A Penny for your thoughts
One reaction to Penny Wong’s baby announcement has a bewildered Alasdair Duncan scratching his head
Reaction to Penny Wong’s baby announcement was as predictable as it was exasperating but one in particular has a bewildered Alasdair Duncan scratching his head.
When Senator Penny Wong announced last month that she and her long-term partner Sophie Allouache were having a baby via IVF, the scuffle that followed in the press and on the blogs was as predictable as it was exasperating. Fred Nile came out and condemned the couple for setting a bad example – as if anyone was really expecting him to do any different. Columnist Miranda Devine accused Wong’s supporters of twisting the announcement to suit their own political ends, then promptly twisted the announcement to suit her own political ends. A rally about the sanctity of the family was held – teeth were gnashed and tears were wept, although Bob Katter’s trusty hat remained perched on his head at a jaunty angle, suggesting that he was having none of this business. Amidst all this bad noise, the Prime Minister came out and congratulated the happy couple – she seemed fairly genuine in her support, although a few years down the line, if the kid starts questioning Auntie Julia about her stance on same-sex marriage, the conversation might take a bit of an awkward turn.
Of all the responses, the one that stuck with me the most was Devine’s, because of one glaring contradiction it contained. Midway through her article, Devine suggested that, in choosing to publicly announce her impending motherhood rather than keeping it a secret, Penny Wong was contributing to a climate of moral decay similar to the one that sparked last month’s London riots. The chief catalyst of those riots, Devine said, was a “fatherless society”, or, more simply put, a generation of feckless children, raised without father figures and therefore without any kind of parental authority, running wild on the streets and setting fire to stuff. Devine’s stance seemed to be that same-sex parents, specifically women, are the first step in a chain of cause and effect, leading to inevitable societal collapse. Then her logic got really wacky.
When Devine was done scolding Penny Wong for bringing about the moral decay of the western world, she offered … well, ‘congratulations’ would be taking it too far, but she qualified her previous statements. She admitted that not all fatherless households are bad for children, then went on to say that Wong and her partner Sophie Allouache “will no doubt be fine mothers, with the financial and personal competence to provide their child a stable, loving upbringing, despite not having a father in the home.”
That’s the bit that really got me. I had to read the article again a couple of times just to make sure I had the whole thing straight. Devine had come around to the point that, while same-sex parents in general are bad, this specific set of same-sex parents seem like decent, upstanding citizens, so whatever, they get a pass. ‘Bigot’ is a word that gets tossed around an awful lot in the media, and while I’m not coming out here and accusing Miranda Devine of being a bigot, this kind of reasoning tells us a lot about the nature of bigotry.
Bigotry works best in generalisations, because when you start to get down to specifics, the whole thing falls apart. “Refugees are a bunch of bludgers who are coming over to get a free ride from Australians, and they can all go get stuffed – except for that Vietnamese family next door, who are pretty decent and hard-working, so let’s leave them out of this.” “Gay people are all a bunch of fags, and letting them get married will destroy the very foundations this country is built on – except for my cousin and his boyfriend, they’re pretty good guys so let’s give them a break.” The inherent insanity in both of those statements is pretty clear, right? While failure to distinguish between people as broad social constructs and people as actual flesh and blood human beings is nothing new, logic like Devine’s is no less infuriating.
Alasdair Duncan is the author of Sushi Central and Metro, and a columnist for AXN magazine. Follow him on Twitter: @alasdairduncan
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