How far can Mardi Gras take us?
By Tom Flanagan
With half a million people in the streets of Sydney watching a celebration of lesbian and gay pride, a Mardi Gras visitor from Mars might presume that Australian society in 1998 is relaxed and tolerant, even welcoming, of sexual diversity.
While the gay and lesbian Mardi Gras undoubtedly has a positive impact on attitudes, the daily experience of people sexually attracted to members of their own sex is no Mardi Gras. And the further you get from inner city subcultures, the more extreme the contrast with the late February night of frivolity.
Growing up gay in Australia, rather than on Mars, it is no surprise to learn that 30% of homeless youth are gay or lesbian. For many, the price of sexual self-determination has been a loss of security. For others, their self-esteem and sense of sexual identity are sacrificed on the altar of conformity to the demands of parents and broader society. The suicide toll on lesbian and gay youth who cannot reconcile themselves with this can only be speculated upon.
While Australian society, as a whole, can tolerate the Mardi Gras (because it refuses to go away, and now generates many millions of dollars), it's another matter entirely for parents to accept their own lesbian and gay offspring, especially while they are at home and still economically dependent.
The reason the nuclear family can be such a pillar of sexual conservatism, and such an authoritarian institution, is that capitalist society assigns it overwhelming responsibility for, and control of, young people. This "free" and "democratic" society suddenly becomes very totalitarian if you are young and your parents don't approve of your sexuality.
In the context of high youth unemployment, the abolition of the under-18 dole and Austudy means-tested on parental income until the age of 25, standing up for your rights often means ending up on the street.
The ideas behind the first Mardi Gras were far more ambitious than just a celebration. A protest was held in Sydney, in June 1978, to commemorate the ninth anniversary of the Stonewall riots in New York, which gave rise to the radical lesbian and gay movement.
Lesbians and gay men radicalised by the civil rights movement, the anti-Vietnam War and women's movements decided that the transformation of society they were seeking included a positive attitude to homosexuality. For the first time, they were prepared to campaign publicly and in large numbers.
But the battle for sexual self-determination is a very uneven one. In the family, in schools and in the streets where visibility means bashings, it's not enough to point to Mardi Gras and say we've made it.
Some of us have "made it" — we've survived with our sanity intact. But that's not enough for teenagers trying to deal privately with a hostile and homophobic home life, or being thrown onto the streets for standing up for their own sexuality.
Society needs to be radically changed, no less so than in the '60s and '70s. As part of this, society as a whole needs to take responsibility for its young people. This means providing them, independently of their family's means or tolerance levels, with a livable education allowance, real employment opportunities, or at the very least a livable unemployment benefit for all those who need it, regardless of age.
We need schools and an education system that respect people's sexual choices. We need not only anti-discrimination laws without exclusions, but government-backed campaigns for sexual tolerance.
Despite half a million people attending Mardi Gras, it's hard to imagine governments meeting these demands.
This is because governments rule on behalf of a very small section of the population — big capitalists. To do this and stay in power, they promote and defend prejudices which divide the working class along race, sex and sexuality lines.
Governments then scapegoat minorities for the social ills created by their system, capitalism. It privatises responsibility for raising the next generation in the nuclear family, which survives solely on the unpaid labour of women.
Such a system is not going to undermine the institutions, prejudices and power relations that serve it so well. The only way such fundamental changes will ever be made is if the majority of people decide they have had enough and get active.
Our needs will be fulfilled only when the economic forces which currently dictate society's skewed priorities are brought under real, democratic control. That's one way of describing socialism.
[Tom Flanagan is a national committee member of the Democratic Socialist Party.]