Should Sesame Street’s Bert and Ernie be allowed to marry, as a same-sex couple setting new norms for the world of children’s TV? Prime Minister Julia Gillard would probably not agree. Gillard insists that her ‘conservative upbringing’ will not allow her to accept marriage as anything other than the union of a man and a woman. Presumably her conservative upbringing was put on hold when she decided to ‘live in sin’ with her male partner Tim Mathieson. She cites no religious reason for opposing gay marriage, being a professed atheist, merely the conventional past. She seems not to understand that marriage under the Act is already a ‘civil union’, not a fixed moral law or a religious sacrament to be preserved at all costs.
The looming Labor Conference debate on gay marriage will be a defining moment not just for the Labor Party but for the whole of Australian society. Already several States recognize what they call ‘civil unions’ which give same-sex partners equal rights to medical decisions if one is ill, to state superannuation and property distribution rights if they split up. The Marriage Act is under the purview of the Commonwealth, not the States and Prime Minister Julia Gillard is being called upon to allow a conscience vote in Parliament to test the waters. That is what should happen.
