Same sex marriage: yes but please stop the fanfare

The gay marriage debate has been a largely fraudulent affair. The acrimony and intolerance on both sides have masked a lack of frankness about what is at stake.

Thousands of people have taken pictures of their postal survey forms with the Yes box ticked in an unprecedented bout of social media-driven voter virtue-signalling. Spare us.

Our household awaits the arrival of forms. Pens are poised. But my long-stated support for legalising same-sex marriage has been tested by the frivolous love is love superficiality of the Yes campaign — grown-ups don’t want to identify with some rainbow coalition replete with balloons and T-shirts.

More serious misgivings have been triggered by the brutish intolerance of Yes campaigners: the Facebook friend who proudly proclaims that anyone who votes No is a bigot; the profane, threatening and offensive tweets of leftist ­so-called comedians; the tennis club members who banish one of the world’s greatest players for her views; and the constant, ­unquestioned claims that marriage is a right and that this is all about equality.

The Yes side shouldn’t be so angry. They blocked a plebiscite and delayed the process. They didn’t want all Australians to have a say. This fostered acrimony.

The Yes activists and their Labor Party colleagues should have embraced the plebiscite device as a political compromise and pitched their message as an appeal to the tolerance and generosity of mainstream voters. Rather than demanding a right, they should have expressed eagerness to share an institution.

The No case is far from blameless. A sound intellectual case exists for preserving an institution that historically and traditionally has been a union between a man and a woman, and it is outrageous that many deny the validity of such a case.

While bigots obviously will cling to this argument, it need not denote bigotry. Many people of faith or strong conservative bent are transparently capable of holding such a view, while displaying tolerance and acceptance towards gay people and even according their relationships equal respect without the nomenclature of marriage. Some gays will hold this view.

The No case has deliberately conflated the issue with others. To portray it as a vote against political correctness is politically clever, even tricky, but manifestly untrue. And to rope in the issues of children, adoption and the quality of family life is a nastier version of the same tactic.

Gay and lesbian couples are ­already accorded the same rights as de facto heterosexual couples when it comes to property, superannuation, children, adoption, IVF, surrogacy and even divorce settlements. So, to be clear, given that de facto couples are treated the same as married couples, we are talking about a word — this debate, in a technical sense, is ­primarily semantic.

To argue children do best within a marriage with a mother and a father insults widows and widowers, divorced parents, de factos, those who are remarried, single parents and step-parents, as well as gay parents.

We know children can suffer terribly in married heterosexual families just as they can flourish in gay families. It is the quality and devotion of the individual parents that count, not their number, history, gender or sexuality.

The debate on religious freedom, too, is overplayed. No marriage celebrant should be forced to perform same-sex marriages if they object. But beyond that, exactly what sort of discrimination against gay couples do No advocates suggest we allow? Discrimination on such grounds is illegal now and should remain so.

One of the most persuasive arguments for the Yes case is that of simple pragmatism. Even prominent Catholic priest Frank Brennan has recognised that with civil same-sex marriages occurring in Britain, the US, Canada, New Zealand and many other countries, we increasingly will have same-sex married couples living in this country and will need to recognise their relationships for a range of practical reasons from pensions entitlements to estate settlements.

So what, then, is the fraudulent aspect of the Yes case? This is far more important than the zealotry and bullying I mentioned at the start. It is about the substance of the campaign.

Because of the legal rights that already exist, especially those around children and family law, the argument that this is about equality is hard to justify. In all practical senses, gay relationships are already accorded equality. At most it is about the word marriage — rather than civil unions — so that apart from obtaining the same status as marriage, gay couples can use the same terminology and lay claim to the same institution. (The sacramental aspects are irrelevant — they belong to the churches and will not change.)

So is this really about marriage per se? Is the passion, activism and antagonism really motivated by a desire to use the term and share the institution of marriage? Why then are we hearing so much about latent homophobia and ­discrimination against gays and lesbians?

It seems to be about more than marriage. Clearly marriage reform has become a proxy cause for acceptance. As a society we are being asked to legalise gay marriage as an ever-so-slightly practical act but also as a hugely symbolic act to demonstrate the acceptance of gay and lesbian people by the mainstream.

To my mind, this is a very good reason to support the change. It is a powerful argument to share the traditional institution of marriage with same-sex couples. It surprises me that Yes advocates haven’t made the case in this broader term.

When my postal survey arrives, I know that despite the divisive debate, whatever box I tick will make no practical difference to the way gay couples are treated when it comes to children, adoption and family law arrangements. It will make no difference to how many gay couples commit to long-term relationships and how many do not. It will make no difference to the hard-won legal constraints that already exist against discrimination based on sexuality.

But my vote can make a difference as a statement of acceptance. It can help make a stand against the overt and subtle forms of discrimination that have been perpetrated against a significant cohort of humanity for millennia. In this way, the gay marriage postal survey and the reform it might deliver is practically insignificant but symbolically beneficial.