Raising questions about parenting, Tsiolkas also opens up the doors for further questioning of those other middle class institutions: the nuclear family, marriage and monogamy.-I’m 43 and my partner Wayne and have been together a long time and our families are quite close. I have many nieces and nephews that I’ve seen grow up from being babies into adults. So kids have always been a part of my life and there was a period about a decade ago when I did feel a real sense of loss that I wouldn’t be a biological father, but I realised over that period that there is something really important about the uncle and aunt role, and the mentoring which comes from that.
-I’m so supportive of my lesbian and gay friends who are parents but sometimes I think we’ve lost sight of the other important roles we can play in our culture. I remember when I first started coming out and I was reading queer literature, at the time there was so much being written about non-biological notions of family and community and that seems to have dropped away. And I’m not saying that either way is better than the other, but they’re both important discussions but I do want that older kind of politics to re-emerge.
Tsiolkas is equally wary of marriage and monogamy, a theme which recurs throughout the book as Tsiolkas strips away layers of middle class hypocrisy to expose the affairs, which nonetheless, don’t prevent the characters from loving their spouses.
-Monogamy is hard and it’s a struggle because sustaining a really loving, passionate sexual relationship is difficult over time, but I think it’s an important struggle to do, and in that way, I think that sometimes I’ve become really conservative.
-But last week I got a phone call from a friend, whose daughter was in a class with a homophobic boy who was anti gay marriage, and she wanted to ask me for my opinion. It’s funny because I can be quite critical about it as well. It’s a traditional, aping of heterosexual norms. I’ve chosen not to be married for that reason but I was also really glad that she was doing it. What is important is an acknowledgement of the richness of our relationships, in whatever form they take.
(sstar.net.au)
Tsiolkas, who lives in Melbourne with his long-term partner, Wayne van der Stelt, has bigger concerns. "For me personally, having to write this book is having to re-engage with the notion of God again. I had to go back to the Bible, the Torah, the Koran, and to start that debate within me again about faith and about God. I hadn't wrestled with God and the devil for a long time.
"If one of the ways we get to know God is by the word of God, and that is fundamental to the monotheistic religions, then the word of God excludes me, by the nature of my sexual identity and relationship. In terms of my relationship to that God, that monotheistic Jehovah god of the Bible and the Torah and the Koran, I am an outsider."
Does that mean Tsiolkas is an atheist? "I would have to say that I am still working out the meaning of that question."
(smh.com.au)
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