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	Australasian Spartacist No. 212	Autumn 2011

Full Democratic Rights for Homosexuals!

For the Right of Gay Marriage...and Divorce!

The campaign for same-sex marriage rights in Australia has seen numerous rallies held in cities around the country over the past few years. At times mobilising thousands onto the streets, the demonstrations and marches have attracted a significant number of youth. Supporters of the Spartacist League have intervened into protests held in Melbourne and Sydney. As Trotskyist fighters for the socialist liberation of humanity, we stand committed to full democratic rights for gays, lesbians, transgenders and intersex people, and support any legal advances that can be wrested from this cruelly bigoted society, including the right to marry. This is part of our struggle to sweep away bourgeois class rule and all its means of reactionary social control, including marriage.

Anti-gay prejudice flows from the repressive institution of the family, a key prop for the maintenance of capitalist rule and the source of women’s subjugation. Enslaving women to domestic drudgery, the family serves the role of tying sex to private property rights. Its roots lie in the early division of human society into classes. The family is upheld to both ensure the “rightful” inheritance of property for the bourgeoisie and the raising of the next generation of wage slaves, instilling conservative obedience to the “values” of bourgeois morality. In bourgeois society the moral code of “one man on one woman for life” is reinforced by the authority of the family, the fear of god instilled by religion and the armed fist of the state. Homosexuality is deemed “sinful” and “deviant” because it challenges the stereotyping decreed by the sexual division of labour within the monogamous, heterosexual family. The destruction of capitalism through workers revolution will lay the basis for replacing the family by providing the material means to socialise and collectivise its functions (for example, establishing communal childcare, communal kitchens, and free quality healthcare).

In this country the deep-seated roots of misogyny and anti-gay bigotry go back to the establishment of an overwhelmingly male penal colony under British rule. Central to the transformation from penal colony to a modern capitalist society was the bolstering and glorification of the family, where women were to be “God’s police” and gays were not to be at all. Australian capitalist society was also founded on the attempted genocide of the Aboriginal people, pogroms against the Chinese and subsequent racial exclusion of all deemed “non-white.”

Attacks on vulnerable sections of the population are intended to strengthen the repressive power of the state and stymie united class struggle by dividing the proletariat along sexual and racial lines. For revolutionary Marxists, democratic rights are indivisible—an injury to one is an injury to all! In its own defence, the labour movement must vigorously oppose all bigotry and discriminatory attacks on homosexuals and every oppressed sector. In order to liberate itself from the shackles of capitalist oppression and exploitation, the proletariat must understand its historic task is to abolish class society in order to open the road to human freedom for everyone. The mobilisation of the immense social power of the organised working class against capitalism necessarily means an intransigent political struggle against the nationalist, chauvinist leaders of the ALP and its trade-union lieutenants, and for the construction of a revolutionary leadership.

Gillard ALP Government Enforces Anti-Gay Laws

The federal Labor government, led in-itially by devout, anti-abortion Christian, Kevin Rudd, and now by the atheist Julia Gillard, has upheld the anti-gay Marriage Amendment Act 2004 with its explicit ban on same-sex marriage and veto against recognising gay marriages conducted overseas. In 2004, the ALP Opposition helped the reactionary Liberal/National Coalition government of John Howard ram the legislation through parliament and has opposed attempts to overturn it since. The Act defines “marriage” as “the union of a man and a woman to the exclusion of all others, voluntarily entered into for life.” With one in three marriages reportedly ending in divorce, such a puritanical definition is clearly far removed from the reality of people’s lives.

Defending the ban on gay marriage, Gillard and Rudd boast that in 2008 the ALP government removed a raft of discriminatory legislation so that de facto same-sex couples are now recognised as de facto partners in areas such as superannuation, healthcare, taxation, immigration and social security. It is a good thing such discrimination is removed and gay couples at least have the same legal rights as de facto heterosexual couples. Of course, the bourgeoisie happily extends such rights when it means saving money. We oppose the government using the recent changes to cut social-security and other benefits to same-sex couples, hitting those that are older, poorer and disabled the hardest, just as we are opposed to slashing meagre benefits to any couple.

While Julia Gillard intones ad nauseam the Labor Party’s wretched line that “marriage is between a man and a woman,” polls have shown wide community support for equal marriage rights such that a number of politicians now echo support. Not surprisingly many activists are encouraged that legislative change is within grasp. Gay-rights groups such as Australian Marriage Equality (AME) have been pushing a parliamentary pressure campaign, directly lobbying politicians and pressing parties to allow a conscience vote on the issue.

Labor has of course for years allowed its members a “conscience” vote on abortion, not least to give a free hand to the reactionaries of the ALP right-wing machine heavily influenced by the Catholic Church hierarchy. Catholic leaders recently instructed their clergy and members to actively campaign against gay marriage. Meanwhile the reactionary nutters in the Australian Christian Lobby fretted that gay marriage would lead to a push for polygamous relationships, and the