The Abbott government has delayed the introduction of same sex marriage.
And in doing so it has, in the words of its critics, left Australia “stuck in the past”, even though in the past – ancient and recent - same sex marriage wasn’t altogether unusual.
Still, there’ll be no change to Coalition policy in the near future because the government’s frontbench parliamentarians have been denied a conscience vote on the issue, ensuring the almost certain defeat of a private members bill proposed by Queensland Liberal National Party backbencher Warren Entsch.
It would be a brave, perhaps even foolhardy frontbencher who’d defy a blunt warning from Prime Minister Abbott that if the bill comes to a debate, crossing the floor will be punished. It’s the “standard position of our party that if a frontbencher cannot support the party’s policy, that person has to leave the frontbench,” Mr Abbott said on Wednesday.
Backbenchers will get a conscience vote though what that might do to their prospects for promotion is anyone’s guess. Back to Tony Abbott:
“I would be disappointed if they went against the party position but nevertheless we have always accepted that in the end all votes in our party room for backbenchers at least are conscience votes.”
It goes without saying that for Australia’s LGBTI community, the hastily convened and dramatic Coalition party room discussion on Tuesday evening that resulted in an informal 60/30 vote against allowing a conscience vote was sad news.
It must surely also be frustrating to hear the Prime Minister assert that marriage has been a union between a man and a woman since “time immemorial”.
Same sex marriage existed in the Roman Empire. Indeed, the Roman Emperor Nero is believed to have married three different men and academics believe 13 of the first 14 Roman emperors were either bisexual or homosexual and in unions of some sort. Only when Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire did same sex marriage become taboo. Same sex unions were common too in Mesopotamia and ancient Egypt whilst in ancient Assyria, unions between men were given the same respect as those between men and women.
Nor has marriage been a settled institution (as the opponents of same sex marriage claim), impermeable to change.
Until the 11th century, marriage was less about an unbreakable bond between a man and a woman and more about convenient and strategic alliances for the benefit of the family or the wider community. As Stephanie Coontz points out in her book “Marriage, A History: How Love Conquered Marriage”, it was a transaction to establish peaceful relationships between different groups. Anthropologists say a majority of marriages were between cousins, to keep wealth in the family. Polygamy was common too, with multiple wives an aspirational target.
And while consent to marriage was once rare, it became commonplace by the 16th century when the church began to officiate at ceremonies and register unions. Until the church put an end to the practice, it was also once a commonly used right for a man to divorce a woman who was unable to give birth, though refusing sex remained grounds for the dissolution of vows for centuries to come. By the 19th century, in Great Britain at least, civil unions were permitted as an alternative to Christian marriage.
The institution has constantly morphed to suit the times, just as it did earlier this year in the United States when a landmark Supreme Court ruling guaranteed the right to same sex marriage nationwide.
The US was rather behind the times. Same sex marriage has been legal in The Netherlands since 2001. Belgium jumped on board in 2003. New Zealand legalised same sex marriage in 2013 and England and Wales did so a year later. All in all, some 28 nations now perform same sex marriages and these marriages are recognised in many more countries.
Australia isn’t stuck in the past as the critics say, because ancient and modern history is replete with acceptance of same sex marriage.
We are simply stuck in a political era where the majority view is hostage to those of a few and the threat of punishment for moving against the minority might outweigh common sense and decency.
Monica Attard is a Sydney based freelance journalist and former ABC foreign correspondent and senior broadcaster.
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