It's been some time since I addressed this issue and then I was cautious. I was promptly pinged. While I wrote carefully, my position was based on tactics given community attitudes as I saw them. That was picked up at the time.
Now I think that the time is right to push, although Bill Shorten has not helped by his tactics. Mr Abbott is right that this matter must be owned by Parliament, although his own tactics are not helping.
At some point, I will bring up my previous posts. However, to make my position clear. Marriage is an act between people who want to establish a solid loving base (as best one can do that) for the future. So let's push this one now. .
7 comments:
Jim, it doesn't matter if your daughter is gay or not; what business is it of yours, mine, or the State's? The State should be concerned with water, sewerage, vaccination, and not much else imo - except maybe decent roads, physical and electronic. F*ck the State for even presuming to intrude upon what happens between two lucid, consenting adults.
Must say I have been greatly disappointed by Prof Don Aitken's post and responses thereon; I wish I could spell antidiluvian - because then I would comment: Fancy a guy who has been married not once, but three times, with a wife (after all the current angst) who actually thinks that 'marriage equality' refers to wives having the same status as husbands. Where does he secrete her?
Anyways, good that you spoke out.
Not.
kvd
Given that the Federal Government only pushed its nose in this in 2004 to override the ACT law allowing gay marriage, it's probably time it butted out again.
The Federal Government can override any territory (not State) law by passing legislation with which the territory law is inconsistent and this was the purpose of inserting "a man and a woman" into the legislation - it invalidated the ACT Act.
Well, I've just had a whack (several, actually) at Don's post; more really at the responders who make me feel embarrassed to call myself a human bean.
Seriously, how is this anyone's business, except those personally involved? And why are we paying our pollies to prognosticate thereon? Surely there's a road, or sewer line, to be attended to.
kvd
I agree with kvd. The government should just get out of marriage.
The churches seem to say that marriage is an exchange of vows between the couple being married. I can understand why many people want to invite their relatives and friends to witness this solemn occasion. I can also understand why people want to have a big party. But I can't understand why any couple would want to register their marriage with the government, unless of course the government told them that it did not recognise their marriage.
2T first. Marriage is a specific Commonwealth power under the constitution so it could presumably over-ride any state legislation specifically concerned with marriage. Whether it could do so with legislation concerned with regulating relationships between couples concerned, for example, with shared property may be a different issue.
kvd, I didn't have the same objection as you did to Don's post. The comments were useful in simply delineating different views.
In my original thinking, I saw practical equivalence between civil unions and marriage. I ignored the emotional and symbolic overlay. I'm also not sure that I recognised the complications that might follow, for example, in regard to the application of divorce laws.
Winton, I have a degree of sympathy with your position. That would make the use of the word marriage a personal or institutional, not legal, decision and could allow a much wider variety of arrangements. The State's role would then be limited to regulating specific outcomes or preventing specific abuses flowing from any form of relationship - as it is now.
But at this point in time and given current structures I remain of the vie set out in the header to this post.
You are right Jim - I'd forgotten s.51(xxi) in the Constitution. So that intervention presumably put an Australia-wide ban on same-sex marriages. All the more reason to take it back out. I hope, somewhat against hope, that a more tolerant policy in one area might lead us to more tolerance in others. But I'm not holding my breath while both parties hold the same policies regarding refugees.
I think that you are wise not to hold your breath, 2T!
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