Gay marriage costs Irish politicians nothing – abortion is another matter

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jun/10/gay-marriage-ireland-abortion-suzanne-moore

Version 0 of 1.

How the acceptance of homosexuality has become the key marker of modernity over the past few decades has been strange to observe. It is wonderful to see attitudes change despite predudice, queer-bashing and the continual closing of gay venues. Many straight people continue to congratulate themselves on their special ability to accept that gay people exist. This happens individually and nationally. Goodness me, Ireland isn’t only Angela’s Ashes and stag dos in Temple Bar, the feckers have voted for gay marriage! They have parachuted into the 21st century via a rainbow of drag queens and decency. Ireland defied its ever-dwindling clergy and just said: “Yes”.

Here, the church and the Tory party have given themselves hernias with their contortions over equal marriage. The Church of England can’t “modernise” as it is fearful of its congregation in many African countries. Cameron had to take on his own backbenchers who were worrying, as you do, that gay marriage would automatically lead to people marrying goats or their own brothers. But the climate was changing. A few years ago, someone asked me what was the gayest event that I had attended. I said the Tory party conference, as I had just spent five days with ministers telling me who was still in the closet, and gossipy aides and delegates who were out, proud and totally Tory.

When Cameron said: “I don’t support gay marriage despite being a Conservative. I support gay marriage because I am a Conservative,” he was exactly right, and that is why I don’t support it. Marriage is an inherently conservative institution. But I see it is a mechanism for change, and if people want to enter a solidly proprietorial state of serial monogamy/monotony, they should be able to. You would have to have a callused heart for it not to be lifted by the vote in Ireland.

But after the party, the comedown is this: gay marriage costs straight people and, significantly, most politicians nothing. Possibly a few extravagant wedding presents, but really nothing. Now that homosexuality is pinned down as something you are, rather than something you do, a certain gay identity is the straightest of all consumer straitjackets. Gay weddings are as pointless as every other wedding. But sure, I will fight for your right to party. And cake.

Yet as soon as that vote happened, people started asking: if Ireland can have gay marriage, when is it going to legalise abortion? Amnesty is now running a brilliant campaign on this issue. This is absolutely necessary, but what it does is show the glitch in the matrix of liberal thinking. It is easier for people to accept gay marriage than the reproductive rights of women. There is not an easy progression here. These “culture wars” are playing out in the US too, whence that phrase originates. Some Republican senators are coming round to equal marriage but remain staunchly anti-abortion.

This never means women don’t actually have abortions. When I first went to Dublin 30 years ago, friends were handing out phone numbers in Grafton Street so that Irish women could come to England. Ireland simply exports this issue. These women used to be on the ferries; now they sit pale and anxious on Ryanair flights, officially 4,000 of them a year. There have been some horrific high-profile cases such as Savita Halappanavar, who died because, as Alison Begas of Dublin Well Woman told Amnesty, a doctor said: “You are not dying enough” for them to intervene. A woman’s life is deemed to be worth less than that of an unviable foetus. A raped 14-year-old could go to prison if she has an abortion.

I hardly need to rehearse the pro-choice arguments here. I said in this paper in 1993 that I had an abortion. It was not a confession or an admission. It was a fact of my life, of many lives, and I feel no guilt. At that time, it was necessary just to say it in public. For although the majority support women’s right to choose, politicians keep prodding the existing legislation via discussions about time limits and “counselling”. It is as if the fundamental right of women to control our own bodies is still somehow up for negotiation.

The way this is done is by framing abortion as a grave moral issue. Homosexuality used to be framed this way too, as simply wrong, but something has shifted. There used to be an understanding between women and gay men that we were in it together. Some of that has fractured. Identity politics wins some battles, loses some wars. The liberal worldview says gay love is lovely and that women should be able to have sex freely.

But marriage is a way of tying everyone into the system, whereas women’s right to choose is still a threat to it. Let’s face it: a big gay wedding is easier to sell than the relief that so many feel when they have terminated a pregnancy.

So the mark of modernity, of where we are “at” as a society, is not simply whether we “accept” homosexuality: it remains centred on women’s bodily autonomy. The culture wars here, in Ireland and in the US will only be won when those in power “accept” that they have no business in my uterus. Or yours.