What if, what if, what if the sky should fall? NO! Thou shalt not be free to discriminate on racial, religious or sexual orientation grounds!

A very simple solution are signs that say, we cater for SSM/attendant business and or, traditional weddings only. Absence of the former would tell the SSM couples, around a million Australians, that their business is not welcome there and to shop around for evidence of the first!

This is plan B for the NO case, as they cannot, will not accept, validated credible evidence that homosexuality has a genetic basis!

Therefore the handiwork of the creator! Whereas those admonitions against homosexuality in some holy book, were/remain the constructs of mere mortals answering only to accepted cultural tradition, norms of stone age culture, or inculcated abysmal ignorance!

One needs to remain cognisant that all the words in alleged holy books, were penned by men, who bought their temporal, culturally acceptable prejudices, with them!

Given the many contradictions found in those books that were and have been quite deliberately excluded or strenuously revised and edited, often several times in the intervening centuries!

One cannot claim, with any shred of certainty, that any passage in any such book was ever the word of God. Or inspired by Deity!

Why even the ten commandments, handed to Moses by the hand of God from a burning bush. May be fiction? As archaeological evidence may be seriously indicating there was no exodus from Egypt?

Therefore, all that derived from that, possible fiction/invention to control the illiterate ignorant!

Who to a generic man, put enormous, absolute trust in these chicken scratchings! Sorry!

If alleged foundational truths prove to be fanciful story telling? How much of the rest of these "holy" books can be relied on for accuracy?

Given no such guarantee is possible! Why should (flat earth) medieval superstition and the pens of long dead men! Be allowed to decide what is or is not acceptable in a SECULAR society! Or put some alleged holy imprimatur on discrimination!?
Alan B.

Just bake the damn cake.

Funny, I think I've seen this article somewhere before...

Oh yes. It was here, last week. What's with the repetition?

Yep, it seems the change in the concept of marriage is yet another feature of the 'secular inquisition' that has been running throughout the western hemisphere ever since the fall of house bourbon. It's weird now how a Christian in Poland can run a business, practise in public, and raise their family according to scripture...but in English speaking countries they can't do any of that anymore.

The interesting question going forward will be whether or not Christian parents will get a visit from secular agents if they don't involve their kids in the indoctrinating process? Guess we'll have to wait see, huh gang.

Unprotected annul sex/a blow job, bad whether or not the participants are heterosexual or homosexual, but even if just as bad! Those homos and they alone, who indulge? Should not be allowed to marry because some words, allegedly dictated they claim, by God who forbade it!

Heterosexuals get a free pass! Because for them, they claim to a generic man!? Limited to, furry boring, missionary position only?

Just as proven and real as those 10-14 commandments carved in stone, by no less than the hand of God himself as the Jews were escaping slavery in a holy exodus from Egypt?

The emerging archaeological evidence to the contrary, notwithstanding!

Look, just put a sign up that says SSM welcome! If it's not there? The formerly discriminated against, will feel perfectly free to take their business elsewhere! NO PROBLEMO!

The sky won't fall, the trains wont stop, the telephones will still work I assure you and the world will not stop rotating!

Nothing real or of any moment will change, with SSM!

The usual Sunday service will be held on Mondays instead of Thursdays. Nude bathing in the community pool will be exclusively for females on Tuesday and males, Wednesday!

And for the pastor and my self? Any nigh we chose.

SSM will be down the hall and to the right and at the second door!

And mind the top step its a big one!

And make sure it's the second door not the third! Which is the service elevator currently undergoing extensive repairs and the top step there, is usually associated with terminal velocity. Or, so far so good.

All levity and levitation aside. Take your control freak fixations away and go, God bother someone else with them!

Now if you want a bill of rights that includes the unalienable right to religious practice, and freedom of speech etc/etc?

Then that's a whole new discussion we can have and will listen to! Be we Poles Slovaks Angles, Mediterranean or Celts? Absolutely!

Even if we have to drag recalcitrant intransigent pollies, kicking and screaming, AGAIN. To the ballot box!
Alan B.

' The interesting question going forward will be whether or not Christian parents will get a visit from secular agents if they don't involve their kids in the indoctrinating process?'

of course they will. The Marxist/feminist who have polluted their own lives want kids to be fed filth at the earliest age possible. They are also the ones shouting loudest about paedophile priests. Go figure.

I don't think they ever intended to protect religious freedoms.
If they planned to do so, they would've debated the 'fine print' first.
I think this thing was more or less a stitch up from the start just like Turnbull's infamous call to Trump.
"We'll get majority support for SSM, then give a show of attempting to push the 'religious freedoms' though after we have a mandate, but we'll let them fail."

Get majority support;
Deal with 'fine print' administratively and let them fail.

Seriously? I'm the only person who doesn't realise that we've had this article and this discussion before?

http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=19440
http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=19440

At the moment it feels like I'm stuck in a time loop but only I realise it... like the dude in Groundhog Day. Could somebody who can remember what they read a week ago confirm that I'm not going mad, and that the screwballs are the people who seem to oblivious to the fact that this all happened last week as well.

«A person who does not wish to participate in a same-sex wedding is doing so because they do not support the idea»

Well this is just ONE possible reason.

There could be dozen other reasons, where one could support the idea of same-sex weddings, but wouldn't or couldn't support actual such weddings in person.

Sadly the title of the article is "Freedom to discriminate", which doesn't sound that good - but is this the only freedom the author cares about?

Toni: It matters not if we've had this conversation before or whether or not there's a scientifically proven genetic basis to homosexuality. The brainwashed remain absolutely unable to accept either evidence to the contrary or the will of the majority!INTELLECTUALLY INCAPABLE!

And like all brainwashed members of absolutist cults, that have no basis in the truth, remain true to their brainwashed from birth belief! Absolutely refuse point blank to even look at the evidence to the contrary! ABSOLUTELY!

These are the swine we were warned not to cast our pearls before and as you are unable to get them to just take their fingers out of their ears and remove the blindfold! Then engage the brain even if that forces previously unused cerebral circuits to smoke?

As they consider, perhaps for the very first time in an entire lifetime? THAT THEY AND THEIR STONE AGE BELIEFS ARE WRONG, WRONG, WRONG!

And given they are intellectually incapable of any of the above!

Suggest you and I and all the other still sane folk commenting here? Just allow the rest of this risible FOAM FLECKED rubbish go through to the keeper?

And our turn to say, we shall not, we shall not be moved! We shall not, we shall not be moved!
Alan B.

I accept that homosexuality is genetic as is heterosexuality but I also accept that as some homosexuals chose heterosexuality, as a free choice, so do some genetical heterosexuals choose homosexuality.

Or am I wrong, and if so, why?

I accept that you accept gender bias has as a cause, genetic origins!

I also accept that you could be entirely wrong when you say people can and do chose to swing either way as a matter of free will.

But rather under extreme physiological distress, i.e., being told that your normal responses/reactions are abnormal and from the first urges of puberty or being bashed into compliance via physical duress!?

That said, does that then justify discrimination on the basis of mere self serving suspicion!?

We shall not, we shall not be moved, we shall not, we shall not be moved!
Alan B.

"Oh yes. It was here, last week. What's with the repetition?"

Yep!
Once you've read a book...no need to read it again...you understood it all the first time...must be wonderful to be so absorbing.