‘Live your liberation – don't lobby for it’: Australian queer student activists' perspectives of same-sex marriage

Abstract

One topic covered in Australian queer university student print media is the legalization of same-sex marriage. The legalization of same-sex marriage is currently generating much debate in Western queer communities. This paper explores Australian queer university student activists' media representation of same-sex marriage, and the debates surrounding its legalization. It uses discourse analysis to examine a selection of queer student media from four metropolitan Australian universities, and the 2003 and 2004 editions of the national queer student publication Querelle. This paper thus contributes to the history of queer activism, documenting what one group of young people say about the legalization of same-sex marriage, and furthers research on queer perspectives of marriage and same-sex relationships.

Acknowledgement

This article is based on a paper presented at The Third Annual Queer Studies Easter Symposium in Mexico City, in April 2009. Travel to the conference was supported by the Queensland University of Technology Postgraduate Grants-In-Aid Scheme, Creative Industries Faculty Conference Grant.

Notes

1. Alternative media can include community and activist media.

2. ‘Will you marry me? Excerpts from an online debate at QUT’ is a four-page article which features multiple statements from multiple, anonymous, students.

3. Heteronormativity can be defined as ‘the impulse of “straight” culture to try and make everybody fit into the same norms of behaviour – not just sexually, but culturally’ (McKee 2005, 148). Heteronormativity is

produced in almost every aspect of the forms and arrangements of social life: nationality, the state, and the law; commerce; medicine; and education; as well as in the conventions and affects of narrativity, romance, and other protected spaces of culture … Heteronormative forms of intimacy are supported … not only by overt referential discourse such as love plots and sentimentality but materially, in marriage and family law, in the architecture of the domestic, in the zoning of work and politics. (Berlant and Warner 1998, 561–2)

Heteronormativity can influence formations of coupling, sex, marriage and reproduction.

4. ACT UP formed in the United States in the late 1980s and described themselves as ‘a non-partisan group of diverse individuals united in anger and committed to direct action to end the AIDS crisis’ (in Crimp 2005, 144). According to E.J. Rand (2004), a meeting of New York City ACT UP in April 1990 featured discussion of direct action in response to the rise in homophobic crimes. People interested in acting on this held a meeting and the group soon developed as Queer Nation.

5. A recent survey of same-sex attracted queers across Australia found that 65% of those surveyed under the age of 20, selected marriage as the way they would like Australian law to formally recognize their own relationships, whether or not they were currently in one (School of Psychology 2009). Sixty-two per cent of those under 30 selected marriage as their personal choice (School of Psychology 2009). A 2009 poll found that 60% of Australians supported same-sex marriage (Sharp 2009).