The Australian documentary Gayby Baby looks at the everyday lives of same-sex parents and their children, including three families with two moms. Director Maya Newell was inspired to make the film by her own upbringing with two moms and by the current situation for families like hers in Australia, where same-sex couples can’t get married, and same-sex parent adoption is only legal in a few states.
Photo by John Phillips/Getty Images for BFI
We spoke with Maya about the present-day situation in Australia, the controversy around her film getting banned, what Gayby Baby is doing in schools now, her experience growing up with two moms and much more.
AfterEllen.com: Let’s start off by discussing the current situation in Australia: how are things looking on the same-sex marriage front right now? Many of us have read about the possibility of a public vote on the issue, which sounds pretty problematic to me.
Maya Newell: It’s incredibly problematic. For the last five or six years, the marriage equality debate has been rising in volume in Australia and probably essentially was one of the motivating forces behind why I wanted to make Gayby Baby because it was getting so ugly. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard, “Children need a mother and a father.” So we’ve been fighting that for a while. We just had a new conservative government voted in, which means that we are looking at a plebiscite. Which is completely absurd, because even if the vote is positive, government don’t actually have to go with that decision and make marriage equality legal. So yeah, I think it’s looking a little bit bad at the moment. Though in polls, we know that Australians want marriage equality. And in actual fact, if it was voted on today even in Parliament, the numbers are there to pass it. It really is just a number of conservative individuals up top that are really blocking it.
We’ve been doing a lot of campaigning around marriage equality and other policies and laws in Australia with the film. We have screened this film in federal Parliament House. We hosted a big panel event where I gathered gaybies from every state all around Australia to come and share their stories with parliamentarians. We’ve had screenings in every state around the country. I think a film that allows children to speak for themselves is incredibly powerful. We’ve been using that to its full potential.
The other really important policy over here which we’ve been battling is around same-sex adoption. Now that’s legal in a few states. Matt and Pete, the dads in the film, were actually the first couple in New South Wales to legally adopt Graham and Michael when the laws changed in 2009, which was pretty beautiful.
AE: Do you ever see the adoption issue becoming something that is a federal concern as opposed to taking the state-by-state approach?
MN: It’s got to. It just requires that lobbying from the sidelines. In some ways marriage equality, while it has a big symbolic value, something like adoption equality actually has serious implications for families and would change lives. I know that when we had a screening in Melbourne in Victoria Parliament, it was a couple of months after that the issue was raised and passed in Victoria, which was pretty amazing. The same is happening in South Australia. So I think that while there’s a huge wave of many people working towards change, I think what’s been really amazing with Gayby Baby is you can see the value of moving hearts and minds. I think that’s why I make documentaries, is because I believe in the power of stories to enact change.
AE: So what happened with Gayby Baby getting banned in classrooms in New South Wales?
MN: It was devastating. We [Note: Maya and producer Charlotte Mars and executive producer Billy Marshall Stoneking] decided to release Gayby Baby independently, which meant that we could decide how we wanted to show it to the world. We decided we’d release the film in schools before we went to cinemas, which is kind of not done. Like if you had a distributor, they’d be like, “That is a terrible idea. Giving out your film on a DVD before anyone has seen it and sending it to schools for free…” In our hearts, we believed that this was a film about Australian youth and we wanted schools and students to see it first. We did this.
A couple of days before our screening was to take place, our leading newspaper, The Daily Telegraph, ran a cover story citing “Gay Class Uproar” where parents—they said parents, but actually, there were no complaints from parents. You know, people were outraged that we’d be brainwashing—rainbow brainwashing our youth with this film about normalizing same-sex families. What was really horrifying was that the top government ministers in our state, the education minister Adrian Piccoli, banned the film. He banned the film from screening during school hours having not seen it. I think what was so absurd is that because no one had seen the film who had banned it, it was the mere idea of same-sex families or this subject matter that had caused such rigorous objection from who you would think to be the people who are to be supporting and making sure children are safe at school.
I think what flowed on from there was a national conversation about the existence of children in same-sex families. The subject matter was trending on Twitter for like a whole week. We were on the front of every paper after that. We had really big politicians stepping up and writing opinion pieces in all the major papers and going on the news and debating what we should be teaching children in schools. What arose from the ashes of that experience was that you would literally have to be living under a rock to not know that kids in same-sex families exist and have done for generations.
AE: Another positive thing that came out of all this is the Gayby Baby School Action Toolkit. Tell me about that.
MN: That is Australia’s first educational resource to represent same-sex attracted families and to explore family diversity in general. We’ve developed it with teachers and experts and community members over the past year. I never thought as a filmmaker I’d be writing an education resource. It’s for primary and high school. We launched that, and now it’s being taught in schools. It’s not compulsory, but yeah, it’s really amazing.
I think a lot of educators are quite fearful of talking about LGBT issues with younger students, and that’s where a lot of the outcry comes from that we’re “sexualizing our children” or something absurd like that. But when you’re talking about family diversity, it’s a soft entry into issues that some teachers feel uncomfortable with. It’s reflecting a positive image of different family structures and sexualities to children at a young age, which I think can only be a good thing.
AE: Having observed the families highlighted for the film, how do you feel their experiences differed from yours as a kid raised by two moms?
MN: I was the result of long deliberation and really they were much more a part of a different generation of women who were fighting for their rights on a much more basic level. My generation of kids in Australia have been raised going to protests, and much more a part of the feminist movement I think for children of lesbians. I think that there are lots of similarities and differences between generations, probably the biggest one being that it’s much more acceptable to come from a same-sex family now. What I discovered is that in terms of discrimination, it’s much more dependent on geography than it is on the time when you were born. There’s still people living in country towns or on the outskirts of big cities that are experiencing some pretty hard stuff. Whereas before, that was even in the city centers.
I think probably the most beautiful thing in spending so much time with all of these young kids is seeing the similarities in qualities. It’s a real identity now to be a gayby. They feel a sense of community amongst other children with same-sex parents because they know other children with same-sex parents. Often we didn’t.
AE: We’ve covered a lot, but I did want to directly ask you why you decided to make this film?
MN: I think there’s a few reasons. I had seen documentaries about people fighting for their rights, about the queer community fighting for their rights. I’d seen films about parents trying to conceive. I’d never seen the story of, you know, my story, about children growing up and what our perspective looked like.
At the same time around the marriage equality debate in Australia, there was—it was just getting really ugly. And like I said before, people were repeating the argument that marriage is about kids and kids need a mom and a dad. And while everyone was talking to the experts and psychologists and scientists and all of that, nobody was really asking the kids or acknowledging that we weren’t this hypothetical group. We have a voice, and we had something to say.
Really, I think the film stemmed from exploring the voice of this new generation of kids that people seem to be overlooking, which was my story. We need stories that are not just about fighting for our rights. We need stories that are about dinner around the table—everyday moments. I suppose I wanted to make a film that showed that. That showed my story that had not been out there.
AE: While your film is specific to Australia, it’s touched audiences all around the world and it continues to be a success globally. Why do you think that is?
MN: I think the film captures what is possible. We’ve been fighting for rights to be together for so long that this film says, “You know what? You can have the dream. You can have the family. You can have the kids as well. And hey, they turn out okay.” I think that’s a really powerful message for people all around the world.
AE: Finally, do you plan to revisit LGBT themes again as a filmmaker?
MN: I think I probably will. It’s my tribal story. It’s in me. And I think whether it is overt in a storyline or in a documentary, it will be the community and the culture which informs every film that I make.
Gayby Baby is available on iTunes, Google Play and other digital platforms. The film can be purchased on DVD in Australia and New Zealand. If you live in the U.S., visit the movie’s website to find out how your local cinema can host a screening.
