Albie Manton,
According to various happiness studies, people are generally happier when they are married.

According to various studies now conducted into divorced couples, they are generally no happier after their divorce then they were before their divorce.

If homosexual couples get married, then whoopee, but there is no scientifically acceptable reason to devalue marriage. Only a feminist would devalue marriage.

it's reassuring to see this moral and logical tripe get the reception it deserves.

Once upon a time, the labor party stood for something.

Now, anyone can buy them for a couple of hundred votes

The argument that marriage is solely for supporting families and child raising would make sense if you were calling for marriage to be restricted to those couples that had children.
Newly weds could be placed on a 24 month probation - if they do not fall pregnant within that period their marriage license automatically expires!
If your are using the child raising argument against same-sex marriage and are you are not calling for a similar scheme to the one I have outlined, then I would suggest your argument is just thinly disguised anti-gay discrimination.

BTW those of you that are arguing that marriage should keep with tradition, shouldn't we be enforcing the "Must be a virgin" rule?

Senator Bernardi, like other defenders of marriage as it currently stands, doesn't spell out what he doesn't want same-sex couples to have. He makes the argument for domestic co-dependency as a sop to gays and other unmarried couples (two sisters perhaps?) but he is vague to say the least about what government largesse and what sort of rights married couples should have that should never be bestowed on same-sex couples.

Does the Senator believe that one member of a same-sex couple should be forced to testify against the other in court? Should same-sex couples be prevented from adopting children? And what is wrong with amending superannuation legislation so the surviving member of a same-sex couple gets what his/her late partner wants?

Although we have a Marriage Act, as I said those defending so-called traditional marriage are often unclear about marriage and rather coy about what exactly should not be conceded to gay couples. Please spell it out.

Incidentally, legal parity between marriage as it is now and same-sex marriage shouldn't worry Bernardi and others like him. They can still believe their relationships are superior if they want to.

Ah, another South Australian. I'm convinced that South Australia is one of the strongest sources for this disease (in their political representatives)....no offence to South Australians... There seem to be a termites nest there.