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From This Day Forward
Marriage Equality in Australia
249 pages, Paperback
First published June 27, 2015
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4 people want to read
About the author
Rodney Croome
4 books2 followersRodney Peter Croome AM is an Australian LGBT rights activist and academic. Croome currently serves as the spokesperson for the Tasmanian Gay and Lesbian Rights Group, National Convenor of Australian Marriage Equality and one of the founders of the Australian Coalition for Equality (ACE).
Croome grew up on a dairy farm in Tasmania's North West and studied European History at the University of Tasmania. He was the founding president and long-term board member of the Tasmanian LGBT support organisation, 'Working It Out' as well as serving on various other similar organisations and had been in a leading role in the establishing challenging-homophobia education in Tasmanian state schools and in the Tasmanian Police, as well as the instituting of anti-discrimination laws in Tasmania.
He also fronted the successful campaign to decriminalise homosexuality in Tasmania, which until 1 May 1997 was a criminal offence punishable by up to 25 years in jail. That campaign saw Tasmanian activists take their case to the United Nations (Toonen v Australia), the Federal Government and the High Court.
In 1997 in the case of Croome v Tasmania, Croome applied to the High Court of Australia for a ruling as to whether the Tasmanian laws were inconsistent with the Federal Human Rights (Sexual Conduct) Act (1994). The Tasmanian Government repealed the relevant Criminal Code provisions after failing in its attempts to have the matter struck out.
For his extensive work in this area he was made the inaugural recipient of the Tasmanian Humanitarian of the Year Award and awarded the Chris Carter Memorial Award for contributions to the gay and lesbian community by the Australian Democrats in 1991.
In 1994, he was shortlisted for Australian of the Year. In January 2001 he was awarded the Centenary Medal for "service and extensive contribution to gay and lesbian law reform" and in June 2003 he was appointed as a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) for "service to the community as a human rights advocate, particularly through promoting tolerance and understanding of the human rights of gay and lesbian people".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rodney_C...
Croome grew up on a dairy farm in Tasmania's North West and studied European History at the University of Tasmania. He was the founding president and long-term board member of the Tasmanian LGBT support organisation, 'Working It Out' as well as serving on various other similar organisations and had been in a leading role in the establishing challenging-homophobia education in Tasmanian state schools and in the Tasmanian Police, as well as the instituting of anti-discrimination laws in Tasmania.
He also fronted the successful campaign to decriminalise homosexuality in Tasmania, which until 1 May 1997 was a criminal offence punishable by up to 25 years in jail. That campaign saw Tasmanian activists take their case to the United Nations (Toonen v Australia), the Federal Government and the High Court.
In 1997 in the case of Croome v Tasmania, Croome applied to the High Court of Australia for a ruling as to whether the Tasmanian laws were inconsistent with the Federal Human Rights (Sexual Conduct) Act (1994). The Tasmanian Government repealed the relevant Criminal Code provisions after failing in its attempts to have the matter struck out.
For his extensive work in this area he was made the inaugural recipient of the Tasmanian Humanitarian of the Year Award and awarded the Chris Carter Memorial Award for contributions to the gay and lesbian community by the Australian Democrats in 1991.
In 1994, he was shortlisted for Australian of the Year. In January 2001 he was awarded the Centenary Medal for "service and extensive contribution to gay and lesbian law reform" and in June 2003 he was appointed as a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) for "service to the community as a human rights advocate, particularly through promoting tolerance and understanding of the human rights of gay and lesbian people".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rodney_C...
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
April 29, 2016
"nobody writes songs about civil union" (Beth Robinson)
On the surface, this quote is frivolous and does not make a strong point for same-sex marriage. However, this quote strike me as a perfect example for marriage equality. If same-sex couple's marriage are labelled as anything else other than marriage, then there are no equality, because our society would be made of some people who are more equal than others.
Onto the review of the book.
In this book the author managed to line up all the anti-marriage equality arguments and knocked them over one by one with evidence, statistics and logic. I found it interesting that frequently the same argument used to oppose same sex marriage can be use to support it.
This book is a recommended read for people who are support of marriage equality. It will help arm them with clearer answers when they run into the anti marriage equality camp.
People who are genuinely fearful of samesex marriage leading to the collapse of our society and bringing the end of the world should read this book as well. This book will provide them with clear statistics and evidences of countries around the world who have had samesex marriage for years and they still go on functioning.
On the surface, this quote is frivolous and does not make a strong point for same-sex marriage. However, this quote strike me as a perfect example for marriage equality. If same-sex couple's marriage are labelled as anything else other than marriage, then there are no equality, because our society would be made of some people who are more equal than others.
Onto the review of the book.
In this book the author managed to line up all the anti-marriage equality arguments and knocked them over one by one with evidence, statistics and logic. I found it interesting that frequently the same argument used to oppose same sex marriage can be use to support it.
This book is a recommended read for people who are support of marriage equality. It will help arm them with clearer answers when they run into the anti marriage equality camp.
People who are genuinely fearful of samesex marriage leading to the collapse of our society and bringing the end of the world should read this book as well. This book will provide them with clear statistics and evidences of countries around the world who have had samesex marriage for years and they still go on functioning.
October 20, 2015
In every writer’s life there comes a time when a piece written by someone else renders our own contribution unnecessary. After exploring the issue of marriage equality in my country for more than a decade, Rodney Croome’s new book has finally done this for me.
From This Day Forward: Marriage Equality in Australia is an aggregation of Croome’s major writing on the marriage equality debate to date, including updates on his 2010 contribution to Why Vs. Why: Bill Muehlenberg and Rodney Croome debate Gay Marriage (Pantera Press).
But Croome’s collection is much more that; it’s the best document Australia has to move the debate - finally - into legislation.
The only possible rebuttal to From This Day Forward is religious ranting or political belligerence, because, as Croome puts it: “The critics of marriage equality are trapped in an intellectual cul-de-sac.”
I had a particular interest in reading this book: I was keen to fact-check my own publication Questionable Deeds: Making a stand for equal love against a more comprehensive document covering the story of Australia’s legislative failure, but I was unaware of Croome’s book until it was launched in Brisbane last week.
It’s a great year for books by same-sex attracted writers. With Magda Szubanski’s memoir Reckoning, and the rerelease of Timothy Conigrave’s Holding the Man off the back of the movie release, gay and lesbian writing is getting a great run.
Although like my title, From This Day Forward does not have a huge marketing machine behind it. This makes for a hard sell at a time when readers and audiences are at marriage equality saturation point, there’s an overbearing unwillingness to just get it done, and the mainstream media seems incapable of selling a story of what it sees as a dead horse, slaughtered by both sides of parliament.
Croome’s book is a well-articulated exploration of the total lack of arguments left for opposing marriage equality. It stands like a boundary, behind which the debate will retreat no longer. For someone who has heard and endured all the classic approaches (he was confronted by one at his launch - the old ‘why call it marriage?’ chestnut), in person and in his book, Croome - the national convenor of Australian Marriage Equality - maintains the neutrality of an activist prepared to go on calmly answering loaded questions forever.
I admire such public strength. My own book reveals my inability to be as dispassionate. Driven by grief, fear and pain, I wrote the awful truth about the depth of my disenfranchisement in Questionable Deeds, revealing how prejudice and lax laws robbed me of self determination as a surviving spouse.
Although I was relieved my research stood up without the benefit of reading Croome’s book, what encouraged me more was his call to action from the LGBTI community to share our experiences.
“Whatever lies behind the power of personal stories, they are immensely effective in showing how marriage inequality affects ordinary people day-to-day. They tap into our desire to understand the ideas and feeling of others,” Croome writes.
Our stories are most effective for the cause when we manage to bend the ear of our federal MPs, Croome writes. Mine is Andrew Laming, federal member for the Queensland electorate of Bowman, a regular flip-flopper on marriage equality.
At his launch, Croome paid tribute to Queensland’s major contribution to the legislative push. It’s here that Warren Entsch (Liberal federal member for Leichhardt), and Teresa Gambaro (Liberal federal member for Brisbane, who launched Croome’s book last week), joined forces with Terri Butler (Labor federal member for Griffith) to co-sponsor a cross-party bill on marriage equality.
Since the entire house of representatives owned the bill, this was a unique moment in the journey, and a shining example of politicians getting their heads around the positive impact of equality on the mental health and wellbeing of their constituents. Andrew Laming would do well to watch and learn, and he could start by buying Croome’s book, and mine. He was invited to my book launch, but did not respond.
Croome also gets to the heart of the current plan for a marriage equality referendum or plebiscite.
“Human rights defenders are rightly concerned about putting inalienable rights to equality and personal autonomy to a show of hands,” he writes, underlining how there’s no constitutional requirement to ask the people on marriage when it was parliament that autonomously altered its definition in the first place.
I support Croome’s view that a national vote on marriage equality would pass the law. Even if the regular polls are significantly wrong, the majority of Australians would say yes.
“My concern is with the process, not the outcome,” Croome writes, referring to the high price that would be paid by the LGBTI community in terms of our mental health.
It’s in this zone that Croome’s book and mine intersect. Croome quotes statistics gathered in the wake of the banning of marriage equality in 2004 - the year my partner died - which showed a sudden increase in mental health challenges for LGBTI.
Of the 2004 ban, I wrote: “It would have passed through my consciousness in my deepest grief and registered only as another reason to feel dreadfully unsafe about being same-sex attracted in my own country.”
I recall the sadness that went into writing that sentence, and nearly deleting it from subsequent drafts because I’d kept such deep-seated emotions in check while remembering the daily struggle of grief and depression in that terrible year. Croome’s book has finally put my struggle to process my disenfranchisement in context.
A major new element of From This Day Forward is an essay ‘Flight from the gilded cage: addressing criticism of marriage equality from the left’.
It’s an area of great interest, not just for those of us who are shocked at how the marginalised seek to marginalise others, but also for anyone wanting to advance their knowledge on the last bastions of objection.
At my own book launch, in conversation with No Fibs’ editor Margo Kingston, she expressed a wish that I’d written more on marriage equality opposition that didn’t stem from homophobia.
I touched on it in my afterword, but Croome’s essay is the most comprehensive and timely argument taken up to several high-profile commentators who have provided great fodder for the religious right over the years.
Croome confronts them all - from former Prime Minister Julia Gillard and her feminist arguments, to author Robert Dessaix and historian Dennis Altman, who have long argued that same-sex attracted people should not need such a heteronormative institution as marriage (although Altman began shifting his stance this year).
This essay validated all the times I’d thrown stuff at the television seeing these commentators failing the entire LGBTI community with their frivolous, often under-researched naysaying.
If you’ve endured the years of debate, From This Day Forward is worth reading for this boost alone.
From This Day Forward: Marriage Equality in Australia is an aggregation of Croome’s major writing on the marriage equality debate to date, including updates on his 2010 contribution to Why Vs. Why: Bill Muehlenberg and Rodney Croome debate Gay Marriage (Pantera Press).
But Croome’s collection is much more that; it’s the best document Australia has to move the debate - finally - into legislation.
The only possible rebuttal to From This Day Forward is religious ranting or political belligerence, because, as Croome puts it: “The critics of marriage equality are trapped in an intellectual cul-de-sac.”
I had a particular interest in reading this book: I was keen to fact-check my own publication Questionable Deeds: Making a stand for equal love against a more comprehensive document covering the story of Australia’s legislative failure, but I was unaware of Croome’s book until it was launched in Brisbane last week.
It’s a great year for books by same-sex attracted writers. With Magda Szubanski’s memoir Reckoning, and the rerelease of Timothy Conigrave’s Holding the Man off the back of the movie release, gay and lesbian writing is getting a great run.
Although like my title, From This Day Forward does not have a huge marketing machine behind it. This makes for a hard sell at a time when readers and audiences are at marriage equality saturation point, there’s an overbearing unwillingness to just get it done, and the mainstream media seems incapable of selling a story of what it sees as a dead horse, slaughtered by both sides of parliament.
Croome’s book is a well-articulated exploration of the total lack of arguments left for opposing marriage equality. It stands like a boundary, behind which the debate will retreat no longer. For someone who has heard and endured all the classic approaches (he was confronted by one at his launch - the old ‘why call it marriage?’ chestnut), in person and in his book, Croome - the national convenor of Australian Marriage Equality - maintains the neutrality of an activist prepared to go on calmly answering loaded questions forever.
I admire such public strength. My own book reveals my inability to be as dispassionate. Driven by grief, fear and pain, I wrote the awful truth about the depth of my disenfranchisement in Questionable Deeds, revealing how prejudice and lax laws robbed me of self determination as a surviving spouse.
Although I was relieved my research stood up without the benefit of reading Croome’s book, what encouraged me more was his call to action from the LGBTI community to share our experiences.
“Whatever lies behind the power of personal stories, they are immensely effective in showing how marriage inequality affects ordinary people day-to-day. They tap into our desire to understand the ideas and feeling of others,” Croome writes.
Our stories are most effective for the cause when we manage to bend the ear of our federal MPs, Croome writes. Mine is Andrew Laming, federal member for the Queensland electorate of Bowman, a regular flip-flopper on marriage equality.
At his launch, Croome paid tribute to Queensland’s major contribution to the legislative push. It’s here that Warren Entsch (Liberal federal member for Leichhardt), and Teresa Gambaro (Liberal federal member for Brisbane, who launched Croome’s book last week), joined forces with Terri Butler (Labor federal member for Griffith) to co-sponsor a cross-party bill on marriage equality.
Since the entire house of representatives owned the bill, this was a unique moment in the journey, and a shining example of politicians getting their heads around the positive impact of equality on the mental health and wellbeing of their constituents. Andrew Laming would do well to watch and learn, and he could start by buying Croome’s book, and mine. He was invited to my book launch, but did not respond.
Croome also gets to the heart of the current plan for a marriage equality referendum or plebiscite.
“Human rights defenders are rightly concerned about putting inalienable rights to equality and personal autonomy to a show of hands,” he writes, underlining how there’s no constitutional requirement to ask the people on marriage when it was parliament that autonomously altered its definition in the first place.
I support Croome’s view that a national vote on marriage equality would pass the law. Even if the regular polls are significantly wrong, the majority of Australians would say yes.
“My concern is with the process, not the outcome,” Croome writes, referring to the high price that would be paid by the LGBTI community in terms of our mental health.
It’s in this zone that Croome’s book and mine intersect. Croome quotes statistics gathered in the wake of the banning of marriage equality in 2004 - the year my partner died - which showed a sudden increase in mental health challenges for LGBTI.
Of the 2004 ban, I wrote: “It would have passed through my consciousness in my deepest grief and registered only as another reason to feel dreadfully unsafe about being same-sex attracted in my own country.”
I recall the sadness that went into writing that sentence, and nearly deleting it from subsequent drafts because I’d kept such deep-seated emotions in check while remembering the daily struggle of grief and depression in that terrible year. Croome’s book has finally put my struggle to process my disenfranchisement in context.
A major new element of From This Day Forward is an essay ‘Flight from the gilded cage: addressing criticism of marriage equality from the left’.
It’s an area of great interest, not just for those of us who are shocked at how the marginalised seek to marginalise others, but also for anyone wanting to advance their knowledge on the last bastions of objection.
At my own book launch, in conversation with No Fibs’ editor Margo Kingston, she expressed a wish that I’d written more on marriage equality opposition that didn’t stem from homophobia.
I touched on it in my afterword, but Croome’s essay is the most comprehensive and timely argument taken up to several high-profile commentators who have provided great fodder for the religious right over the years.
Croome confronts them all - from former Prime Minister Julia Gillard and her feminist arguments, to author Robert Dessaix and historian Dennis Altman, who have long argued that same-sex attracted people should not need such a heteronormative institution as marriage (although Altman began shifting his stance this year).
This essay validated all the times I’d thrown stuff at the television seeing these commentators failing the entire LGBTI community with their frivolous, often under-researched naysaying.
If you’ve endured the years of debate, From This Day Forward is worth reading for this boost alone.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews