"In this regard, I very much doubt legalising gay marriage will achieve the positive net result we are all after."

So time for an empirical experiment, then...

Legalise gay marriage and 'we' will all have a before and after chance to compare, rather than guess or doubt.

Also in the meantime you could start to address the deficiencies in heterosexual marriages... all the statistics demonstrating the social situations surrounding the 'breakdown of traditional marriage' have been achieved without the legality of gay marriage in Australia.

You should 'find another whipping boy'. (Unless you like that sort of thing?)

"I'm not for a moment saying homosexuals don't feel real pain or that they aren't sometimes treated poorly. The issue - the only issue in the end - is how we address this as a society. In this regard, I very much doubt legalising gay marriage will achieve the positive net result we are all after."

So lemme get this, er, straight.

In your opinion:
1. The marriage equality issue only affects homosexuals (transgender and intersex people don't matter and / or exist).
2. Having your relationship viewed as second-class doesn't amount to being treated poorly.
3. Because you don't think reducing discrimination against LGBTI people will reduce discrimination against LGBTI people, we shouldn't reduce discrimination against LGBTI people.

That's unreal. You should decide all of our social policies.

The author is displaying typical right wing Christ-stain compassion; you know that one that saw the cover up Pedo priest.

Basically the author’s piece boils down to, his morals are correct and true, and anybody thinking differently is either a mental defective or Santan vassal.

The lack of logic is the Author's, rather than Kevin Rudd's.
I just don't see where any of us have any right whatsoever, to decide what happens between consenting adults, in the privacy of their own homes. Be they (allegedly celibate) bible bashing, pulpit pounding holy rollers, and past the age of consent, and or, just different folks?
There's enough evidence for those prepared to somehow set aside rusted on prejudice, and actually look; to establish as a scientific certainty, that sexual orientation is a product of nature, rather than choice.
Given that is so, those with this naturally occurring aberration; shouldn't then have their particular problems compounded, by being forced to comply with a very different set of rules or social mores, than those we accept as our normal due. Or indeed, denied rights we take for granted for ourselves. i.e., the right to happiness and physical affection; and just be themselves, without being asked to pay an absurd price, by abysmally ignorant, dark age nincompoops!
The very worst of who, may well still be in the closet, or in permanent denial; and or, butching it up?
If you or I don't like what I see, you or I, remain perfectly free to look elsewhere!
Rhrosty.

Part of living in a (relatively) free and open society is that all of get to do things that other people don't like. Lots of people don't like me advocating atheism, or speaking as a global warming sceptic. That's tough for them, but they put up with it because they want to have the right to do things that I don't like too.

If you think legalising gay marriage will 'harm society' -- whatever that means -- you have to show how that will happen, and why the hypothetical harm outweighs the benefits of allowing people who want to marry their same-sex partners to do so. I don't see any of that here.

What's wrong with homosexuals getting married. They should be able to do anything they like. Because getting married doesn't make an unnatural act, a natural act, does it. Homosexual people practice a very unnatural sexual act. Getting Married will never change that.