By Joel Meares
One of the most powerful words hurled at the gay community today doesn't start with an F. Or a P. Or any other ugly, lip-pursing consonant. It begins with a vowel and it might, on first listen, sound innocuous: agenda.
You will have seen it most commonly at the end of that sinister-sounding phrase: the gay agenda. The expression has been bandied about since the early 1990s, when it was popularised by the American Christian Right to describe the pesky way that the LGBTQI community was standing up for itself; the Australian right adopted it like some new set of basketball shoes fresh off the docks at Botany.
The LGBTQI community does not have an agenda beyond a desire for equal rights.Credit: Bradley Kanaris
On the "gay agenda" back then? Stateside, it was opposing moves like a ballot measure that would have shoved a new line into the Oregon constitution describing homosexuality as "abnormal, wrong, unnatural and perverse". At home, it was ending the ban on gay people serving in the military and the small issue of decriminalising homosexuality nationwide. Not exactly ignoble agenda items.
Every push for LGBTQI rights since – "human rights" to those doing the pushing and their supporters – has been met with whining about the insidious "gay agenda" from conservative politicians, columnists, and, in the digital age, legions of brave and anonymous keyboard warriors who share their views. In the last two years, with the defence of the Safe Schools program and campaign for same-sex marriage rights, those cries have reached a kind of fever pitch.
In newspapers and online, the Safe Schools program has been described as being underpinned by a "Marxist sexual agenda" and as "part of a wider Marxist strategy to radically change society". In a column partly conceding the inevitability of same-sex unions, one prominent conservative commentator wrote of the movement's "hidden agenda" – as the story was headlined - which is, apparently, to subvert the institution of marriage with a flood of childless unions jam-packed with polygamous partners. (As a married gay man, I can tell you that between baking and Gilmore Girls marathons, there is precious little time for orgies.)
Then we have Cory Bernardi and his ilk, who look at people wanting to exchange vows and programs designed to protect children and see an agenda to take a Bedazzler to the fabric of society before tearing it to shreds. In a piece of writing titled Homosexual militants' agenda exposed, Bernardi argues that the "alphabet mafia" has been viciously attacking opponents (read: protesting) because its "true agenda has been exposed like never before". He never clearly explains what that true agenda is, but the language leaves no doubt it's a threat.
This is the genius of the "gay agenda" as a rhetorical tool, and the challenge for those to whom it is applied: it doesn't need to be explained, but the brand of suspicion tends to stick. To call the push for LGBTQI rights what it really is, a gay "movement", would be to acknowledge the increasingly widespread support Australians are showing for it – and to place it rightfully within the context of past successful civil rights movements. And so critics deploy the "A word", implying there is something beyond equality that the LGBTQI community is after. Reiterate it again and again, and people listening begin to ask: What do they really want?
A similar trick of language is used to delegitimise developments around gender. In column after column criticising progress in trans and gender rights, these advances are framed in the language of insanity. Just last week, we saw the increase in parents seeking gender therapy for their children attacked as lunacy in one Australian newspaper column: "The madness has reached a point where parents of children as young as two are seeking gender counselling." In a piece published by American conservative magazine The Federalist around the same time, an author describes "transgender stuff" as "otherworldly", part of an alien-like invasion.
Both pieces suggest the increase in the number of kids questioning their genders, and parents supporting them as they do, is part of a media-led fad – as opposed to, say, the result of reduced stigma and increased information around gender issues. Fear and uncertainty here is understandable; this is new territory for most people, and it can be hard to comprehend a child feeling so misplaced in their body that they want to physically change themselves, or to put yourself in the shoes of a parent faced with that suffering. Is any decision they make "madness"? Agenda-driven? Or is it a complex choice made by people wanting to do the best by their kids?
Portrayals of the LGBTQI community as rainbow militants on the march, crazed agendas in hand, miss a key thing about us: We're playing defence, not attack. The movement isn't about advancement, it's about catch-up – we aggressively campaign, and wield the weapons of politics, but we do so to make up the ground we lose in this country just by being born different.
When we pushed for our lives to be decriminalised, we were catching up. When we fought to fight in the military, we were catching up. When we demand the right to marry – not in your church, nor in your face – we are catching up. When we demand safe spaces in schools for vulnerable children, we are only asking for something every parent wants for their kid.
There is no ambition here to fundamentally change society; I love our society. It could be less racist and homophobic, and the property prices definitely suck, but it's mostly pretty fab. I didn't marry my American husband as part of an agenda to change anything about the US or to change what marriage means in Australia; I did it because I loved him, wanted that recognised and plan to some day start a family. Which is, I assume, why most people get married.
If there is a "gay agenda" it might be this – not to change society, but to take an equal place in it. If that scares you, I have to wonder: What's your agenda?
Joel Meares is a Fairfax Media columnist.