Are we ready for more gay world leaders?
Labor Senator Penny Wong and US presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg and could both be transformative leaders, writes David Mills – but we ready for gay and lesbian leaders?
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Pop quiz: what do Ireland, Iceland, Belgium, Luxembourg and Serbia have in common?
Besides the obvious fact that they’re all in Europe, there’s something else: they’ve all had, or have, an openly gay or lesbian head of state.
So what, you might say. Gay, straight, whatever, a person’s sexuality has no bearing on their ability to be a leader.
That’s a reasonable point of view, but it raises an interesting question: if sexuality is irrelevant to political ability, why aren’t there more countries with leaders who aren’t straight?
In Australia, that’s quickly answered. The reality is that all our MPs were heterosexual, at least nominally, until pretty recently. It’s only been in the past generation any of them have come out in public.
The first was NSW Labor MLC Paul O’Grady, who revealed he was gay in 1990, and now most Australian parliaments have, or have had, MPs who identify as something other than straight.
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We’ve had Bob Brown heading up The Greens, Labor’s Penny Wong leading the government in the Senate (among other ministerial roles), and since 2014, Labor’s Andrew Barr as Chief Minister in the ACT.
We’ve also got three gay Liberal MPs in our current federal parliament – Trent Zimmerman in North Sydney, Tim Wilson in Goldstein and Trevor Evans in Brisbane. All have been open about who they are, and none seem to have suffered any electoral unpopularity because of it.
What we haven’t had is an openly gay or lesbian Prime Minister or Premier (however Chief Ministers are a Territory’s equivalent) – although rumours have circulated about a surprising number of people in these roles over the years.
Wong has been asked about her leadership aspirations many times, a question she has made moot with the simple reminder that she sits in the Senate, not the lower house.
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In Penny Wong: Passion and Principle, biographer Margaret Simons revealed the Malaysian-born Senator rebuffs leadership talk in both private and public.
“Partly this is due to her fear of the impact of prejudice: she judges the nation not ready for a gay Asian woman as prime minister,” Simons wrote. “There are two sides to this concern. On the one hand she fears the electoral impact – the percentage of Australians who would change their vote because of her. On the other side, she fears what it would mean for her personally. As she puts it, ‘Why would I do it to myself and my family?’”
Simons asserts that Wong “will almost certainly never be prime minister” but also describes her as “clearly head and shoulders above most of her colleagues. She is one of the most significant political talents of our times …”
The question about a nation’s readiness to accept an openly gay leader is coming into exquisitely sharp focus in the US, where presidential aspirant Pete Buttigieg is making ground in the race for the Democratic Party nomination.
Originally considered a long shot, Buttigieg has recently emerged as the front runner for the Iowa caucus, the first primary vote in the race for the nomination. Commentators now describe the contest as a four-horse race, pitching him against established favourites Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders.
He’s the candidate from central casting in a bunch of ways: a military veteran, a Harvard graduate, a Rhodes scholar, with moderate leanings. (In a recent poll, 63 per cent of people in Iowa said his views were “about right”.)
One of his big “negatives” is his limited political experience, with only a mayoralty under his belt – but given Donald Trump had no experience in elected office prior to becoming president, that can hardly be held up as the mandatory prerequisite it once was.
At 37 (38 in January), Buttigieg is also young. The Democrats usually skew much more junior than the Republicans in terms of who they put up for president, but even so, if Buttigieg gets the nod he’ll be the youngest they’ve ever selected.
Bruce Wolpe, Senior Fellow at the United States Studies Centre, says Buttigieg will face “strong headwinds” if he wins the nomination, “especially from deeply conservative religious voters across the political spectrum”.
Wolpe says Barack Obama’s election in 2008 “broke the colour barrier for the presidency” and was cause for widespread celebration.
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“Whether Buttigieg can accomplish the same as a gay man will turn on how effectively he presents his leadership qualities, how they stand up against Trump and, frankly, how people feel about seeing Buttigieg and his partner together on the campaign trail,” Wolpe says. “Will voters in Middle America be OK with this very public relationship – or uneasy?”
Electoral research suggests some voters will be uneasy – especially in African-American communities, where support for Buttigieg is extremely low.
For some Democratic primary voters, their decision will be a pragmatic one: why back this amazing-on-paper candidate if he’s only going to lose the election?
It’s a consideration that can’t be ignored.
But pragmatism is a funny thing: have too little of it, and you’re an idealist who will never achieve anything; have too much of it, and you will never achieve anything really worthwhile.
And if the 21st century has taught us anything, it’s to expect the unexpected when it comes to leadership. It’s something that Donald Trump, Barack Obama, Julia Gillard and even Tony Abbott have in common. All of them were once considered extremely unlikely to ever lead (for vastly different reasons), and yet all of them did.
In the Land of Opportunity and the Land of the ‘Fair Go’, there should be no reason why our top political offices should not be open to politicians who identify as gay or lesbian, just as they should be open to politicians who identify as Muslim, or atheist, or Catholic, or Aboriginal, or female, or any of the other myriad of things that people identify as.
The things that don’t matter for leadership shouldn’t matter, full stop. And if an overly pragmatic approach is the thing that prevents us from seeing that truth, too much pragmatism is itself a big part of the problem.
David Mills is a columnist for RendezView.