Phanto writes: "Perhaps you do not want to focus on why you did what you did and perhaps why you even remain married"

Not really. Not a single reason but a range of reasons that amount to a subset of the massive range of reasons that govern the rest of the billion. We are both quite satisfied about our marriage and have no interest in exploring it with an ignoramus on line.

If you repeat the same question the answer will be exactly the same but may not be transmitted as repetition is boring.

Marriage is a union between a man and a woman, Minotaur,> The statement is one of fact, and definition, like the statement that two parallel lines never meet. It is axiomatic, so not open to argument.
“Same sex marriage” is a nonsense. The union of a same sex couple is not marriage.
That is why the movement for perversion of marriage aims to change the legal definition, as if that will wipe out millennia of society establishing and sustaining the institution of marriage as a union between a man and a woman.
The legislated legal definition of marriage is simply a restatement of the definition of the institute of marriage. It is not a fabricated definition like the one proposed for perversion of the term "marriage".

I have just read through 14 pages of this, and no-one has stated the reason a plebiscite was rejected. When it was first mooted certain parties, including Labor, were opposed to the cost, estimated to be in the region of $525m. The argument was, you're the government, either do it or don't do it, we don't need to spend $525m. That's how it stands, you cannot add for or against arguments here, because for or against hasn't been decided.

If you want to change the definition of marriage in Australian society, then at least give Australians a say in it... bring on the plebiscite.

No handful of pollies have the right to change this without the assent of the people.

The vast majority of hate and rabid behaviour has been coming from the Progressive Left and a minority of LGTBIQ people. Why should we change tradition and a rite that has been with us for millenia on the say so of a very very very small minority?

It's not about love or equality... marriage is more than that... its about change for change sake.

Re Billyd

I think the reasons for the rejection of a plebiscite have been

1. The cost
2. The belief that a plebiscite would lead to a hate fest
3. My own objection, that neither I nor any other citizen has the right to decide on what sexual criteria other people should be permitted to marry.

Same sex couples wish to be able to marry under the same rules as male-female couples, with the addition that reference to gender be omitted. They wish for all the conditions allowing a man and a woman to marry to apply also to them. That'll be why SSM advocates call it marriage equality.

The main objection to marriage equality seems to be from people who have grown used to their own type of marriage (heterosexual) enjoying a supremacist privilege in which society and its culture has long been sculpted around their particular type of sexual union, and who wish it to remain "special" or exclusive.

Any legislative change opening up the definition of marriage to same sex couples would require removing any reference to gender from legal provisions relating to married couples. This could easily be legislated by a vote in the national parliament.

Surely not a big deal, too big to be voted on in parliament. Turnbull is allowing himself to be hogtied to a mainly Roman Catholic mafia which has internalised Bob Santamaria's Jesuitism - a mafia as little an expression of the Roman Catholic religion as ISIS is an expression of Islam.

Why can't the dogmatists get over it by adding an asterisk, in all their correspondence, to their own marriage status so that recipients can gasp "Wow"?

Leo Lane once again you make statements but have no argument to support them. Very typical of opponents of same-sex marriage...absolutely no substance.