Married With Children

In the heated debate over Same Sex Marriage or Marriage Equality being allowed by law in Australia and the debate over whether there should be a parliamentary vote to enable it, a couple of cool voices were to be heard. Julie McCrossin who supports Marriage Equality is well known to Australians for her campaigns and work as a commentator. David Van Gend, a GP in Queensland and President of the Australian Marriage Forum, has published his own views opposing Same Sex Marriage in his Stealing From A Child and has travelled across Australia arguing his views. David Van Gend and Julie McCrossin addressed The Sydney Institute on Tuesday 22 November 2016.

MARRIED WITH CHILDREN

JULIE McCROSSIN

Let me begin by acknowledging we are on Aboriginal land, the land of the Gadigal people of the Eora nation and I pay my respects to Elders past and present and any Aboriginal people here today.

Thank you to Anne and Gerard Henderson for inviting me to speak tonight and thank you for coming.

I support changes to the Commonwealth Marriage Act to enable same-sex couples to marry here in Australia and to recognise marriages between same-sex couples conducted in international jurisdictions.

This is the second time I have spoken in support of reforms to the Commonwealth Marriage Act here at the Sydney Institute. My first talk on this topic here was in July 1999. The title of my presentation was, “Always a Bridesmaid, Never a Bride – Recognising Same-Sex Relationships.” I chose that title because my partner, Melissa Gibson had been a bridesmaid six or seven times, but we couldn’t get married and she couldn’t become a bride.

Melissa has two children, Luke and Amelia, from a prior relationship with their father, Michael Woods. Michael, Melissa and I have raised the children together since they were small – and we still do now. Until the children were 18, we lived in adjacent suburbs, so the children could move easily between both homes. We have attended hundreds of soccer games as a family across the Blue Mountains and Western Sydney, so that Mum, Dad and Julie could cheer the children together. We have shared all the birthdays. Every Christmas began with an open-house breakfast at Melissa and my home, so that all the family could be together, before going to varied lunches. On Mother’s Day and Father’s Day Michael, Melissa and I all exchanged cards and gifts.

We each attended a variety of Parent/Teacher nights. The children were four and six when I met Melissa. They are 24 and 26 now. Amelia is now Dr Amelia Woods, currently working in her first year as a doctor in Melbourne. Luke is a plumber and is working all over Greater Sydney. Both Luke and Amelia are in long-term, committed heterosexual relationships.

There is nothing that would give me more joy than to hear that Luke and Amelia were planning to marry and have children of their own. Melissa and I are now at an age when many of our gay and straight friends are becoming grandparents and Melissa is very keen to be a grandmother. For myself, I find it impossible to put into words what it would mean to me to hold a child of Luke or Amelia in my arms. I will leave it to the grandparents in the room tonight to explain what a precious and profound feeling that is.

Why am I telling you these personal things about my life and my family? I am telling you because I believe that “coming out” – and being open about our lives – often influences how people think and feel about gay and lesbian people.

In my experience, “coming out” can help decision-makers to include us in every aspect of community life, rather than exclude us. My whole life journey as a lesbian has been a journey from exclusion to inclusion. I believe our inclusion within the scope of the Commonwealth Marriage Act will be an important milestone on the journey to full citizenship and full equality before the law.

I first thought I was a lesbian when I was 13. I saw a film called The Loudest Whisper starring Shirley McLaine and Audrey Hepburn. It was based on a play by Lillian Hellman called The Children’s Hour. It is the story of two teachers who are falsely accused of being gay and what happens to them and their school. It is based on a true story.

If you want to understand the emotional climate in which gay and lesbian people of my era grew up, watch The Loudest Whisper. It ends with a suicide, as every play, book, or film on the theme of homosexuality did at that time.

When I accepted I was gay in the early 1970s, homosexuality was still a mental illness under the DSM (the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders), the so-called “psychiatrists’ bible”. In the early 1970s, homosexuality was the subject of the criminal law and all faith communities proclaimed it was against God’s will.

The changes I have seen in my lifetime give me great joy and hope for the future. Homosexuality was removed from the DSM in 1973. Homosexuality was gradually decriminalised in Australia, starting in South Australia in 1975 and concluding in Tasmania in 1994.

These days some faith communities welcome us to worship. We have seen open, gay and lesbian people accepted into our community’s leadership positions: teachers in schools, a President of the AMA, members of the High Court, a minister of the Crown and members of the clergy in some Christian churches and rabbis in some Jewish synagogues.

The Sydney Mardi Gras has changed from an edgy street protest with multiple arrests to an international community expression of inclusion. The marchers now include contingents from the defence forces, the police and first responders; political leaders from all parties; organisations from government, non-government and the private sector; and the Uniting Church and some other religious organisations. State and Territory laws now allow gay and lesbian people to adopt and foster children in several Australian jurisdictions.

Marriage equality is inevitable in Australia.

The leaders of all our major parties now support it. The interesting question is, why is it taking so long?

Meanwhile, gay and lesbian people – who want to celebrate their love in the traditional way and give legal force to their commitment to each other – have started getting married where they can.

Many Australian same-sex couples have already married in New Zealand, the United States, the UK, Canada and other countries. Some have married in embassies on Australian soil.

I always planned to wait until Melissa and I could marry in Australia. However, in 2013, I was diagnosed with stage four throat cancer. I was sitting having chemotherapy when I realised I may not have enough time to wait for the Commonwealth Marriage Act to change in Australia. I asked Melissa in the Kinghorn Cancer Centre, near St Vincent’s Hospital, if she would come to New York and marry me if I survived.

I am very pleased to tell you Melissa said, “Yes” and I survived. In April 2014 Luke, Amelia, Melissa and I travelled to New York. Michael, the children’s Dad, supported our plans and gave us a present. A handful of close friends gathered at the Office of the City Clerk in Manhattan for the civil ceremony. My brother, Dr Ian McCrossin came to New York and witnessed the marriage. On our return, a Blessing ceremony was held at South Sydney Uniting Church where Melissa and I go to church.

It was standing room only for that Blessing Service. Several of my friends took Communion for the first time in many years. I think they were heartened and moved by the inclusive joy and faith in that church that day. The Uniting Church ordains gay and lesbian people. They do not support marriage equality at this time, but they are having a respectful conversation about it.

I am an Elder on the Church Council of the South Sydney Uniting Church and the Treasurer. Our Minister, Andrew Collis is not gay but he welcomes everyone to his congregation. I am currently studying theology at the Uniting Theological College. I am also on the Board of SCEGGS Darlinghurst, an Anglican school that both I and Amelia attended. I have had the honour of being invited to speak at Speech Day on two occasions at SCEGGS over the past 20 years.

Again, I share these personal fragments of my life with you to demonstrate that within the Christian community there are places where gay and lesbian people are welcome and included. When Amelia was six years old, she asked me, “Why can’t you and Mummy get married”? All these years later, we are still looking for the answer.

Dr David van Gend, in his book Stealing from a Child. The injustice of “marriage equality’”(Connor Court Publishing 2016), cites research that demonstrates that children do best in married, heterosexual families with their biological parents. He points to the unreliable results of studies that suggest children can do just as well with same-sex partners.

The results of many of these studies can be challenged on a range of factors – lack of random selection of the people to be studied, lack of sample size, the perceived bias of the researcher and the perceived bias of the funding source.

Dr Van Gend also points to the fact that many of the children in the families that were studied were too young to speak for themselves. Whereas there are examples of adult children of same-sex couples speaking out about a sense of loss and a yearning to know the person who was the biological source of their life. Many of these adult children speak lovingly of their same-sex parents, while saying they still experience a sense of loss, or an absence in their life.

I believe we must listen to the voices of older children who express concern about their inability to identify or locate the man or woman who was the biological source of their life. Just as we must listen to any adult children who tell us that they felt the absence of a mother or father.

Of course, there are many different types of families with same-sex parents. Many of the children know their mother and their father, even if they are not living under the same roof.

I agree that we need good quality, long-term research into the experience of children from same-sex families – and all the other family types where children are raised – single parents, divorced and separated couples, and children of widowed and adopted families. We need research that uses excellent methodology with large, random samples. We need research that is conducted by independent researchers and funded independently by organisations who are not associated with advocacy.

The purpose of such independent research should be to help us, as a community, to identify things we can do to support children in all types of families. We want to help ALL children to be as happy and healthy and successful as possible. We need to promote the results of this research throughout the community via mainstream and social media.

Let’s talk about the challenges children face and what parents, extended family, teachers, the health sector and the general community can do to help support these children and their parents.

I’d like to give the last word to our children, Luke and Amelia. One of the big lessons I learnt at our marriage in New York and our blessing in South Sydney, was how happy it made our children. I asked them to answer these questions:

Firstly, it is argued by some opponents of same-sex marriage that the most reliable research indicates that a family with a married, heterosexual Mum and Dad, living together, delivers the best results for children. Should we therefore not allow same sex marriage? Secondly, what support would have helped you, as a child growing up?

Luke answered by text message:

I believe Mum and you should be able to get married in Australia. I believe marriage these days is more tied to law for most people, than religion. The only reason against marriage is the religious one for some people. Growing up, it would have been good just having a school counsellor, trained in dealing with children from same-sex households, available if we needed.

And Amelia responded with this email:

The evidence that children raised by heterosexual, married parents have better outcomes is not raised for any other argument except same-sex marriage, despite similar results with other populations.

If we were to really follow this argument through to its logical conclusion, we would limit pregnancies to married couples, outlaw divorce and adoption, and perhaps even consider removing the children of widows/widowers and single parents.

But these ideas seem ridiculous to us now, because we recognise that the most important factor for children is to have a loving home, and this is much preferable to an unhappy or unfamiliar nuclear family.

What support would have helped me growing up?
Honestly, I don’t actually think I needed any more support.

I’m a health professional now and so have great respect for good quality research, but I was shocked to hear these statistics as I feel that I was luckier than others with a traditional nuclear family.

I had an extra parent, and so an extra personality and set of values to learn from. I have a strong individual relationship with each of my parents, and my mother’s same-sex relationship gave me a model of a strong partnership.

I’m sure I wouldn’t have had such a happy life if my parents had stayed together. Watching my mothers marry in New York two years ago was an incredibly joyful and moving experience, and I can’t help but feel having that earlier in life would have made me more secure.

As to what might help children, I think the major support that would help is just having a community that is experiencing the same things at the same time – and talking about what works and what doesn’t work. So you are not constantly reinventing the wheel. And more discussions when we are young about gender identity and sexual orientation.

Thank you very much for listening.