Yes, it’s true Halloween was not invented by Americans, and nor were yearly customs that soon became annual traditions such as trick-or-treating or dressing in spooky costumes. However. Claiming that Halloween as it’s celebrated today is “not an American thing” is a bit like claiming Christmas is not a Christian thing because pagans (or Celts, or whatevers) were throwing winter festivals way before Jesus ever rolled up. Whatever Halloween used to be, it’s been swallowed up by a cultural tradition popularised by America and profoundly American.

This is not in itself a bad thing! If you’re an Australian and you want to celebrate Halloween, go right ahead. Costumes and candy are fun! But please be prepared to admit that you’re borrowing the modern phenomenon of Halloween from American TV shows and movies and pop culture. You just are.

(Also, please be prepared to admit a lot of Australians still don’t care much for Halloween, so if you’re out collecting candies, take the hint and bypass the undecorated houses.)

Actual bride and groom not pictured

On the weekend I went to a wedding which was quite lovely. The bride looked beautiful. The groom wore a kilt. (He’s Scottish. There was much bagpiping.)

However. During the ceremony, the celebrant announced that marriage is “the union of a man and a woman, to the exclusion of all others”. My boyfriend and I rolled our eyes at each other, but we’ve been to enough weddings together in the last several years to know that this line wasn’t a passive-aggressive dig from the newlyweds or a last-minute insertion from a crazy celebrant. The law demands celebrants say it (a requirement added in 2004, when former prime minister and evil reptile John Howard amended the Marriage Act).

Later in the night, the bride – who, again, looked beautiful, and who I’ve known since I was 10 – approached me and my boyfriend. She kindly apologised for the “exclusion” line. She had asked the celebrant not to say it, but it’s a legal requirement – if it’s not said at one’s wedding, one’s marriage could be deemed invalid.

So this is the state of things in Australia: not only is same-sex marriage off the cards in the short-term, but opposite-sex couples are forced to insert nasty reminders of bigotry into their marriage ceremony even if they personally support same-sex marriage ceremonies.

What a sad, frustrating, backwards little country we live in.

Do I really need to explain why the lifeguards are my favourite part of the parade? Image: pinched from News.com.au

While I was watching the Mardi Gras last night (on TV – watching it in person inevitably means battling sweaty crowds comprised of either loud bogans or screaming gays or loud screaming gay bogans), it occured to me that those homophobes are right when they insist that being gay is a choice.

They’re right, but not for the reason they think they’re right.

Being gay is not in itself a choice. No one chooses to be gay (or lesbian or bi or queer, or whatever; for simplicity’s sake I’m bundling them all up under “gay”); that’s decided by the genetic lottery. But every gay person chooses to live a gay lifestyle.

After all, no gay person has to live as an out gay person. You could acknowledge you’re gay but spend your entire life living in the closet. Or you could suppress your homosexuality altogether – get married, have kids, settle down into a life of permanently suppressing your true identity.

But both of these choices are deplorable, and it’s really sad that thousands of people believe it’s the best path for them, or worse, that they’re forced down that path by the people around them.

Sometimes I hear people questioning gay pride. “Why would you be proud of being gay?” they ask (and I’ve heard this from both gay and straight people). “It’s like being proud of having brown eyes.”

But gay pride isn’t merely about taking pride in being gay. It’s taking pride in choosing to live a gay lifestyle – choosing to live as yourself in defiance of all those hateful fuckwits who believe homosexuality is evil and wrong, or in defiance of the many people out there who “merely” have a dull, low-level scorn for men who kiss men.

The Mardi Gras, for all its ridiculous flamboyance, is a pretty great way of expressing that pride. What’s not to be proud of?

My recommendation would be to wait [to have sex]. Wait for the right moment, the right person and the right situation. Becoming sexually active is not to be entered into lightly. I have seen too many girls damaged by a decision that was not carefully considered.

Assuming you’re safe and responsible, is sex itself actually what’s damaging? I reckon it’s certain attitudes to sex that are damaging, not the act itself. For starters, virginity’s not a “gift”. Blergh. Sex isn’t something you give. It’s something you have. This is an important distinction, because “sex = gift” implies an imbalance in the sex, and/or that you’re losing something of yourself if you “give” it away. (Not to mention that “sex = gift” typically translates to “gift given by women, who must guard their sexuality and moral fortitude, to men, who have no impulse control and demand/need sex always”. Double blergh.)

My advice to teens: have sex, or don’t, but don’t reduce your identity to sex. You are more than someone who has or hasn’t done it. Believing otherwise leads to trouble – if your self-image is rooted (no pun intended) in whether you’ve lost your virginity, of course you’ll feel you’ve lost something if you’ve “given” it away.

I actually agree with the fundamental proposal of Adornetto¹ and Tony Abbott, the Catholic Australian politician whose comments kicked off this whole virginity brouhaha: Teens shouldn’t have sex willy-nilly (again, no pun intended). It’s not something to rush into.

But at the same time, sex isn’t that big a deal. You’re still the same person after you lose your virginity. So don’t stigmatise it. And you know what? At some point you’ll probably Do It with someone you’ll wish you hadn’t. But this won’t make you a bad, immoral skank. It won’t somehow spoil you.

Be responsible. Be safe. Think it through.

1. I disagree, though, that there are teens who would actually use the phrase “Did you sex him?”