Steel, I wouldn't be so hard on yourself. Over in NSW we have Fred Nile and the so-called Christian Democrats (who are neither). South Australia doesn't have a monopoly on homophobes.

One point I thought of is how the likes of Bernardi, Nile et al seem to want to minimise the number of gays. They say gays number as few as one or two percent of the population (and therefore their rights don't matter). And at the same time, they make out that same-sex marriage would mean the end of marriage, the death knell of civilisation etc.

You can't have it both ways. Either gays are numerically significant enough to pose a threat or they are negligible in numbers and therefore same-sex marriage would not make one iota of difference to marriage per se.

I'd also like to know how many heterosexuals would refuse to get married if same-sex marriage was legislated. That would be a real test of the effects of same-sex marriage.

The Wikipedia site on Corey Bernadi makes interesting reading, it seems Malcolm Turnbull and other liberal MPs distance themselves from him!

The 'institution' of marriage was already destroyed by historical divorce laws, secular marriages (and even interracial marriage according to the religious), which is extremely prevalent in our society including christians (that irony of course will be lost on most of them)..... I wouldn't expect a logical or rational argument from these people. How a gay couple expressing their love for one another and getting married tangibly affects anyone (especially when divorce has been okay'ed) has never been explained.

> The Rudd Government wants us to accept a number of conclusions at face
> value...Same-sex relationships are not the same as marital
> relationships and to treat them the same is to suspend common sense.

Which boils down to "they're begging the question because they're wrong" and puts paid to any pretense the senator had to reasoned argument.

Government should get out of the business of marriage altogether and limit itself to regulating partnerships and contracts (of whatever arrangement) as it does already.

Thanks for the tip on the Wikipedia entry, Kipp.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cory_Bernardi

With Bernadi retiring from the Senate tomorrow, I doubt that he'll be holding forth on relationship recognition much more.

So Senator Bernardi is retiring. What a shame because I didn't really get to know him. He seems like the thinking person's homophobe. He concedes gays should have some type of relationship recognition through the Coalition's proposed "domestic co-dependency" initiative but, as I said, doesn't explicitly say what benefits married couples should receive and gay couples should be denied.

It is a mystery to me how amending the Marriage Act to include same-sex marriage would cause marriage to collapse. The only way it could would be if heterosexuals suddenly opted for same-sex marriage en masse. First of all, if they did that would be their choice (we live under capitalism not communism and so people do have choices).

Secondly, most people are heterosexual not through their own choice but because of their sexual orientation. And so they are not likely to take up the opportunity to marry someone of their own sex. Only gay people would do that.

Finally, the Coalition's proposal and same-sex marriage legislation are not mutually exclusive. How about both? But of course Bernardi and his colleagues are simply using "domestic co-dependency" to hide their anti-gay bigotry. At least Fred Nile here and Fred Phelps in the US are more honest.