ANDREW BARR: WHEN IS A WEDDING NOT A WEDDING?

Young Australian politician Andrew Barr, writes here for The Gay Marriage Blog, about how he asked his boyfriend to marry him, how his family and friends recently attended what they called a wedding – and why he’s still not allowed to call it a wedding.

In the lead up to our ceremony I was struck by many conflicting emotions. Pride, joy and optimism are the overwhelming feelings – this is a marriage in my eyes, our marriage. But those feelings are tempered by a frustration that significant social change in my country is still some way off.

Our civil partnership at the National Library had great timing – we used our ceremony to celebrate 10 years of being together – and that same week in November 2009 the ACT Legislative Assembly passed new laws giving us the right to that ceremony. The formalities were taken care of the day before at ACT Births, Deaths and Marriages Unit.

I believe that good governments seek to lead on important social issues.  Good governments set the social agenda for their communities; they govern as leaders, not followers. So I’m proud to be a member of a Government that believes all loving, committed relationships deserve to be treated equally and to be celebrated.

As a Minister in the Australian Capital Territory Government it is a matter of considerable pride that we have taken significant action to recognise and strengthen relationships – action to support loving, caring relationships, regardless of the sexuality of those involved.

After all, strong relationships deliver important benefits to us all. We all define ourselves, in some way, by those we choose to share our lives with.  Love, trust, intimacy and commitment are to be found at the heart of all good relationships.

And while this ACT Government may have led on these issues – I’m also proud that my community embraces my relationship with Anthony. Not just my gay networks, but my city too.

Asking your boyfriend to marry you (and having him say yes!) is one of the most significant moments in your life.  It is also something that, I must confess, I didn’t think would ever happen to me.

Anthony and I met a decade ago at the very first Canberra SpringOut Gay and Lesbian Festival just a few minutes before midnight on Saturday 13 November, 1999.  It is funny how I still remember the exact time and date.  He was visiting Canberra for the first time.  I was going to a major gay and lesbian event for the first time.  A bit of a late bloomer, I had only recently come out, aged 26.

Like so many couples, we battled against the odds to make it work. We spent the first year of our relationship in different cities.  Many weekends were spent travelling highways along the east coast of Australia to be together.

After a year of this, I managed to lure him to Canberra and to live with me.  Since then we’ve bought a home together and added a couple of spoilt cats to our modern family.

None of this is particularly unusual for young Australian couples.  Except that for most couples in this situation they have clear paths and legal certainty on offer if they want their relationship to progress to further stages. When we started out there was nothing – our city and our country didn’t really want to know about us.

Fortunately, much has changed in Australia in the past decade, particularly in the national capital.  We now have civil partnership legislation and some long awaited legal recognition of our relationship.

So with Friday 13 November 2009 being our tenth anniversary and, not being triskaidekaphobics [people with a phobia about the number 13], we decided that it would also formally mark the start of our civil partnership.

The day after we gathered with our family and friends for a celebration of ten years together and this exciting new stage in our relationship.  I was not sure how the day would go.   At first, I thought the absence of a formal ceremonial component would make it seem less significant than a heterosexual wedding but I have been overwhelmed by the response of family and friends.  It certainly is a wedding to them.

I’m frustrated that in 2010 we are still having to compromise on full legal equality. This is a civil partnership, not a wedding, and the laws in the ACT have been framed to avoid “mimicking marriage,” because despite several attempts, the Commonwealth Government refuses to allow us to grant full equality. But while the political culture up the hill from our party is stuck in the mud on this issue, it couldn’t stop our big day.

Why does the federal branch of my party – the Australian Labor Party – think that some relationships are more legitimate than others and that some loving, committed, long-term relationships are, for some inexplicable reason, of lesser value?  The party’s policy is after all aimed at ‘securing an inclusive future for all Australians.’

I’m also wondering about the apparent veto power some of Australian religious leaders appear to have over Government policy in this area. We live in a secular liberal democracy. Modern Australia has always been based on a Christian ethic and has always afforded space to religious groups to practice as they see fit. But I do not believe that organised religion has the monopoly over morality or ethics, and our political leaders need not act as though it does.

Governments permit divorce, abortion, sex before marriage and child-bearing out of wedlock. None of these things has affected the right or ability of Christians to live by their religion, and there is no reason why gay marriage will either. We have to ask why it is gay issues that are so often the exception to this sensible division of church and state.

It is insulting and offensive to be told that by extending equality, respect and recognition to same sex relationships that Government would somehow be undermining marriage.

What does it say about community perceptions of the institution of marriage if it could be weakened or degraded by acknowledging the strength and validity of same-sex relationships?

Gay men and lesbians are part of our community. We are not nameless, faceless people who live on the margins of society. We deserve the respect and dignity afforded to others; we deserve equality.  We deserve this equality not only because it is functional and practical but because it is also highly symbolic. It allows us to hold our heads up high as equal members of the community and to celebrate our relationships, confident in their standing. It is about dignity.

What is really at play here is a battle between the progressives and the conservatives for control of the social agenda in this country. The late historian Professor Manning Clark spoke of this struggle in Australian life in terms of the enlargers taking on the straighteners. He said:

This generation has a chance to be wiser than previous generations. They can make their own history. With the end of the domination by the straighteners, the enlargers of life now have their chance. They have the chance to lavish on each other the love that previous generations had given to God, and to bestow on the here and now the hopes and dreams they had once entertained for some future human harmony.

There is no good argument for allowing only opposite-sex couples to formalise and celebrate their relationships and to deny that right to same-sex couples. Those who oppose the gay marriage have frequently talked about its alleged dire effect on families. This ignores the fact that gay men and women have families too. We are sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, cousins, aunts and uncles and we are parents.

The ACT government has seized the opportunity to support family and to say plainly that no-one deserves to be excluded simply because of his or her sexual orientation. We have drawn a line in the sand.

Let’s hope that the civil partnership scheme in place in the ACT doesn’t represent the final word on recognition of same-sex relationships in Australia.

As for the final word on Andrew and Anthony, well … we loved our big day and the honeymoon in Tasmania that followed. We, along with our community, are going from strength to strength.

You can read Andrew’s latest speech striving for equality here, and more on Andrew’s political positions on equality here

Source : http://www.thegaymarriageblog.com