Thinks. Bob Katter: “Gay marriage is wrong”
Bob Katter’s Australian Party has paid for ads on television this week, denouncing gay marriage. Bare flesh is involved. A natural corollary, it would seem, to the word ‘gay’. Something of a puzzle to this fully-clothed dyke who spends most of her life in her far from alluring PJs, maniacally writing.
As the Buddhist teacher, Pema Chodron might say: That gay marriage is wrong, is Bob’s opinion. It’s Bob’s thought. It popped into Bob’s head. No sooner did he think gay marriage was wrong, than Bob probably started thinking about what he was going to have for dinner. As you do. As we all do. Lyn thinks: “Oh, I’ll kill that possum, for eating my roses”. And then: “Oh, look, it’s going to rain.” It doesn’t rain. The possum lives. Lyn’s not God. She merely thinks.
Opinions aren’t facts. They’re transient, fleeting thoughts. No-one has ever seen one. But opinions, spoken aloud, constantly reiterated, acted upon, can be hurtful, crushing, demoralising, even dangerous. They can push people over the edge. Most of all, vulnerable people. People who’ve been encouraged, by other people, to think less of themselves. In Africa the saying goes: We are people through other people. I’d say we’re also not people, through other people. Like 15 year old Dominic Crouch, in the UK, who jumped off a building, having kissed a boy in a game of spin the bottle and been tormented for it at school.
I don’t want my choices in life annulled by opinions. That said, I don’t want to get married, either. I am deeply engaged to my female partner of almost twenty years, and more than happy to stay that way. But lately, I’m starting to feel like an under-aged bride. Obliged to marry. Forced to it. Except in my case, it would be marriage as protest. As a political act. Occupy marriage. In support of women who do want to publically announce that they love their female partner and would like to try and make a go of wedded bliss. Come to think of it, we’re headed for North America soon. Should I pop the question? Start hunting out that special ring?
Quite a lot of lesbians have kids. For a moment, I thought to ask my own wonderful pair, now grown-up, and having spent half their childhood with a heterosexual mother, and the other half with a lesbian mother (same mother), well, what do you reckon guys? Glass half empty, or half full? Then again, I don’t mean to be churlish, but I don’t think my parents ever thought to ask me, child of a sometimes violent, dysfunctional, heterosexual marriage, for a vote of confidence. So I didn’t.
If I married again (second time round), I’d want the kids, and the grandkids, there on the day. And we can’t afford to fly them all to the States. And if the thought of our gorgeous five-year-old granddaughter carrying a posy and wearing a pink bridesmaid’s frock to her Nana and Nona’s wedding seems absurd or offensive to some, be it Bob Katter or men in long frocks with a propensity for funny hats and a far from enviable track record as regards the guardianship of young children, it’s no more odious than it is to me that, as the law now stands, they have the final call on my marital status.
Some people have strong opinions on gay marriage. As I sometimes have strong opinions on those same strong opinions. Which is probably why it’s as well that opinions get trapped in those sweet little ‘thinks’ bubbles and stay put. And that political parties don’t start forking out money to air them on public TV.