Dear Yuyutsu,

For me this discussion has now run its course.

Thank You for your contributions.

It will be interesting to see what the future
brings and what Australia decides on the kind
of society they wish to live in.

As soon as someone says their primary source of information is a 'friend in California' then you know it is time to stop reading. It is obvious that author had no intentions of voting anything but 'no'. The whole piece was an exercise in what has been typical of the 'no' campaign...misinformation and outright falsehoods.

Well this post will have nothing to do with the thread topic but anyway here goes:

Alan B: You say "I found far the published and peer reviewed Professor, more convincing, credible and cogent than a numbskull, who seems to think a bit/claims, that the double helix DNA molecule doesn't have discernible form or shape? "

You're just confirming your total ignorance of cellular biology here, because guess what: the DNA molecules in your body DO NOT have a *constant* discernible overall form or shape!!
(However, the molecule itself is a three dimensional double-helix and does have a particular direction which it can be read in - which I explicitly stated in my previous post*! )

Throughout the various stages of your cells' lives their DNA is constantly changing shape, but the molecule itself normally remains chemically the same.
For example, sometimes a small part of DNA molecule changes shape when the cell needs to read a gene during the transcription step of the gene expression process. Here part of the DNA undergoes a process of unraveling-at-a-particular-spot / strands-separting / getting-transcibed / strands-joining-again / raveling-up-again [Note: the unraveling here is NOT the helix unraveling but rather the complicated super-twisting of the DNA, the helix does unwind a bit during the strand-separating part though]

-continued below-

--continued from above -

Another example is during the cell division processes (ie: mitosis and meiosis). During these processes the *whole* of the DNA molecule changes form considerably!! Unlike the previous example which is too small to be seen (since it only deals with a small part of the DNA) for these processes you can actually see with a microscope the DNA change shape in real-time! Here is a link detailing these processes with pretty pictures: https://publications.nigms.nih.gov/insidethecell/chapter4.html

The fact that is changes shape should not at all be a surprise since it is a long narrow pair of intertwined molecular strings so you could except it to behave like a piece of wrapping-string. And even a child knows that pieces of string very easily change shape when moved or played with.

Of course, all this is really just ELEMENTARY biology-- school kids know the stuff! It is unfortunate that you somehow missed out on this education, but being an ignoramus is possibly not you fault. However, the real shame is that somehow you think that your know-nothing opinion should be taken as some kind of authority.

[*PS: in previous post I made a slight mistake: 8'-to-5' should be 5'-to-3' direction. The numbers are those assigned to the carbon atoms of the sugar-ring component of the DNA. Seeing as I know that the sugar doesn't even have 8 carbon atoms I should have noticed this error, however its been over 20 years since I studied this at uni so its not at all the fresh in my mind hence the slip-up.
Now you probably don't believe anything I say since you think I'm a "numbskull" so for proof it is confirmed it here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directionality_(molecular_biology) ]

I am not homosexual. I am a widow with two adult children and four grandchildren. This same sex marriage vote is not about same sex marriage, people see the vote about homosexual SEX not marriage! You don't have to be married to have sex. Marriage is all about inheritance, keeping 'it' in the family. Homosexual sex can happen in any marriage. The Greeks used to encourage homosexual sex-without -love for their philosophers etc.

Get over the sex part of the vote and think about the meaning of marriage now. And, please leave God out of it. Marriage is man-made . We do not need marriage to have sex. Plain and simple.