Gay commentator Dennis Altman is frustrated at same sex marriage being seen as a human rights issue, and has criticised the “marriage equality” movement for marginalising LGBTI people not in long term relationships.

The Star Observer newspaper reports that Altmann launched a “scathing attack against the marriage equality movement” at a public event discussing his recent book The End of the Homosexual? at the Victorian Gay and Lesbian Rights Lobby AGM with Lobby co-convener Anna Brown.

The Star Observer reports that, “He described hearing a radio interview with a woman in Canberra waiting to get married:

“’To be honest what came through was the most appalling, smug self-satisfaction. ‘I’m in this fabulous relationship, everybody loves us and we want to get married and it’s a basic issue of human rights.’ And I thought well f*** off. It’s not,’”Altman said.

“’People being killed in Uganda, people being raped in South Africa because people assume they’re lesbian, men being lured into parks and bashed up in Russia, those are basic human rights [issues]. In Australia if you are in a long-term relationship…you actually have pretty well all those rights.’”

Altman described by the Star Observer’s Benjamin Riley as a “gay academic, activist icon” also said “[What] most worries me is the message it sends to other people: you are a failure if you are not in a long-term relationship. You are a failure. It’s exactly the message young women have had to fight against for a long time,” he said.

“One of the strengths of the lesbian and gay world was that it had room for a variety of relationships and it had room for people who weren’t couples”

Altman’s position is that while he believes that there have been examples of gay couples with long lasting relationships in the absence of marriage, “most gay men, at least, accept a whole range of sexual adventuring as co-existing with long term partnerships” (article here).

He sees an element of hypocrisy in the rush to accept marriage vows that have traditionally acted to curb sexual relations outside the marriage.

Eternity has previously reported on Altman’s view on why traditional monogamous marriage is not what many gay people want, expressed at the Sydney Writers Festival in 2011.

Altman criticised Melbourne’s gay radio station Joy FM, and the gay press in general of not providing a forum for intelligent debate. He argued they need to find a way “of broadening the discourse and getting beyond the idea that everything will be solved the day two women in matching white tuxedos can walk down the aisle together and get married.”

Despite his strongly critical stance, Altman is sympathetic to the work of lobbyists for same sex marriage in that they promote the full acceptance of homosexuality by the broader society. Perhaps the part of his message that Christians should be listening to is the warning against the bullying of homosexuals in schools and the fear of their sexuality that will drive some to suicide.