Conservative columnist, Christopher Pearson, argues that Dennis Glover is wrong to claim working class Australians support marriage equality. Pearson claims “the sacrament of marriage” is more important to them, as is the kind of family life which he believes coming out as gay is perceived to threaten.
As a homosexual member of the baby-boomer generation with a working-class father and a middle-class mother, I’ve out of necessity made a lifetime’s study of Australian attitudes on this and related questions.
In my experience, prior to the late 1970s men of all classes were markedly more inclined to adopt a live and let live attitude than women, especially if they’d served in the war or done national service. What would at the time have been called respectable working-class people of both sexes were generally more disposed to stern judgment than their middle-class counterparts until well into the 90s. An at-least-notionally relaxed attitude was a marker of upward mobility from the mid-60s and a default position for most university graduates from the 80s.
As I see it, what lie at the heart of post-war working-class Australia are extended family and tribal bonds of attachment. Anything that’s likely to impinge adversely on family life, in the way coming out openly as a homosexual so often does, is apt to be perceived as a threat.
Then there are all the households of every social class where religion plays even a residual part. I doubt that Glover or most of the self-styled progressives could imagine what the sacrament of marriage means to them and the strength of their opposition to same-sex weddings.
It is worth spelling out that none of the mainstream churches sanctions homophobic behaviour – not even the Sydney Anglicans – these days. That doesn’t mean that they don’t or shouldn’t take a hard line on homosexual activity. They mostly do.
Only one of Glover’s focus group of 25 said he was opposed to gay marriage and that it wouldn’t influence his vote because “he had bigger concerns”.
Glover says the rest of his friends, and especially the women, “instinctively grasped that gay marriage is about justice . . . This shouldn’t surprise us, because people such as Oprah, Ellen DeGeneres and Elton John have made gay equality a given.”
I give working-class Australians far more credit than that. They didn’t need foreign television stars and singers to teach them about equality in the first place and most of them will rely on far more discerning judges when the pros and cons of gay marriage are debated.
For the full article, click here
For the article Pearson is responding to, click here