I was surprised that I got married. It wasn’t that I was really against it, I had a girlfriend I adored and had a lot of fun with. It was more the permanency and establishment vibe that said, “I am a joiner”.
I was a little anti-establishment in my twenties.
I had a choice to get married or stay blissfully de-facto. It is a disgrace that my gay and lesbian friends do not.
Two days ago the happily unmarried Julia Gillard outed herself as a social conservative saying she had a “pro-union, pro-Labor upbringing in a quite conservative family, in the sense of personal values”.
For Julia this expresses itself neatly into her view of same sex marriage as she said, “the Marriage Act and marriage being between a man and a woman has a special status”.
That this is a transparent pitch to the conservative voters of Sydney and Queensland is blindingly obvious. For me this is the last straw – Gillard is a bitter disappointment. I expected Rudd to be opposed to same sex marriage given he is a God botherer, but the left wing Gillard. No way.
What I don’t understand is all the fuss and bother concocted by right wing radio hosts driving policy making. My reading is that most Australians do not care about same sex marriage or at least they didn’t until they were whipped into a frothy outrage by the christian lobby. The Australian Christian Lobby even went as far to describe those calling for equality as “rights fundamentalists”.
Now that is kind of ironic and demonstrates that organised religion is not always a force for good in our society.
There is a rally in Melbourne this weekend, 26th March at 1pm outside the State Library. I intend to go with my children because I want them to grow up in a world where everyone is respected and equal.