ttbn,

"Can you give an example where homosexuals have been 'excommunicated' simple for being homosexual?"

No, but the Catholic Church excommunicates them if they refuse to give up homosexual practices.
Other Christian Churches have much the same outlook and the major Christian Churches all condemn homosexuality.

What a fabulous day for the reasonable people who believe in marriage equality.

In one vote, we did what was right, we did what was fair, and we strengthened human rights by allowing marriage equality. Yes that's correct - The right to marry the person you love if you so choose!

Well done Australia!

Now let's get it through the parliament and into law and the people who don't understand love and loving relationships can go back to their dark dreary existences and we can all move on.

For those who will support someone's right not to marry two gays, or not to make a cake for the wedding of two gays, please put a huge sign in your doors stating that.

We the majority and unbigotted Australians will simply not buy from those stores either...

Love defeated illogical fear today!

You lost No voters - Get over it... This is how democracy works!

' You lost No voters - Get over it... This is how democracy works!'

bit rich coming from those who are still throwing tantrums over Trumps victory.

What's wrong runner did your world collapse today?

Never mind...

I think you have the wrong person... Trump or Clinton was a loss for common sense.

Now be brave and try not to wallow too deeply in your defeat...lol

Keep smiling

rehctub: You say, "It would be logic to think that of the 20 odd% that didn't vote, the vast majority would have been no voters that simply could not be bothered."

Actually rehctub, I don't draw this conclusion. For me what I say is that vote on a single issue like this doesn't just have YES and NO, but rather YES, NO and OTHER. Where the OTHER is shown by not voting/invalid voting and is composed of people who either
1) Abstain - this is my position, cause I don't believe government should have anything to do with marriage, hence I didn't vote to support SSM it nor vote against
2) Don't vote due to apathy - this is probably a large part of the 20% non-voters, but these votes can in no way be used to support the YES vote but at the same time cannot be considered as NO votes. However, they have the same effect like no votes to the extent that that they are not yes votes and so don't get counted as yes votes.
3) Don't vote or cast invalid votes for other miscellaneous reasons- such as they forget or were out of the country or were too sick/incapacitated or too stupid to understand the voting process, etc. This group of people would be very small.

What I've found truly amazing of this whole exercise is that most people don't seem to realise that a majority of eligible voters means 50%+1person out of *all* eligible voters. All day we've been hearing that the definite/overwhelming/landslide "majority" have voted YES but in reality less than 49% did. Just as an example of how many people think that a majority voted yes- the last comment on the thread before I started writing this was by Opinionated2 and includes this "We the majority and unbigotted Australians... "

Is this correct?

48.972% of Registered Voters who PARTICIPATED voted 'YES'
30.528% of Registered Voters who PARTICIPATED voted 'NO'
20.5% of Registered Voters ABSTAINED from PARTICIPATION in the Postal Vote

Also, an unknown number of extra citizens weren't registered to vote;
- Or did not have current address updated to receive a ballot.