"Respectful and reasoned debate," is what was promised. But from the outset of the costly and entirely avoidable marriage equality plebiscite, it was obvious that respect and reason would be scant. Abject hate was to be expected. Indeed the attitudes of homophobes is something many of us in the LGBTQI+ community have to live with every day. But apathy and ignorance are far harder foes to counter. When a case made with deeply personal passion is flippantly dismissed as a shrill and stubborn rant, there's very little room left for any debate at all, reasoned and respectful or otherwise.
It seemed Dr Katherine Harper's rationale for voting "no" in the upcoming marriage equality survey, as outlined in an article published yesterday in The Age, could have been edited to a single sentence. "In my experience, the debate in the lead up to this postal plebiscite has been characterised by this sort of prejudice by the 'yes' voters and their intolerance of genuine discussion," the good doctor claimed, apparently oblivious to the irony of bemoaning intolerance and prejudice while promising to impose both on her fellow citizens when her postal ballot eventually arrives.
Harper's think piece goes on to ask why marriage should be viewed as a "right" when it is not defined as such in the constitution. There are other superfluous ponderings too - some nebulous anxiety about the dystopian ethics that may rule over a future Australia given the recent census's indication that Christian morality is in short supply. But underpinning every sentiment expressed in this article - written by a heterosexual, affluent, university educated, 30-year-old, white cis-woman - is the blinkered incomprehension of someone who has lived a life of total privilege — someone denied no rights under law, who has never had to reconcile the crushing reality that they are deemed lesser by the Government.
Dr Harper, I too have been extremely fortunate in my life. As a white cis-male from a comfortable, distinctly average middle-class home, I grew up in the Goldilocks zone of western society. And while, as a gay man, I am part of a minority, a childhood nurtured by unconditionally loving parents, and adult years spent in the insulating attitudes of cosmopolitan cities, has largely shielded me from overt discrimination. But I haven't escaped entirely unscathed.
I was 18 years old, just starting my music degree in London, crossing Southwark Bridge in the heart of the city. As I ambled across the Thames, chatting with a friend, I was naive to the kind of mentality I was about to encounter. As we passed a random man, a stranger to us both, he hissed just one word: "faggots." I stopped in my tracks; my friend kept walking, although his frame was visibly shrunken by some unseen, quiet implosion of fear and shame. The man never broke his stride and never looked back. His attack was delivered by stealth, but the damage he casually inflicted was far from insignificant. In the wake of such unprovoked hostility, self-surety shatters, leaving a void instantly filled with questions. How did he know? What was I doing? How should I alter, or moderate, or contort my behaviour or myself to better fit in, to keep myself hidden? Bigots rarely question themselves; their victims can do little else.
It's been 15 years since that experience, and in comparison to the physical and psychological harm that has come to so, so many of my peers, this verbal pot-shot seems insignificant. And yet, the sting of that moment is captured in amber, an unaltered artefact in my memories, ever-potent, never too far away. And always, with more questions. It's a thought that has been particularly preoccupying in recent months, but whereas in the past it might have prompted some private introspection, it has now taken on an increasingly ominous resonance. I cannot say for sure, but that man, who felt empowered enough to spit a slur under his breath at two passing strangers but self-conscious enough to skulk away from any direct altercation, seemed aware that openly brandishing such hateful views in public could be an unwise gamble. How many people on that bridge would share his opinion? How many might turn on him in our defence?
If that man wanted to play those same odds today, he'd need only turn his gaze to Trump's American carnage. In Charlottesville, the world was offered a nauseating glimpse at what happens when political legitimacy emboldens bigotry. Swastikas - the ultimate symbol of humanity's capacity for evil - were proudly worn by those who insist that their calls for discrimination have a right to be heard. Klansmen took off their hoods for the world to see that they are no longer held back by any pesky repercussions.
And so, the questions keep coming. How long before "poof" or "dyke" are as normalised as the white supremacist flags that have become a common appearance on news bulletins and front pages? What if, 15 years ago, the man who called me a "faggot" had been made bold like James A Fields Jr, the driver who ran down and killed civil rights activist Heather Heyer, and injured 19 others, when they refused to listen patiently while hate slogans were being hurled at them?
Ultimately, the issue of marriage equality is about more than whether same sex couples should be allowed to have their relationships cemented by the bonds of a legal marriage. It's about acknowledging that all Australians deserve to be legally recognised as equal, deserving of exactly the same rights and protections regardless of gender, race, religion or sexual orientation. A "no" vote should not be seen as some churlish tit-for-tat payback because you feel slighted by people unwilling to listen patiently while they are being told how they don't deserve the same rights as you.
But if reason and respect are too much to ask of the heterosexual majority deciding our legal status, then offer us your empathy, because humanity's awareness of self and of those around us is born of our setbacks and failures, our difficulties and the injustices we face. In a society where there is equality, our peers help us overcome those things that might otherwise hold us back, and in return we reflect that spirit for the common good. In a society where there is discrimination, success becomes inextricably anchored to the failures of others. And thus, the complexity of truth, and the nuanced and shaded reality of people, becomes bludgeoned by the oversimplified stupidity of narrow mindedness.
As the vile, empathy-void anti-gay propaganda that has appeared on Australian streets has shown, inequality is the essence of absence: an absence of honesty; an absence of compassion; an absence of unity; an absence of understanding. This is a concept that the privileged - those who have never experienced absence - are oblivious to. So if you need a better reason to vote "yes", let it be that absolute equality protects us from the creeping erosion of that most sacred yet abstract of concepts: liberty. Events in America - the so called Land of the Free - are signalling a change in mechanics of civilisation. The democratic principles that are the cornerstone of our society are being warped and misrepresented to give acts of discrimination an absolving sheen of political process. Freedom of speech should never equate to freedom of persecution. If our society is complicit in actively regressing the progress of civil liberties in Australia, where will it lead? And this question should surely give everyone, straight or gay, pause for thought.
