Cory Bernardi picked the worst of times for a beastly outburst

Lobbecke

TIMING is everything in politics, and Cory Bernardi picked a very bad time to make some rather objectionable comments about bestiality. He did so while the Coalition leader was already under pressure and could not afford to ride it out defending his parliamentary secretary.

Bernardi's logic in making his comments was a conservative staple: the slippery-slope argument. If gay marriage is legislated, who knows what might follow? But when you toss an animal or two into that mix, let's face it: it gets more than a little distasteful.

I had similar fears (insert sarcasm) that women getting the vote might lead to animals with non-pliable thumbs trying to fill out ballot papers one day, but then realised that I wasn't caught up in some low-grade political parody.

Bernardi was a member of the opposition frontbench, the parliamentary secretary to the Leader of the Opposition, no less. He remains a senator in our national parliament, proving that while a donkey might not be in line for marriage they can sit in Australia's parliament.

The way things are going, Bernardi is well on his way to becoming to Tony Abbott what Bill Heffernan was to John Howard during much of his prime ministership. Heffernan was gaffe-prone and at various points in his career has had to be demoted or rebuked. But he remains in the parliament to this day: a conservative warrior like Bernardi who appeals to a quotient of party members and the public. Abbott has to first win the next election for Bernardi to become the problem Heffernan was to Howard. Abbott has been having a rougher than usual time of it lately, which meant he could not tolerate Bernardi's remarks as he might have at other times in the political cycle.

A David Marr essay trawling Abbott's (alleged) past. A Newspoll just this week showing the two-party votes of the major parties level pegging on 50 per cent. A Fairfax Media poll showing that Malcolm Turnbull is far and away the preferred choice of voters when it comes to who should lead the Liberal Party. Fracturing tensions over foreign investment between Liberals and Nationals continues.

It's not the sort of political climate in which Bernardi could go unpunished, lest the failure to rebuke him rebound on a leader under more pressure than at any other time during this parliament.

We have become so used to political tensions coming from the other side of the chamber - the Julia Gillard-Kevin Rudd spectacle has been all-consuming for years now - that it has become an unusual thing to see a frontbench sacking by an opposition leader under pressure.

Bernardi prefaced his remarks by noting that "some creepy people" argue for bestiality, and it's in this context that the conservative in him is fearful of where the slippery slope might take the nation if gay marriage is legislated.

Conservatives do like their slippery slope when arguing against change, but they must keep it within the realms of what constitutes reasonable fear. Polygamy is arguably a reasonable fear, bestiality most certainly is not.

Not that it stopped former leader of the Coalition in the Senate Nick Minchin coming out and defending Bernardi. He took the view that Bernardi's words were being distorted. Perhaps. But, distortion or not, the timing motivated Abbott to act.

If Abbott's not-so-swift removal of Bernardi were motivated by moral outrage at the remarks, as was subsequently claimed, then he should have reprimanded and/or sacked a range of others who have made offensive remarks in recent years, including himself.

In a 60 Minutes interview aired in March 2010, Abbott was asked the question: "Homosexuality? How do you feel about that?"

He responded: "I'd probably (say) I feel a bit threatened, as so many people do". Abbott's excuse for such homophobia was that "it was a spontaneous answer". Even the conservative commentator Andrew Bolt was motivated to remark: "Any man who feels personally threatened by homosexuals has a few issues of their own that need sorting out."

Immigration spokesman Scott Morrison waited for the very day that funerals were being held for victims of the asylum-seeker tragedy off Christmas Island to condemn the decision by the government to foot the bill for family members held in detention being flown to the funerals. It took Joe Hockey to call for compassion, when Abbott had stayed silent.

The Coalition's Parliamentary Secretary for Citizenship, Teresa Gambaro, this year said migrants should be taught the importance of wearing deodorant, but she wasn't rebuked by her leader, either. The difference with these instances was that the Coalition was riding high in the polls and political pressure wasn't being applied. Circumstances have changed significantly.

At least none of these examples raised the dreaded spectre of bestiality. As much as gay marriage advocates won't like hearing this, the numbers from the votes during the week in both chambers highlight that there is a way to go before the parliament is ready to legalise gay marriage. Even had there not been a disciplined binding party vote imposed on Coalition MPs, the results still would have been overwhelmingly against legislative change.

While I have long advocated same-sex marriage, it is appropriate that parliaments are more conservative when it comes to change than the general public.

Polls might show that a majority of Australians are in favour of same-sex unions, but I suspect passionate advocates for such change are fewer than the sizeable religious and traditionalist family values lobbying groups that oppose it.

The point is that interim civil union laws, as a follow-up to Labor's equalising of legal rights between heterosexual and homosexual couples, now look like a step towards full equality worth pursuing, even if the likes of Bernardi will see it as a slippery slope (which it quite properly could be). The problem with the gay marriage debate is that religious opponents want to own both the institution and the laws that underpin it in our modern age. This is what creates discrimination.

A simple solution would be to abolish marriage as a legal construct, replacing it with civil unions accessible to everyone (humans only, Cory, don't worry) and turn marriage back into what it used to be: a religious construct with no legal clout.

That would leave churches to individually decide whom they want to marry (seeing as religious groups are exempt from anti-discrimination laws).

Progressive churches could marry gays, Muslim churches could even sign off on polygamous marriages, but conservative churches could say no to gay marriage or anything of the sort. But none of it would be of legal consequence unless the civil union papers were signed.

Religious conservatives would never go for that, because they would argue that it "devalues marriage" (ironically, by returning it to what it originally was), highlighting that the legal exclusion of gays matters to them more than anything else.

Peter van Onselen is a Winthrop professor at the University of Western Australia.