Magda Szubanski didn’t hold back on Q&A last night when the issue of gay marriage was raised.
On Monday night’s panel the Kath and Kim star publically condemned the idea of a plebiscite on gay marriage and recalled her youthful struggles of feeling suicidal because she though being gay would mean she’d have an “absolutely terrible life”.
“The difference between LGBTQI people and any other minority is that in every other minority group the family shares the minority status,” Magda said.
“As an LGBTQI person you are a minority of one within your own family. It is such a precarious feeling.”
Magda, like many gay marriage advocates, believes a plebiscite would cause more harm and humiliation to the gay community – especially vulnerable LGBTQI youth.
She said that gay couples not being allowed to marry “means you are not considered to be a fully human person.”
Magda added: “Every time they knock back those bills in Parliament how do you think we feel? We know it’s telling us we’re lesser. That contributes to the lack of self-esteem and the self-harm that LGBTQI people have done to ourselves for decades.”
Deputy Nationals leader Fiona Nash was also on the ABC panel and as an MP that supports the governments use of a plebiscite Szubanski challenged her view with an emotional hypothetical.
Szubanski asked Nash: “One simple question: Do you think I’m equal to you?”
Nash answered: “Of course I do.”
Szubanski: “If I was your daughter, and I’m being gay, would you think that I should have the right to be married?”
Nash: “I’ve been asked this question a lot over the last 12 months and my response was that my view is still the traditional view of marriage. I love my children regardless of what they ever brought home for me would make absolutely no difference at all. I completely respect your view and your desire to see that as equality …”
Szubanski: “But you won’t give me my rights. Thanks for nothing.”
While Nash didn’t change her position, and fellow panellist and independent senator Jacqui Lambie hardly engaged in the same-sex debate, rocker Jimmy Barnes was at the desk supporting Magda’s view that a plebiscite could get “ugly”.
Barnes referenced Ireland’s 2015 same-sex marriage legislation which was decided by a referendum after months of campaigning from both sides of the debate. The singer said his view was that it wasn’t wise to put families through it.
“I have friends who lived in Ireland and it was very, very ugly,” Barnes said of Ireland’s gay marriage referendum. “It got really below the belt.”
He added: “Like I said at the start, no-one asked us when they changed it in the first place,” Barnes said, talking about the Howard government’s change of the Marriage Act in 2004 to outline marriage as between a “man and a woman”.
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