Lexi,
What people do in private consensually they are answerable for, it does not mean we have to have laws to legislate what is a lifelong commitment of love. Marriage defines much more love and the State is not interested in our love life. It is interested in a male and female relationship because it has potential to bring children into the world. The marriage contract is a public declaration recorded by the State for the wellbeing of family.

Consider the tremendous welfare expense on the state caused by children of fatherless homes. Mrs. Meyer a family counselor said tonight they had to deal with children brought up in a communal arrangement on the north coast of NSW were there was no single family unit and the effects on these children were horrendous.

It was not I who introduced the behaviour of priests:
"Now, despite the teachings of the church of the rock spider, pedophilia is pedophilia and not a homosexual act. For example, bent priests have been known not only to get up little boys, but also little girls and maybe even the old chopper sow out the back.Posted by DreamOn, Monday, 25 June 2012 7:28:53 PM"

Dear Josephus,

There are many human inventions. There are material inventions such as the plough, the telephone and the wheel. There are conceptual inventions such as God which have no material existence. There are structural inventions by which humans define relationships such as hierarchy which relates individuals and music which is a serial relationship of sounds of various pitch, duration, intensity and tone. Marriage is a structural invention which relates individuals to one another. Since humans have invented it they can define it any way they like. There is no natural definition of marriage.

Dear Josephus,

As I stated in my previous post - there are many different
patterns today of marriage, family and kinship - there is
no one "right" and only way except in the minds of
certain people who believe that their way is the only
"right" way- (and usually God given way as well).
These people are entitled to their views - however they
are not entitled to impose these views onto others - not
in a society such as ours. It is time that the Marriage Act
was changed to allow for equity and a fair go for all -
which is after all supposed to be one of our Australian values.

Lexi,
What absolute rubbish in this statement, "there are many different patterns today of marriage". There is only one way for children to be born into a family that gives children identity and emotional security and that is not a burden on the State. Talk to child counsellors on what makes a great family.

david f,
Again I repeat when did man or woman construct how children were born to form a family? Family is not a construct of man but a natural birth of a union betwen a man and a woman. The union of a Husband and wife is the exact biological and historical definition of marriage. Contrary to your spurious claim "There is no natural definition of marriage".

Learn what is the difference between a contract and the reality the contract covers. The written contract of marriage began in about the 3rd Century AD but the ceremony celebrating the union has been in society for many thousands of years. A State registered contract itself is not the reality. The reality is the marriage not the contract of itself. A person is not married in reality until they have consumated it in the sexual union.

Show me a healthy society that does not hold to a lifelong exclusive union of a man and a woman as maternal and paternal heads of their family.

Dear Josephus,

You are entitled to your opinion
but not your facts Sir.
I have nothing more to say to you.
I no longer wish to argue with you
as I do not want to be brought down to
your level in this discussion. You
will beat me by your obvious experience
as an illogical and abusive poster.

Dear Josephus,

Anglican Bishop Holloway wrote "Leaving Alexandria" an account of his life. He started out doctrinaire and intolerant of others. As a young student he even wrote a letter to his irreligious father to come to Jesus – a letter he was later ashamed of. In a later chapter of the book he wrote about his father and his realisation that his father was a very good man in his opposition to the rigid morality of the Scottish church. His father would rent a bus on Sunday so his workingman friends could legally get booze since bars could only serve on Sundays to travellers. (Jesus - The sabbath was made for man, not man for the sabbath.)

As he grew older and wiser he became more accepting of human frailties and realised that some of what were defined as frailties were part of the normal human condition. There is much humanity in the book:

“You no longer needed to play conceptual games with God. What you had to do was clothe the naked, feed the hungry and give cold water to the thirsty.”

“it was obvious that I could not refuse the sincere request of Peter and Richard to hear them promise to live together till death. I heard their vows in the Lady Chapel one evening after Evensong, using the form of the Prayer Book wedding service: and it took death to separate them, thirty-seven years later.”

“I have known many gay priests over the years. What has moved me most about their persistence in remaining within a Church that at best only grudgingly accepts them, and at worst actively persecutes them, is their identification not with campery and high jinks in the sanctuary, but with the figure of Jesus, the great Outsider. Many of them intuit that Jesus was himself probably gay, but whether or not that was the case, there is no doubt of his appeal to the rejected and discarded in ancient Israel, an appeal that is still strong today.”

Holloway resigned as Bishop of Edinburgh in 2000 over the Church’s condemnation of homosexuality.