Rodney you said "My response is that I'm not equating his opposition to marriage equality to racism". Mate that is exactly what you did!

Marriage is between a man and a woman, so whatever relationship same sex couples may form, it is not marriage.

Their activists want to hijack the word, as is their habit, but it is not available. They need to work out a word for this previously unrecognised, and socially unacknowledged relationship. It is not marriage.

When they have a word for it, they may set about seeking recognition of it.

@Leo Lane:"Marriage is between a man and a woman..."

Or between a man and up to four women in some Islamic states. Or between a man and a dozen women under the original rules of Mormonism. Or one woman and several men in some tribal cultures. Your own personal church can define 'marriage' any way it likes, but once it's handed the control and registration of marriage over to the state, then it's lost any power to dictate what 'marriage' really is. It's up to the electors now -- and the electors are showing a strong preference for extending the term to include gay partnerships. Like 'unemployment' or 'dependents' or 'minors', 'marriage' can be whatever the state chooses to define it as. And a truly democratic state chooses in accordance with the wishes of the majority.

Perhaps a better term for such unions than 'marriage' - or even 'civil union' - could be 'civil conjuncture', with a clear differentiation between such forms of union and 'marriage'/'civil union' with their identification under Australian law of a union between one man and one woman.

Let's move on, there are real issues to worry about these days.

Joe

Come off the highfalutin garbage Roddy, we didn't come down in the last shower.

We know damn well it is nothing to do with freedom, but all about money.

You want to call whatever you do marriage to gain access to the other blokes super & property. You also want the other privileges that go with real marriage.

No one, including me gives a damn what you do, but you can't shove your lifestyle into a tradition of centuries.

Go away & call your activities what ever you like, but don't try to call it marriage, because if you can't breed naturally in your relationship, marriage it aint.

I had difficulty deciding Rodney position until he reached his final conclusion.
There are literal millions around the world, who just don't get to decide what their sexual orientation is going to be!
Only nature makes that choice!
Denying this endlessly discriminated group the freedom to chose happiness, is not a right we or the government has, nor incredibly ignorant church elders, or those who just get off marginalizing a minority?
We can't decide for the Gay community any more than we can decide for left handers, or those born with club feet, cerebral palsy, downs syndrome or any other difference from the so-called norm.
Would we forbid Jesus to marry one of his Apostles, Judas perhaps?
Given his gentle kind nature and his patent predilection for almost exclusive male company, would, in today's extremely judgmental world, probably label him as Gay?
Marriage is always between a man and a woman. Maybe?
But the holy estate only goes back a few hundred years. Before then, the union was just something two people agreed on or had sanctioned by a civil union.
Just like the one where the Master, allegedly turn water into wine for the wedding guests?
Nobody has a choice over their sexual orientation, or who they fall in love with?
An outcome that from time to time, really does throw in some odd couples?
Very tall woman, very short man, or very strong, robust and powerful woman, thin weedy reed of a man?
Should we ban odd couples? Or define union between the mentally challenged as something less, because it doesn't suit an imposed, by religion, common ideal!
Look if somewhere around 80% of the voting populace are cool with this change, why don't we simply more on, or, failing that choice, we could have a referendum, that would settle this issue once and for all!
Marriage is a fairly recent phenomena, but love between partners is as old as time itself.
Let the people decide, rather than intolerant rabid religious ranters, granting themselves a self declared right, to stand in the creator's shoes!
Rhrosty.

Well, sorta Hasbeen, if you define marriage as a sexual relationship. When two people cannot perform sexual intercourse then they don't have a sexual relationship, even infertile or disabled couples who can perform the act of coitus can be said to have sexual relations, two people of the same gender cannot "have sex".
I suppose in the past a marriage which was not consummated was seen as void, or at least one party might leave themselves open to annulment and divorce proceedings however chaste marriages did persevere.
Those considerations aren't really relevant since the introduction of no fault divorce but a chaste marriage or a marriage where the parties engage in err, how to put this.. "physical recreation resulting in orgasm" as an alternative to sexual intercourse will still persist as a minority of all marriages.
As stated above though it's all just trivia for the amusement of people with time on their hands and bored internet addicts like me, Marriage equality is last years meme, this year it's "Racism", in order to be relevant Rodney Croome needs to change hats at this juncture, swap his Gay Rights wimple for his Anti Racist hoodie and bandanna.

Rhrosty,
There's no evidence that the "voting public" support Gay Weddings, in fact Rodney Croome has in the past given his reasons as to why there should not be a vote or a referendum on the issue. The Gay Rights activists want the change to come via act of parliament because as a path of least resistance they can bully or shame individual politicians in lieu of trying to gain grassroots voter support. How many people can a Marriage equality rally in a major city gather? 200? sometimes 1,000 if it's on a sunday and the weather is good and these rallies are not welcoming or open to the public, try going there to debate them and see how far you get.
The reality is that this is a non issue, it's something that pertains to an extreme minority of an extreme minority and which has no bearing whatsoever on the health, security or moral bearing of a nation. We're talking a few hundreds of couples nationwide who may for a time be married in the legal sense, the fad will pass just like the "golden age" of 1980's Gay club life has passed.

Obviously it's not the libertarian thing to add government services or to extend existing ones.

I see no connection with freedom because everyone is already free to marry whoever, whatever and as many as one chooses to. So what if the government wouldn't provide the service of registering some of these marriages? They shouldn't be providing any similar services in the first place!

Complaining about the loss of freedom to have the government register one's marriage is like complaining about the loss of freedom to have the prime-minister clean one's house.

Rodney
As others have suggested you are entirely free to form and maintain any sort of sexual relationship you please with any consenting adult in this country, you can even expect the freedom to do so openly and with out any sort of artifice. That is the epitome of personal freedom and You would be very hard pressed to find anyone who objects to that in any way shape or form in contemporary Australia.

The result is that being openly Gay is essentially uncontentious in our society.Long may that be so but being able to call a same sex union a marriage is just a bridge too far and something that smacks too much of a small tail trying to wag a large dog for many of us. When we have activists vilifying anyone who dares to say that they object to "gay marriage", calling us bigots homophobic or worse it does your cause no good service especially when we have an otherwise supportive attitude to homosexuality.

If the author can convince islam of his point of view then I'll listen to him. In the meantime he should shut up and enjoy the legal equivalence he and his partner have with married couples.

"The state has no right telling me, you or anyone else who we can and can't marry."

Rodney whilst I'm of the view that if the state is in the business of registering relationships they should not discriminate the fact that it is a state recognition does give them that right.

I have not seen any case to suggest that the push for same sex marriage is any more critical than a fight against one of the last official flags of difference.

If I've understood the legal lack of ramifications to the marriage/de-facto issue correctly then what you are after appears to be for the state to tell you that it's OK for you to marry who you want to rather than a rejection of the states right to tell you "who we can and can't marry".

I've also noticed a tendency from some gay activists to stand divided on the issue of the state telling people "who we can and can't marry" by rejecting the case of people seeking unions involving more than two consenting adults. Not sure where you stand on that but it's not helped the credibility of a rejection of state authority.

I'd like the government out of the business of registering relationships and if the existing mostly meaningless registration is continued discrimination regarding the choices of consenting adults should be removed (and for the christian fundies who have those particular fantasies children and alsations can't consent in a valid manner).

The current marriage act seems to be a farce, defendants of the status quo talk about procreation but the act has no requirement for that and readily allows the marriage of people where that is neither the intent or in some cases a possibility.

R0bert

This issue is of importance to so few of us all this is of little significance.

In the wider picture so few care, regardless of the noise from the minority.

The vast majority of us will teach our children our values. The vast majority will absorb those and as the vast majority of us have, they will reject the notions of homosexuality. All natural parents will teach children the values, great pleasures of parenting and the interactions in male/female families.

It is my opinion sodomy is an unnatural and selfish behaviour but if a minority want to indulge and raise it to a par with heterosexuality ... well they can, but it will never rank equally in the opinion of the vast majority. That is a self evident truth.

I totally disagree with same sex parenting. Which of course once the aim of same sex marriage has been achieved will be the next aim of homosexual activists.

I think it won't be the state that draws that line. It will be drawn by natural parents.

Rodney, the continued push to normalise homosexuality with full government assistance is an example of the tail wagging the dog. You may think that the lack of support for any desire to equalise homosexual unions with marriage is morally wrong. Plenty of gun owners I know think that disarming the population is morally wrong too. But in both instances, the problem is that both gun owners and homosexuals need to convince the public that the public's widely help beliefs are wrong.

Neither gun owners nor homosexuals can just say "we have a right to be as we are, and you are wrong to deny our rights."

If gun owners used government assistance to insist that we change the English language to label school shootings or massacres with innocuous euphemisms, the public would see through the subterfuge and get angry about what was being done to our language in order to push a pro gun agenda. But this is exactly what you homosexuals are already doing to our language, and it is also making the public angry because we can see the agenda that you are trying to force down our throats. Your position is increasing hostility towards homosexuals, not reducing it.

Or between a man and up to four women .....
Jon J,
Not in the eyes of those who believe in marriage. What's next ? Marry your Pet , or a tree ?