H

I am quite sure Suze is completely unfamiliar with your anatomy, usually one needs to be a little less than full on hard to be able to pee. Something to terrify the ladies - yes he can pee in your vagina.

However, none of this has any thing to do with understanding discrimination against gays, nor methods of procreation. The topic I suspect you were trying to camouflage - but I guess that's your job here at OLO - deride and derail. You deserve a medal or something...

Fact is homosexuals do not have the choice to marry. It is taken away from them even if there are many homosexuals who would not choose to marry in the same way that there are de-facto couples.

Strangely I agree with Houlley about the de-facto status thing, however it does make a difference if the couple have children. The rights and responsibilities of parents does not change with marriage under Family Law which makes a mockery of the legal angle that pushes the idea that marriage is only a framework in which to have and raise children.

There is no harm in all manner of families and types of relationships. People should be free to engage in activities that cause no harm to anyone else and are really no-one else's business.

No-one has mounted a strong case as to why SSM should be verboten other than saying they don't like it.

Wow,

What a sensitive, logical argument.

Well done Ian this is the first balanced, sane article I have seen on this topic which nornally drowns in emotional bandwagons.

If I place my biases aside I am unable to fault the rational logic presented.

Why must we always defend our bandwagons instead of seeking to understand the authors intent.

If we are to truly evolve into something greater we have to be open to advanced logical thinking.

I shall now go and reread the article again for a third time.

pelican I think you can make parents responsible for children without any corresponding responsibility for each other.

It's a strange idea this de-facto law. It's almost as if the church is running the governmnet or something. It's like, 'how dare you live in sin, we hereby declare you married! We can't face it!'

In the end, the government should stay out of people's romantic lives and sex lives altogether.

I blame those public service form makers that must categorise us and make us tick boxes. Then when we put down Jedi as a religion they decide to ignore us and change it to a tick box of 'other'.

I really think the Secret Brethren have more influence than people realise.

'No-one has mounted a strong case as to why SSM should be verboten other than saying they don't like it.'

I don't like it works pretty well in all sorts of areas. Public nudity, public sex, polygamy, Sex with animals.

I don't really have a stake. I'm not a stakeholder, as marriage is not important to me. I can't relate. What I can relate to is the attitude

'Freedom is not the ability to become like other people, freedom is the ability to become more fully yourself! '

Now, given they have practically given all rights to defactos (or enforced responsibilities on people who choose to not marry, ie taken away rights of marriage averse heterosexuals) why does it matter?

In the end it's all this 'Gay Pride' which I have never been able to work out. I'm not 'proud' to be hetero, I just am. I could, at a stretch accept 'not ashamed', but really you're just playing the game on bigots terms if you do that. It is self evident that your sexuality would not be a source of shame. The idea is ridiculous, and attributing pride to such a thing gives bigots power.

Morganzola
There is nothing libertarian about arguing for the governmental registration of sexual relationships.

It is the gay marriage advocates who are pushing legal sophistry. As I have shown it is completely empty of any point of substance, and you have been completely unable to say anything against but name-calling, ho-hum.

Pelican
Gay marriage is not verboten; homosexuals have the same right as everyone else to do exactly what heterosexuals do to marry each other, celebrate these commitments, and enforce them.

Your idea that our personal relationships are made by government is completely false. Not even the government believes it or claims to. For example if a couple get married under the Marriage Act, and then one spouse applies for permanent residence on that basis, the government will not accept its own certificate of marriage as evidencing the existence of the marriage. Similarly with marital status in social security law. The government looks to *the substance* of the matter, not mere formality, and in substance, there is no different between the status of homosexual “marriage” and heterosexuals’.

The argument about gay marriage is *solely* about the mere formality of registration, which does *not* define marriage even according to the government, and no-one advocating government registration of homosexual marriage has shown why, by their own reasoning,
a) all other forms of human sexuality should not have an equal claim, and
b) government registration of sexual relationships should not be abolished.
“People should be free to engage in activities that cause no harm to anyone else and are really no-one else's business´
You contradict your own position in favour of persecuting polygamists.

And yes Houellebecq, the clamour for government to define our sexual relationships causes the injustice, that the government imposes a one-size-fits-all template of monogamous marriage on everyone, whether they want it or not.

Far better to abolish both the marriage and de facto relationships acts and let everyone shape their own relationships according to their own values. The only alternative is endless invidiousness and acrimony that can never be resolved except by arbitrary political favouritism.

“It's a strange idea this de-facto law. It's almost as if the church is running the governmnet or something.”

Yeah funny the whole church run govt thing but isn’t the de-facto thing about welfare benefits, a couple receiving less than two individuals?

So do couples of any variety really need a whole new contract under the law to establish rights or just no more marriages at all but anyone can have the wedding and dress like a bloody great pavlova?

And yes I can vouch for boys peeing at a various angles. You must move fast when changing nappies.