Excellent post by Alex Isle.

Excellent post by Alex Isle.

Originally shared by Alex Isle

Australia Gets Equal Marriage

8 December 2017 is a special date for Australians now; the date when equal marriage legislation became law.  We're a bit late to the party; following Ireland, Germany, England, New Zealand and North America, among others.  This is a bit disappointing because we were certainly ahead of the pack in giving women the vote.  When I looked that up, I saw it was complicated, all the states having done this at different times!  Still, I was proud of Western Australia for being the second, in 1899, after South Australia in 1894.  It was a while longer before women could stand for Parliament, in the 1920s I think, but I haven't checked that.

Some folks are muttering and complaining because our Liberal (read Conservative) Federal government is claiming the credit, with beaming smiles and dancing, when all they really did was hold things up by insisting on a postal vote first and then bowing to the inevitable.  Still, think again of women's suffrage.  I'm sure there was much bitching about how long it took and dire "The world is ending!" from detractors.

Actually, I do have some idea of how it might have been, because I have Swiss German relatives and know some of the oddities about that country, i.e. that women did not have the vote until 1973.  There was no point, the men said, because they would simply follow the voting pattern of their husbands.   The comparison ends here, of course, except that this was something once believed unthinkable.

Now, if I want to get a feel for how the detractors are reacting now, I could talk to my mother, but I don't want to.  She says patronisingly that I have to accept the views of other people.  This treating me as a child or an idiot is another reason why I don't like her, but I was actually quite shaken up by the argument we had on our last encounter.  I was primarily annoyed then because I was tired of enduring her views, the sniping at "the other side" of politics as though they were actually demonic instead of just opposing.  She knew I didn't agree with her views but seems I was meant to put up with them nonetheless and not discuss mine unless I really wanted to set her off.    I knew she'd voted no before she said it, but the reasons, beyond selfishness, confuse me.  It's primarily a thing of the traditionally religious, and my mother is not religious, only hidebound.

This is a game changer.  All of society will change with the updating of our words and our laws.  I said in an earlier post that nothing was going to change for those who still cling to the "traditional" view of marriage, meaning they will lose none of their rights.    But I wasn't entirely correct, because of course society is going to change around those people.  Is changing.   Their views, to me, are as selfish and mean-spirited as those who once enslaved black people, or declared that women were naturally subservient to men, according to the will of some ancient deity whose rules,  of course, were set out by men.

Whether it happened this way or another way, whatever obstacles people put in the path of the happening, these things in the end won't matter.   A good thing, long delayed, has finally happened and the atmosphere feels, to me, more optimistic and free as a result.

[This is my Wordpress post. Linking Wordpress with Google Plus is too much for my brain right now; it is a hot Sunday in Perth. I wrote it last night when my brain was working a little better].