Ex-PM meets his match on gay marriage – his lesbian sister
He is a polarising former Australian prime minister and she is an outspoken Sydney councillor, but as brother and sister they are locked in an increasingly personal battle before a national vote on gay marriage.
Tony Abbott, a committed Catholic who was once a student at a seminary and who is nicknamed the ‘‘mad monk’’ by his detractors, is leading the opposition to legalisation. His sister, Christine Forster, a mother of four children who left her husband nine years ago for a woman she met on her suburban Sydney school run, is one of the most vocal proponents in favour.
Within hours of the news this week that a national ballot would be held on the issue next month, Abbott, 59, and Forster, 53, clashed on social media, radio and television in a campaign that is dividing the nation as it already has the Abbott family.
Forster – a communications executive with Australia’s largest oil and gas producer – accused her brother of scoring cheap political points after he revealed remarks that she had made to him privately about her failed marriage.
Abbott told a radio interviewer that his sister ‘‘joked years ago that she’d just got herself out of one marriage – why would she be rushing into another one?’’.
Forster responded on national TV that she found her brother’s remarks hurtful, as the breakdown of her 20-year marriage was not something to be laughed at.
She said the weeks leading up to the start of voting in the postal ballot on September 12 would be ‘‘very difficult’’, and that her brother was not making it easier.
She also took exception to Abbott’s public comments immediately after Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull confirmed that the ballot would be held before a vote in parliament late this year or early next year.
‘‘To say this is an issue about political correctness does trivialise something that is a very deeply held belief by myself and many other members of the community.’’
Forster said she hoped the siblings could set an example to the nation as to how people holding opposing views on gay marriage could have ‘‘a respectful and reasonable discussion and put emotions aside’’.
‘‘The Abbott family is like every other family. We do have differences of opinion on some things, but we are a normal, functional other.’’
Forster – the youngest of Abbott’s three sisters – has rarely spoken about falling in love with her partner, Virginia Edwards, but she told the Sydney Morning Herald in 2012 that Abbott and his wife, Margie, were the first members of the family to openly welcome her new partner into their home.
In the past, Abbott has described his sister’s decision as ‘‘brave’’ and ‘‘authentic’’.
The poll is opposed by advocates for same-sex marriage legalisation, who fear that it will foster hate attacks on gays. They believe that the issue should be decided immediately by a simple vote in parliament.
On Friday it emerged that Michael McCormack, the minister in charge of the ballot, write a homophobic column when he edited a country newspaper two decades ago. McCormack said that he was far more tolerant now. family ... we love each