"I think you are confusing followers of Christ to followers of the gw religion where the HIgh Priests have made millions.....Your a hard man to convince:)....gw is a very real cause, and I think you know that deep down inside runner. The pope should have enough faith to change the worlds problems with one good pray....and if achievable, that would be worth paying for.

The money from the carbon tax that taxes the most 500 of the biggest polluters, at least that helps keep the causes that impacts the very fabric of our society.....and what does GOD do of late that helps all the little creatures he has made?

Religious money goes strait into things that helps nothing but influencing politics.

The carbon tax helps the poor more than all the religions combined.

I'll stick the HIGH Priests runner:) at least the money goes where it does the most help.

cc

500 of the biggest polluters,
plant3.1,
I suppose by the time those 500 spread the cost of the tax over the other 22 million polluters in this country they'll probably make a hundred fold profit from recovering the tax. it's really going to hurt them badly eh ?

WmTrevor, (10.34am, 4/5)

Thanks for the icon advice. I have wondered for years why I could not convert web addresses to words via html as I can on other sites.

I don’t understand your point about heterosexual couples.

The “religious right” is a funny term in Australia. The US religious right is a con to make poor people vote Republican. The nearest thing we have had to a so-called religious right party in Australia is Family First, and Steve Fielding voted to repeal WorkChoices. The term is just lazy.

Pelican (11.19am, 4/5),

There is no “denying marriage rights to two consenting adults”. All consenting adults have the right to marry; i. e., to form an exclusive and lifelong union with one person of the opposite sex. Strangely, some people who have this right and understandably do not want to exercise it demand that the word used to describe this right be used to describe the thing they actually want. They do so with the usual emotional appeals to equality, but it is as silly as lemons demanding the right to be oranges on the grounds of fruit equality or members of the Labor Party demanding to be called Liberals on the grounds of political equality.

If you wish the word “marriage” to be redefined to remove the “opposite sex” part, what is the argument? How is it different from removing the “exclusive”, the “lifelong” or the “one” parts”?

This thread has raised many intriguing issues. Since in law, marriage has to be accompanied with other life-factors such as division of property on decease of one party, or at divorce between parties, alimony payments, etc., one wonders how much Squeers would owe his Shih Tzu - and if payments are calculated in human- or in dog-years ? And if someone married a building, what are the consequences of demolition ? Or Heritage listing ? If someone married him/herself, how would divorce work then ? Division of property at the decease of one/both of the parties ?

More to the point, if same-sex unions are recognised, what happens for bisexuals, situation in which one party to a same-sex union wanted to also marry somebody of another sex ? When does 'normal' marriage necessarily imply the possibility of polygamy ?

Or, if one was alreasdy married, additional marriages involving Squeers' Shih Tzu, or a building, or a tree, or a photo of Rita Hayworth (as many adolescent youth would have loved to do), or of oneself, or of a photo of oneself at a much younger age ?

In other words, what would be the boundaries of polygamy ? And if polygamy - multiple marriages beyond male-female unions - then what are the legal consequences of divorce in these other cases ? Of inheritance of property ?

To try to get serious for a moment, there do seem to be - at least - three situations even for heterosexual unions:

* a couple loving each other, living together for life, but not bothering with any official union;

* a couple participating in a civil union, one recognised by the State, irrespective of recognition by a church;

* a couple, participating in a church-officiated union, irrespective of recognition by the State.

It seems that much of this discussion about gay 'marriage' blurs the boundary between State-sanctioned, and church-sanctioned, unions. I have no problem with

..... State-sanctioned unions of homosexuals, but any such unions sanctioned by churches is not the business of the State, only of churches and their parishioners, presumably their homosexual parishioners.

[Just as Squeers might seek the sanction of a church to marry his Shi Tzu - this does not have to involve the State in any way, except on grounds of animal cruelty.]

If we called one, 'civil unions' - unions recognised by the State, and the other, 'marriage' - those unions which are recognised by churches. From this perspective, Gen Y could marry themselves and seek to have their marriages (and later divorces) recognised by their local church rather than by the State.

If we stop trying to blur the boundaries between the two, that may resolve some of the confusion - and keep the business of the State separate from that of churches.

Apart from all that, I don't really give a toss :) It's not as if it's a real issue, like clean water for Third World villages, after all.

Cheers,

Joe

Doug Allen’s http://www.sfu.ca/~allen/samesex.pdf is the first paper I have seen to discuss the unintended legal and social consequences of same-sex divorce.
Allen says that marriage is an institution evolved over time to regulate incentive problems that arise between a man and a woman over the life cycle of procreation.
The real problem with same-sex marriage is same-sex divorce. Marriage includes a set of exit provisions in terms of the possible grounds for divorce, rules for splitting property, alimony and child support rules, and custody rules.
1. Many institutional rules within marriage are designed to restrict males from exploiting the specific investments women must make upfront in child bearing.
2. Since same-sex marriages are not based as often on procreation, these restrictions are likely to be objected to and challenged in courts and legislatures. To the extent divorce laws are changed, they may hurt heterosexual marriages, and women in particular.
3. Given that same-sex relationships are often made up of two financially independent individuals, there will be litigation and political pressures for even easier divorce laws since the problem of financial dependency will be reduced.

Alterations in divorce laws to deal with issues of same-sex divorce necessarily apply to heterosexuals, and these new laws may not be optimal for heterosexuals, making marriage a more fragile institution for them.

No-fault divorce laws influenced a series of other laws related to spousal and child support, child custody, joint parenting, and the definition of marital property. Many of these changes had subsequent impacts on the stability of marriages.

the social and legal characteristics of marriage may provide a poor match for the incentive problems that arise in the relationships of gay and lesbian couples. Putting all three relationships under the same law could lead to a sub-optimal law for all