Hmmm. I am actually very disappointed by this.

There's public opinion, and there's what is fundamentally 'right' or 'wrong'. Denying your citizens the right to marry just because they are of the same sex is fundamentally wrong. Not recognising all loving, consensual and legal relationships between two people, regardless of their gender, is fundamentally wrong. Who cares what Mr Citizen thinks about same sex marriage?! Shouldn't governments do what is fundamentally fair and right? FFS!

You would imagine so Travis, but, when we have dissent within our own ranks its hard to prove that point.

I think the government will bring in civil unions.
We will then have to wait until the next Labour government to bring in marriage rights. :( very sad that it will come to this.

Quote:

the vast majority (of MPs) said their electorates were opposed to marriage law reform, citing a high levels of correspondence they’d received knocking back the idea of gay marriage for various reasons.

I think this is the main problem. The people who are against gay marriage are fanatically against it. They're willing to do whatever it takes to prevent it. They're often well-organised groups, usually religious-based, and they're able to tell their members to bombard MPs with anti-gay-marriage messages.. which they do, in huge numbers.

On the other hand, the many ordinary Australians who are OK with gay marriage (possibly the majority of Australians) simply don't care enough about the issue to bother contacting an MP and expressing their views.

I know a lot of straight people who are perfectly fine with gay marriage and will say so if asked, but I doubt many would actually be bothered to send an email or a letter to a local MP about an issue that doesn't really affect them directly.

Therefore, MPs get bombarded with thousands of anti-gay-marriage phone calls and emails from organised groups, but they don't hear nearly as much from people who are in favour of gay marriage. So they assume that their electorates are overwhelmingly against gay marriage, although that might not be the case at all.

In the words of Tatu, This Is Not Enough.

what did you expect? I think it was a "tad" naive of people to expect otherwise from this bunch of morons.

Of course if this happened in the USA, gay activist would have put the photos, name and addresses of those vile politicians on a website for all to see and ridicule and they would initiate a boycott campaign against Anyone or anything associated with those people..... but of course that would never happen in this country since our so called gay activist are not of the fierce variety unfortunately

From my MP:

Quote:

Fowler MP Chris Hayes reported that feedback in his electorate was overwhelmingly in opposition: of the 395 votes cast, over 90% said no to same-sex marriage. Hayes said he “does not apologise for the view of his electorate”.

Total cunt. I don't recall a vote. It's so dodgy...

This (plus the 8 shootings in the past week) make me really want to move to a different area...

I reiterate what is by now a broken nature but remains at the heart of my very firm beliefs about this. It should not have to come down to a vote!

Quote:

Originally Posted by pioneer_to_the_falls

From my MP:
…This (plus the 8 shootings in the past week) make me really want to move to a different area...

The Police are being so limp-wristed about it all. I'd be wanting tougher action.

Quote:

Originally Posted by mark_

The Police are being so limp-wristed about it all. I'd be wanting tougher action.

Agreed.

It seems that the majority of heterosexuals support marriage equality, however they don't care about the issue enough yet to contact there MP's to express support. Simply being a member of Getup or ticking a box in support of marriage equality on a website is not enough. We need to be more vocal and demanding. Anyway the positive side is that only about 40 MP's out of 150 have so far voiced there opposition to marriage equality publicly, so there is a small chance that at the ALP National convention they still may change the policy to support gay marriage, but I doubt it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Totka

You would imagine so Travis, but, when we have dissent within our own ranks its hard to prove that point.

Meaning what exactly?

The current PC-driven editors of 'The Sydney Morning Herald' chose to ignore all of the Parliamentary gay-negativity just like they chose to ignore the Larissa Behrendt Scandal




.

Quote:

Originally Posted by rudeboy86

Meaning what exactly?

I mean its hard to prove that it is the right thing when we have discordance within our own community on the issue. All it takes is a handful of people within our community questioning the relevance of gay marriage to justify a lack of action on the issue. Having a united front is imperative to drive change.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Totka

I mean its hard to prove that it is the right thing when we have discordance within our own community on the issue. All it takes is a handful of people within our community questioning the relevance of gay marriage to justify a lack of action on the issue. Having a united front is imperative to drive change.

Yes how dare some Queers within the community have an issue with the institution of marriage and the push for assimilation or that we are campaigning on other issues that are more pressing for us...we should just fall into line right? Starting to sound like a fucking ALP's anti-dissent practice.

I would never say a 12 year relationship between two men was not legitimate.
Self-defeating negativity does not drive change either. It only confirms what the bigots are saying.

This letter in today's SMH is a pragmatic view that I share:

I have a solution to the gay marriage debate - repeal the Marriage Act (''Let's shoot straight on gay marriage'', August 25). Does the Marriage Act serve any real purpose? Genuine relationships, whether straight or gay, are already recognised in most areas of law, regardless of whether couples are legally married or not.

Since 2008, most federal legislation has defined spouses to include couples living together in a relationship on a genuine domestic basis, regardless of sex. This definition of spouse is far more meaningful than marriage. Being married is not the same as living together in a relationship as a couple. It is possible for two heterosexual people to get married without ever having met before and with no intention of living together. And in a high proportion of marriages the genuine domestic relationship ends well before the marriage is formally dissolved through divorce.

Without a Marriage Act, both gay and straight couples could still have a marriage ceremony if they wanted one, but these ceremonies would have no legal status.

Andrew Patterson The Rocks

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/national/lette...#ixzz1W6Dh2qfq

Perhaps marriage should be gotten rid of and everyone have civil unions.

Marriage was created for the husband to own the wife and those ideals are no longer relevant.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Brisbane_7000

I think this is the main problem. The people who are against gay marriage are fanatically against it. They're willing to do whatever it takes to prevent it. They're often well-organised groups, usually religious-based, and they're able to tell their members to bombard MPs with anti-gay-marriage messages.. which they do, in huge numbers.

On the other hand, the many ordinary Australians who are OK with gay marriage (possibly the majority of Australians) simply don't care enough about the issue to bother contacting an MP and expressing their views.

I know a lot of straight people who are perfectly fine with gay marriage and will say so if asked, but I doubt many would actually be bothered to send an email or a letter to a local MP about an issue that doesn't really affect them directly.

Therefore, MPs get bombarded with thousands of anti-gay-marriage phone calls and emails from organised groups, but they don't hear nearly as much from people who are in favour of gay marriage. So they assume that their electorates are overwhelmingly against gay marriage, although that might not be the case at all.

Some of us are our own worst enemy. They won't get off their fucking asses to write to the various politicians but will complain at every opportunity at the lack of equality.

But you could bet your bottom dollar the the religious fundies are up their in their pulpits exhorting their congregations to write, fax or email their local and federal members of Parliament to oppose it. And a lot of queens can't be bothered. They don't see it as necessary.

But the law won't change on it's own. We have to get off our fucking behinds and write, fax, email (or carrier pigeon) those messages to those in Macquarie St and Canberra. For every letter or email from those that are opposed to same sex marriage are sending to the pollies, we should be sending 3 times that amount.

But if you'd rather just sit in a bar having another drink you only have yourself to blame.

If you want to go ahead and campaign go for it I am not stopping you. I am not getting involved in that particular struggle for my own ideological reasons and I am somewhat suspicious of many of the mainstream Gay movement's people and the such.

So if the law does pass I will still not want to marry and if I did then there would be an issue of having not been there to fight for it in the first place when I had the chance so that would also seem unfair for me to reap the benefit. Kinda like the same way that some workers on union sites who refuse to be members of the union but still get all the benefits that the union fought tooth and nail to get...

Thats cool Rudeboy, I'm not asking you to get on my band wagon. Im talking about those that actively and vocally oppose it because they don't want it for themselves. You go for it and fight for what you think is right, I will do the same.

http://blog.nj.com/njv_guest_blog/20...emote_for.html

Right to marry more remote for low-income LGBT couples
Published: Friday, August 26, 2011, 8:02 AM

By Arlene Stein

Today, New Jersey gay and lesbian activists gaze longingly at the legal rights their neighbors across the Hudson now enjoy.
The fight for marriage equality has captured the imagination of many men and women here who never before saw themselves as activists — such as my neighbors in Maplewood.
They are predominantly middle-class men and women, who are in long-term relationships and have children. At dinner parties, these LGBT folks discuss their children’s school performance and athletic pursuits, assess their children’s teachers and debate recent school controversies. In 2006, when the state Legislature began to offer civil unions, giving same-sex couples nearly all of the rights granted to married couples under state law, many of them eagerly signed up.

Just down the road in Newark, another LGBT community is busily mobilizing. Here, there are scores of mothers who are lesbians, a burgeoning population of gay youth and enclaves of racially mixed gay men, to name but a few groups.
Several years ago, Mayor Cory Booker appointed a commission to deal with the concerns of Newark’s gay/lesbian communities. And a local group is collecting the stories of gay Newarkers in preparation for a conference at Rutgers in November.

But the right to marry is not high on their list of priorities. As of last month, eight times as many Maplewood couples had obtained civil unions as those in Newark — though the population of Newark is 12 times larger.
The comparison of Maplewood and Newark raises questions about whether same-sex marriage is a one-size-fits-all solution.

For those who wish to publicly affirm their relationships, and establish legal and economic bonds — like middle-class families in Maplewood — marriage is a no-brainer.
But those in the lowest ranks of the workforce, the bulk of Newark’s population, are less likely to have jobs with benefits and are more likely to be coupled with people who don’t either. And since they’re also less likely to own property, they’re unlikely to be very concerned with questions of inheritance.
Gays and lesbians in Newark are also more likely to be embedded in family networks, less likely to move away from their families of origin in order to act on their homosexuality, and consequently they are less likely to construct identities in which sexuality is primary — and they have less incentive to marry.
Popular images of the “gay community” — circulated by national LGBT leaders and amplified by the media, activist Kenyon Farrow told the crowd at Newark Gay Pride last June — suggest that “LGBT people do not come from places like this.”

Such images also claim that the right to marry will benefit everyone equally.
Legalizing same-sex marriage will not make our unequal society suddenly fair, though it will close some of the gaps.
But as sociologists tell us, marriage tends to bring together people who are very much like one another: Highly educated men and women are more likely to marry those who are also highly educated, and low-income men and women tend to marry others like them. This pull toward similarity has accelerated during the past few decades among heterosexuals; homosexuals are not all that different.
So while middle-class gays and lesbians will certainly benefit from symbolic recognition of their relationships, and from greater legal and economic parity — that’s less true for their low-income counterparts.
“All this talk of marriage is just a luxury,” says James Credle, a longtime Newark educator and gay activist. “For us, it’s about survival.”

So let’s join in celebrating the long-awaited nuptials of our gay and lesbian friends. But as we do, we should pause to consider those who are absent from the party. How can we create a more just society for them, too?

Arlene Stein is a professor of sociology at Rutgers/New Brunswick and the author of “The Stranger Next Door: The Story of a Small Community’s Battle Over Sex, Faith and Civil Rights.”