What a load of tosh, Brian.

Whichever way you slice it, homosexuals and their supporters are a small minority who are trying to impose their views on the majority.

Marriage is between a husband and a wife, according to my dictionary.

Your "christianism" concept is false. Christians don't have to introduce "religious lore" because the Marriage Act already specifies that marriage is between a man and a woman. On the contrary, you and your mates are trying to insinuate "homosexual lore" into law. You are trying to hijack a word to suit your own agenda.

Those who are bleating about "equality" already have access to civil unions and the various legal protections that entails. If that's not enough, invent a new word. Just leave "marriage" alone.

Sharia law is notorious because it orders people to do certain things and prohibits them from doing others, then it metes out punishments for those who break it.

Isn't Australian law the same in principle? It is quantitatively less draconic and its punishments are usually less severe, but qualitatively it is the same.

It's just "the devil we know"!

Now if there are suggested laws that would instead ALLOW people to follow their conscience or their religion rather than restrict them, then I only welcome it. Question being: how come existing laws prohibit people from following their conscience and religion to begin with?

Milad Bin Ahmad-Shah Al-Ahmadzai is a contemptible murderer and he certainly does not have my support on that count, yet as far as his refusal to stand in court, the author is wrong to claim that "There was no sympathy for him across Australia, with everyone demanding he recognise Australian laws and values.": I for one do not make any such demands of him, so it cannot be "everyone".

I see nothing wrong with a nominally christian country creating laws that protect/entrench its traditional ethos, customs and common law liberties.

If only to send Sharia law back to the stone age where it and the bigotry it instils, belongs.

New enacted laws could have been and should have been a bill of irrevocable rights and still could be?

And needed as never before in our history, just to prevent us becoming a nation increasingly dominated by an implacable fully imported entirely alien culture, who just don't even give as much as lip service to genuine religious freedom to other than Islamists!?
Rhrosty.

Shari'a law penalises women.

Under Shari'a, women can inherit only half what a man can inherit.

A man can have four wives, (or three, plus the 'overnight wife'), and he can divorce any one of them by simply saying so.

A man can beat his wife any time he likes, as long as the bruises and broken bones don't show: hence burkas.

Women can be shut up inside their father's or husband's or brother's house at will.

Young girls can be married off as soon as they get pubes.

Even before that, they can be genitally mutilated.

If a married woman is reported to have looked at another man, she can be stoned.

So, if an Australian woman, entitled to all the protections and opportunities available under Australian law, is a Muslim, under Shari'a law, she would have no such protections. The sisterhood would tell her to bugger off since, after all, all cultures are equal. Pity that all women aren't.

What a ghastly world we COULD be living in.

Joe

I can see the author's point. What's being proposed here is exactly like sharia law.

Think of it like this. Imagine you have someone walk into a Marriage office in a sharia compliant country and ask for assistance to marriage his gay lover. And then imagine someone walking into a Marriage office in this new Australia asking the same question.

In the case of the former, said person would eventually find themselves on top of an 8 storey building ready to be thrown to their deaths by the baying mob.

In the later case, said person would be told the person in the new cubicle would be able to help them.

See, basically the same thing!! No difference at all.

Honestly!! Where do these people come from?

I agree with the author on this one.

If Australia denies gay people the right to marry under the law (NOT church law), because of a push from the minority Christian fundamentalist groups, then where will it end?

We can't allow any religious group to dictate what laws can and can't be enacted in our parliament, or we are no better than places that have Sharia law.