiritual redemption.
Rabbi Gutnick clearly expressed in the Senate submission that this relaxation of the use of marijuana would only be required for Jewish men and not for gentiles, as gentiles are spiritually unclean, due to not having had a religious circumcision ceremony.
Most unexpectedly, Rabbi Gutnick apologised to the gay community for his earlier claim that he would be opposing gay marriage and noted that since this religious loophole had been found to the previously problematic issue of homosexuality, he now had no issue with gay marriage, and in fact fully endorsed it, claiming that gay men are now encouraged to “shtoop like rabbits, especially on Shabbat”.
The explanation given in the Senate submission was that he realised that if same-sex marriage was legalised in Australia, he wanted the Jewish community to have unfettered access to the estimated $161 million dollars of wedding spend likely to be outlaid on same-sex marriages.
He said that it would revitalise the kosher catering and hospitality industry, that kosher food suppliers would feel the surge of business and that all manner of Jewish shops and enterprises would thrive from the rush of gay weddings, especially the Jewish diamond and ring merchants. Rabbi Gutnick went on to say that the kosher butchers would do particularly well because he knew how much gay men liked their meat, and added that the kosher fish-mongers would do particularly well from lesbian weddings. Rabbi Gutnick went to great pains to explain in the Senate submission that his connection to Kosher Australia should not be perceived as a conflict of interest.
Rabbi Gutnick’s new enthusiasm for gay marriage was evidenced by his statement that Orthodox Judaism was particularly sensitive to the needs of single-sex celebrations, because in traditional heterosexual weddings the men and the women were required to be separated by a mechitzah, and so there was an existing culture of men celebrating with men and women celebrating with women. He added that it’s actually a principle feature of the religion that men must spent considerable amounts of time with other men, in close confines, in the absence of women. He said he felt that it was very homoerotic at times, and the headiness of the masculinity in the crowded prayer and study sessions was particularly appealing, especially on those hot days, when the men were dripping with a particularly musky sweat, and were just a little frustrated. He noted that this frustration was most evident when the men were denied sexual gratification with their wives during their periods of uncleanliness, and further exacerbated by the total religious prohibition on masturbatory relief.
In the summary of the submission, Rabbi Gutnick repeated his apology for the long overdue admission that to deny gay men and women the right to equality was in fact an oppresive and persecutory behaviour and that he had looked back at the history of the Jewish people and felt that he was in no place to call for the superiority of heterosexual Australians over homosexual Australians.
An addendum to the submission included a suggestion that Rabbi Gutnick officiate at the first mass Jewish gay and lesbian wedding in Australia, co-hosted by Adam Hills of the In Gordon St Tonight fame, because he said the ABC studios in Elsternwick were at the centre of the ultra-religious quarter of Melbourne’s Jewish community, and that he was particularly proud of the ground-breaking work that Adam Hills had done to break down barriers in the community around gay marriage.
Tonight my partner Gregory and I got married. We made a public declaration, affirming our love for each other. We were dressed in our sartorial best, freshly shorn and groomed like two gay blades.
We had a bucks night the week before and we even had a lovely party afterward, with wonderful catering. Oh, and there were bomboniere.
I have to be honest with you. It wasn’t a real wedding, and we didn’t really get married. But yes, there was a wedding, on TV, in which as reality actors, we pretended to get married. You see, currently in Australia two men like Gregory and me are not allowed to get married to each other. That’s gay.
But despite the mean-spirited Howardian legalistic prohibition on us blokes tying the knot, the lovely team at Adam Hills In Gordon St Tonight decided to throw us a big ole gay wedding. And throw us a wedding they did. There were photoshoots, interviews, a special bucks and hens night (coz there were some chicks as well as some blokes wanting to tie the knot), the main event, wedding presents and even a cocktail reception afterward. Oh, and there was live entertainment too, although it seemed more like it had been freshly exhumed. And all at tax-payer expense. Thank you tax paying Australia, and especially Jim Wallace and Bill Muehlenberg, coz I know how much you hip dudes would have wanted to help us celebrate our homosexual union.
If you know me you’d know that I’ve been very activisty in raising awareness of the discrimination that a not insignificant section of Australia’s population faces when it comes to equality in relationship recognition. I’ve protested (peacefully) at the Equal Love rallies. I helped my partner campaign as a then-candidate for the Secular Party of Australia in the 2010 Federal Election (because the party supported marriage equality). I manage the Proud to be a Second Class Australian Facebook group, with a moniker aimed to draw attention to being treated as second class by the Federal Government. I give money to Get Up! to campaign for marriage equality. I’m even a paid member of Australian Marriage Equality.
I don’t think I could possibly make it any clearer that I am trying to achieve a turnaround in the marriage legislation in Australia, to remove the discriminatory words that, for no good reason, prevents me from marrying my partner. That said, we are already living in a legally recognised relationship under Victorian state legislation because we entered a civil union on April 21, 2010. Sadly though this relationship is only valid in Victoria and carries no legal weight anywhere else in the world. It’s also not the same as being married. You might ask why? Well, quite simply, because it’s not a marriage. It’s a civil union, or a registered relationship, or a domestic partnership, or whatever else you want to call it, but it’s not a marriage.
Do I want to get married? Good question. Yes, and no. To be honest I don’t really know. Parts of me want to get married and then go and say to those who don’t believe in equality “See, two poofs can now get married, so stick your bigotry…”. More than that I want to be a positive example of a successful same-sex relationship, to help empower those in their closets, and say “Gregory and I are two men, married to each other. If we can do it, so can you. Be proud of who you are”. Other parts of me simply don’t like the old-fashioned, out-dated notion of marriage that binds two people together, until either one dies or they get a divorce. Camels and goats must be fatted and dripping in gold chokers if you must give a dowry.
I am committed to being in my relationship with Gregory, and irrespective of any piece of paper or legal status, we love each other very much and want to be deeply interconnected in each other’s lives. I know what we mean to each other. We’re special in each other’s eyes and hearts and that’s something legislation can’t change. But it can make us equal in society, and that’s what we both want. Equality. Incidentally, some narrow-minded folk believe that two gay men can’t be equal in society, and therefore shouldn’t get married, because we can’t have children, or that even that we’d be depriving the children of a mother, and therefore bad parents, blah blah blah. With two well-adjusted adult children under his belt Gregory certainly isn’t looking to have any more. And we are equal in society.
Now, around the middle of February this year Gregory sent me an email asking if I wanted to be in the Adam Hills IGST mass gay wedding. I pondered the idea and then without consulting Gregory I sent in an application to be part of the wedding. I thought that if he was tempting fate with asking me to be part of a TV wedding, I’d accept the challenge and commit him, and me, to being part of it.
We were accepted by the IGST team and told there were going to be a number of events over the coming weeks culminating in the TV wedding. It was becoming exciting. A bit like a real wedding. Photos, what to wear, bring some food, look good, get hair cut (#2 clippers on each other…), vajazzle, you know, the usual stuff. There was a sense of anticipation. A bit like a real wedding.
We told our family and friends about this. They got excited. Very excited. Colleagues were talking, even those who were usually a little uneasy with the “gay” thing were getting excited for Gregory and me. I was even asked by a colleague, who only last year told me he didn’t believe in gay marriage, whether I was going to invite the guys from work to a bucks night. After a coffee and a chat he even seemed comfortable with the notion that marriage equality might have some merit in treating people on an equal basis. Yes, equality is about being equal.
Gregory told me many of his colleagues were having kittens because he was getting married. They really couldn’t contain their excitement for him. And on Facebook I was getting a variety of well-wishes from people who wanted to know when “it” was and then wished us all sorts of lovely things in anticipation of the big day (or is it the big gay…?). Things were abuzz.
I really started feeling like I was getting married, for real. When we got civil unionated in 2010 people were happy for us, but not to the same level as they had become around the IGST wedding event. It was as if the notion of marriage conveyed a special status, over and above any other sort of life event or relationship recognition. Funny that. Because it does. It’s the ultimate in happy. And it’s the ultimate in silly too. Just look at the amount of money people throw at weddings. It’s big business.
Quite remarkably though, and I think this is about as significant as it gets, Gregory told me that tonight, on his way home, a dear friend of his told him that he had decided that it wasn’t so bad after all if two blokes wanted to get married. He threw his religious belief coins up in the air and they both landed queen-side up. And the world didn’t stop, and the sky didn’t fall in.
People have been talking because of the IGST wedding event. They are talking about how lovely it is to see two guys getting married, and two gals getting married, and they cried and they were happy. These people and conversations are actually changing attitudes and opening minds. Oh, and my Facebook account has melted with all the wonderful messages from people who saw us on the TV and loved that we were getting married. I have never ever had a bigger response to anything on my Facebook page than to our participation in this event. It’s really quite overwhelming, and humbling.
So we got TV married tonight, in a very happily-ever-after way. Two handsome princes rode off into the sunset and shared a bit of love around the place, and hopefully they made a difference.
PS. If you missed the TV coverage of this event, you can catch up on it here.
PPS. If you want to tell the Australian government why you support marriage equality, you can make a submission here. It only takes a few minutes. Be quick as the deadline is April 2, 2012. You can read other people’s public submissions on the site, to get an idea of what they are saying. Speak from the heart. It need only be a few paragraphs. Thanks.
Photographer, blogger, popular Melbourne gay identity and significant Qmelb contributor, Michael Barnett, is to be featured in a mass gay wedding with his handsome partner. The wedding (and what has been advertised as a stag night / hens night) will be hosted on Australia’s national television network’s by comedian Adam Hills over the next two Wednesday evenings. This will clash with Melbourne’s Queer Film Festival. The wedding will be paid for by Australian taxpayers, a service the ABC has never offered to straight couples. At this stage it is not known whether the ABC or Barnett will be releasing a video of the post wedding celebrations.
Michael Glover
East Melbourne
(The Gordon St Mass Same-Sex TV Wedding Extravaganza is just around the corner! This inaugural event will happen on March 26 and airs Wednesday March 28 at 8:30pm.)
I reckon Peter Madden and Warwick Marsh would make great homosexual lovers. Two wonderful role models of Australian masculinity. But which one would be the man and which one would be the woman in that relationship? Coz we all know that every relationship has male and female roles.
I also wonder which one would go top and which one bottom. Perhaps they’d take turns, one going for it first, then flipping and going the other way. I bet they’d both get down and dirty, squealing like stuck pigs, and there might even be some santorum being shared, coz I’m sure they’d be lapping up the post-coital love juices.
Well, that’s just my fantasy, a bit like their fantasy, that all homosexual relationships are disgusting and dangerous and that it’s ok to vilify homosexuals.
Oh, and if they don’t like that gays want to marry a same-sex partner, I’m of the opinion that their choice of life partner is pretty sucky too and that they could have done a lot better.
In keeping with the tradition of having a representative of the GLBT community to attend the commemoration, Colin Krycer of Aleph Melbourne accepted the invitation to light a candle in memory of the tens of thousands of homosexual men who were murdered at the hands of the Nazis.
Colin Krycer lights a candle in memory of the homosexual victims of the Holocaust
Federal member for Kooyong, Josh Frydenberg MP, delivered the keynote address on the evening.
Josh Frydenberg MP delivers the keynote address
I feel compelled to express my reservations with the selection of Josh Frydenberg as keynote speaker at this event. My reservations stem from the fact that Josh Frydenberg wishes to deny equal rights for homosexual Australians and calls for a second-class status for the registration of same-sex relationships.
My view is that marriage is a unique relationship between a man and a woman. It is much more than a simple debate about preferred terminology.
Relationships between same sex couples are equally special but nevertheless by definition different.
These relationships are to be respected and valued for the love that they bring and the families that they build. However, the term marriage should not apply.
Civil unions, however, should be an alternative.
I know many people in our community, particularly those younger than me will not agree with my view on same sex marriage.
I hope they respect my view as I do theirs.
In the Holocaust homosexual men were denied equality and treated as lesser citizens, with reduced rights and status. There is no place for any discrimination against homosexual men and women in Australian society.
Aside from the possibility of a same-sex couple producing a biological child belonging to both parents, same-sex relationships are equal in every way to opposite-sex relationships, including those opposite-sex relationships where a biological child is not a viable or a desired option.
I ask Josh Frydenberg to understand this reality and to join the increasing ranks of Australians who understand that marriage equality, a definition of marriage that does not discriminate on the basis of gender, is in the best interests of all Australians.
Consider this conversation* between Sally Begbie, SBS Ombudsman and Peter Wertheim, ECAJ Executive Director regarding the ECAJ complaint about the screening of “The Promise”, a situation that has even made the mainstream media.
SALLY BEGBIE: Hi Peter. It’s Sally Begbie from SBS calling. It’s about the letter we’ve received from you regarding The Promise.
PETER WERTHEIM: Hi Sally. Thanks for calling. How may I help you?
SALLY: I’ve read the complaint, all 31 pages. It took me a while to get through the document. Very thorough and comprehensively researched I’ll have to admit.
PETER: Indeed.
SALLY: It’s about stereotyping, and discrimination of Jewish people. Those are the main concerns?
PETER: Yes, that’s correct. Stereotyping, discrimination, negative attitudes of Jews.
SALLY: I see. Yes. That’s a concern we take seriously at SBS.
PETER: That’s good to hear.
SALLY: And no doubt, it’s something your organisation takes just as seriously, stereotyping and discrimination.
PETER: Absolutely. We pride ourselves on our efforts to prevent and reverse such attitudes. If you take a moment to review our web site you’ll see we give those issues priority amongst the many issues we care about.
SALLY: That’s excellent to hear. In reviewing the complaint that we’ve received I have been doing some research into issues and attitudes amongst the community you represent, to gain a more complete understanding of the situation. I’ve had some interesting findings.
PETER: Oh, yes?
SALLY: Well, it seems that there appears to be an area of concern into discrimination that the ECAJ has remained silent on, that some in your community are demanding a more vocal response.
PETER: Please explain.
SALLY: In particular, it seems that the ECAJ values equality and egalitarianism, yet has no comment to make on the issue of marriage equality. That would seem to me to be a strange position to take, considering your organisation does not stand for discrimination in any way whatsoever.
PETER: That’s a difficult area Sally.
SALLY: Discrimination? It really doesn’t seem that difficult to me.
PETER: No, not discrimination. Marriage. It’s a complex issue for some in the Jewish community.
SALLY: But your organisation does not stand for discrimination.
PETER: Correct.
SALLY: And yet you’re prepared to remain tolerant of some discrimination?
PETER: No, we don’t stand for discrimination of any type.
SALLY: So you’re supportive of efforts to remove discrimination facing Jews in same-sex relationships?
PETER: It’s not so simple Sally.
SALLY: It is to me. Discrimination is discrimination.
PETER: Of course, but not all discrimination is the same.
SALLY: However you look at it, it’s still discrimination. There’s another issue that has come to my attention. If I may.
PETER: Certainly.
SALLY: I’ve read that some in your community are concerned about attitudes that are upheld amongst certain religious leaders and members of the community whereby homosexuality is considered a condition that can be overcome with reparative therapy. The concerned parties seem to be calling on your organisation to speak out against these attitudes, claiming they’re proven to be harmful to members of the community who are being asked to overcome their orientation. They’ve provided you with evidence from leading professional bodies claiming these are harmful and ineffective therapies.
PETER: I’ve heard these concerns.
SALLY: Do you take them seriously? The claims that they are harmful to members of the Jewish community who are being forced to undertake them?
PETER: Absolutely. The ECAJ does not for one minute want a single member of the Jewish community to undergo an iota of suffering or come to any harm. We would extend that concern to the wider community as well.
SALLY: And you would then want to ensure that your community had a clear and unambiguous understanding that it is inappropriate to refer people to practitioners of these untoward therapies?
PETER: It would be our desire to ensure no member of our community came to any harm.
SALLY: So what I am hearing is that your organisation takes the issues of discrimination and harm seriously and wants to ensure the ongoing and increasing welfare of the members of your community, the Jewish people of Australia.
PETER: Effectively. Yes.
SALLY: Then it would seem to me, Peter, that it would be to your organisation’s advantage to show the rest of us that it does take these issues seriously and take a stand on them. You are asking SBS to take a stand against discrimination and stereotyping affecting the Jewish people, but what I see is that there are members of your community who are lacking the necessary protection from your organisation and who are at the mercy of harmful attitudes that have not been reined in.
PETER: Of course, we want a positive outcome for all parties.
SALLY: That’s good to hear. So do we. I appreciate your time today. We’ll be in touch.
—
* This is one of many possible conversations that could potentially occur. I am not aware of it actually having occurred, yet.
Australian Marriage Equality have today issued a revised list of Australian politicians who are publicly supporting the call for Marriage Equality. Of particular interest (and pleasure) to me is the presence of the name of the ALP’s Federal member for Melbourne Ports, Michael Danby.
Michael Danby MP - Melbourne Ports - supporting Marriage Equality
Prior to the 2010 Federal Election Michael Danby refused to speak specifically in favour of Marriage Equality. However he did allude to increased support for Marriage Equality from his party should it be successful in winning the election, as outlined in this media release from the then Secular Party candidate for Melbourne Ports Gregory Storer.
The next step Michael Danby needs to take is to make a public statement of his support for Marriage Equality, something that is noticeably missing from his web site.
On December 21, 2011 a message was posted by Paul Winter of Chatswood, NSW on the J-Wire news site in response to an article I wrote about marriage equality:
Vilifying comment posted by Paul Winter on J-Wire prior to it's removal.
The entirety of this comment is offensive in the extreme. The author states that GLBT people are “abnormal”, “disabled”, “developmentally immature”, “confused”, “not fully developed”, “in need of counselling” and implies that we are not capable of having “fully functioning and fulfilling” relationships.
Winter’s anti-intellectual ramblings are reminiscent of that employed by the infamous dictators who relegated undesirables to sub-human status.
Further to a complaint by me regarding the deeply offensive and vilifying nature of the comment, the J-Wire editor Henry Benjamin swiftly removed the comment. Fortunately the damage done by publication of the comment had been mitigated.
I hope never to see this sort of language published ever again on any web site, especially a Jewish one.
"Sunlight is the best antiseptic" -- American Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis
"Since it is obviously inconceivable that all religions can be right, the most reasonable conclusion is that they are all wrong." -- Christopher Hitchens
Posted by Mikey Bear 
