[Deleted for profanity].

Actually, there is a great deal of evidence for the heritability of homosexuality. But I'm sure peer-reviewed journal articles won't shift you from your entrenched position of bigotry.

Your assertion that same-sex relationships run counter to Darwinian evolution shows how poor your understanding of basic biology is. If the gene(s) which produce homosexuality provide a selective advantage sufficiently large to counteract the selective disadvantage of removing some carriers from the reproductive pool, then that gene has a good chance of being propagated, possibly even selected for.

what, amongst other matters, is strange about this article is that way back in the 19th century (when the australian constitution was being formulated) 'marriage' included common law marriage (otherwise known as de facto marriage - that is, woman and man living together as if formally married) along with same-sex/gender relationships (that is, man and man, or woman and woman living together as if formally married). and, no doubt, persons who are now labelled, often, in questionaires, etc as 'other' (rather than 'male' or 'female') lived together in various permutations.

the mystery is that courts should define 'marriage' under the australian constitution as constituted by a woman and man (or, as they are more inclined to term it, 'man and woman') who have formally married. this is a new version of marriage, rather than an old one, and one that began with the aristocracy (because of their wish to consolidate property ownership). the common herd eventually succumbed to church and registry office - but as noted many didn't.

The major difference is that formerly common law 'marriage' could only be said to exist where both parties, a man and a woman, agreed to it of their own free will (informed consent), whereas in Australia de facto relationship status can be deemed to exist against the intent, agreement or consent of the parties affected. The State peers into bedrooms and decides. So much for choice and freedom.

Unabashed by the complex mess they have wrought with changes to de facto law and compounded by the extension of those arrangements to gays whether they wanted it or not (suck it up), the same meddlesome middle class elite is proposing to thunder ahead to 'fix' the Marriage Act. Incredible!

Riz,
I really loved your "10 reasons..." post!
And diver dan's reasons for opposing same-sex marriage are pretty hilarious, too.

"Actually, there is a great deal of evidence for the heritability of homosexuality."
This is only one example of the kind of articles that bigots like diver dan and philip need to read:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=having-older-brothers-inc

Philip,
There is enough evidence to show that one's sexual orientation is not a choice.

There is no logic in opposing same-sex marriage for the reason that these couples will not produce children.
They are not producing children when they are not married either, so nothing changes in that respect.
It makes no difference to the size of our population whether same-sex couples are married or not.
Same-sex marriage should, however, enable these couples to adopt children; children who otherwise would have to spend their childhood in orphanages.

Agree with CF in his/her reply to Dotto.
When I was in HS, there were also a couple of lesbians- students as well as a teacher. It was hardly an issue. They certainly didn't cause orgies or sexual experiments with other students.

To go back a step - wasn't marriage something created by the church? Wasn't it something designed to make it a rule that a man and a woman could have sex together under their own roof? So it was a rule made up by the church, yes? And it's still a rule because the longer it's been a rule the more values have been attached to it. Darwin it seems has also been attached to it. If you're a man and a woman and you get married and you want to have sex together in your own home, or on holiday, then you can. Cool, sounds like a good reason to get married. But not everyone gets to do this, because if you don't fit Darwin's theory because you happen to be in that queer 10% then too bad you can't get a certificate that says you can have sex together in OUR society. You can still have sex, but you can't get that certificate of acceptance to say that you're a legitimate member of the marriage society. So what about that 10% thing? What if it's sometimes 50-50? There are some people who are bi-sexual. What if some are 20-80, or 30-70, or 5-95. What if only 10% are a 100? And if this were true, then 90% of people would be shades of gay anyway, from light gay to dark gay. And by the way, I think Darwin was probably more interested in sex purely for reproductive purposes because he wanted to record the offspring from this process. I don't think he recorded if for example, a female monkey had a relationship with another female monkey and they adopted a baby monkey whose 'natural' mother had rejected it at birth. The baby monkey thrived and they were a family together. There are all kinds of families. They teach this stuff on Sesame Street kids!