Young Australian politician Andrew Barr, writes here for The Gay Marriage Blog, about how he asked his boyfriend to marry him, how his family and friends recently attended what they called a wedding – and why he’s still not allowed to call it a wedding.
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In the lead up to our ceremony I was struck by many conflicting emotions. Pride, joy and optimism are the overwhelming feelings – this is a marriage in my eyes, our marriage. But those feelings are tempered by a frustration that significant social change in my country is still some way off.
Our civil partnership at the National Library had great timing – we used our ceremony to celebrate 10 years of being together – and that same week in November 2009 the ACT Legislative Assembly passed new laws giving us the right to that ceremony. The formalities were taken care of the day before at ACT Births, Deaths and Marriages Unit.
I believe that good governments seek to lead on important social issues. Good governments set the social agenda for their communities; they govern as leaders, not followers. So I’m proud to be a member of a Government that believes all loving, committed relationships deserve to be treated equally and to be celebrated.
As a Minister in the Australian Capital Territory Government it is a matter of considerable pride that we have taken significant action to recognise and strengthen relationships – action to support loving, caring relationships, regardless of the sexuality of those involved.
After all, strong relationships deliver important benefits to us all. We all define ourselves, in some way, by those we choose to share our lives with. Love, trust, intimacy and commitment are to be found at the heart of all good relationships.
And while this ACT Government may have led on these issues – I’m also proud that my community embraces my relationship with Anthony. Not just my gay networks, but my city too.
Asking your boyfriend to marry you (and having him say yes!) is one of the most significant moments in your life. It is also something that, I must confess, I didn’t think would ever happen to me.
Anthony and I met a decade ago at the very first Canberra SpringOut Gay and Lesbian Festival just a few minutes before midnight on Saturday 13 November, 1999. It is funny how I still remember the exact time and date. He was visiting Canberra for the first time. I was going to a major gay and lesbian event for the first time. A bit of a late bloomer, I had only recently come out, aged 26.
Like so many couples, we battled against the odds to make it work. We spent the first year of our relationship in different cities. Many weekends were spent travelling highways along the east coast of Australia to be together.
After a year of this, I managed to lure him to Canberra and to live with me. Since then we’ve bought a home together and added a couple of spoilt cats to our modern family.
None of this is particularly unusual for young Australian couples. Except that for most couples in this situation they have clear paths and legal certainty on offer if they want their relationship to progress to further stages. When we started out there was nothing – our city and our country didn’t really want to know about us.
Fortunately, much has changed in Australia in the past decade, particularly in the national capital. We now have civil partnership legislation and some long awaited legal recognition of our relationship.
So with Friday 13 November 2009 being our tenth anniversary and, not being triskaidekaphobics [people with a phobia about the number 13], we decided that it would also formally mark the start of our civil partnership.
The day after we gathered with our family and friends for a celebration of ten years together and this exciting new stage in our relationship. I was not sure how the day would go. At first, I thought the absence of a formal ceremonial component would make it seem less significant than a heterosexual wedding but I have been overwhelmed by the response of family and friends. It certainly is a wedding to them.
I’m frustrated that in 2010 we are still having to compromise on full legal equality. This is a civil partnership, not a wedding, and the laws in the ACT have been framed to avoid “mimicking marriage,” because despite several attempts, the Commonwealth Government refuses to allow us to grant full equality. But while the political culture up the hill from our party is stuck in the mud on this issue, it couldn’t stop our big day.
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I’m left wondering why same-sex partners are not able to stand up in front of their family and friends, and receive the formal blessing of the state for their union.
Why does the federal branch of my party – the Australian Labor Party – think that some relationships are more legitimate than others and that some loving, committed, long-term relationships are, for some inexplicable reason, of lesser value? The party’s policy is after all aimed at ‘securing an inclusive future for all Australians.’
I’m also wondering about the apparent veto power some of Australian religious leaders appear to have over Government policy in this area. We live in a secular liberal democracy. Modern Australia has always been based on a Christian ethic and has always afforded space to religious groups to practice as they see fit. But I do not believe that organised religion has the monopoly over morality or ethics, and our political leaders need not act as though it does.
Governments permit divorce, abortion, sex before marriage and child-bearing out of wedlock. None of these things has affected the right or ability of Christians to live by their religion, and there is no reason why gay marriage will either. We have to ask why it is gay issues that are so often the exception to this sensible division of church and state.
It is insulting and offensive to be told that by extending equality, respect and recognition to same sex relationships that Government would somehow be undermining marriage.
What does it say about community perceptions of the institution of marriage if it could be weakened or degraded by acknowledging the strength and validity of same-sex relationships?
Gay men and lesbians are part of our community. We are not nameless, faceless people who live on the margins of society. We deserve the respect and dignity afforded to others; we deserve equality. We deserve this equality not only because it is functional and practical but because it is also highly symbolic. It allows us to hold our heads up high as equal members of the community and to celebrate our relationships, confident in their standing. It is about dignity.
What is really at play here is a battle between the progressives and the conservatives for control of the social agenda in this country. The late historian Professor Manning Clark spoke of this struggle in Australian life in terms of the enlargers taking on the straighteners. He said:
This generation has a chance to be wiser than previous generations. They can make their own history. With the end of the domination by the straighteners, the enlargers of life now have their chance. They have the chance to lavish on each other the love that previous generations had given to God, and to bestow on the here and now the hopes and dreams they had once entertained for some future human harmony.
There is no good argument for allowing only opposite-sex couples to formalise and celebrate their relationships and to deny that right to same-sex couples. Those who oppose the gay marriage have frequently talked about its alleged dire effect on families. This ignores the fact that gay men and women have families too. We are sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, cousins, aunts and uncles and we are parents.
The ACT government has seized the opportunity to support family and to say plainly that no-one deserves to be excluded simply because of his or her sexual orientation. We have drawn a line in the sand.
Let’s hope that the civil partnership scheme in place in the ACT doesn’t represent the final word on recognition of same-sex relationships in Australia.
As for the final word on Andrew and Anthony, well … we loved our big day and the honeymoon in Tasmania that followed. We, along with our community, are going from strength to strength.
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You can read Andrew’s latest speech striving for equality here, and more on Andrew’s political positions on equality here:
Tags: Andrew Barr, Andrew Barr gay marriage, Australia gay marriage, Australian Labor Party, Rainbow Labor
Thank you Andrew (and Manning Clark). Your efforts are appreciated.
Thank you Andrew for sharing your wedding day, I am thankful that a politician like yourself is so honest about his life, what he stands for and is passionate about. It has made my day reading this and holds so much hope for change in this country for the GLBT community.
It feels like this year is bringing the issue of marriage and equal rights to levels that command debate and winds of change. There’s an electricity in the GLBT and straight communities which basically is the same community, we walk the same streets.
I can’t wait to marry my boyfriend of 4 and a half years and hopefully it will be in a climate that legally accepts such a marriage…a marriage built with love and respect, just like your marriage to Anthony.
I believe in gay marriage and think it should be legal, shouldn’t all people, -gay or not- be able to have their special day ?
Your words have helped me with my speech on this subject, and i hope your very happy.
Mollie Hicks.
Hear Hear!
Maybe the real lesson to learn here is why is the institution of marriage so important to the gay community? It could be argued that the tradition of wedlock has not exactly been a raging success in the heterosexual community. High divorce rates, infidelities and a lot of emotional hang-ups and confusion. Therapists abound and even more so, divorce lawyers.
Perhaps, in a strange, back-to-front subtle away the wider community is protecting gays and lesbians from making what may possibly be a big mistake in getting married.
Finally, if two people love each other and want to commit their lives to one another shouldn’t that be enough. All this scrambling for ‘approval’ in the eyes of society is not only bewildering but a little strange somehow. It is almost as though gays and lesbians want to be ‘validated’ in their relationships by being recognized by law. Talk about pandering to the mainstream!
I strongly suspect that there is a perhaps more insidious reason underlying this demand for ‘equality’ and laws to be changed etc. Marriage and the sharing of material possessions as sanctioned under the law may be a larger reason for why the push for gay marriage is on with a vengeance!
Call me a cynic if you must but the gay and lesbian community seem to be hung up with the whole picture of material gain and opportunism. Seems like a simple truth to me.
A society who has apparently vilified and discriminated against the gay community for centuries is now being asked to give its ‘approval’ to the formalizing of personal relationships. If it were me, I’d be running as fast as I could away from the ‘moral majority’ and refuse to have a part of their lot.
Why dance with the devil etc. ? Be proud of who you are and your own personal standings. As Fleetwood Mac once sang … ‘You can go your own way …. you can call it under another name…’
Respect.
Thanks Andrew – you made me laugh, and cry, and reminded me of how I felt more than years ago when my partner and I ‘got committed’.
Mister Jackson, I can see where you are coming from, but there is a difference between wanting equality and kow-twoing to the dominant mainstream. One can have the first without being a slave to the latter. One of the main issues in this debate is that gays, lesbains, intersex, etc people are already ‘going our own way’ and that struggle has been a hard one in the past. We want to know a simple answer to a simple question – why is a same-sex couples union being recognised as official in law with the word ‘marriage’ attached, so threatening to politicians and society?
Respect and understanding.
i just thought that married life is the happiest point of my life..-,
married life is a bit exciting but you will have lots of responsibilities..~-
there are many social issues today that bothers us, hope we can solve everyone of them’,;