Why won’t Tony Abbott allow a Coalition conscience vote on gay marriage?
What has Abbott got to fear with such a vote, defeat that’s all?
The cross-party House of Representatives' social policy and legal affairs committee’s inquiry into same sex unions received about 276,000 responses to its online survey, with nearly two-thirds in support of gay marriage. There is strong support for gay marriage from committee chairman Graham Perrett, he said it was "undefendable and unjust" not to support gay marriage, adding that "The love between same-sex couples is no different,” to any other.
The Greens member Adam Bandt told Parliament that the public was "ready for change" and that same-sex marriage should be legalised because it was "right".
Naturally, the usual suspects have came out once again to oppose gay marriage, the so called Christian churches. The Anglican Archbishop of Sydney, Peter Jensen, wrote a letter to parishioners. It quotes Bible extracts from Genesis on the nature of marriage and notes that ''not all can be or should be married''.
The Catholic Archbishop of Sydney, George Pell, and his auxiliary bishops, Julian Porteous, Terence Brady and Peter Comensoli, co-wrote a similar letter to catholic parishioners. Their letter entitled ''One Man and One Woman in a Covenant of Love and Life'', states that ''legislating for same-sex marriage will change the meaning of marriage for everyone and radically reshape the cultural and social structures of our country''.
It is likely that some time in the near future parliament will vote on a proposal to change the legal definition of marriage. Let’s hope they do, as Adam Bandt said, the “right” thing by their fellow Australians.
Both my partner and I support gay marriage.

Dear Paul1405,

A conscience vote should be allowed in Parliament
on same-sex marriage in a secular country like
Australia - which has no official or state
religion and where religious laws have no legal
status. To have a political party dictate to its
members and not allow them to have a conscience vote
because of religious reasons goes against Australian
values one of which includes freedom of religion and
secular government.

Its very disturbing to think that these people may
form our next government.

There should a conscience vote on all matters except for those specifically mentioned in the platform the party has campaigned on to get elected. Until there is representing their constituents, consulting their conscience or considering the good of Australia and the world will take second place to the decision of the party room.

Since gay marriage is completely a civil matter and no churches will be required to perform them it merely seems a matter where the churches are trying to use government to enforce their moral vision.

Government should not be used to promote religion according S. 116 of the Australian Constitution.

Abbott should be an abbot.

Sexual union between two persons of the same gender cannot be defined in the historican and biological sense as marriage FULL STOP.

Dear Josephus,

You are clearly wrong. Since marriage has been defined to include sexual union of two people of the same sex in some places it obviously can be and has been defined that way. You obviously don't like that definition, but it can be and has been defined that way.

Why won’t Tony Abbott allow a Coalition conscience vote on gay marriage?

The answer is simple, and Abbott has said so plainly. Both Labor and the coalition went to the last election pledging not to change the marriage act.

Abbott intends to keep his promises, a problem that Labor apparently does not suffer from.