Voting in the same-sex marriage postal survey has now closed. Based on the widely-held assumption that the majority of Australians have voted Yes, discussion has now turned to what amendments will be made to the Marriage Act to implement this outcome.

 

Conservatives who have opposed marriage equality throughout this process, including the Australian Christian Lobby and many Liberal and National Party MPs and Senators, are now arguing that any change to the law must include new exceptions providing a broad range of special privileges to discriminate against LGBTI couples.

 

As WA Liberal MP Ian Goodenough has publicly acknowledged: “[t]he focus will be in the area of preserving parental rights, freedom of speech, and institutional considerations such as curriculum in schools, access to reproductive technology, correctional facilities, etc…”

 

This is on top of those new exceptions already included in Liberal Senator Dean Smith’s Marriage Amendment (Definition and Religious Freedom) Bill 2017, which, as I have written elsewhere, would:

 

• Permit existing civil celebrants to nominate to become ‘religious marriage celebrants’ so they can avoid marrying LGBTI couples,
• Duplicate exceptions from the Sex Discrimination Act within the Marriage Act itself, allowing religious bodies that offer wedding-related facilities, goods and services to the public to turn away LGBTI couples, and
• Reinforce the ability of military chaplains, who are public servants, paid for with taxpayers’ money, to refuse to perform the marriage ceremonies of LGBTI personnel serving within the ADF.[i]

 

The supposed justification for these new exceptions? That they are essential to protect the ‘religious freedom’ of people who object to marriage equality on the basis of their personal faith.

 

Which is, to put it bluntly, bollocks.

 

The coordinated campaign for new exceptions in the Marriage Act has very little to do with ‘religious freedom’. This push is primarily, almost exclusively, about legitimising homophobia, biphobia and transphobia.

 

This motivation can be seen through one simple comparison – how the Marriage Act has treated divorced couples remarrying over the past four decades versus how conservatives are proposing LGBTI couples should be treated now.

 

After all, there are a variety of religious beliefs about divorce and remarriage, just as there is a range of religious perspectives about marriage equality. The single largest religious organisation in Australia – the Catholic Church – remains staunchly opposed to both. Other faith groups support both.

 

So, if there are individuals and groups with strong views about, specifically against, divorce and remarriage, surely the Marriage Act will already contain special privileges allowing discrimination against people having second, or subsequent, weddings?

 

Well, no actually.

 

Even following the introduction of ‘no fault’ divorce as part of the Family Law Act reforms in 1975, the Marriage Act was not amended to provide civil celebrants with the ability to discriminate against people remarrying. Nor were military chaplains given ‘strengthened’ powers to refuse to perform the marriage ceremonies of ADF personnel tying the knot for the second time.

 

The inconsistent treatment of divorced people remarrying and LGBTI couples is demonstrated even more powerfully by considering the introduction of the Sex Discrimination Act 1984.

 

As well as prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sex, from its very beginning this legislation has protected people against discrimination on the basis of their ‘marital status’, an attribute that was originally defined as:

 

“the status or condition of being-

(a) single;

(b) married;

(c) married but living separately and apart from one’s spouse;

(d) divorced;

(e) widowed; or

(f) the de facto spouse of another person…” [emphasis added].

 

Discrimination on the basis of ‘marital or relationship status’ remains prohibited under the Sex Discrimination Act today.

 

Which means that, for 33 years, the Marriage Act has happily coexisted with legislation that prohibits discrimination against divorced people remarrying – including discrimination by civil celebrants.

 

For 33 years, there has apparently not been a need to duplicate exceptions from the Sex Discrimination Act within the Marriage Act allowing religious bodies that offer wedding-related facilities, goods and services to the public to turn away couples wishing to remarry.

 

For 33 years, there has been no massive campaign to ‘preserve parental rights, freedom of speech, and institutional considerations such as curriculum in schools’ about divorce and remarriage.

 

At no point during this time, not when marriage equality was originally banned by the Howard Government in August 2004, or even when the same Government had a majority in both houses of parliament between 2005 and 2007, has there been a concerted push to amend the Marriage Act to protect the ‘religious freedom’ of people who object to divorce and remarriage on the basis of their personal faith.

 

So, why now? If it was not necessary to protect ‘religious freedom’ following the introduction of no fault divorce more than four decades ago, nor at any point since the prohibition of discrimination on the basis of marital status more than three decades ago, why is it suddenly necessary to defend ‘religious freedom’ today?

 

The logical conclusion – in my view, the only possible conclusion – is that the changes being put forward, in Dean Smith’s Marriage Amendment (Definition and Religious Freedoms) Bill, and by others like his Coalition colleague Ian Goodenough, are not actually about religious freedom at all.

 

If these amendments are only being put forward now that lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex Australians might finally have the opportunity to legally marry, then their intended purpose appears to be: to legitimise discrimination against LGBTI couples.

 

These provisions are inherently homophobic. And biphobic. And transphobic, too.

 

People arguing for ever-widening exceptions in the Marriage Act can dress their proposals up in all the fine language they want. But they cannot hide the naked truth: such amendments are just homophobia in a fancy frock.

 

It is simply not good enough for the long desired, long fought for, and long overdue introduction of marriage equality to be undermined by the inclusion of religious exceptions that will, in practice, perpetuate discrimination against LGBTI couples.

 

Equal should mean equal – and that means LGBTI couples marrying in the future should be treated exactly the same as divorced people remarrying are now.

 

 

Footnotes:

[i] It should be noted that Smith’s Bill also permits increased, or strengthened, discrimination against other groups, including divorced people remarrying. This is to avoid criticisms of Senator Brandis’ 2016 Exposure Draft Marriage Amendment (Same-Sex Marriage) Bill, which explicitly discriminated against same-sex couples. It is unlikely that many divorced Australians understand they could theoretically be discriminated against as a result of the Smith Bill. Then again, they probably shouldn’t worry too much – the timing of the introduction of these amendments, and the public debate surrounding them, confirm that LGBTI Australians are the real target.