Voting Postal

We're going to have a postal vote plebiscite/survey thingy to see if the nation in general approves of gay marriage or something.  I've got to admit I'm not quite sure exactly how this is supposed to work or how legally binding the result is on the government or anyone else.  I also have to admit to being a little annoyed by the whole thing.  We hire politicians to run our country for us.  If they're going to come yelping to us every time there's a difficult decision to be made then what on earth do we pay them for?  Although since our entire parliament seems to be made up of traitors, spies and double agents for foreign powers possibly its all for the best.

At least the people will speak or, I suppose, write.  Assuming the Australian Bureau of Statistics manages to cock this up a little less than they did the census.  I wouldn't be entirely surprised to learn that we tally up the votes and discover that we inadvertently declared war on Malaysia or criminalised red hair.

To make my position plain; I'm in favour of permitting gay marriage.  In fact I feel a little awkward that my permission is apparently required before they can get married.  I don't recall asking any gay people for permission before I got married.  As long as I'm not expected to buy a present you can pretty much assume I'm fine with it.

Those opposing the idea run the gamut from concerns about religious freedom, slippery slope arguments (will we wind up permitting polygamous marriages with multiple goldfish?) and social cohesion issues.  I've got to admit I don't have a lot of sympathy for these views, largely because I find it difficult to believe that any of them are serious.

Will permitting gay marriage curtail religious freedom?  Possibly, but we have a long and proud history of curtailing religious freedom.  We're not permitted to toss homosexuals off buildings for example but an argument could be made that we should be if we're really concerned about religious freedom.  Moving to Christianity we no longer stone adulterous wives, we no longer permit "no Catholics need apply" notes on job offers (although my grandmother could remember a time when we did) and from time to time we have even been known to suffer a witch to live.  Speaking of which I can't remember the last time we burnt a heretic at the stake.  The religious freedom we curtail is basically the freedom to act like a malevolent prick and blame it on God.  If religion can survive the barrage of assaults on its freedom that are collectively known as "behaving like civilised human beings" then I'm sure it can survive this. 

Slippery slope arguments sound plausible but only because we let them.  It is almost certain that proponents of polygamous marriage, marriage with animals, marriage to trees and marriage to close relatives will seize on a "yes" vote to push their own agenda.  Of course they will, if you have a cause and see what you perceive to be an advantage then you take it.  But here's the thing.  We don't have to say yes to those things.  Slippery slopes only work if you're prepared to slip.  Polygamy is different from gay marriage is different from bestiality is different from incest.  You can support one (any one) of them and not the others and not be a hypocrite. 

Finally we have the social cohesion argument.  Marriage between a man and a women is part of our culture.  It has been so for millennia, it is part of the fabric that holds us together and makes a society more than the sum of its parts.  I actually have more sympathy for this argument than I do for the others.  No one (except maybe a few morons) expects gay marriage to mean that their wife is going to dragged off and forced to marry a lesbian the day after the vote.  But changing something so well established that we probably don't even notice its there until it gets brought to our attention is a bit of a step.  When we change something this fundamental we are implicitly stating that thousands of years of tradition, revered ancestors, law givers and much loved public figures (not now of course but back when there were public figures worth loving) were bigoted and a bit silly.  That's not nice, a lot of us have fond memories of some of those people.

But here's the thing.  We change our culture all the time.  Our ancestors did the best they could with what they had and the changes we make serve only to highlight how much they got right.  A century or so ago we enfranchised half the damn population and the world didn't collapse around us.  There was no precedent for that, indeed there was a vast cultural precedent for the status quo.  A century or so before that back in less than Merrie England the collection of inbred nutjobs, gentleman farmers and moral degenerates then running the place took time out from hitting on their cousins and hunting foxes to give the peasantry a say in how the country was run.  If you're talking about unprecedented it doesn't get much bigger than that.  The same collection of people (backed up by some hard as nails merchant princes) banned slavery and then sent the worlds largest navy out onto the seas to enforce that ban whether other nations liked it or not.  Nowadays slavery is seen as a terrible moral evil, three centuries ago it wouldn't have raised an eyebrow but they banned it anyway.  And before each of these changes and the many, many others our society has gone through over the centuries people argued, passionately and with sincerity, that however desirous change was it would destroy our society if we tried it.  They were wrong then and they're wrong now.

This is the strength of our culture.  It can change.  We are not locked into a pattern of behaviour simply because our ancestors did it.  And because we're not, because we can change what needs to be changed we don't have to destroy the entire edifice to do so.  Change is the strength of our culture and the reason why so much of it (rule of law for example) remains without serious challenge.  We built a society we can continuously update, we are not stuck in the dark ages simply because Charlemagne was.  Gay marriage will not destroy our society and it won't destroy marriage. At the very least things will get no worse and both may indeed be strengthened.  If you want people to be committed and dedicated to society then they need skin in the game.  They need to be part of us.  This will help some people who, for no good reason, were "them" become "us".

For me my reason for being in favour is not because I'm an ardent exponent of marriage for anyone.  Been there, done that, didn't turn out so well.  Nor is it because I expect the entire gay population of Australia to flock to the registry office the day after the vote. Some will, no doubt, others are quite likely to be happy as they are.  Actually I'm not so much in favour of gay marriage as I am opposed to forbidding it which is where we are at the moment.  Because if there is something that is readily available to most, something which is taken for granted as an absolute right by the bulk of the population and one small subset is denied it then the question is why?  And the automatic implication is, because there is something wrong with them.  Equality can be legislated, demanded, insisted on but at the end of the day if you prevent two people who love each other from marrying you must think there is something wrong with them because why else would you bother?  I know some gay people, most are nice, one or two are pricks but there is nothing wrong with any of them.  Collectively and individually they deserve the right to make a mess of their lives under the same conditions as the rest of us.  There is no reason to prevent them that doesn't ultimately boil down to bigotry, forcing gay people to be "them" when they should be part of "us".

That's a bit of a diatribe and I'm actually a little nervous about posting this blog in case I haven't put myself well or inadvertantly put somebodies back up.  So I'll finish by registering my disgust with the entire political class of this country.  Our prime minister who didn't have the balls to ram this through, the opposition who would have sabotaged this if they could simply so they could get the political "glory" of granting gay marriage themselves.  With the exception of a tiny handful of people none of our political class comes out of this with any credit.

One final thing.  I will be surprised if the vote gets up.  The simple fact of the matter is the bulk of the population aren't invested in it.  There is a small group who are passionate for yes and another small group who are passionate for no.  Everybody else falls into the category of "it doesn't really affect me and I have my own problems".  In such a case people tend to vote for the status quo simply because they know there won't be any unexpected consequences at the end.  I hope I'm wrong; every so often people surprise me with how amazing they can be.