Gay men and lesbians can sneak around with the best of them, of course, but marriage, as it is legally defined, generates conditions for dishonesty, disavowal and sexual hypocrisy. Lesbian and gay communities, and the feminist communities with which they have historically overlapped, have long celebrated the values of sexual diversity over the sexual conformity represented by marriage and the ethical importance of sexual straight-talking rather than the double-standards so frequently observed in marriage’s vicinity. The credibility gap between the soft-focus idealisation of marriage and its grittier realities suggests something of the scale of bad faith implicit in public discussions of marriage. Defining marriage in terms of exclusivity and permanence is, at best, a wishful description it’s an idealised account of how we, individually and collectively, hope marriage might work. The union of a man and a woman to the exclusion of all others, voluntarily entered into for life.Ī lot of attention has focused on that opening phrase - “the union of a man and a woman” - but we need to look as carefully at the rest of this almost entirely fanciful definition. Since the 1961 Marriage Act, the definition of marriage in Australia is: Yet the terms on which this broader public conversation is taking place are remarkably narrow.
