The family closet: Bob Katter and his brother

Bob Katter is the new Sir Joh. A right wing nutter, most famous for his ludicrous conservative commentary. He is like Pauline Hanson or Wilson Tuckey on a good day, giving voice to the extreme conservatism which makes irresistible fodder for send up.

In some ways a person like Katter is less politically dangerous than savvier politicians -- those who publicly present as more moderate but are actually quite difficult to pin-down and challenge. At least Katter is often dismissed as just plain loopy.

But loopy or not, Katter has some pretty hurtful things to say about gay men and lesbians. Last week he made headlines for vitriolically encouraging people to "laugh at” and "ridicule" the concept of gay marriage. He also announced his campaign to reclaim the word ‘gay’; a perfectly “healthy adjective” that has become captive to the gay lobby. (Ok, that last bit was a bit ridiculous and funny as well as offensive.)

So it is interesting that this morning nearly every newspaper in the country seems to be carrying pictures of Carl Katter. Carl Katter is Bob Katter’s brother. And Carl is gay. On national TV last night, Carl commented on Katter’s expressed views about homosexuality, saying, ''It's hurtful, it's dangerous, it's damaging and it's really inappropriate”. He also said that should he meet the right man, he would like to get married, although Katter would be an expected no-show at the wedding.

So what is it about Bob Katter having a gay brother that excites the media? Part of me thinks it is just a fine opportunity to lampoon him. In one of Katter’s infamous quotes he stated that he would ''walk to Bourke backwards if the poof population of North Queensland is any more than 0.001 per cent''. Haha! Got you there Bob! That 0.001 percent was eating his cornflakes at your breakfast table.

But there is also something powerful about a family member of a public homophobe outing themselves. It reminds the world that no matter how much distance someone tries to create between themself and the scourge of gay humanity, every family has its closet.

People say the darndest things...

In her weekly column for the Sun Herald last week Miranda Devine somehow managed to link Penny Wong’s baby with the London Riots. How did she get there?
Penny Wong and her partner are having a baby = supporters of same-sex marriage are happy for her and wonder if Wong and partner would like to marry = gay marriage will undermine the traditional nuclear family, the “last bastion of bourgeois morality” = fatherless families = “You only had to see the burning streets of London last week to see the manifestation of a fatherless society”.

Get it? Perfectly logical equation.

It made me think of some other bizarre associations people in public places have made.

In 2006, former Federal Member of Parliament, Danna Vale used an eloquent leap of logic to connect the ‘race-debate’ in Australia with the RU486 abortion pill. She claimed Australia would become a Muslim nation within 50 years because we (‘we white-faced-Christians’) are aborting ourselves out of history. I suspect this comment may have been a little off-the-cuff and she probably paid for it with a temporarily eggy face. But with logic like this you gotta wonder why she was elected to the team of people who RUN THE COUNTRY!

Senator Barnaby Joyce is of course always ripe for a corker. He recently explained that he is against gay marriage because it would adversely affect his four daughters. Says Barnaby, "We know that the best protection for those girls is that they get themselves into a secure relationship with a loving husband, and I want that to happen for them. I don't want any legislator to take that right away from me."

So I accept this logic is perhaps slightly more stable than Danna Vale’s. But it is still a bit wobbly. No-one is suggesting Barnaby’s daughters can’t get married are they? As Alyssa Betts wrote in the NT Times yesterday, “It is not known if he was trying to say his daughters were all lesbians, or if, instead, their prospective male partners would rather marry men if given the option.”

Keeping it clean: housework’s gender divide

The following piece appeared in the National Times on 21 February 2011.

As the television series Mad Men apparently spawns a new desire among women to wear aprons over gowns,  lippy smothered ear to ear, while vacuuming the floor – a new study suggests it is lesbian couples that have modernised the meaning of housework.


For the past two years, I have been involved in the Work, Love, Play study at La Trobe University. We have surveyed lesbian parents about their everyday family lives and how they organise their household tasks. Who does the dishes? Who takes out the garbage? Who puts the kids to bed?

We were essentially interested in whether same-sex couples organise their households differently to heterosexual couples, particularly once children are in the mix.

Our findings are that lesbian couples are more likely to report a fairly equal division of labour in their household, compared to their heterosexual counterparts. On the whole, lesbian mothers are less inclined to feel like they shoulder more of the housework or parenting responsibilities than their partner.

This is not to suggest lesbian couples are better on the home front than heterosexual couples. In fact, sexuality is, in many ways, a minor plot line in this story. Gender is the main topic of interest here.

The common thread was that women in lesbian relationships were doing what millions of heterosexual women do everyday – simultaneously managing the competing demands of work and family. Not only was there a more egalitarian sharing of household tasks, lesbian couples were much more likely than heterosexual couples to manage their work and family demands by both working part time.

Not the only gay in the village

In June this year the first child ever born through IVF in Australia turned 30. In this same month, the NSW Parliament debated whether to allow lesbian and gay couples to adopt children; journalists clamoured to ask the new Prime Minister to clarify her stance on gay marriage; and the media revealed findings from a high profile US study: children of lesbian parents grow up well adjusted. Like it or loathe it, the past few decades have ushered in a whole new social landscape for Australian families. Within this, lesbian and gay parents have achieved unprecedented levels of visibility. But for all that visibility, what is life really like for these parents and their children?


There are pockets in inner city areas where lesbian and gay parenting is pretty normalised and there is a lot of support available. There are 'Rainbow' playgroups where kids and adults find like minded friends, it is not hard to find services that openly promote themselves as gay friendly and most schools have pretty good anti-homophobia programs. Living in the inner city, however, isn't an option or a preference for many people – even gay people.

I am involved in some research at La Trobe University looking at the experiences of lesbian and gay parents. Surprisingly, of the 450 families who took part in our study, close to 60% did not live in the inner city. Instead, these families lived in the outer suburbs or regional/rural areas of Australia.

There is a lot of idyllic imagery associated with rural life. The pace is slow, towns feel safe and community bonds are strong and genuine. But the flip side of this can be a lack of anonymity and diversity that makes it hard for people to be 'different' in small towns. Sadly, a lot of what we hear about gay life in rural Australia relates to the high rate of suicide among young men who can't bear the shame or pain of 'coming out' to their small community.

Clip-art: you've come a long way baby ... maybe?

When searching for images with which to decorate this site, I typed the word 'gay' into the Microsoft Office online clipart search engine. Twenty-eight images appeared, seven of which depicted same-sex couples with children. The researcher in me started counting:

• female couples: 4

• male couples: 3

• non-caucasians: 1

• semi-decent artwork: possibly 2 but mostly 0

It should be said that all of these images are reasonably ambiguous. To a heterosexist eye they could easily appear to be 'mother, daughter and granddaughter' or 'Male Friend One congratulating Male Friend Two on his son's soccer prowess'. But they do come up under the category of ‘gay’, so at least someone at Microsoft has decided they must be same-sex parents.

Are clip-art images a good way to measure representation? Most likely NO. But it is interesting nonetheless.

Jen

Welcome

Welcome to the Work, Love and Play Blog!

This blogsite is dedicated to discussion about the politics and culture of same-sex parented families.

The blog has been created by the research team who are running the Work, Love and Play study. Work, Love and Play is a longitudinal study looking at the experiences of families parented by same-sex attracted (gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and intersex) couples and sole-parents. The study started in 2008 and we have funding to keep it running until 2014. So far over 450 families from Australia and New Zealand have been involved in the study.

The study is being run by the Bouverie Centre at LaTrobe University, with involvement from researchers at the Australian Research Centre in Sex, Health and Society, the Division of Health Studies (Counselling & Psychological Health) at LaTrobe University, Relationships Australia, Melbourne University Department of General Practice and Deakin University School of Nursing.

The study is being funded by the Australian Research Council, Relationships Australia (national and Victorian branch), Vic Health (the Victorian Health Promotion Foundation) and ACON (formerly the AIDS Council of NSW) with generous in-kind support from Gay and Lesbian Health Victoria and the Queensland Association for Healthy Communities.

The aim of the study is not to try to demonstrate whether or not the children of same-sex attracted parents have equal outcomes to other children. We feel like this work has been done. Instead, the focus of our study is the way in which same-sex families operate on a day to day level. Some questions we are interested in, among many others, are:

• How do same-sex couples with children organise their work and household responsibilities?

• What childcare options have same-sex parented families chosen?

• Do same-sex attracted sole-parents find support within the GLBTI community as parents?

• Are same-sex attracted parents connected to community networks and their extended families?

• Do same-sex attracted parents feel supported by community, welfare and health services?

We feel that questions such as these will help us better understand factors that support resilience in families parented by same-sex attracted couples and individuals. We also plan to use the findings from this study to provide some education and support to health and community services in working with same-sex parented families.

If you are reading this you may have been involved in this study in some way or have an interest in the study findings. We would love for you to stay in touch with us via this blog (if you are the sort of person who likes to read blogs!).

The purpose of the blog is partly to keep readers up to date with the study and our findings. But also to be a forum for discussion about political, social and cultural issues concerning same-sex parented families. We will post information about relevant current affairs, upcoming events and conferences and general ideas and commentary about issues relevant to same-sex attracted parents.

More formal information about the study (including publications of our findings) can be found on the Bouverie Centre website.

Cheers,

Jennifer Power
Principal Researcher on the project
Email me here