The ‘uncanny doubles’ of queer politics: Sexual citizenship in the era of same-sex marriage victories

Abstract

In this article, the author explores the challenges for sexual citizenship campaigns as same-sex marriage emerges as a touchstone for progressive politics in Australia and beyond. Analysing popular media and public debate, she argues that there is much to be learned from recent critiques of liberal and colonial feminisms. Jasbir Puar argues that the ‘woman question’ is currently being supplemented or supplanted by the ‘gay question’ as a marker of a nation’s modernity, democracy and ‘civilization’. In the context of widespread support for marriage equality, an urgent challenge is how to respond to an emerging ‘homonationalism’ in public culture which positions the West on ‘the right side of history’ in contrast to homophobic Islam, and a liberal version of gay rights which obscures ongoing discrimination and injustice.

Keywords

homonationalism same-sex marriage sexual citizenship

Introduction

From Australia's Prime Minister Turnbull to the biggest corporations in the country, public declarations of support for same-sex marriage legislation are commonplace in contemporary Australia (ABC [Australian Broadcasting Corporation], 2015; Whiteman, 2015). On the day after New Zealand passed same-sex marriage laws in October 2013, the then-Premier of the state of New South Wales declared his strong support for similar legislation in Australia. Explaining his change of heart, Barry O’Farrell stated, ‘as a Liberal who believes that commitment and family units are one of the best ways in which society is organised, I support the concept of same-sex marriage’ (Nicholls, 2013). O’Farrell was then leader of a conservative state government centred in Sydney, Australia’s unofficial ‘gay capital’ and home to the annual Mardi Gras festival (formerly Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras). O’Farrell’s public support of same-sex marriage might well be celebrated as a significant victory for sexual citizenship. In this article, I argue instead for caution and careful strategizing at precisely the time when public support for same-sex marriage in Australia is rapidly increasing. Inspired by the figures of the feminist killjoy (Ahmed, 2010) and the unwelcome wedding guest (Warner, 1999: 119–171), I explore the ways in which the new-found legitimacy of same-sex marriage claims in Australian political debate and popular culture can rather serve to narrow the discursive possibilities for sexual citizenship and to obscure pressing political concerns.

Sarah Ahmed’s (2010) theorization of the feminist killjoy positions ‘killing joy’ as a world-making process, vital if we are to keep horizons of possibility open, and to resist restrictive forms of ‘happiness’ or social good which mask violence and oppression. Michael Warner has long argued that ‘dissent’ on the question of gay marriage is rife amongst queers ‘on the street’, and yet there is ‘something deeply unfashionable and perhaps untimely’ about questioning the centrality of gay marriage in media and popular debate in the USA. Indeed, queer dissent on gay marriage may be seen as an ‘unmannerly guest’ at a same-sex wedding (Warner, 1999: 119–171) or ‘the shrill voice at the back of the church, speaking now instead of forever holding my peace’ (Ryan, 2014). In this article, I examine comparable developments in the Australian context, analysing recent key events in public culture in terms of the challenges for keeping open horizons of possibility and dissent. I highlight the challenges and pitfalls for queer politics at precisely the moment when support for marriage equality has become relatively uncontroversial in much of mainstream popular culture. In developing this argument, I draw on critiques of ‘colonial feminism’ (Ahmed, 1992) and ‘homonationalism’ (Puar, 2007) to suggest that same-sex marriage may come to function as an ‘uncanny double’ of queer politics in Australia.

There is no doubt that support for same-sex marriage as a component of sexual citizenship has increased significantly in the space of just one generation in much of the English-speaking world. In the lead-up to the national election in Australia in September 2013, an Australia Institute survey found that for Australians aged 17 to 25, same-sex marriage was one of the top four issues that would decide their vote (Pulford, 2013). Opinion polls show support for same-sex marriage ranging from 59 per cent to 69 per cent (Steketee, 2015). Politicians increasingly make public statements of support for marriage equality, including then Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd in Australia in 2013. Rudd’s commitment during a televised leaders’ debate to introduce legislation for same-sex marriage if elected framed the issue as ‘marriage equality’ where the moderator asked about ‘same-sex marriage’. Commentators suggested this rephrasing might be intended to defuse the issue among conservative voters, suggesting that the term ‘marriage equality’ is less threatening than ‘same-sex marriage’ (O’Donnell, 2013). Nevertheless, the comments on gay marriage led much of the national and international news coverage of the debate (O’Donnell, 2013), and debate-related Twitter chatter peaked while then opposition leader Tony Abbott was discussing same-sex marriage (ABC [Australian Broadcasting Corporation], 2013).

Australia was a pioneer in recognizing same-sex couples, and in allowing individuals in same-sex partnerships to immigrate. Federal and state laws have increasingly eliminated discrimination against gays and lesbians and their children in areas such as social security, workers’ compensation, superannuation, child support and Medicare (Altman, 2013; see also Johnson, this issue). Gay marriage emerged on the political agenda in 2004 when the then conservative Prime Minister John Howard changed the federal Marriage Act to define marriage as ‘the union between a man and a woman’, supported by the Australian Labour Party, and clearly following the example of US Republicans (Altman, 2011, 2013). In 2008, the Rudd Labour government removed inequalities in dozens of federal laws. Unlike the USA, rights in terms of health care, social security and the like are not connected to marriage in Australian policy, and the campaign for marriage equality in Australia no longer has the wider rights implications which characterize US debates (Copland, 2013).

The examples analysed in this article centre on Sydney, Australia’s ‘global city’ (Sassen, 2005) and a ‘gay mecca’ voted as one of the ‘ten best places in the world to be gay’ (Field, 2008). Sydney’s reputation as a gay-friendly city is actively promoted in tourism marketing targeting the ‘pink dollar’, focused in particular on the annual three-week Mardi Gras festival which attracts international and domestic visitors to the city. While the diversity of queer lives cannot be represented in urban experiences alone, Sydney does provide a rich focal point for an examination of the challenges and limitations that might arise just as campaigns for same-sex marriage achieve increasing support.

Citizenship and social policy have usually ignored sexuality (Bell, 1995: 139–153; Richardson, 2000: 105–135). Same-sex marriage and other campaigns signal an increasing use of the language of (sexual) rights and (sexual) citizenship, and a shifting focus to inclusion of the ‘private’ in recent considerations of citizenship (p. 128) While there is much to be celebrated in the recent shifting of attitudes, there is a risk that the relative success of the campaigns around same-sex marriage may also serve to hijack more complex debates and obscure a range of significant issues. As Richardson reminds us, sexual citizenship is not only closely associated with hegemonic heterosexual and gendered norms of sexual behaviour, but is also informed by, and informs, constructions of race and racialization (p. 126). These complexities and challenges form the focus of this article. I begin by outlining key arguments developed in feminist and queer theorizing which inform my discussion of representations of sexual citizenship at the time of same-sex marriage debates. The following section examines critiques of the focus on marriage in particular. I then discuss the normalization of a certain version of same-sex rights as a marker of a nation’s modernity and progress; and the following section details the prevalence and persistence of homophobia. The next section details traces of an emerging homonationalism in Australia, while the final section explores possibilities and alternatives.

Uncanny doubles

In this article, I explore the ways in which the rapid rise in support for same-sex marriage in Australia and in many other countries might function as an ‘uncanny double’ to a gay rights agenda which began alongside second wave feminism in the 1970s. The concept of the ‘uncanny double’ is drawn from Nancy Fraser (2009), who argues that discourses of feminism have become popularized to the extent that the feminist movement ‘is increasingly confronted with a strange shadowy version of itself, an uncanny double that it can neither simply embrace nor wholly disavow’ (p. 114). Feminism, Fraser contends, has become an ‘empty signifier’ which has ‘gone rogue’, and is ‘invoked to legitimate a variety of scenarios, not all of which promote gender justice’ (p. 114). Reflecting on the many achievements of second-wave feminism, Fraser argues that feminist ideals have been ‘resignified’ to ambiguous meanings under neo-liberalism (p. 108). She argues, for instance, that the demand for women’s participation in the labour market has coincided with the increasing precarity of work, such that women have poured into the US labour market just as flexible capitalism entrenches insecure work, declining living standards and exacerbation of the ‘double shift’ (Fraser, 2009: 110). Iris Marion Young (2008), Micheale Ferguson and Lori Jo Marso (2008) and others have analysed the ‘feminised security rhetoric’ of the George W Bush administration in the USA during the ‘war on terror’, a rhetoric which functions as a ‘protection racket’ (Young, 2008) whereby a feminist agenda is sidelined in return for paternalistic ‘protection’ under a conservative ‘family values’ framework. The paradox for Western feminism in the early 20th century, according to Fraser (2009), is that feminist ideas have been successfully disseminated around the globe, but have also ‘undergone a subtle shift in valence’ to the extent that feminist ideals can serve to legitimize projects which do not ensure gender justice (p. 113).

It is vital to outline the ways in which the ‘uncanny double’ of feminism is always also shaped by racism and colonialism (Moreton-Robinson, 2009). Rebecca Stringer (2012: 19–36) draws on Fraser’s concept of feminism’s ‘uncanny double’ in a critique of the Australian government’s ongoing interventions in Northern Territory Indigenous communities. Aileen Moreton-Robinson (2009), Nicole Watson (2009) and Rebecca Stringer (2012) argue that the proclaimed concern for the protection of women and children provides ‘moral cover’ for paternalistic and neo-colonial policies which required the suspension of the Racial Discrimination Act. This involved measures such as compulsory income management and winding back land rights, foreclosing Indigenous sovereignty and ignoring a long history of Indigenous rights campaigns (Moreton-Robinson, 2009; Watson, 2009).

The analysis of the gendered politics of ‘protection’ underpinning the Northern Territory intervention is a reminder of the critiques of ‘colonial feminism’ which were mobilized with increased urgency during the ‘war on terror’. ‘Colonial feminism’ is a phrase coined by Leila Ahmed (1992) and illustrated with the historical example of Lord Cromer, the head of the British Protectorate in Egypt at the turn of the 20th century. While Cromer was a staunch critic of the women’s suffrage movement in Britain, he positioned himself as champion of the rights of women in Egypt, arguing that the British Protectorate was required in order to ‘liberate’ Muslim women. Roksana Bahramitash (2005: 221–235) distinguishes between Orientalist feminism, as analysed by Ahmed, and feminist Orientalism, a modern project that advocates particular foreign policies toward the Middle East.

A similar dynamic has been analysed in the global politics of the ‘war on terror’, exemplified by Laura Bush’s radio address justifying military intervention in Afghanistan on the grounds that it would ‘liberate’ ‘oppressed’ Muslim women (White House, 2001). In the Australian context, Christina Ho (2007) has analysed ‘colonial feminism’ at work during the conservative Howard government and the ‘war on terror’, where proclaimed concern for ‘oppressed Muslim women’ underpinned both a claim that Australia was in a ‘post-feminist era’ where women’s rights were fully secured, and fuelled Islamaphobia via the construction of Muslim men as dangerous and brutish, and Muslim women as oppressed and silenced.

In sum, these critiques have identified a ‘hijacking of women’s rights’ (Ferguson and Marso, 2008; Ho, 2007: 290–298) whereby conservative politicians and commentators deploy a language of concern for women’s rights in highly selective ways. This serves to undermine continuing feminist demands in the ‘West’ by focusing instead on paternalistic or neo-colonial interventions against internal and external ‘others’ who are racialized and seen as being inherently oppressive of women (and children). In terms of sexual citizenship, the ‘West’ becomes positioned as the guarantor of both sexual safety and a healthy sexual freedom, while Islam (and Indigeneity in the Australian context) is understood as threatening that very safety and freedom. The challenge for sexual citizenship claims is that apparently progressive or liberatory claims can actually foreclose debate; they can mask continuing inequalities and injustices, and can serve nationalist or racist agendas.

If these challenges are common for transformative politics in general, the increasing salience of ‘sexual geopolitics’ (Caluya, 2012: 54–66) is a particularly significant challenge for sexual citizenship campaigns. The Intervention in Northern Territory Aboriginal communities was justified via a pathologizing of Indigenous sexuality and family relationships, positioning all Indigenous men as sexual predators, Indigenous families as essentially dysfunctional, and sidelining the agency of Indigenous women and communities (Moreton-Robinson, 2009; Watson, 2009). In the wider politics of family formations including fostering, white middle-class same-sex couples have been positioned as exemplary parents relative to pathologized, ‘dysfunctional’ Indigenous parenting (Riggs, 2006).

The ‘war on terror’ has seen Arab and Muslim Australians also constructed as sexually deviant and threatening in public debate, including what Caluya (2012: 54) calls the ‘blue balls theory of terrorism’, which asserts that terrorism is caused by the sexual frustration of non-Western men. This focus on sexual dysfunction and/or deviance is discursively conflated with an intense moral panic centred on a series of brutal group sexual assaults in Sydney during 2000 which were reported as a ‘new race crime’ and widely interpreted as evidence of a hypersexualized, aggressive masculinity among young Arab-Australian men (Baird, 2009: 372–391; Ho, 2007: 290–298; Poynting et al., 2004). The 2005 riot on Sydney’s Cronulla beach was justified as ‘protecting Australian girls’ from sexual harassment by young Arab-Australian men (Ho, 2007), continuing the characterization of Muslim and Arab men as sexually threatening. This purportedly sexual aggression is explained in part by the assumed excessive modesty of covered Muslim women. As Judith Butler (2008) argues, such racialized framing of sexuality and sexual rights presents ‘a rather serious bind for those of us who have understood ourselves as advocating a progressive sexual politics’ (p. 3). The challenge for a feminist killjoy or for Warner’s ‘unmannerly wedding guest’, therefore, is to continue critique of and resistance to the ways in which ‘the sexual has become a privileged site for regulating non-western states’ (Caluya, 2012: 54) and cultural ‘others’, including Indigenous, Muslim and Arab Australians. This challenge is particularly pressing at the very time at which sexual citizenship claims for marriage equality are enjoying increasingly widespread public support.

Debating marriage

The focus on same-sex marriage as the central claim of contemporary gay rights campaigns in Australia and elsewhere raises a further challenge, for this potentially sidelines other debates around the institution of marriage. This can have the effect of limiting the range of acceptable relationships and modes of sexual expression. The critique of marriage has been a key concern of feminists, and queer theorists have developed critiques of same-sex marriage in particular, as discussed below.

Sociologist Luke Gahan (2013) argues that Australian advocates for marriage equality are ‘embracing an emerging conservative family values discourse’ typified by morality-based arguments. The embrace of family values is certainly evident in then-Premier Barry O’Farrell’s abovementioned comments in support of same-sex marriage legislation. As another example, Gahan cites calls by Australian Marriage Equality (AME) convenor Rodney Croome to focus less on ‘inequities’ and ‘rights’ and more on ‘commitment, family and abiding love’ (Croome, 2013). This ‘turn to the right’, argues Gahan, ignores the Australian research that shows same-sex families to be diverse and non-conventional, and ignores the growing number of LGBTI people who question marriage and/or the need for marriage equality (Gahan, 2013).

When she was Prime Minister, Julia Gillard was regularly asked to confirm her opposition to legislation to recognize same-sex marriage in Australia, yet rarely was her argument engaged in detail. In a friendly interview after leaving parliament, Gillard justified her position with a critique – that marriage is an anachronistic institution (Raj, 2013). Gillard’s response was unusual in Australian public debate for mobilizing feminist critiques of marriage as an institution – an institution that in Gillard’s account treats women as objects of exchange from their fathers to their husbands, and devalues alternative forms of relationships and recognition (Keane, 2013; Raj, 2013).

Gillard’s comments are a rare example of feminist critique in the same-sex marriage debate – and were widely reported as ‘fumbled’, ‘disingenuous’ and ‘confused’ (Keane, 2013). Whatever the political expediencies of her position, Gillard’s argument suggests the wide horizon of debate on marriage that is largely obscured by the growing consensus on the desirability of same-sex marriage reform. Feminist critiques of marriage date back to the 18th century (Seuffert, 2006: 285). Clare Chambers (2008) provides one of many succinct summations of feminist critiques: currently marriage is associated with the gendered and unequal division of labour; historically, marriage has been based in the exchange of property between men and allowed women very few independent rights in law; and the symbolism of weddings is replete with sexist imagery.

Queer theorists also critique marriage and valorize the many diverse forms of sexual expression and relationships that have been developed by LGBTI people excluded from marriage (Altman, 2013; Copland, 2013; Franke, 2011; Ryan, 2014). Without access to marriage, queers have explored a very wide range of alternatives – from polyamory, public sex venues and s&m (sadomasochism) cultures, to kinship and family structures very different to the heteronormative and patriarchal norm of conventional marriage. If same-sex marriage is framed as securing ‘family values’, then this means a failure to recognize the diversity of queer experience and a devaluation of queer intimacy. This includes the devaluing of queer experience outside the ‘couple’ formula, such that ‘partnerless’ queer folk have articulated their own experiences of discrimination. Analysing the New Zealand debates on Civil Unions in 2004, Seuffert (2006: 281–306) found that the sexual intimacy of lesbians and gay men was largely erased – by both supporters and opponents of the Bill.

Michael Warner (1999: 123) outlines 12 key reasons queer activists historically refused to prioritize same-sex marriage, including: the need to resist state regulation of sexuality; the cultivation of unprecedented kinds of commonality, intimacy and public life; a refusal to measure queer life by the norms of straight culture; and an insistence that self-esteem must include one’s sexual relations and pleasures, no matter how despised they may commonly be. As support for recognizing same-sex marriage increases, it becomes more important to ask what exactly that support means, and whether marriage equality will ‘go down in history as a progressive social reform celebrating alternative ways of living and loving, or a conservative affirmation of the primacy of the family unit?’ (Woods, 2013). Carol Johnson (2013: 242–253) argues that conservative support for same-sex marriage is not unambiguously normalizing, but can also serve to contest heteronormative signs. In contrast to the established critiques, lesbians and feminists have also argued in favour of same-sex marriage, as an equality principle and on the basis that it would actually transform the institution of marriage (Seuffert, 2006: 285). Analyzing the US context, Warner (1999: 157–158) identifies a struggle over the meaning of the gay movement, and a widening gap between the national gay and lesbian movement and queers with a more radical and transformative activist agenda. This entails the possibility that the worst consequences of same-sex marriage will actually fall on ‘non-normative sexual cultures’: ‘whether marriage is normalizing or not for the individuals who marry, the debate about marriage has done much to normalize the gay movement and thus the context in which marriage becomes a meaningful option’ (p. 158). The challenge, then, is to allow competing and contested meanings around marriage, mindful that the success of same-sex marriage claims might threaten both the ability to critique marriage and to explore options beyond.

The right side of history

On 17 April 2013, the day that the New Zealand parliament voted for same-sex marriage legislation, and the day before Premier Barry O’Farrell became the latest political leader to declare new-found support for similar legislation in Australia, a meme circulated on social media. The words ‘New Zealand made history today. Let’s be on the right side of history too’ were superimposed on a rainbow flag. The image was credited to Simon Sheikh, a Greens Party Senate candidate in the federal election of 2013. This slogan of being ‘on the right side of history’ provides just one example of the ways in which support for a liberal gay rights agenda, and the issue of same-sex marriage in particular, has become a key moral or social justice touchstone in Australian public life.

In images such as ‘the right side of history’, same-sex marriage is assumed as natural, unremarkable and inevitable, marking the nation and its people as modern and tolerant. Indeed, the question of marriage equality may well be developing into a ‘litmus test’ whereby Australians demonstrate a commitment to progressive politics. During the national election campaign in 2013, the Australian Labour Party used the slogan ‘It’s Time for Marriage Equality’, echoing the famous ‘It’s Time’ phrase which contributed to the election of the Whitlam Labour government in 1972 on a platform of social justice reforms. As an example of the deployment of this issue as a ‘litmus test’, panelists on Q and A (an agenda-setting current affairs programme on the national broadcaster, the ABC), are regularly asked their position on same-sex marriage as a means of assessing their general political orientation.

In this section, I explore two key dilemmas for sexual citizenship campaigns as support for same-sex marriage comes to function as a litmus test issue for progressive politics in Australia. I examine the racialized politics of sexual rights which is enabled by the assumption that increasing support for same-sex marriage indicates a country’s natural progress towards increasing freedom. I then turn to the critiques of contemporary gay rights campaigns which emphasize the normalizing and domestication of queer identities.

Judith Butler (2008) argues that the narrative of Western progress epitomized by the guarantee of sexual rights can also underpin the policing of racialized communities. If support for same-sex marriage increasingly operates as a marker of progress and tolerance in Australia, it also works to defuse criticisms of Australia’s human rights record. This is in a context where Australia is regularly criticized, as in UN reports on the mandatory detention of asylum seekers (Kretowicz, 2012) and the operations of the Intervention in Northern Territory Aboriginal communities (Moreton-Robinson, 2009; Murdoch, 2011; Watson, 2009). Butler (2008: 3) argues that ‘certain ideas of the progress of “freedom” facilitate a political division between progressive sexual politics and the struggle against racism and the discrimination against religious minorities.’ As examples, Butler analyses the use of US torture protocols based on assumptions of the specific sexual vulnerabilities of the so-called ‘Arab Mind’ (p. 15) and the Dutch citizenship test which requires applicants to watch footage of a gay couple kissing – but exempts citizens of the EU, USA, Australia and some other countries (p. 5). Butler sounds a warning that ‘a certain version and deployment of “freedom” can be used as an instrument of bigotry and coercion’ (p. 3). David Eng (2010) suggests that the emergence of ‘queer liberalism’ in a ‘colorblind’ age entails both the racialization of intimacy and the forgetting of race – such that civil rights struggles are consigned to history. The cleavage between a progressive sexual politics and anti-racism is evident also in New Zealand, where borders have been progressively opened to the immigration of same-sex couples, at the same time as immigration policy overall has been ‘whitened and tightened’ (Seuffert, 2009: 131–149). In Australia, white middle-class same-sex couples are encouraged to become foster parents, while Indigenous children are removed into foster care at rates comparable to the Stolen Generations (Riggs, 2006).

In the title of his memoir on 40 years of gay rights campaigning in Australia and internationally, The End of the Homosexual?, Dennis Altman (2013) signals both the achievements and the challenges for sexual citizenship in the early 21st century. The rapid achievement of many equal rights and changing public attitudes towards same-sex marriage in Australia means that homosexuality has been normalized to a significant degree. Yet the question mark of Altman’s title signals doubts – both as to the extent of this normalization, and as to the desirability of becoming ‘normal’. As campaigners argue that legislation for same-sex marriage will put Australia ‘on the right side of history’, queer critics warn against ‘a triumphalist narrative, according to which we have emerged from the long night of marginalization into the full glory of our rights, our acceptance, our integration, our normalcy’ (Warner, 1999: 159).

Doubts about the extent to which queer identities and practices have in fact become acceptable extend to the realm of film and television. Social media has been used to circulate complaints that references to ‘gay sex and relationships’ were edited out of the popular prime-time TV show Glee on Australian television, while heterosexual scenes were not edited (Star Observer, 2013). In her analysis of the film The Kids Are All Right (Cholodenko, 2010), Walters (2012) notes the prevalence of family in contemporary popular culture representations of lesbians and gays. Gay visibility, she argues, has become ‘predictably narrow’ in a process of banal inclusion or assimilation:

Gay family images are now emerging as the sanitising counterpart to gay sexual liberationist images. By and large these images are of church-going, nuptial-desiring, station-wagon driving, pet-loving, PTA-attending, suburban-dwelling two-parent and child households … This media-friendly version of sexual minority inclusion is predicated on an erasure of feminist and queer critiques of gender normativity and the nuclear family. (p. 91)

There is a concern, then, that ‘heteronormative’ versions of sexual rights will dominate popular culture and politics, with the result that critique becomes depoliticized and queer difference is rendered invisible, or undesirable. Lisa Duggan (2002) coined the term ‘homonormativity’ to describe a ‘new neoliberal sexual politics’. This is:

politics that does not contest dominant heteronormative assumptions and institutions but upholds and sustains them while promising the possibility of a demobilized gay constituency and a privatized, depoliticized gay culture anchored in domesticity and consumption. (p. 179)

As Seuffert (2009: 139) explains, homonormativity ‘represents the normalisation of particular types of intimate heterosexual relationships that reflect social hierarchies, including race, gender, class and other configurations of privilege’.

These concerns are evident in online media as well as in academic analyses. Early 2013 saw Facebook and Twitter users in the US, Australia and beyond adopting a red equal sign as part of a social media campaign for marriage equality. The image was an adaptation of the logo of the US-based Human Rights Campaign (HRC), and prompted criticism of the HRC and the campaign. A commentary in the Huffington Post’s ‘Gay Voices’ section explained these reservations.

Some people have reservations that a large number of people – especially economically well-off, able-bodied, gender conforming, non-immigrant and white (read: relatively privileged) gay and lesbian Americans – will disengage from the many other institutional and social changes necessary for full inclusion of LGBT communities. (Clifton, 2013)

Clifton went on to argue that the HRC had failed to take sustained action on youth homelessness, or to adequately include trans people and people of colour in its organization and its campaigning. Dissent is further evident in the blogosphere, typified by a posting ‘6 things that happened while y’all were preoccupied with gay marriage’ (McKenzie, 2013). The ‘6 things’ listed as occurring at the same time as the US Supreme Court debated marriage equality include Obama’s signing of the ‘Monsanto Protection Act’, a bill in Arizona which targeted transgender people; and that ‘around 2000 queer youth around the country became homeless’.

The prevalence and persistence of homophobia

If the ‘right side of history’ meme suggests that same-sex marriage is the key marker for progress on same-sex rights, this can also obscure the prevalence and persistence of homophobia and ongoing forms of discrimination. For earlier forms of gay activism, according to Michael Warner (1999: 120–121), HIV and health care, anti-gay violence and ‘the saturation of everyday life with heterosexual privilege’ seemed both more urgent and more agreed-on than marriage. Yet the highly visible support for same-sex marriage in Australia is rarely contextualized with reference to ongoing violence and discrimination against LGBTI Australians. While public debate focuses on the inevitability of same-sex marriage as the key achievement to secure Australia’s place ‘on the right side of history’, we need constant reminders of the prevalence and persistence of homophobia and disadvantage.

Just before the NSW Premier’s announcement of support for same-sex marriage in 2013, there were revelations of police violence against participants in the annual Sydney Mardi Gras parade. Media coverage was precipitated by a YouTube clip of a Mardi Gras participant being violently arrested. Footage of 18-year-old Jamie Jackson being thrown to the ground by police before an officer stamped on his back with his boot went ‘viral’ (Olding and Robertson, 2013: 15). This prompted a street march and a public meeting with police where dozens of people shared personal experiences of being harassed by officers at Mardi Gras events. The meeting also heard that concerns over the use of sniffer dogs, over-policing and homo-phobia [ts: change line break occurrence in word] from police officers had been brewing for years before the 2013 event (Akersten, 2013). Concerns in 2013 included the case of gay activist Bryn Hutchison, who suffered bruising and contusions while arrested and detained by police during Mardi Gras (OzTurk, 2013). The community concerns around policing at Mardi Gras also provide a reminder of the event’s origins. Recently re-badged as a celebratory ‘parade’, the Sydney Mardi Gras actually began as a protest march against police violence in 1978, a history that some argue has been obscured as the event is rebranded (Thomsen, 2013). Allegations of police brutality will be investigated internally and overseen by the NSW Ombudsman, but calls for a fully independent investigation were rejected (AAP [Australian Associated Press], 2013).

Public expressions of homophobia persist alongside the growing support for same-sex marriage, and are not confined to the arguments against marriage equality. During the 2013 federal election campaign, then-opposition leader Tony Abbott attended a media event at a Sydney Catholic School whose website includes the words ‘We believe that homosexuality and specific acts of homosexuality are an abomination unto God, a perversion of the natural order and not to be entered into by His people’ and ‘We believe the practice of attempting to or changing one’s gender through surgical and/or hormonal or artificial genetic means is contrary to the natural order ordained by God’ (Akerston, 2013). Only months earlier, conservative radio ‘shock jock’ Howard Sattler subjected then-Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, to on-air questioning about her and her partner’s sexuality, including the insinuation that, as her partner Tim Mathieson is a hairdresser, he ‘must be gay’ (McDonald, 2013). Furthermore, current affairs stagings of the same-sex marriage debate can themselves provide platforms for public statements of homophobia which participants find traumatic, as described by participants in a televised discussion on marriage equality (Ben, 2013).

While homophobia in the public sphere persists, the high rates of suicide, homelessness and mental illness among LGBTI Australians rate relatively little coverage. Politicians and pundits are regularly asked to justify their views on same-sex marriage, but are very rarely asked for their views on research which consistently identifies concerns about the health and wellbeing of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Australians (Leonard et al., 2012), such as the fact that young people who are questioning their sexuality are six times more likely to attempt suicide than their heterosexual peers (Pulford, 2013).

The cautionary note sounded here is to ensure that support for gay rights is not confined to the relatively acceptable option of same-sex marriage. Rather, campaigns for sexual citizenship must extend also to challenging key institutions such as the police and addressing the persistence of homophobia and disadvantage.

Emerging homonationalism

If an intensified focus on marriage can serve to obscure issues of homophobia and discrimination in Australian popular culture, there is also evidence of an emerging sexual nationalism, or ‘homonationalism’. Homonationalism, as analysed by Jasbir Puar, refers to the increasing tendency to position ‘gay-friendliness’ as a conspicuous marker of commitment to ‘Western’, ‘democratic’ ideals. As Puar and others argue, the claim to ‘gay friendliness’ or support for same-sex rights can in fact function to obscure injustice and provide ‘moral cover’ for past and present oppressions (Butler, 2008; Puar, 2007). The most well-known literature in this regard is academic and activist work which analyses the ways in which Israel’s marketing of itself as ‘the only gay friendly democracy in the Middle East’ can serve to ‘pinkwash’ the occupation of Palestinian lands and the development of an apartheid state (Puar, 2012). According to this analysis, sexual rights have emerged as weapons of war and tools of foreign policy (Caluya, 2012: 54–66). Ritchie (cited in Puar, 2012) argues that ‘the production of the Israeli Gay Tolerance/Palestinian homophobia binary is a recognized discursive tactic of the conflict today.’ Homonationalism has also been identified in the construction of terrorists as effeminate, emasculated and perversely racialized, versus progressive sexuality as a ‘hallmark of US modernity’ (Puar, 2007) during the ‘war on terror’ (Caluya, 2012: 54–66). Gay rights are framed as a nationalist issue also in countries such as Russia and Uganda, where the (re)criminalization of homosexuality and a winding back of recognition for queer families is justified by the claim that same-sex rights are a form of Western imperialism and decadence (A paper bird, 2014; Persson, 2014).

In the Australian context, I find some evidence for the emergence of localized forms of homonationalism. Traces can be found in posters used by the Australian Protectionist Party (and also used by the British Nationalist Party) proclaiming a ‘Sharia Free Zone’, which includes a call for ‘no homophobia’ (Hasham, 2012: 3). The Australian Protectionist Party is a very small, ultra-nationalist political party which used these posters in local government elections in Sydney during August 2012. The posters present a series of six symbols each framed by the red circle and crossed red line reminiscent of traffic signs which warn against dangerous behavior. The six crossed circles frame ‘no child grooming, no hate preaching, no honour killings, no terrorism [symbolized by a grenade], no oppression of women [symbolized by three veiled women in silhouette] and no homophobia [next to a noose symbol]’ under a banner headline, ‘you are entering a sharia free zone’. The posters present an assemblage of purported ‘threats’ assumed to be intrinsic to Islam, and position Australia (or the West) as securing the rights of women and LGBTI communities. The assemblage effectively links the question of gay rights to the much longer history of ‘the woman question’ in international relations.

A similar mobilization of the ‘gay question’ was evident in a campaign against the decision by a local government body in Sydney to join the global Boycott, Divest, Sanctions (BDS) movement. In December 2011, Marrickville Council voted to join the BDS – an international campaign which responds to the 2005 call by Palestinian civil society for boycott, divestment and sanctions directed at Israeli companies operating in the Occupied Territories (Palestinian BDS National Committee online). Before, during and after the Marrickville vote, traces of emerging homonationalism were evident in posters targeting the NSW Greens Party (which had adopted the BDS as party policy) and displayed around the local government area, and around the Mardi Gras parade. Posters displayed at Mardi Gras read:

Do the NSW Greens oppose gay rights? By boycotting Israel, the NSW Greens are boycotting the only country in the Middle East where homosexuality is not a capital offence or even a crime. Choose Freedom – Don’t Vote Greens on 26 March. (Hamad, 2011; Lowenstein, 2011)

During the 2011 NSW state election, similar posters appeared, including the slogans ‘A Vote for the Greens is AGAINST Gay rights, AGAINST Women’s rights, AGAINST Community tolerance’ (‘Merc’, 2011), and during the Marrickville Council debates on the BDS stickers were documented stating ‘The Greens Hate Gays, The Greens Support Terror, The Greens Oppose Democracy’ (Loewenstein, 2011).

These public statements represent Australia as being at the vanguard of support for gay rights while presenting Islam as inherently homophobic and threatening to the rights of LGBTI Australians. Making explicit the connections with colonial feminism, Puar (2012) argues that ‘the woman question’ (how do they treat their women?) is rapidly becoming extended to include ‘the gay question’ (how do they treat their gays?) as a test of a nation’s ‘development’ and ‘civilization’. The resulting challenge for those who make sexual citizenship claims and campaigns is to expand the horizons of possibility while resisting nationalist mobilizations of same-sex rights.

The complexities of this challenge are evident in the visual imagery accompanying a 2012 feature article on homophobia and queer politics within Arab Australian communities. The article is thoroughly researched and aware, in the author’s words, of ‘the dangers of feeding into coarse stereotypes of violent Islam’ (Marr, 2012: 12–15). As well as documenting homophobia and violence, the feature details organizations such as Queer Muslims Australia online and Club Arak, a dance party which has operated since 2002 with ‘Arab-flavoured beats for queers of all colours’ (p. 14). Interviewees include an openly gay lawyer from a Palestinian Christian family and users of Queer Muslims Australia and Club Arak. The accompanying photographs depict diversity, including a Queer Muslim float at Mardi Gras and fashionable young professionals interviewed for the report. The cover for the magazine in which the report appears, however, presents classic orientalist imagery: two women wearing black niqab covering hair, neck, nose and mouth, face to face against a black background, only kohl-lined eyes visible. While the feature article attempts to represent diversity and a range of articulate and politically-savvy Arab Australian voices, the cover image reduces this complexity to a stock image of mysterious and exotic Islam. What, then, are the alternatives and possibilities for responding to the challenges produced by the narrowing of representations around sexual citizenship as support for same-sex marriage increases?

Possibilities and alternatives

I began this article with the figures of the feminist killjoy and the unwelcome guest at a (gay) wedding, and the preceding discussion has focused on concerns and challenges around representations of sexual politics in public debate and popular media. In this final section, I turn briefly to highlight the ‘world-making’ possibilities of such a ‘killjoy’ project, suggesting a number of alternatives and possibilities. In particular, I argue for complexity, connections and continuations as campaigns for same-sex marriage gain increasing support and high visibility.

Scholars and advocates in Australia and beyond have raised concerns that, due to the focus on marriage equality, the diversity and complexity of queer lives and queer politics is narrowed or even erased, to be replaced by privatized and depoliticized family values. In response to this challenge, it is vital that queer difference is visible and that ongoing homophobia and discrimination be contested in public culture. Campaigns focused on transgender and intersex rights offer just one frame for mobilizing against sex and gender normativity (Carpenter, 2014). Warner (1999: 123) suggests that advocates of queer politics should insist on sexual justice, prioritize the unrecognized dignity of people marginalized as sexual deviants, and focus on hierarchies of inclusion and exclusion in sexual politics. To insist on radical difference is a ‘world-making project’ which might ‘upend heterosexist business as usual and provide a template for imagining kinship in the future’ (Walters, 2012: 930). As noted above, most legal discrimination against lesbians and gays in Australia was formally removed without the need to legalize same-sex marriage. Further steps might include alternatives to the policy focus on sexual relationships in the granting of benefits. Instead, policy consideration might be extended to any group of people in a long-lasting relationship of care, such as originally envisaged in France’s pact civil de solidarité (Ryan, 2014). Overall, the priority is to highlight what is hidden in the normalizing discourse of same-sex marriage, in order to envisage alternatives.

Intersecting with concern about the development of a homonormative sexual politics is the critique of an emerging homonationalism which positions Western nations as guarantors of sexual freedom, while Islam is positioned as inherently homophobic and hence pre-modern and unworthy of full autonomy. As the ‘woman question’ is supplemented or even supplanted by the ‘gay question’, intersectional and coalitional approaches to analysis and practice offer alternatives. One strategy to challenge the framing of Islam and homophobia as synonomous is to provide more public space for Muslim voices supportive of same-sex rights – such as the Greens member of the NSW Upper House, Mehreen Faruqui (Hussein, 2013). Judith Butler (2008: 1–23) stresses the importance of critiquing the state violence that is justified by sexual nationalism. Some organizations insist on intersectional approaches to international solidarity for LGBTQI rights. The international coalition of Indigenous and Women of Colour Feminists (Abdulhadi et al., 2012: 90–92) insists on ‘indivisible justice’ rather than separating justice for Palestinians and justice for queers, and seeks to make connections between human rights campaigns in the face of arguments that support for Palestinian civil society equals support for homophobia. Others advocate working with established refugee assistance organizations with records of working both in East Africa and on LGBTI issues, rather than supporting US-based ‘rescue missions’ (A paper bird, 2014).

Finally, there is a concern that the relative success of same-sex marriage campaigns can serve a celebratory or triumphalist narrative which implies certainty and inevitability, and thus evades the need for argument. A possible response is to insist on continuations – clearly positioning marriage equality as a starting point for conversation and contestation rather than a final goal or end of debate. Various US advocacy groups organize under slogans such as ‘beyond gay marriage’ (BeyondMarriage.org, 2006) and ‘against equality’ (Against Equality, 2011); while publicity for a 2013 Symposium at the Stanford Law School asked, ‘what if the LGBT movement imagined more than marriage?’ (Imagine More than Marriage, 2013). Continuing conversations should move beyond any positioning of same-sex marriage legislation as the litmus test for Australia’s tolerance, diversity, democracy and modernity. We should insist, instead, on continuing the difficult conversations prompted by the challenges outlined in this article.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

Tanja Dreher would like to thank Vera Mackie for the initial invitation to develop this article, and Vera Mackie and Nan Seuffert for their very helpful comments on earlier versions.

Funding

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

Tanja Dreher is an ARC Future Fellow and a Senior Lecturer in Media and Communications in the Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts at the University of Wollongong. Her research focuses on the politics of listening in the context of media and multiculturalism, Indigenous sovereignties, feminisms and anti-racism.

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