I’ve long been mystified by Julia Gillard’s position on equal marriage, and her almost complete silence on the matter. However, on a recent Google search, I found this, which left me even more mystified than before
“I do understand that the position I took on gay marriage perplexed many people, given who I am and so many of my beliefs. I’ve actually had lot of conversations with many of my old friends about this, some of whom have got a different view than me.
“But, I’m a lot older than you,” Ms Gillard told the young man, “and when I went to University and started forming my political views of the world, we weren’t talking about gay marriage indeed as women, as feminists, we were critiquing marriage. If someone had said to me as a twenty year old, ‘what about you get into a white dress to symbolise virginity, and you get your father to walk you down an aisle and give you away to a man who’s waiting at the end of the aisle’, I would have looked with puzzlement and said ‘what on earth would I do that for?’.
“I’m conscious that these may be views that have dated and that the way people interpret marriage now is different to the kinds of interpretations that I had. I think that marriage in our society should play its traditional role and we could come up with other institutions which value partnerships, value love, value lifetime commitment. You know, I have a valuable lifetime commitment and haven’t felt the need at any point to make that into a marriage. So I know that that is a really different reasoning that most people come at with these issues, but that’s my reasoning.
So, apparently she used to be against marriage altogether, but now wants to promote alternatives. If I read her correctly, she proposes to do this by stopping some people from getting married at all, while retaining “traditional” marriage for others. Is the idea that we could gradually extend the ban, for example, by prohibiting various kinds of mixed marriage until no-one at all could get married? Or is there some more coherent argument I’ve missed here?
John Quiggin 
strip away the wrapping cultural,religious and emotive etc
what is left is a
a contract of kinship.
i’m not saying any thing else on this subject.
Pr Q said:
There is no “coherent argument on policy at all. Gillard, like most Australians, does not think this issue warrants a great deal of attention, since it will only directly impinge on a minority of a minority. Stop trying to read to much meaning into a politicians off-the-cuff response to gotcha journalism, particularly at an Anne Summers feminist love-in.
There is of course, a coherent political rationale for steering clear of supporting homosexual marriage. Gillard backed away from endorsing it because she needed the support of Right-wing unions in her never-ending leadership tussles. Another good reason for avoiding such conflicts since they use up embattled leaders political capital in the mere struggle for survival.
To the extent that her seventies era progressive rationale makes sense its fairly simple: marriage is not such a great institution, so why promote its extension? Traditional marriage can slowly wither away until we can all live in one big free-for-all commune. QED, KISS.
Of course the seventies era post-modern liberalism never made a whole lot of sense to begin with. Its been somewhat rolled back on the ethnic domain with the collapse of multiculturalism, refugee open borders and indigenous self-determination. And even in the estrogenic domain it seems to have run out of steam, since most red-blooded women steer away from the concept of “feminism” as if it was made of Kryptonite.
Social conservatives who pay attention to social science take the assumptions of the post-modern liberal argument and turn the conclusion on its head: marriage promotes social cohesion (that is to say, a love of institutional integration) so it should be promoted and extended to all.
Homosexuals are especially in need of the bonds of marriage. Its no secret that this sub-culture faces some serious challenges in:
– sexual health (predilection for promiscuous sodomy) and
– social exclusion (estranged from families).
Marriage, as we all know, is the safest form of safe sex. And undoubtedly includes people in at least one family, your own.
So social conservatives should logically support homosexual marriage. The fact that they dont is a problem for social conservative political culture, akin to the fact that so many economists have failed to endorse Keynsian macro economics.
I expect Gillard’s position on marriage had more to do with being owned by the Shop, Distributive and Allied Employee’s Union than principle.
I wonder if Gillard’s opinion coincidentally reflects that of current and former senators Wong and Brown. It seems to me the senators also regard the marriage certificate as just a piece of paper.
Since Gillard is no longer in parliament, should her views on same sex marriage be of interest to anyone ? Whatever her views, she is entitled to them.
come on john bringing mixed marriage is a complete red herring.
She might have been against marriage as an institution when she was young and silly but she recognized what the institution was.
Husband and Wife.
‘Equal’ marriage is an absurdity.
I think the charitable explanation is that she was beholden to the right wing bigots mentioned above but does not want to say so. The alternatives are awful: she’s a bigot herself; or she’s selfish enough to say “I don’t want it so you can’t have it”. But she didn’t do the latter with education or disability, so I think it’s unlikely she’d do the same for marriage. Might be a bit of both, but given her close working relationships with a number of quiltbags I’m inclined to say not.
I agree with a number of commentators that this is an issue where there are hard-core believers at the extremes and probably 80% of the population don’t care a lot. I suspect there’s an age-based skew there, with younger people more likely to think it’s a good idea. But I point vigorously at the great Australian disdain for human rights and equality in general, and don’t think we’re going to see a mass movement any time soon. It’s possible that this will come as a side-effect of a more general revulsion for the Abbott coaltion, though.
I think that’s Ms Gillard’s point. It seems extremely unlikely that heterosexuals will be able to marry as equals in the imaginable future. Note that same-sex marriage is not marriage equality, it’s just extending the current discriminatory arrangement to a few more people. Marriage equality would be consent-based: any adult that wants to marry another consenting adult may do so.
I’ll go with beholden to the ‘right’, too.
@Moz of Yarramulla Regardless of the PM or anyone else’s view nobody has the right to demand that others kowtow to an opinion.
@Disenfranchised
Yes, best that we don’t learn from dissembling and muddled thinking; let’s keep our political culture dumb and unreflective. Politicians come and go, yet their ideas hang around, some with a bad smell.
This issue is low on my list of priorities as it is guaranteed to happen soon whatever I do . There are too many well connected gay and lesbian people to stop it now.
I get Gillard’s reasoning as to her own views. She formed a view early on that marriage was not something she believed in. Fair enough.
What I don’t understand is her reasoning in imposing her belief on the rest of Australia. She acknowledges that her reasoning is “different” to most, yet she weaved it into the policy platform of the government. Where is democracy in all this? Two thirds of the population want SSM, what gives her the right to deny democracy? That is what remains unexplained, at least from the above quote.
Amusingly I’ve just been reading about the persistence of the British treason laws, whereby it is an offence for anyone to hold an opinion that the British monarchy should be disestablished. So perhaps you could explain your ideas to our Queen and see how you go. The punishment, BTW, is transportation, you you wouldn’t even need to buy a return ticket.
More seriously, insofar as I agree with you about opinions, that position seems to be firmly in favour of marriage equality of the sort espoused by Ms Gillard. Specifically, that marriage is an unfair institution that should be abolished. The many and diverse opinions to the contrary notwithstanding.
exactly it’s entirely unclear why she would oppose changes to marriage given her concerns with the institution as a whole. I suppose post-retirement she figured that she needed some vague justification for her absurd surrender to the right on this issue
I also found this to be one of the more puzzling and bizarre aspects of the Gillard Prime Ministership and one that I think will come to be regarded by future history as a significant blot on her tenure. I have a detailed piece on this issue at http://kevinbonham.blogspot.com.au/2013/05/julia-gillard-same-sex-marriage-enemy-1.html which was mostly written when Gillard was still PM and includes probably all the Gillard quotes on the issue that I am aware of.
There has been a disdain for marriage in the left for a long time. During the 1970s participating in the bourgeois institution of marriage was akin to supporting royalty. Those who accepted a knighthood, for example, were shunned, and it was almost as bad among some, if one got married. So it didn’t bother those who were gay and left that they couldn’t get married.
This changed though in the 1990s and into the twentieth century. Michael Kirby has described his change of view on this issue. He came to see that being denied the right to get married (if one wanted to do that) was a denial of the human rights of a gay person. Julia Gillard is not a stupid person. So I think she would have changed her views as Michael Kirby and others on the left have changed their views, if the political cost of changing her view had not been so high ie she knew that the right wing SDA in the Labor Party would make her pay a high political price if she changed.
This by the way is an interesting example of where one’s view on a particular issue is not determined by the balance of argument for and against that position, but is determined by loyalty to the group. We see this phenomenon very frequently on the right but it also happens on the left.
I meant ‘into the twenty first century’ obviously.
@John Goss
That’s true and I know I had that attitude – about marriage being totally irrelevant and why couldn’t people just get over their need to be part of bourgeois society – before learning to understand that the way I think isn’t the only way to think, or feel.
Same goes for football, meat pies and Holden cars, perhaps.
Julia Gillard is also an atheist and perhaps the type that believes that the church, religion and the church are the root of all evil.
Not that being ‘owned’ by the right wasn’t part of the mix.
@sunshine
You’re so right, sunshine: gays and lesbians are the modern Catholic Masons – infesting and corrupting the corridors of power. Open a door and you’re bound to see a Brown Kirby-Wong chewing on Abbot’s gullible ear. Where will it end?
@Geoff Andrews
Thanks for the evocative images. Now I ‘get’ Fyshwick’s location.
I think the fact that Julia Gillard is an atheist, and was a feminist at a time when both work and marriage were asymmetric in their treatment of the two (main) genders, is what feeds into her feelings about the value—or lack thereof—for marriage. She is also saying that she was brought up in a time when there was no question that marriage was of a man and a woman, at and by a religious (Christian) institution. I read it as her trying to say that she doesn’t see any value in marriage, traditional or generalised. However, whoever was interviewing her should have probed a bit more in order to get something less ambiguous from Julia Gillard.
I don’t understand why Gillard gets so much hate thrown at her for this view. Yeah she did some stupid things because the culture of the Labor Party is a bit stupid. But there was a lot of pressure on her on this issue from the “marriage equality” side. How did she not have the power to do what she wanted? If you honestly think “marriage equality” is impossible and the attempt is evil, the logic “I don’t think it’s right but you can have it for yourself” is foolish. Rather than doing what the patient asks (which’ll make it worse) you’ll do nothing till you can heal the wound.
I support marriage equality—I oppose gay marriage, because any government recognition of marriage is a problem. I don’t come at my view the same way she does—I’m not far enough left, nor am I old enough—but the idea that marriage laws shouldn’t be changed until they can be repealed is one I would agree with.
How silly is it, that no-one ever gets told by a hetero “oh, and my husband/wife …” and then asks “where’s your marriage certificate? I need to inspect the proof of your marriage to ensure that it exists”; rather, we accept people’s claims to be married. And yet, strangely, when a guy says “oh and my husband” or a girl says “oh and my wife”, we ignore this claim to be married and treat them like they’re not married, because the government doesn’t respect the truth. Well bugger the liar.
So the problems caused by recognising hetero marriage and not recognising gay marriage is only the evidence of the problem! Correcting one symptom isn’t correcting the problem; the problem is regarding an institution’s claim as having precedence over the claim of the one who made it and who it affects, and the government’s reality as more real than the reality of the people who live it. The government is a tool we created; it should serve us and not vice versa.
I wish she had’ve expressed her view more explicitly while she was prime minister, so that people could understand who she is. When I first heard this some months ago, I realised I’d misjudged her and I gained some respect for her that I wish I’d had during her term.
Jack Strocchi makes a coherent sort-of conservative argument for legislating for homosexual marriage and its seems to be the one Malcolm Turnbull espouses. But taking a similar pragmatic approach it might be argued that the remaining minority of those likely to be faithful to traditional ideas of marriage ought to be encouraged because what they bring to stability in the upbringing of the next generation is more important than creating a bit of possibly short term stability in the relationships of adult homosexual couples by adding the excitement of a formal marriage and its celebrations.
Only half my fairly close relations who are under sixty and have children are married or were when or shortly after they had their children. Their relationships are stable and their children looked after properly regardless of marriage. So I write only as a pragmatist. And as a practical dispassionate observer I wonder why the Commonwealth Parliament doesn’t de facto get out of the marriage business (in anything like the traditional sense) and use its power entirely pragmatically to 1. look after the interests of children. 2. provide some prima facie rules – and rules for their acceptable variation – to ensure that anyone who is not making an entirely private contractual arrangement for cohabitation – once rendered void by the common law but presumably not now – will cause the minimum impact on future tax revenues. With that in mind it seems very strange that homosexual couples who could make private contracts for how their affairs were to be arranged and, if they fell out, go to an ordinary civil court for resolution are afforded the unnecessary luxury of being able to invoke specialist courts where the judge’s discretion will be so ample that huge costs can be run up compared with simply suing on a pre-nup. OK, they haven’t made the suggested contract: no doubt a few prima facie rules can be made by statute to cover common cases and where, eg. a couple has cohabited for at least X months and/or bought a house together and lived in it for Y months.
@24 What you’re proposing is actually a very old idea. The archaic practice of contract marriage, which was the law in England and Wales before Lord Hardinge’s Act 1753, did not lead to simple and easy resolution of disputes about marriage, children or property.
Rather, contract marriage led to competing courts, laws and considerable violence against women to prevent them exercising what few rights they possessed against husbands they had not necessarily consented to marry. Contract marriage also encouraged a flourishing industry of ward marriage, child marriage and actual bride abduction, because a man who retained physical control of a woman for a long enough period could claim her person and property in terms of a common law marriage.
Really easy and simple solutions need to be checked against history.
A much easier solution is to recognise that LGBT people are not children who need special protection from the evils of marriage, alleged or otherwise. LGBT people are fully capable of making the same choices as other human beings and there is no obvious reason why Tony Abbot, Julia Gillard or anyone else should make that choice on their behalf.
@Alan
What you say is historically accurate, but the context since those days has changed radically. Neither women nor children are regarded as “assets”. Conjugal right and “society of one’s wife” (love that euphemism) has disappeared. We have r@pe-in-marriage laws. Pre-nuptial agreements are enforceable.
There’s no reason to doubt that partnership contracts or perhaps even “articles of association” could be written to reflect the will of the parties and their “meeting of the minds”. And of course, even probate is actionable in the courts.
But even so, I continue to support the recognition that marriages between those capable of informed consent and who have so consented should be recognised by the state regardless of the ostensible gender/sex of the applicants.
Gillard was certainly a substance free zone. Here is another one of her quotes on marriage:
dailytelegraph com au/pm-julia-gillard-gay-marriage-against-my-upbringing/story-e6freuy9-1226025009815
What a reactionary old windbag.
To answer your question John – no, there is no coherent argument there that could be applied to public policy. But I guess if she was just expressing her personal feelings about the matter, who cares?
How would it sound if Gillard had come out and said “Gay marriage is ok with me personally but I’m not going to support it because of the political ramifications. It would create me more enemies than I need.”
Personally, I’d be more much happy, perhaps delighted, to hear that rather than the sort of airheaded rationalisation that she has to make, and then half believe, but I’m not sure that it would work. And, of course, this isn’t a specific Gillard problem, it’s endemic in the political process. Is (eg) Tony Abbott really a xenophobic racist who hates boat people? I doubt it, it just happens to work with a chunk of Australians so the policy gets rationalised into dumb stories about border protection and so on. This is what you get when politics is driven by aspirations, fears and phobias rather than evidence and management.
@Jim Birch
Hear! Hear! Candour is a great thing. Had she said that, the people who already were unalterably opposed to her regime’s survival would have been chuffed, but those in favour of SSM would have had a clear target other than her. Most of us assumed that was the reason and were insulted by the dissembling by her and on her behalf.
If she’d gone on to say — we still need to win over more of the holdouts before I can take this forward she’d have deflected much of the irritation.
I dont know about that. Turnbull, so far as I can gather, is a stock-standard wishy-washy knee jerk liberal on most social issues, eg Henson nude children photos, asylum seekers etc. That is, he believes in e
@Fran
I wouldn’t really expect to see Lorna Doone re-enacted if we reverted to contract marriage.
However, this society has some difficulties already with trafficking in women and children. ‘She signed a contract in Low-income Country X would undoubtedly be used as cover’. There’s also the issue of children and their rights,
A child who comes within the Family Law Act with its extensive focus on children’s rights and protection issues, and can be the subject of a single order that applies nationwide, is infinitely better off than a child who falls under the various state courts with much less well-developed laws and orders limited to a single state or territory.
You can do some things by contract but there are huge areas of law and policy where contract is neither viable nor desirable. Apart from anything else children are in no position to consent or not consent to whatever agreements their parents make.
Neil Hanrahan @ #24 said
I dont know about that. Turnbull, so far as I can gather, is a stock-standard wishy-washy knee jerk liberal on most social issues, eg Henson nude children photos, asylum seekers. His support for homosexual marriage is of a piece with that. That is, he believes that every person should have equal right to liberty, so long as it does no harm to others. Not exactly the worst position in the world to take, but one that glosses over the hard questions that most post-modern liberals evade or hopelessly muddle: what is a “person”, who should be entitled to “rights”, what does “harm” consist of?
More generally, liberal moralistic language of rights & entitlements in the absence of duties and obligations leaves me cold. Rights & duties must be based on an underlying view of human nature and social purpose or they are “nonsense on stilts”.
I am an anthropological realist, basing my social views on the evolution of human nature for given areas & eras, which generates socio-biological conservatism in matters of race, religion and ruler. The evolutionary perspective gives me some political wiggle room to allow for contemporary institutional and instrumental developments.
The age-old social ostracism of male homosexuals (female homosexuals dont count as evolutionary problems) is based on the innate desire of men, particularly dynastic Alpha-males, to have grand-children to carry on their line. Contemporary HRT allows homosexuals to be biological parents, so it is logical to allow them to get married to facilitate procreation of their family line.
Moreover forbidding homosexual marriage means homosexual males will continue to be ghettoised in their “gay beats” way past their marriageable age. Which is bad for public health given what they get up to when they start pounding that beat. And it will wind up leaving society to provide aged care facilities for a huge cohort of aging “gay” bachelors. Not a good look.
So let the homosexuals and drag queens get married already. Although could you liberals please draw the line there, which is the limit of the vestiges of my liberalism. Polygamous, incestuous and bestial marriage (even to your best friend) are a bridge to far.
Homophobic scumbag deleted. Appears to be http://defeatcommunism.com/profile/TerrieMcCormack
The most important thing in reference to Gillard is that this liberal, confused, and utterly incompetent lady is out of office. Anything else is irrelevant.
@Jack Strocchi
I am not sure what an ‘anthropological realist’ is, do you have some sort of definition? It sounds like someone who believes whatever they learned last century and uses self-serving explanations to justify irrational ‘feelings’.
Your facts about the ‘age-old social ostracism of male homosexuals’ and story about alpha males and their ‘needs’ is just so uninformed that it is sad.
I can’t see any reason why polygamy or what the other thing where women have lots of men? should not be legal. What’s your problem with that?
prawn… rocking horse… prawn… rocking horse…
Jack, I absolutely prohibit anything further on this hobbyhorse. To be clear, no further comments from you involving race, culture, genetics, anthropology or any cognate topic. If I decide to vary this ban for a particular thread, I’ll do so, mentioning you by name
Is Cory Bernardi the Minister for Hate in Tony Abbott’s cabinet? Just asking.
@David Allen
Even if there was such a ministerial portfolio, he’d probably be over qualified and with too many conflicts of interests to rightfully participate.
I don’t understand why they don’t just repeal the Marriage Act and walk away from the “issue” leaving marriage to be a cultural tradition, as defined by the people of Australia.
Such is the case with engagements, christenings, birthdays, anniversaries, bar mitzvah, etc etc…
@Julie Thomas
‘I can’t see any reason why polygamy or what the other thing where women have lots of men? should not be legal. What’s your problem with that?’
A polyandrous marriage is one in which one woman marries more than one man. A polygynous marriage is one in which one man marries more than one woman. Strictly speaking, polygamy includes both. However, because polygyny is vastly more common than polyandry (that is, as a socially sanctioned practice), ‘polygamy’ is frequently used as a synecdoche for polygynous marriages only.
The most obscure part of Gillard’s statement is ‘I think that marriage in our society should play its traditional role …’
What role does she suppose that is, and why does she think it should continue to be played?
I think I understand what she was saying. If you are a free thinker, why bother with the illusionary chimera of marriage, gay or straight, a bourgeois institution and reificationary cutural trap.
Don’t upset the straights by intruding on their cherished sentimental rituals- it only antagonises them- ignore it and do your own thing with those who want to be with you.
Of course, from that point you’ve gotta hope they’ll leave you in peace.
Not Bernardi and co, of course as it turns out, but many of these suffer protracted future shock, as change becomes confusing for them and what we see with the barking is the maifestation of the shock of cherished assumptions undermined and the uncertainty this can create in an individual
Turnbull is a wordly city liberal, unencumbered by the superstitions and subjectivity of the populist right, but probably is using the issue as a ploy to place himself within the new government hierarchy.
It wouldn’t bother him one way or the other, he is more like Gillard, although I did read some where that he had converted to catholicism.
Going back to Fran Barlow, we are expected to know that it’s not personal (unlike as with the likes of Bernardi, a fantasising psychotic), with people like Gillard and Turnbull, merely a tacit acknowledgement of what they and we know history shows happens to politicians who adopt principled public stances on issues.
Like others I did yearn for Labor to buck the tyranny of the rightist reificationaryapparatus and challenge a few memes, as briefly happened during Rudd’s best days, when the 2007 election platform was laid down. Like Obama, the local non-right also lost its bottle when the establishment leaned on it.
In the end, Labor retreated on many issues, abandoning advocacy for them to the Greens, but we know now that the Tories would have been even worse, even though we can’t conceive of this being possible.
That a regiment is actually just a restatement of the whole thesis that an airhead incapable of advancing a coherent argument for their position is nevertheless entitled to enforce that position on others without their consent. That the others in question are defined exclusively in terms of sexual orientation merely makes obvious how vicious the argument is.
It is worth recalling that the Gillard government displayed a certain enthusiasm for substituting its own decisions for other people’s agency – continuing the Intervention, reducing aboriginal autonomy, extending income management to other areas outside the NT, the list goes on.
‘I know more about this than you do and your misguided wishes therefore do not count’ is an argument for first year philosophy students.
Ahem, ‘that argument is…’
Amongst the waffle and bonding with the interviewer, I think she makes two coherent points:
1. “I think that marriage in our society should play its traditional role …” And by traditional role, I think she means religious. She allows these (religious) people to do what they will, since the subject of the interview appears to be society’s acceptance of same-sex couples and not atheism versus the modern practicalities of one or other religious sect.
2. Her second point is: ” … we could come up with other institutions which value partnerships, value love, value lifetime commitment.” This seems reasonable, and would include de-facto couples wether same-sex or opposite-sex, probably; and whether there was a ceremony involved or not.
You (JQ) state: “If I read her correctly, she proposes to do this by stopping some people from getting married at all…” I don’t think you read her correctly – there is no mention of stop, bar, disallow or prohibit in the text.
It is strange to read your comment about a prime minister who endorsed and defended a law that stops, bars, disallows and prohibits persons from marrying in terms of their sexual orientation.
The rest, frankly, is desperate logic-chopping to try and make this imperious homophobe into a serious thinker and politician.
don’t forget voting for said law
@Alan It is is not an ethical position in a conversation to misrepresent other person’s proffered view and selectively quote, out of context with the rest of a proposition.
Fortunately, the readership here will see through such a tactic because they read a person’s take rather than attempting to manipulate it for base purposes.
In short, re-read my post.. I didn’t endorse the Gillard And Labor position, merely attempted to explain my thoughts as to the approach; why it had developed as it had.
I said myself that they had backslid on issues of principle, if this coincides with your take, why fore the seeming animosity?
…………………………..
I will say, after watching Hockey on ABC a little while ago, that gay marriage may end up being the least of the average Australian’s problems soon- this coincides with my position as to backsliding whilst in government, as the outworking of consequences for that, represented in the entrenchment of a hard right government possessed of far more animus toward (various, not just gay) minorities than any ALP government, even of the New Labor/ right faction type, could conjure of.