International Day Against Homophobia

With the stigmas of immorality and perversion continuing to attach to LGBTI people, is it any wonder why in Australia over 60 per cent of same-sex attracted or gender questioning young people are bullied at school and experience considerably higher rates of depression?

In a society that still demands people's sexual identity be placed on the table if they are not heterosexual, coming out has become a double bind. Either a person must be public about their sexuality (in order to be honest) and risk social marginalisation, or as gestured to by Akermanis' comments, shamed or coerced into remaining silent in order to fit with a particular culture or atmosphere.

If homophobia is, as many seem to think, a peripheral issue, why is there so much political, legal and cultural capital invested in policing non-heterosexual conduct?

Our own laws continue to give credence to homophobia. Provocation defences in NSW criminal law provide legitimation of the rhetoric that homosexuality, in public manifestations, is a threatening presence to an "ordinary person". The common law formulation of the "homosexual advance defence", as it is colloquially referred to, may reduce a charge of murder to manslaughter. Effectively, it mitigates culpability in circumstances where a person of the same-sex made an unwanted, non-aggressive, sexual advance.

If, as Justice Kirby opines, a similar defence extended to women in relation to unwanted heterosexual male advances, how many heterosexual men would be left in Australia?

Correspondingly, the Marriage Act continues to discriminate against same-sex or gender diverse couples. Maintaining a hierarchy of intimacy and recognition continues to legitimate the idea that same-sex relationships are still undeserving of the same legislative respect and dignity as those in heterosexual ones.

So as we celebrate IDAHO, we need to confront the reasons why sexual and gender minorities continue to struggle for the recognition and visibility that so many others take for granted.

Sexuality is not a burden that non-heterosexuals should be forced to manage, or an identity that ought to involve oscillating in or out of closets. To combat homophobia, we need to have dialogue and reform built on eroding stigma and discrimination, until we manage to obliterate the need for the closet itself.