‘In this house we believe in fairness and kindness’: Post-liberation politics in Australia's same-sex marriage postal survey

Abstract

In December 2017, Australia legalized same-sex marriage (SSM), following a 13-year ban and a drawn-out postal survey on marriage equality that saw campaigners mobilize for a ‘Yes’ vote on a non-binding poll. Through a discourse analysis of the Yes and No campaigns’ television and online video advertisements, we demonstrate how the Yes campaign was symptomatic of what we call a ‘post-liberation’ approach that saw SSM as the last major hurdle for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Intersex and Queer (LGBTIQ) politics. While the No campaign linked SSM to gender fluidity, transgender identity, and sex education programmes, in contrast the Yes campaign limited itself to narratives around love and marriage. In not attending to the link between sex, gender and sexuality, the Yes campaign narrowed the possibilities of the debate, preserving existing White heteronormative expectations of gender and sexuality. We contrast the debate that unfolded during the postal survey to the Australian Gay Liberation movement of the 1970s, the latter of which was able to successfully and radically challenge similarly homophobic campaigns. Rather than relying on ‘palatable’ or mainstream ideas of equality, love and fairness, Gay Liberation in Australia embraced the radical potential of LGBTIQ activism and presented a utopian, optimistic vision of a transformed future. Here we suggest that we can learn from the history of campaigns around sexuality, to understand what was ‘won’ in the SSM debate, and to better develop strategies for change in the future.

Ephemeral promises of happiness: Coming out in the Australian accounting profession into the late 2010s

“…Fear and tension had not gone away simply because marriage equality was now legislated. Marriage equality of itself was seen as a moment of victory in 2017 for the so called “LGBTIQ+ community.” However, this legislative shift was of little direct interest to many, for whom “white heteronormative expectations of gender and sexuality” through marriage (Thomas et al., 2020, p. 475) were of no interest. Statements of support from each firm for marriage equality, therefore, did little to allay concerns about exclusions and depravations (Fuss, 1991) for the “triple otherness” (Rousseau, 2015) of staff subject to diverse genders, sexualities, and ethnicities.…”

“We’re tolerant and they’re prejudiced”: Same-sex marriage supporters’ and opponents’ perceptions of supportive and oppositional claims

“…Postal Surveys were distributed to Australians from 12 September, 2017 and were required to be received by the government no later than 7 November, 2017. As such, at the time the current study was conducted, considerable public debate about the Postal Survey had already occurred [e.g., 50 , 51 ]. Participation rate in the Postal Survey was 79.5% of eligible voters (all Australians over the age of 18 are required by law to register to vote; [ 7 ]).…”

Is there anything “toxic” about femininity? The rigid femininities that keep us locked in

“…This rigid attachment to femininity as heterosexual is found in both religious and secular contexts, and brought to the fore during public debates over sexuality, such as in marriage equality campaigns. Often in these campaigns the figure of the heterosexual mother figure is deployed as moral arbiter -whether that be to denounce "same sex" marriage or to permit it (Thomas, McCann & Fela, 2019). Here, even where "same sex" marriage is granted permissibility, where the heterosexual mother figure "endorses" it, it must be enrolled/assimilated into a fundamentally heterosexual nuclear model.…”