Discrimination not in the manual

AS a long-time civil celebrant, I resent my profession becoming a political football in the marriage equality debate.

This week the Lower House of Parliament will debate the Bill from Senator Dean Smith allowing same-sex couples to marry.

There will be a proposal to allow civil celebrants to legally refuse to marry particular couples, including same-sex couples, if we have a religious or conscientious objection to their relationship.

I don’t want this exemption, and surveys show the overwhelming majority of my fellow civil celebrants don’t want it either.

We are delegated by the government to perform an official duty — solemnising marriages — and we should not be allowed to abdicate that duty whenever we feel like it.

We particularly shouldn’t be allowed to pick and choose who we serve on the basis of religious or other personal beliefs. It would be like giving an official at Service Tasmania who just happens to be Jewish the right to refuse drivers licences to Muslims.

The Australian way is to treat everyone equally and fairly regardless of their religion, gender or sexual orientation.

That ethos was reflected in the overwhelming Yes vote in the recent postal survey.

We voted Yes to remove discrimination, not perpetuate it. What also annoys me and many other civil celebrants about the proposal to allow us to discriminate against couples seeking to marry is that it impugns our professionalism.

It suggests that we alone among all the professions can and should be able to put our own personal prejudices ahead of professional ethics.

It says what we do isn’t serious or important enough to be governed by the same rules as everyone else.

I know from my 23 years as a celebrant that this is deeply wrong.

Civil celebrants discharge a duty to the community that is extremely important.

We guide couples and families at one of the most important moments in their lives. We counsel, unite and uplift people, as well as making sure all the official “i”s are dotted and “t”s are crossed.

To perform this important role we undergo regular professional development and are subject to regular reviews.

We are trained professionals and we reject the suggestion our personal feelings do or should get in the way of that.

But I think what rankles me most about the discrimination exemption being proposed is that it is only being proposed to smooth over differences in government ranks.

As I’ve said, the overwhelming majority of civil celebrants don’t want this wholesale discrimination exemption, and there has been no call for it from our representative bodies.

It is only on the table in an effort to placate members of the Government who are against marriage equality and who want to rescue something from their defeat in the survey.

Our profession is a pawn in someone else’s political games and we want it to stop.

There have been many changes to marriage and to civil celebrancy since the latter was created in 1973.

We have seen the introduction of no-fault divorce, the recognition of de facto relationships and the softening of attitudes towards sex and children outside marriage.

The links between religion and marriage have also changed with most couples now choosing to marry in civil ceremonies.

Marriage ceremonies have evolved as well, becoming more personal and more adventurous.

I have conducted a wide range of ceremonies, incorporating valued cultural traditions and personal beliefs.

I have been flown into the wilderness, hiked into the forest, stood alongside waterfalls and on windswept beaches, and celebrated nuptials at dawn on our majestic mountain, kunanyi.

I have married couples who are young and old, who have children already or don’t intend to have children, who have been living together for decades and who are divorced.

Like other civil celebrants I coped quite well with all these changes without the need for special treatment or legal mollycoddling.

We will also cope quite well, thank you very much, with same-sex couples marrying. I didn’t become a marriage celebrant to marry particular kinds of couples.

I became a marriage celebrant to celebrate and solemnise the love and commitment between two people. That is the common thread in all the many different marriage ceremonies I have performed. The same thread that will run through the many same-sex marriage ceremonies I look forward to performing. Most heterosexual couples I marry ask me to add a disclaimer to the mandatory statement I am forced to make during marriage ceremonies about marriage being “the union of a man and a woman”.

Like them and most other

Australians, I look forward to the day when we can drop that discriminatory statement and celebrate love wherever it exists. Let’s not mar that happy day by giving civil celebrants an opt-out clause that we have never asked for, don’t want, and that will continue to stigmatise some relationships as less valuable than others. Maxine Lowry is a Hobart civil celebrant and former vice president of the Australian Federation of Civil Celebrants.

We shouldn’t be allowed to pick and choose who we serve on the basis of religious or other personal beliefs