NO CHILD OF MINE

You may not have known about Angela Shanahan until last Thursday’s episode of the ABC’s Q&A, in which she was drawn into a rather heated debate with gay journalist David Marr over the Catholic Church’s teachings on homosexuality.

But this was only one in a series of platforms from which Shanahan has launched her anti-gay views. A socially conservative columnist for hire who’s been published in most of the mainstream papers, one of her reccurring bugbears is equal rights for same-sex couples, particularly with regard to adoption. In Shanahan’s world, ‘lesbians and other single women who have deliberately chosen a lifestyle that reduces the role of the father to carefully chosen but anonymous sperm donor … gives the lie to the politically correct argument that anyone should be able to form a family’.

Furthermore, in opposing the ACT Stanhope government’s attempts to legislate for civil unions, Shanahan argued the proposed Act ‘was really about homosexual relationships. ... It is about sex. ... It is about a group of people who want their kind of sex accepted in the same way as most people’s brand of sex. The public is being bamboozled into accepting that it is the same as heterosexuality, therefore those relationships are just as good.’

Pretty meaty stuff, though some may argue it’s about what we’ve come to expect from conservative columnists opposed to equality and civil liberties. But what makes Shanahan stand out from the wailing wall of queer opponents is that she also happens to be the mother of a gay man. Of her nine children, elder son Brendan, also a columnist, is described as ‘the funny gay nephew of Bill Bryson’ in one review of his book, In Turkey I am Beautiful.

Of course, it’s perfectly possible that Brendan has a great relationship with his mother. But having read many of Angela’s anti-gay tirades over the years, it’s saddening that she appears to be allowing her dogmatic fervour to cloud judgment of her own child. I have never once read Angela write how proud she is of her gay son, or how he’s shown her the error of her ways. If anything, she seems more resolutely homophobic these days.

Indeed, I almost admire how militantly she has held the courage of her unfortunate convictions. From Janet Albrechtsen to Nancy Reagan and Dick Cheney, we’ve seen how some conservatives so easily let go of their parochial ‘pro-life’, homophobic, racist and/on misogynist agendas the moment it’s one of their loved ones who is begging to be euthanised, or requiring stem cells for physical recovery, or seeking to produce a family with their lesbian partner.

But not Angela Shanahan. A gay son appears to be just a tiny blip on her radar – perhaps one she’s successfully tuned out.

Sam Butler

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