Jay,

The machinations within the Labor Party are well known, the gay marriage policy seems to be a 'Claytons' policy. Possibly the anti faction led by mostly the right Christian element within Labor, which is still very strong, did look to have out maneuvered the pro group with a "We'll give you your policy, but we wont give you the vote." I do not believe it is a straight right/left faction thing, our three local Labor members, 2 state 1 federal, all from the Labor right, 2 pro, 1 negative. The policy, even in its present form ,would not have got up without at least some center/right support. Now the pro group have "called" the other side on the issue through a leading party figure in Tanya Plibersek,
Unlike some, I have gay friends, I have a close family member who is gay, thinks The Greens are screwy and votes Liberal. I have been in gay establishments and attended parties, birthdays, engagements, wedding, numerous times in the past two years, with a mix of people. I have not seen what you describe, but then again I have not seen straight people at rave parties either, high on drugs and out of control, it takes all kinds. I am not pretending being gay makes you a saint, gay people have as many vices as the rest of the community. Although they tend to have more money than average.

cont

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p/s A wild night with our gay friends is dinner, in or out, talk of the days events etc, a couple of drinks, and home. I have had gay couples stay with us, we have no problem putting them up in the double bed in the spare room. A while back we attended a 21st for a young straight bloke, well the party got out of control, cops at 12, footy mates off their heads with who knows what, and fighting to boot. Went to a gay couples engagement party on the north shore of Sydney, they are in business got money, a very lavish catered for party etc, the scotch was all black label, as was everything else, no trouble, there could have been drugs, there was a lots of people in attendance, I don't know. When we attended the legal gay wedding in NZ, the couple put everyone up in a $300 a room hotel for two nights, paid for all meals and the next day paid for a fully catered harbor cruise, even wanted to pay our airfares from Australia, I wouldn't let them. Remember it talks all kinds in this world.

Dear Paul,

Any reason your friends had their wedding in New-Zealand?

Surely they could do it in Australia, except for the paperwork, which doesn't make a difference anyway and even if they still wanted it (why?) then they could simply go to New-Zealand, before or after, to arrange it.

Paul 1405,
As I said there are Gays and homosexuals, your friends would appear to be the latter, the word Gay in this context comes from 19th century London street slang, the "Gay life" was drinking, drugs, whoring and crime.

It's also pretty obvious that support for sames sex marriage by the captains of industry is purely for commercial reasons, take a look at this video, is this a marketing campaign or a show of community pride? It's hard to say.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWZBKMwFSH0
Usually the majority of the participants in Gay pride parades are not even gay and a good number of them are paid to be there or otherwise incentivised to attend by their employers.
In fact the whole "debate" is driven by Facebook and Google and their liberal minded boards, all of a sudden a movement founded with the explicit goal of destruction of the family is now pro marriage?
We said years ago that capitalists were going to take over the internet and impose their agendas and skew everything their way, in 2007 Murdoch was the boogeyman with Myspace but in reality it was the Lefties and Liberals who ended up dominating the web. !00% of the directors of social media companies are pro Gay marriage, pro Feminism, anti Racism and so forth, social justice is now a capitalist project, it's even absorbed the hard left and your beloved Greens.

Yuyutsu, gay marriage is recognised as legal in New Zealand.

Jay, I cannot comment on your sweeping statements. <<Usually the majority of the participants in Gay pride parades are not even gay and a good number of them are paid to be there or otherwise incentivised to attend by their employers.>> Where do you get that stuff from? etc etc. I doubt many employers would advertise the fact if those claims of yours were true.

Dear Paul,

<<Yuyutsu, gay marriage is recognised as legal in New Zealand.>>

I know, but it's not illegal to conduct an unrecognised private or religious marriage in Australia (I did check about it, and it is so as long as no claim to it being "legal" is mentioned in the ceremony, or better still if the word "legal" is completely omitted from the protocol). Then the couple can quietly slip off to New-Zealand a few days before or after and do the legal thing there (if they even care to).