When the abortion debate abruptly thundered back into life after decades of quiescence in New Zealand last week, I was reminded of how ‘residual politics’ usually operate.

All right, what is probably about to happen in this context? While it would be nice to envisage a situation where Labour had an attack of the machiavellis and decided to decriminalise abortion in New Zealand altogether, I suspect that what will eventually happen later this year is this. The Supreme Court overrules the High Court decision, arguing that Judge Miller exceeded his jurisdiction, and misread existing New Zealand case law and constitutional law. Everything returns to normal. Exit RTLNZ and Orr fuming, to the hearty bronx cheers of numerous, very angry, women.

Ultimately, though, the pro-choice movement can be happy, given that tomorrow belongs to us. The anti-abortion lobby literally aren’t getting much younger, and they lack long-term committed younger activists. With enough time, they’ll end up succumbing to infirmity and mortality, and we can then step in, lobby Parliament to end the current farce, and have the decriminalisation of abortion as a fait accompli, instead of having a situation where abortion practice is hopelessly trailed by an antiquated law from three decades ago.

When one thinks about it, I suspect that very much the same is eventually going to be the case with same-sex marriage in New Zealand. Think about it. What do the terms “same-sex” and “marriage” mean, if not civil marriage, and what is ‘civil marriage’ if not merely an alternative ceremonial marker to the civil unions that we now possess? After all, the Relationships (Statutory References) Act has equalised heterosexual married and same-sex civilly united spousal rights almost across the board.  When the time comes, there won’t need to be the sort of fuss that there has been in Greece, the Church of England, and California lately.

And there’s more evidence that this is the case. Oddly, the Maxim Institute devoted very little time to the US National Marriage Project (a Christian Right/social conservative group opposed to same-sex marriage, straight divorce and both solo and same-sex parenthood), when the latter came forth with the finding that many younger straight New Zealanders are bypassing marriage, and cohabiting instead, compared to many other core Commonwealth societies.

I suspect that this may be the reason why same-sex marriage hasn’t triggered the sort of unholy rows here that it has overseas. Heterosexual marriage isn’t as essential to the award of appropriate spousal rights as it is in the United States, given that de facto cohabitators have such rights as a result of the erstwhile decline of that institution. No-one seriously thinks about repealing the Civil Union Act or Relationship (Statutory References) Act these days, and Gordon Copeland’s same-sex marriage ban bill failed miserably.  When same-sex marriage comes, all it will mean is that lesbian, gay and pre-operative transgendered people get read into the amended Marriage Act, and it becomes gender-neutral.  It might even be the case that a future Parliament might fix the Adoption Act at the same time, importing the amended definition of marriage into that legislation at the same time.

In New Zealand, same-sex marriage has become a residual issue of merely formal equality. It doesn’t attract as much histrionics on either side of the debate, because there is confidence that given the state of play overseas, and the absence of any discriminatory legislative ban as in Australia, eventually it will come to pass. Unlike the pro-choice movement, we don’t have a long-term established and durable Christian Right anti-gay group that provides meaningful obstacles to our legislative reform agenda.  As in the United Kingdom over the last two decades, most of the more virulent homophobes have already succumbed to infirmity and mortality.

Of the ringleaders of the campaign against homosexual law reform in the mid-eighties, all but one appear to be deceased. Apparently, Keith Hay is that large lump in Mount Roskill, and Peter Tait is also buried somewhere. Norm Jones died ages ago of Legionnaires Disease, Graeme Lee has a heart condition, and Geoff Braybrooke and John Banks are reformed characters. Barry Reed’s wherabouts are currently unknown.

As for the opponents of the Human Rights Act, Noel Mosen is now a Catholic chef for a religious community somewhere, Pat Bartlett is dead, Graham Capill is in jail, and Bruce Logan is somewhere in the Mediterranean, according to my sources. Homophobes have a short shelf-life, it would seem.

I predict that we’ll probably be home safe by 2018 or so, and then wonder what all the fuss was about.