For many centuries marriage has enjoyed an honoured position in society as it denotes respect for others, responsibility and the nurturing of children.

I think public respect will diminish if the word marriage is allowed to be used to describe a homosexual union. This will be simply because many view homosexual acts as weird, abnormal and dirty..

I hold my marriage on a high level and have no wish to see its reputation drop as a result of homosexuals being part of the institute. Homosexuals can find another word that means homosexual union.

There certainly is a great deal of emotion associated
with the issue of same-sex marriage in this country.

People read all sorts of different things into it what the
outcomes will be if we allow it.
They argue as to what marriage means to them and
how they generally view homosexuality. That is quite
understandable in a country such as ours where religion
has played such an important role in our lives. However,
realistically, taking religion aside, we are suposed
to be a secular state and religious laws have no legal
status.
Marriage is basically a legal
contract between two consenting adults which in this
country is controlled by the government. Like taxes.

Prior to 2004 - marriage was not defined under our
laws. Former Prime Minister John Howard
did so in 2004 by Amending
the Marriage Act to make it only between a man and
a woman to the exclusion of all others.
The Marriage Act can therefore be changed back. The
government has the power to do so. It can also include
all the "protections" voters deem as necessary.

Each society views its own patterns of marriage, family,
and kinship as self-evidently right and proper, and
usually as God given as well. If we assume that there
is only one "right" family form, then of course any
change will be seen as heralding the doom of the whole
institution. It is important therefore to recognise
that there is an immense range in marriage, family,
and kinship patterns and also that these patterns
have changed through time. The family patterns of
other cultures also challenge many of our assumptions about
the nature of marriage, family and kinship.

In any case people will have an opportunity to make their
feelings known through the postal vote on this issue.
Best to make it count.

As a liberal, I see no need to define marriage as only between a man and a woman, however, the slippery slope argument is frequently used usually by the opponents of any law. For example, Labor used the same argument against CHAFTA arguing that employers would be able to bring in large quantities of unskilled Chinese labour, yet 2yrs later and we are still to be swamped by the yellow peril.

Of course, any war is won one battle at a time and the left is very unlikely to be satisfied with one victory. One only has to look at Labor extolling the virtues of a plebiscite until the libs adopted it.

The question is whether if SSM is legalised whether the left whingers then try and make it illegal to refuse service based on religious grounds, and for those that say rubbish, it is already being discussed within Labor and the Greens.

Foxy writes:
“If we assume that there is only one "right" family form […]”

There’s no assumption happening.
Whether it be “right" or otherwise, there is only one form.
Any other “form” is a biological dead end.

I think the problem might be confusing the wanting access something with the something itself.

One has to be totally blind and pig headed to deny the slippery slope arguement. Regressives will take us to sodom and Gomorrah quickly.

//Any other “form” is a biological dead end.//

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jFqhjaGh30

Yep, and you can't go letting folk getting married if they can't produce issue. That's why we should test people for fertility before they get married, and only let the marriage proceed if they can procreate.

Now some of you might be thinking that this all sound a tad Orwellian, that it isn't the place of the State to be sticking it's nose into its citizen's reproduction, and that sort of thing is for authoritarian regimes like China with their one child policy. But thinking of marriage as a decision between two individuals tie the knot is lefty nonsense that will inevitably and swiftly lead to bad things happening. The only correct and proper way to think of marriage is as a State-controlled breeding program.