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It's past time for the AFL to stand tall and show it's support for same-sex marriage

Caroline Wilson
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Accepting her historic AFL Women's best and fairest medal, Erin Phillips spoke of her sadness as a 13-year-old footy fanatic being told she could no longer play the game with the boys.

Phillips' story highlighted so many profoundly moving tales of so many young women denied to football. She waited 17 years, but happily for the new national league she was still young enough and brilliant enough to make her historic mark.

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Then Phillips thanked her wife Tracy, the other mother of the couple's 4-month-old twins, an American who travelled across the world to allow the Olympic basketball silver medallist and now Adelaide premiership star to achieve a childhood dream.

Speaking personally, this was the most touching moment of the AFLW awards on Tuesday night, just as some notable Brownlow Medal-winning family tributes have proved in the past. Remember Shane Crawford's televisual link-up with his equally emotional mother in 1999?

But speaking as an Australian, there was even more sadness – heartbreak really – to watch Phillips pay tribute to her partner in the knowledge that the couple have returned to a country that still bans them from getting married.

Football has come a long way in 17 years, but in this crucial social area the Australian government has not. New Zealand now would allow Phillips to marry the love of her life, and even Ireland and ever-growing numbers of US states and the Middle East. But, shamefully, not her own supposedly progressive country.

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It is said that evil takes place when good men stand by and do nothing. I always felt it was a great failing of Julia Gillard's prime ministership that she was so frightened, either by her national electorate or her caucus, that she could not achieve marriage equality in Australia when she clearly supported it. The same goes for Malcolm Turnbull, another obvious believer in same-sex marriage. At a time when the federal government fails to show leadership on so many fronts, a major part of the Australian community is being heartbreakingly discriminated against.

An international embarrassment is a cause of profound pain to so many Australians who believe in the sanctity of marriage.

The good news for the AFL is that it has a new chairman who has not once but twice taken a public stand on the issue.

Last week's carefully planned corporate same-sex marriage campaign saw incoming commission chairman and Wesfarmers chief Richard Goyder step forward again for marriage equality.

In 2015 Goyder wrote to the Australian Marriage Equality Movement.

He said, in part: "While Australia continues to exclude same-sex-attracted people on this important and highly valued institution, it sends a message that discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation remains acceptable." 

And yet while last week's corporate campaign boasted signatures from the chiefs of the NRL, Basketball Australia and the national soccer body, AFL CEO Gillon McLachlan was not a signatory.

The prevailing view is that McLachlan and his outgoing chairman Mike Fitzpatrick prefer to vote with their feet, although, interestingly, both have avoided taking a public position on same-sex marriage.

At a recent Melbourne Press Club lunch, McLachlan spoke about same-sex relationships in AFL Women's and made the point that the new league had helped to further normalise an issue that for most Australians has been normal for some time.

No one batted an eyelid, McLachlan pointed out, when Fairfax Media's Samantha Lane wrote about two opposing AFLW players and their engagement, because in the eyes of the public, it was no big deal.

His view then implied that the great achievement of the AFLW in this area has been to expose the complete acceptance, to the point of indifference, to what was once considered controversial.

And yet, knowing McLachlan, this would be an issue close to his heart and I'm sure he would privately back marriage equality. 

Knowing Fitzpatrick, he would do the same, although his reluctance to comment probably stems from a fear of thrusting social issues down the throat of a section of the public that believes the AFL should stick to running football.

But that ship sailed decades ago, when the competition finally but emphatically took on racism by targeting inappropriate on-field sledging. It proudly stands by that achievement. 

For the sake of this exciting new breed of footballers, I hope McLachlan follows Goyder's lead and takes a strong public position on same-sex marriage. 

For now, the game is happy to take its lead from Phillips.

"Every bit of this is owed to you," she publicly declared to Tracy. "I love you and thank you so much." Just as the media did before the ceremony, as the couple posed on the coral carpet, when a journalist asked the couple for Tracy's surname.

"Phillips," was the All-Australian footballer's reported response. "She's my wife."