There is really no reason not to give homosexual unions respectability. I agree that many homosexual unions are not monogamous, but this obviously does not count for all of them. I don't understand what people find so threatening about gay relationships being considered on the same par as heterosexual relationships. If a homosexual relationship is monogamous and based on love - what makes this inferior to other types of relationships???

Its highly reductionistic to measure the worth of a relationship from its reproductive value. So a couple with 10 kids are more valuable than a couple with 2???? Or is it a simply a case of any old excuse to maintain your own power??????

Most people respect homosexual unions, even though they would not be willing to grant them the same status as heterosexual unions. We are living in a time of social conservatism - of course people would not want something marriage changed in such a plural, confusing world.

I would also be interested to know about you DM. I take it you are a male, but are you a Christians - if so, what church?, how old are you, what level of education have you reached?? What are your general attitudes to homosexuality??? Do you believe that homosexuality is inherently wrong, or do you just think they should not be allowed to get married.

I really don't think the 'gay community' is a polar extreme from the heterosexual world as you would think. There are people attracted to the same-sex right throughout the community who have nothing to do with the gay community (which I take it you imagine as a group of flowery, lispy, drug-taking polygamists somewhere in the inner-city). They are normal, everyday people who are part of our workplaces, our sporting teams and our churches. I guess its only natural that they would want full-citizenship and don't see how this would send their married next-door neighbours into crisis. The other thing that you should be aware of - NOT ALL GAY PEOPLE HAVE AIDS. I don't mean to be patronising, but your thoughts on this issue would advance considerably if you thought as gay people as something other than some early 1990s gay mardi-gras stereotype. Gay people and society have moved on, you can too!!!!!! I actually think gay and straight people could live well together without these invented categories if gay people were given full-rights and therefore didn't have to huddle together in ghettos.

I might be wrong, but I kind of get the impression you have never really met any gay people or had any friends who are gay people. Could you look a friend in the eye and tell them they were a second-class citizen??

May I ask that you spend some time actually considering your own motives on the issue. And please do not make this a consipiracy issue about how 'gay people with AIDS dominate the media and the law professions'. Lets face it, you are discriminating against people - you are just using what you consider to be 'facts' to justify this. By saying one group in society can have one set of privledges and another cannot, based simply on who they are, is discrimination - not matter how you justify this.

I am sad that as a society we are still so unenlightened on this issue.

'Cat' and 'YngNLuvnIt' - I should make one clarification for you both- when I say that many of my friends are not interested in marriage I do not mean my male friends solely. I meant both my male and female friends are largely disinterested in or apathetic towards marriage.

Additionally, please don't patronise me (or other young twenty-something males) by equating my hesitation about marriage with "wanting to have my cake and eat it too." We're not sex-crazed, rutting drones preoccupied with 'Ralph Magazine' pin-ups who will eventually grow up and quietly shuffle away to the nuptial bed. We are not part of any primordial "age old" battle for commitment, many of us are not even remotely scared of commitment; we simply have deeply considered and profound problems with the institution of marriage.

Now you can, if you wish, shake your heads and intone that "nature will kick in" at some point in 5-10 years but let me tell you this: 'nature' has got nothing to do with 'marriage.' 'Nature' tells us to have kids, not walk down an aisle. It's possible to be in a loving, committed relationship (with kids, if you want) without ever marrying or feeling the need to do so- I'm in precisely that situation now. In fact the absence of ceremony can be a wonderfully affirmative, because your relationship rests solely on its own strengths.

Of course, many friends of mine (male and female) don't want a life-long partner at all, and it is nonsensical to accuse the men, at least, of simply wanting to "settle down into a de-facto relationship with a girl until somebody better comes along, and thus never have to commit to one sexual partner for life."

This is a cardboard cut-out caricature of men that's offensive and unfair.

1) It ignores the natural fragility and complexity of all long-term relationships.
2) It presumes that we are hard-wired for a life-long partnership and that deviation from this is somehow immediately selfish. In fact life-long partnerships are always difficult and often painful (look at the divorce rates.) Of course, some work hard at it and are happy. But the high failure rate and work required for success imply we’re smothering a few hard-wire urges while we’re at it, and I don’t just mean sex.
3) If “someone better comes along” (not just ‘better looking/younger’ but someone who is better suited to you) then should the urge to move on be automatically smothered? If you’re a male or a female in a loveless marriage (particularly if the kids have moved out/ are yet to come) should a more happy partnership be automatically discounted?

Sex, like the relationships we form, are ultimately what we make them. Some will enjoy one blissfully happy marriage, others will bail out from a destructive and painful marriage for another loving long-term partner, some will have three or four long-term partners. Some will have countless affairs and never settle down, happily free of the "deep lonliness" that Cat insists must exist in them. I know one or two people like this.

Cat demands that "we want husbands (not boyfriends), we want commitment." Fair enough, noble sentiment. But many do not, and falling back on accusations of selfishness to make these views fit your world view does not, I'm afraid, cut the mustard.

Ofhust, in your last post you say that you would be interested to know more about DM. If you scroll upwards, past the personal abuse from Big Al and his mates, you will find that DM is Donna Murphy from Petrie Queensland – the heartland of Hansonism. DM was so pleased with one of her own postings on this website that she sent it to the Australian newspaper and it was published last Saturday. I happened to notice. I then googled Donna Murphy and discovered that she has also published under her own name on the subject of abortion. Apparently Donna wants to force women seeking abortions to look at ultrascans, a particularly nasty form of fundamentalist fear-mongering that was visited on the good citizens of Canberra for a while until they sensibly voted out the god-botherer responsible for the legislation. (Now Big Al etc, before you angrily burst onto my screen again accusing me of intimidating DM by “outing” her, try to remember that Donna had already outed herself.) I remain as curious as Ofhust to know where your anti-homosexuality comes from Donna. Enlighten us please, answer Ofhust’s questions.

Thanks Grace. I am just not sure if Donna is self-aware enough to work out exactly why it is that she has a problem with gay people. I suspect its simply a case of thats what she was taught about homosexuality in church and all her arguments spring from there.

Like Donna Murphy aka DM, Big Al 30 has outed himself by publishing his online opinion comment ("Denying Christmas is political correctness gone mad") through the letters columns of the newspapers. In the Canberra Times letters of 23 December we discover that Big Al is in fact Alan A Hoysted of Thomastown Vic. Hello Alan, take a bow...

Bill's commitment to his own ideal family structure and values may be an admirable trait. Where he gets scarily totalitarian is in his theocratic insistence everyone share the same family structure and values or get locked out of society (criminalised, left in a legal limbo or simply ostracised).

In the AFA world view there appears to be an underlying paranoia that human society is so fragile that any tolerance of minority values and experience will make the whole edifice crumble. Even stranger, it's as if they believe homosexuality is so faaaaabulous the whole world will turn gay unless official disapproval is enshrined in law. In the 21st century we know enough about human sexuality to know that is not going to happen.

There's also an underlying hyprocrisy in the AFA's insistence only heterosexuals should marry. For years they've been telling us marriage is the ideal institution in which to promote cohension and stability in families and in the larger society. But if that's really true why deny gays and lesbians access to that stability? Is it because the AFA needs gays and lesbians to live promiscuous and unstable lives in order to ensure reality fits their reading of scripture?

Contrary to the claims made by some here, there is no credible evidence to show children raised by same sex couples are in any way disadvantaged by the experience. Those studies that claim to show disadvantage have all emanated from conservative religious 'think tanks' whose agenda is to bend science in order to make reality fit a right wing reading of scripture. These studies are not supported by independent academic studies and do not stand up under peer review.

But no matter how determined conservatives are to lock same sex families out of the law, a percentage of same sex couples will continue to raise children and form families.

The real question is whether conservatives have any place deliberately disadvantaging those kids by insisting they have fewer rights than their peers.