Image from samesame at http://samesame.com.au/news/14421/BREAKING-The-plebiscite-is-officially-dead
The Labor Party has decided to vote against the Bill to establish the plebiscite on same sex marriage and to call instead for a Parliamentary vote to change the law to allow equal love. This raises the question – where to now for the campaign?
If the Government is to be believed there is no Plan B. It is a plebiscite or nothing. So what prevents Malcolm Turnbull moving an amendment to the Marriage Act to allow gays and lesbians to marry? The reactionary and homophobic right in his party.
The Liberal and National Parties oppose any change to the Marriage Act to allow equal love. Their elected members are not allowed a conscience vote on the issue. One National Party backbencher has threatened to leave the government (which has a one seat majority in the House of Representatives) if it allows a vote to amend the Marriage Act.
The history of change that challenges the status quo in Australia is the history of struggle. Therein lies the hope for the way forward for the same sex marriage campaign. To date it has operated through ‘respectable’ channels.
To break the parliamentary deadlock in my opinion means becoming radical, and adopting civil disobedience as a way to win the goal of equality.
First, actions like militant protests that shut down the centres of big cities send a message. It is no longer business as usual. Human rights are not negotiable. Vote now for marriage equality.
Second it puts pressure on Labor. It was last year that the Labor Party bound its MPs to vote for marriage equality, but only from 2019. It refused to act on marriage equality when in Government between 2007 and 2013. Julia Gillard famously declared that she was opposed to equal love.
The move by Labor to oppose the plebiscite was in part a response to the decades’ long campaign by equal love activists for same sex marriage and their opposition to the plebiscite based in part on the dangers inherent in a divisive debate denigrating gays and lesbians. The cynic in me says that another reason is to contain the homophobic wing of the party. They can all ‘unite’ against the plebiscite and postpone the day when significant sections of the ALP expose themselves as opposed to equal love.
To move the ALP to really fighting for marriage equality maybe our demand should be for them to make the Parliament ungovernable. Labor could refuse to vote for any government motion or Bill, even ones they in theory agree with, until the Government allows a free vote on marriage equality.
We could begin that process by making the cities unworkable, by calling protests with the express goal of thousands of supporters closing down key entry points until the government allows a free vote on same sex marriage and calling on Labor to make the Parliament unworkable until that happens.
