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The slippery slope to homophobia

By Rodney Croome - posted Thursday, 7 June 2012


After heterosexual couples began to get hitched it was all down hill. First they got us ejected from Eden, then men started marrying lots of women at once.

Pretty soon we had forced marriages, child betrothals, wife beating and wife burning.

And don’t get me started on the kids: forced labour, abandonment, infanticide - all practiced by heterosexual married parents.

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Clearly, the only way to stop these barbarities is to ban straight people from marrying.

If you think that’s silly and not a little offensive then welcome to the world of those Australian same-sex couples that want to marry.

We are told that if we are able to legally wed marriage and society will fall apart.

There’ll be a stolen generation of fatherless and motherless children. Christians will lose all their freedoms and be “fed to the lawyers” (as evangelicals like to joke).

The latest fear is that the recognition of multiple-partner relationships like polygamy (one man married to several women) and polyamory (several people together) are “the next logical step”.

Of course, they aren’t.

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Nowhere have these relationships been recognised as a result of same-sex marriage.

In Australia there is no movement or public support for their legal recognition. Our family law is constructed for couple relationships and would find it impossible to handle multiple-partner relationships.

Our shared cultural understanding of marriage as an equal, stable, exclusive sexual relationship between two people can accommodate same-sex marriages but not multiple-partner relationships.

If there is a slippery slope to multiple-partner and incestuous relationships then, to be facetious again, it is the heterosexuals we have to blame.

Almost all polygamous and polyamorous relationships are, or begin as, heterosexual couplings.

The point is underlined by Australia’s highest profile example of a polygamous relationship – a Perth man who wants to keep his wife and marry her twin as well.

This unusual arrangement flows “logically” out of a heterosexual marriage not a gay one.

What we are seeing here is just the kind of fear campaign that has always accompanied the removal of discrimination against gay Australians. 

Opponents of decriminalising homosexuality, anti-discrimination laws and gay parenting loudly predicted society would collapse.

They were wrong then and they’re wrong now.

But still, opponents of same-sex marriage are going all out to beat up fears about the slippery slope. 

In recent weeks we’ve seen them evolve from simply declaring same-sex marriage will lead to polygamy and polyamory, to trying to wedge the Greens and same-sex marriage advocates on the issue.

If we agree that “equality” means equality for all relationships, we’re damned for allowing polygamy and polyamory.  If we disavow polygamy and polyamory, we’re damned for not sticking to our principle of “equality”.

As far as wedges go this one is pretty weak.

It shows a profound misunderstanding of what marriage is and contempt for the common sense of the majority of ordinary Australians who support same-sex marriage but not multiple-partner relationships.

It also shows willful ignorance of why many same-sex couples want the right to marry.

We want to participate more fully in family and community life. 

We want to share in the values and traditions of marriage. 

We want to be included in the universal language of love and commitment that marriage provides.

In short, we want to be part of the institution as it currently exists.

As a polyamory advocate recently wrote, there is “a utopian element” to such relationships. This will appeal to some idealists, but this is not what the movement for same-sex marriage is fundamentally about.

That movement is about the inclusion and integration of gay people into society as it is now.

I believe gay integration is what the opponents of same-sex marriage fear most.

That is why they are whipping up fears about polygamy and polyamory.

This kind of fear mongering not only confuses the same-sex marriage debate. 

It also speaks to old stereotypes of gay people (particularly gay men) as sexually radical, promiscuous, irresponsible and bizarre.

If you still believe all gay guys are inveterate sex fiends who want nothing more than lots of sex with lots of partners, and want that way of life affirmed, then all this talk of recognising multiple partners will confirm your prejudice.

Seen this way, blaming gay Australians for some hypothetical slippery slope to multiple-partner marriages is even worse than blaming heterosexuals for wife burning and infanticide.

It brings back the crushing stereotypes that have so devastated the lives of gay people in the past.

What we’re seeing here is the re-emergence of public homophobia in a new but no less damaging form.

That is why every Australian who cares about a respectful, unprejudiced public discourse must take a stand against this new fear campaign.

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Article edited by Jo Coghlan.
If you'd like to be a volunteer editor too, click here.



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About the Author

Rodney Croome is a spokesperson for Equality Tasmania and national advocacy group, just.equal. He who was made a Member of the Order of Australia in 2003 for his LGBTI advocacy.

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Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

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