WTG Aussies! All I heard was worries about this survey. I guess the next step is to actually pass some legislation?
Yes. The next hurdle is the hardcore conservatives insisting on built-in discrimination, i.e. “protection of religious freedom”.
Wow, I didn’t know the proposed legislation forced people to have a same-sex marriage! no wonder the religious are concerned.
Here’s an example of the idiocy:
As I understand it, the PM has promised that, if the measure passed, Parliament would draft and pass a bill by the end of the year.
Welcome to this century.
That’s correct. The real issue is that the conservative wing of the government have run out of options to delay any same-sex marriage legislation any further, so now they want to sabotage it by including provisions that allow for continued discrimination–they’re uncomfortable with true marriage equality.
Bizarrely, 11 of the 17 electorates that voted ‘No’ (out of a total 150 electorates) are held by members of the centre-left opposition, including the nine electorates with the strongest ‘No’ votes. So the conservatives aren’t even representing the views of their constituents.
Holy crap, I’ve seen this movie before. VP Mike Pence was governor of the state next to mine, and he practically invented using the “religious freedom” cover phrase as a means to discriminate against gay people.
Congrats, Australia on the decision, anyway.
Woah, we’re halfway there.
Now let’s get this thing legislated, done and dusted.
The truly awful Paterson bill has been sent to live on a farm, and hopefully the conservatives can be prevented from putting their grubby little fingers all over the proposed legislation.
It will be a beautiful thing if John Howard lives long enough to see his spiteful monitum abolished and the marriage act returned to the version prior to his meddling that did not mention the genders of the parties permitted to marry - a change he unilaterally made without a $122 million opinion survey.
Freaky. The $100 million survey gave the same result as all the pollsters.
61.6% Yes
38.4% No
$122 million dollars well-spent there. Good thing they don’t have any other issues that they could be applying that money to.
I’m disappointed in the result. I had expected it to be closer to 70/30. I’m also disappointed that we even had to have a vote. There’s been a bill tabled in the Australian state of Victoria to legalize euthanasia. I think euthanasia, while I agree with it in principle, is a far bigger issue and more worthy of a general pole than gay marriage is, and yet it just slides through the system with relatively little fuss.
It’s a very popular myth that Howard introduced the monitum into the Marriage Act 1961 but the exact same wording in Section 46 has been there all along. People weren’t aware of it many years ago because hardly anyone was married by a celebrant and ministers of religion are not required to make the declaration.
It has always, long prior to 2004, required a celebrant to state ‘‘Marriage, according to law in Australia, is the union of a man and a woman to the exclusion of all others, voluntarily entered into for life.’’ If you had been to a civil ceremony you would have heard it.
Howard’s amendment simply stuck those words in Subsection 5(1). The text of the entire 2004 act is here. There isn’t much to it.
True encounter: I was arguing same sex marriage with an uber religious type and he said “You now, in Australia a man married his dog.” I shot back “Austrailia does have same sex marriage yet!”
Well, so much for that argument. And I am very pleased for Ozzie friends Todd & William.
So they’re repealing Rule One?
I was hoping for 70/30, wasn’t expecting to get much above 60 which is an electoral shellacking hence Paterson realising to jig was up on his discrimination enabling bill.
All manner of ironies in the results.
My family of farmers & graziers come from two conservative regional electorates (Riverina in NSW] & Murray in while I’m in the metropolitan, inner west Sydney electorate of Reid, awash with us bright young things of liberal persuasion and guess which one had the lowest Yes vote? Mum’s already texted me asking “Just who’s the progressive now?” 
If Malcolm could just walk into the chamber now and announce “Mr Speaker I table a motion to enable SSM and all members of the Liberal party are free to vote based their conscience” then he’d win in a landslide.
The problem being he can’t just table Dean Smith’s bill and if he has to call a caucus prior there’s a non-zero chance the conservative reptiles could call a leadership spill and replace him.
Bugger 'em Mal, go for it, the angels and agnostics are on your side.
BTW, Dean Smith’s elegant speech to introduce his same-sex marriage bill to the Senate is well worth listening to (IMHO)
Same sex marriage has not been illegal in Aus since last century. And a comprehensive program of legislative reform subsequent to that means that same sex marriage is recognized by the courts, all government departments, and any regulated industry. Where relevant, discrimination on the basis of same sex marriage is treated the same as discrimination on the basis of any marriage.
The recent postal survey and upcoming legislation are about several things. Entering the 21st century is not one of them.
De facto partnership status, and the various state-based registered relation ship schemes, do not allow same-sex couples the same rights as marriage.
And, it should be pointed out, that it was in this century that the Howard government amended the Marriage Act to specifically define marriage as marriage as between a man and a woman only.
Does Australia have country-wide referendums? How common is this?
The reason I ask is that in the system we have in the US a country-wide referendum would be virtually impossible. Not saying it’s good or bad (probably a little of both), just… different.
Yes – Australia has referendums to amend the Australian Constitution.