If you are straight and think Gay Marriage is going to affect you, you’re right…

you will get to live in a world that treats adults in loving relationships with equality, dignity, respect, a world that would never insist that children with gay parents cannot equally see that their own loving parents can marry, a world that will no longer promote one rule for one type of adult being yet deny the same for another, a world which will no longer make homosexuality something silent, silenceable, in the closet, and its teenagers one of the most at risk of suicide and homelessness. If you are straight and support gay marriage, then you support equality, humanitarian values, dignity. If you are a bigot, a zealot, a fear monger projecting and promoting your xenophobia then take your cardboard heart and the dogma you convince yourself is concern, and take yourself a time machine back to the 1950s where you belong… a time in face when marriage WAS NEVER STATED AS BEING BETWEEN A MAN AND A WOMAN FOR THE PURPOSE OF PROCREATING…. THAT was only brought in to deliberately discriminate against gay couples… not the word of god, just a the work of a bigoted bureaucracy.

In Australia, the addition of the MAN and WOMAN clause was inserted into the act in 2004 by hard line right winger JOHN HOWARD (Mr Anti-Multiculturalism, Mr Anti-Asian) so had nothing whatsoever to do with the word of God… just with the word of a bigot. Before the Marriage Amendment Act 2004 there was no definition of marriage in the 1961 Act, and the definition was based in the common law. The 2004 Amendment incorporated the common law definition of marriage into the Act as:

Marriage means the union of a man and a woman to the exclusion of all others, voluntarily entered into for life.
Certain unions are not marriages. A union solemnised in a foreign country between: (a) a man and another man; or (b) a woman and another woman; must not be recognised as a marriage in Australia.[3]

So if you think that the inclusion of the ‘man’ and ‘woman’ clause is part of ‘traditional marriage’ and part of your revered grand heritage, it is in fact not traditional at all and is only the heritage of deliberate bigotry and discrimination… does that give you belonging?… make you feel like a ‘proud Australian’?

If you are straight and concerned about people having anal sex, then given that 44% of straight men report having anal sex and 36% of straight women, perhaps its time you came out of the closet. If you’re afraid of people who have oral sex then the 27% of men and 19% of women having oral sex had better get deep into the closet before we find out. As for marriage being for the purposes of procreation, the 20% of women choosing to go child free (and probably having sex) and the majority of humans exercising contraception or masturbating (ie not procreating), and the Asexuals who may marry an Asexual partner they know they will never have sex with, and those past menopause who marry knowing they will never have children with their partner, also need to stand up and be counted.

Perhaps its just people over 70 listening to bigots on talk back radio who imagine the world is still full of straight baby makers doing it in missionary position. My mother was one of those straight baby makers. She stayed with my father presenting as the straight married could. SHE was also an abuser and a pedophile and if there had been a stable gay couple happy to foster or adopt this brain injured, traumatised, abused autistic kid it would have saved me years of therapy.

Donna Williams, BA Hons, Dip Ed.
Author, artist,and presenter.
http://www.donnawilliams.net

I acknowledge Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people as the Traditional Owners of this country throughout Australia, and their connection to land and community.