Milestone for values? WTF?
The Australian Parliament reached new lows yesterday when the Senate wasted time passing legislation to make sure that ‘marriage’ has to be between a man and a woman, thus making very sure that no gay couple could go and get married.
Labor lost the plot big time here and combined with the coalition combined to pass this narrow-minded, bigoted legislation, amid protests from the Democrats and Greens, who gave example after example of how this was going to discriminate against people and create confusion as to the validity of some existing marriages.
Howard presumably got the idea from US Republicans and George W himself who have recently passed similar legislation. [Update/Correction: As Chris explains in comments below, it hasn't been passed in the US yet. Looks like Australia is leading the way for a change :-( ] It is a piece of the Neo-Con fundamental-values agenda which makes it OK to get stuck into gay people or anybody who isn’t me and my mates, really.
I’m really pissed off about this. It should never have happened. For a start, there is no burning need to change the law. It is just a bit of gay bashing by the major parties at a time when they think they can get away with it. It plays to Australians bigoted lower selves, where we fear and hate people different to us. It messes with peoples lives for no good reason. Already married people undergoing gender reassignment for whatever reason are left with potentially ‘illegal’ marriages. That is cruel.
The bigoted Government says the new law is “a historic milestone for Australian values“. Um. You mean a historic milestone for Neo-Con values, don’t you?
Yet another reason to vote for the Greens or Democrats in the coming election. They are the only ones with any heart or compassion or sense.
What on earth are they worried about? What possible harm could it do to let gay people get married? Even Jesus would say Jesus.
“Howard presumably got the idea from US Republicans and George W himself who have
recently passed similar legislation.”
They _tried_ to pass the legislation here, but it didn’t go through. The current situation
in the US is similar to the medical-marijuana thing, in that there is a variation
between local, state, and federal laws.
By the letter of the US constitution, banning Gay Marriage is not allowed. The
Republicans were trying to get an ammendment pushed through to get around this,
but it was defeated in July (getting less than 50% support, it needed 2/3 to pass)
The current raging debates are mostly about State law, and although there is no federal
law against it, each state has different rules. The recent SF gay marriages were all
officially annuled by the CA Supreme Court, but with the judgement being made that
the Major of SF did not have the right to go against State Law - not that the State Law
was valid. To be honest, I tend to agree with that decision - it was an important move
in advancing the cause, but it is not up to local Majors to decide which laws they will
obey and which they won’t. I’m not sure when the next referendum will come to give the
CA people a chance to have their say on the law, but that will be the big one to watch.
Oh, the other big issue is about recognising gay marriage in other US States - and I
believe that there is constitutional support for allowing state _not_ to recognise
gay marriages, even if they were performed legally in other States.
Check out my blog article
on the subject.
Thanks for the correction, Chris, and the pointer to your post. I like they way you put it: “…. a minority of grumbling unhappy people should not be allowed to stand in the way of a lot of happy people getting what they want!”
That quote seems a bit strange out of context. I thought activism was all about being in a grumbling, unhappy minority.
Heh heh, you’re right about that, but now I look back at it - yes, I feel kinda the same way about so called “activists” a lot of the time too!