Weekly Wrap 9

For another rebuttal of my ABC piece see Jason Langenauer’s The ass-backwards arguments against gay marriage and, I daresay, some of the later comments at the ABC — none of which I’ve had time to go through properly.

I really do want to respond in detail. And I really do want to read Judge Walker’s ruling that California’s Proposition 8 was unconstitutional which is mirrored elsewhere [PDF]. Annoyingly, though, my next few days are packed solid with on-deadline work, even the weekend.

But a couple of quick responses for now…

@Eric TF Bat: I saw this unfold not by watching Q&A, which I can’t stand, but by seeing the surge of abusive tweets calling Senator Wong all sorts of names — some of them straight-up racist abuse. Then I saw people linking to angry blog posts and so on.

So I went back and read the transcript and found that most of the headlines were wrong. Wong had not said she was “against gay marriage” but that she was a team player when it came to being a cabinet minister.

I wonder whether she would have gotten around to giving her personal opinion if moderator Tony Jones hadn’t moved on to the next topic.

You mention the word “loyalty”. We are all members of many tribes. In Wong’s case two of those tribes are the ALP and “the gay and lesbian community” — quiet, Alastair, I’ll come to the scare-quotes in a moment.

On Q&A Wong was asked a question which, in essence, asked her to chose one tribe over the other. A tribe which thought she should have chosen them first, or at least chosen to state her views on tribalism in the one specific way they wanted to hear, turned on her with verbal pitchforks. That’s what I found disgusting.

Whether Wong is an effective minister in her actual portfolio is a whole ‘nuther question…

@Alastair: I put the scare-quotes around “gay and lesbian community” because I was, at least in my ABC article, quoting The Australian. That’s who they said had responded to Wong.

But I kept them there because I question whether lumping every non-heterosexual together as one supposedly-heterogeneous “community” is all that helpful — particularly given the term has been extended to “the LGBTI community”.

Langenauer refers to what he calls “gay exceptionalism”, the idea that gays and lesbians form a separate cultural group with a distinct identity based around sexual orientation. Both he and I reject that idea. I can’t speak for him, but for my part of the many tribes of which I might consider myself a member the LGBTI community is certainly not the highest on the list. Community spokespeople say things which make me cringe. I do not want these people speaking for me!

You ask, “Are you taking the view that marriage isn’t that important to you, because of the history and because it’s basically just a word, and hence it shouldn’t be that important to anyone else?” No, I am not. If I’d had more time for the article, this is one aspect I’d have improved.

What I’m saying is that of the many issues the LGBTI community could champion right now, this is not the most important. Not in Australia, and certainly not globally. That there is no equality here is wrong, I agree, but I don’t think this issue is the touchstone for human rights.

Senator Wong is part of a government that just passed the most sweeping legal forms in support of this community. I daresay she was an important part of that. But on this one day she didn’t address one issue in the specific way that the mob demanded, and they turned. And they talk about loyalty…

All of that went on for a lot longer than I expected, and I’m nowhere near finished. But work calls. I shall return.