Why Brexit and Trump make me nervous about the marriage equality vote
Let’s say you live in Potts Point or Darlinghurst or Fitzroy or Brunswick. You’ve checked your enrolment details, you’ve familiarised yourself with this weird thing called a postbox, been to the rallies, changed your avatar to a rainbow flag and share articles supporting marriage equality on your social media.
Everyone you know supports marriage equality – even your parents! You’re going to vote yes. Of course you are! Who are these no voters anyway – apart from weird religious people that you hear being interviewed on the ABC in an effort to get a bit of balance.
You’ve even made attempts to understand the no position – reading no opeds in the papers. But none are particularly compelling. You hateshare them on Twitter. It’s like the no people are scratching around for an argument, and the only thing they illuminate is their own prejudice.
Welcome to my bubble – this is how I think, and according to a survey by the ABC it’s a view shared by many in the inner city. In fact their statistics on marriage equality show a very stark inner city v country and suburban divide.
In Australia, with the gentrification of our inner urban areas, this divide also indicates a split between knowledge and culture workers in the inner city who tend to be progressive and left-leaning, and the conservative swathe of voters in the suburban and country areas. Spending time recently in a small Victorian country town I’ve observed that the bars and restaurants that attract cashed-up city people as well as local knowledge and culture workers, are festooned with rainbow flags and marriage equality posters. While the more working-class watering holes where the tradies drink don’t carry or fly the rainbow flag. There is a certain amount of campaign fatigue already. Which way do you vote when you’re outside the bubbles that keenly feel a personal and/or political stake in this issue?
The DNA encoded in this divide between inner city and outer suburban presents a risk for the yes camp. That is that a group of rightwing, largely religious-inspired establishment figures in church and politics can find their way to persuading the larger “silent majority” and bring about a win for the conservatives. We’ve seen it before.
Globally, in recent years this progressive class has experienced a pushback in its ideals and interests when it comes to the ballot box.
Take Brexit. The vote to leave took many, in both the remain and leave camps, by surprise. Commentators trying to do a post-mortem on the situation, which of course means doing a post-mortem on Britain, framed the story as a fight between a global elite, many of whom reside in the capital, and those who lacked transportable skills, education and a certain type of swagger. Think of it as a battle between the readers of the Daily Mail and the Economist. Or as UK academic David Goodhart put it – the Somewheres (people who have a local, regional identity) and Everywheres (globalists, more likely to live in the capital).
Then there was the US election – where the right accused Hillary Clinton of a liberal agenda with a focus on identity politics and rights. She was defeated not only by evangelical Christians but by a swathe of conservative voters in the rust belts – some of whom were economically struggling and felt left behind by progressive ideals. The reality is that a large portion of Donald Trump voters are actually economically well off.
Guy Rundle, exploring the popular pushback against a progressive agenda, wrote in the Saturday Paper: “The progressive class has taken its formative values – radical openness, borderlessness, cosmopolitanism, ungroundedness – as unreflected upon virtues. They have marked any resistance to them as political evil … This class has rolled over the old Marxist delusion – that the working class are necessarily internationalist – into gender and race issues, and then dispensed with economic class altogether. Those outside the progressive class have held on for a decade or more waiting for real recognition of their demands. Denied it, a chunk of them broke off and voted Trump into power.”
JD Vance, author of Hillbilly Elegy – a must-read book for anyone who wanted to peer outside their liberal bubble – wrote after Trump was elected: “The feeling that so many of America’s opinion leaders see your concerns as the product of stupidity at best, or racism at worst, confirms the worst fears of many. They already worry that the coastal elites don’t care about them, and many among those elites seem happy to comply.”
Could this backlash against progressives happen with the marriage equality vote? And could the vote be perceived as a narrow identity politics issue that for many voters doesn’t speak to their anxieties about rising house and electricity prices, or a dwindling resources boom?
There is no doubt that Tony Abbott and co want to cast themselves as anti-establishment figures who represent the silent majority, in the mould of such Men of the People as Trump and Nigel Farage. This silent majority they appeal to, according to the former opposition leader John Hewson are a “great mass of the electorate that are rarely polled accurately, rarely let their views known, yet determine electoral outcomes”.
The conservative Australian pundit David Flint also believes in harnessing the potential of a silent majority. In 2013 in Give us Back our Country he argued that if you want conservative values to prevail in Australia, the winning strategy is direct democracy because he believed the silent majority are essentially socially and politically conservative.
The only way that progressives would win, according to his thesis, is by controlling the power structures.
We do live in an essentially a conservative country – where according to my colleague David Marr “change only comes with a great deal of pain”. This is a country where even when the ostensibly more progressive Labor party was in power and had the chance to bring in marriage equality, squandered the opportunity to satisfy the conservative trade unions.
The politicians are scared, pensive and cautious of change. But what about the people? Are we ready now?
It is wrong to assume the silent majority would really say no to marriage equality.
In the Australian conservative mainstream there is a strong element of a fair go that travels beyond the usual progressive/conservative battlelines. This fair go translates as “as a heterosexual I can get married to my husband/wife – so why shouldn’t everyone?” The fairness argument is logical and very hard to counter.
That’s why the most effective campaigning for marriage equality is persuading soft voters – heterosexual, instinctively conservative, perhaps slightly nervous – that a yes vote is a vote for them too. That it’s not for others leading lives they don’t lead but about healing pain and unfairness across society. A better, more generous, Australia where this issue just isn’t an issue any more.
It is wrong to assume that the silent majority would really say no to marriage equality