Briar says: “I know a lot of straight people who've ended their marriages over the years, and none of them were radical feminists.”

I’m not sure what she is talking about. Is she saying that two wrongs make a right? I do know that thanks to feminists, expressive divorces and abandoning children are much easier nowadays. But is that a good thing?

It is sad when couples split, but to purposefully engineer fatherless families without fathers is sickening. As Timothy J. Dailey reminds us: “The eminent Harvard sociologist, Pitirim Sorokin, analyzed cultures spanning several thousand years on several continents, and found that virtually no society has ceased to regulate sexuality within marriage as traditionally defined, and survived.

briar rose, "Some posters seem to think 'inclusion' is the same as 'compulsion.'"

So you are saying that gays were 'included' in the de facto provisions?

They had no choice, no option and it was something sorted in back rooms. The electorate was never consulted and nor were gays. The State and courts can now make rulings on their relationship status as de facto (common law marriage) or not and without regard for their choice or intent in those 'relationships'. This would have to be the most significant contract a person could ever enter into, yet unlike even the most simple of contracts, the 'simple' (sic) matter of their informed choice and consent is disregarded, or even overruled.

As has already been said a number of times, even the administering bureaucrats who are empowered to decide a person's relationship for them do not have a simple definition of a de facto relationship and rely on up to forty 'conditions' that could indicate the status of the relationship. A big change from when gays were fortunate enough not to have the State peering into their private affairs.

You have a strange idea of 'inclusion'. It is all rhetoric though isn't it and a word means what you want it to depending on the circumstances, like Lewis Carroll's Humpty Dumpty in through the Looking Glass.

"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less."

"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things."

"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master -- that's all."

What gays have asked the bothering elite in academia and the bureaucracy to represent them anyhow?

@ Jason84.
There you go again asking permission for your views from the Boomers.
Mate they have no loyalty to you,the country, "Gays" or even their own principles if they become inconvenient.
Quentin Bryce is a socialist who works for a monarch...Huh?
Julia Gillard is a socialist who supports unreservedly the Fascist state of Israel....Huh?
Let's not even mention Peter Garret or Bob Brown, have either of them mentioned the N.T intervention yet?....errr nope.
This duplicity,contradiction and treachery goes back to the first emergence of that failed, dysfunctional generation in parliament.
You're probably too young to remember Gerry Hand when he was in parliament, tireless campaigner for the rights of the East Timorese living under Indonesian occupation who then emerged as a business partner of the Suharto family and their cronies.
Boomers won't help you, the sooner we get them out of parliament the better because nothing will change, everything they do try to do will fail because they are utterly lacking what used to be called "character" and what we'd now call "integrity".
Their parents abandoned them, absolved them of any social or personal responsibility because that WW2 generation were brainwashed to the limit of their comprehension during and after the War.
The WW2 generation lost the War and then lost control of their country, the real bad guys were the winners and they warped the minds of the Boomers, effectively rendered them useless to society, so much so that they were telling my generation not to have babies and that we were all going to die in a Nuclear War or an environmental disaster anyway...no I'm not joking that's what they used to tell us in school.
Break out of that mindset, don't listen to the boomers and certainly don't rely on them, just work toward getting them out of power as quickly as possible and then we'll see the real lay of the land

"fatherless children" ?

Recognition of gay marriage will neither increase nor decrease the incidence of fatherless children.

Lesbian couples, and single women for that matter, can already legally have children. Nothing will change.

Recognising gay marriage is little more than the government and society acknowledging what already exists and, in turn, recognising everyone as equals in our society. What is so threatening about that?

All this fear and loathing has got me perplexed...

Cornflower, there are two issues that are being conflated in this debate.

One is the issue of government regulation of all sexual relationships through the Marriage Act and de facto legislation.

The other is the issue of same sex couples having the same rights as heterosexual couples, ie including same sex couples in the same legal structure as heteros.

If you disapprove of de facto legislation across the board, that should be kept separate from your disapproval of equality for same sex couples.

I don't recall an outcry from gays and lesbians when they were included in some of the de facto legislation, quite the opposite, in fact.

There are many pieces of legislation none of us have any "choice" about, and many of us don't like or want them. That's the price we pay for living in a liberal democracy.

But everybody in this liberal democracy has the inalienable right to be included in its legislations, and to exclude anybody is discriminatory and unfair. It's especially disgraceful to exclude human beings from any of our social systems solely on the grounds of their sexual preference.

There is no ambiguity in my use of the word inclusion. I mean exactly that. The inclusion of gays and lesbians in our social system of marriage.

There are many same sex couples who do not share your perception of registered marriage and de facto legislation as government interference in their relationships, just as there are many heteros who disagree with you. The difference is, the heteros have the choice to engage with this system or not, and gays and lesbians don't.

Jay Of Melboune

What is your issue with baby boomers, I mean seriously. You seem to have some warped idea about the thinking process of baby boomers and their ideology and decisions they make or will make. Sure the majority of the population might be over a certain age soon, but its mix of ages and sexualities who are creating influence and utimately shaping the country, I mean who's to say we don't have a thirty year old prime minister in a few years, or who could of predicted a twenty year old MP getting elected to federal government from a part of consertive Queensland thirty years ago. This world is moving very fast and its heading in a positive direction for us GLBT people, you only need to look back at the 1950's to know that the worlds view on homosexuality has changed for the better - its just happening slower or faster in different parts of the world. Soon there is going to be so many openly gay people in the world with influence that the issue of gay rights can only get better and better. Its 2010 and in NSW, ACT and WA there is no discrimination in law which directly targets gays, and in all the other states and territories nearly all discrimination which targeted gays and lesbians has been removed thanks to mainly Labor governments. Even gay men are kissing one another on primetime tv now, thanks to the shows Will And Grace and Modern Family. Im sorry but marriage equality is inevitable.