Gay marriage polyamory marrying your goat and the LNP’s position on a conscience vote on gay marriage.
Sorry to revisit this topic but as happens when a major decision goes through in politics a whole lot of the debate falls away and then other issues start to emerge.
Firstly now that the Australian Labor Party National Conference has changed ALP policy to allow for gay marriage another group has come out of the woodwork wanting their particular romantic love interests to be approved under the banner of marriage too. These are people who participate in what is called ‘polyamory’ – more than two people living together in a committed way variously interacting sexually. For example it might be one man and two women and he might be mating with each of the women who may or may not be also relating in a lesbian manner with each other. The polyamorous community believes the ALP’s change to support gay marriage is a platform on which they can build to get recognition for multi-partner relationships.
At which point the discussion trends off into – and then there is the bloke who wants to marry his goat.
Fred Nile MP is saying: I wanred people this would be the next stage.
Some of the most vocal supporters of gay marriage at the ALP National Conference were Penny Wong (a lesbian) Peter Garrett Tanya Plibersek Anthony Albanese Doug Cameron and Stephen Jones who plans to introduce a same-sex marriage bill. In Queensland Premier Anna Bligh and Member for Everton Murray Watt MP both gave strong support to the Civil Unions Bill.
Well actually why and where do you draw the line? The question that has been suggested to ask these politicians is: Do you given your deep commitment to the topic believe that at the next ALP national conference the platform should be further amended to legalise marriage among poly-fidelist triads?
This has been presented as an issue of ‘equality’ but it is far from clear that marriage is anything to do with equality. Outside my back door there is a whole dance that is constantly going on played out by all the birds all the butterflies all the lizards and insects. It is the dance of mating breeding producing eggs and tadpoles and offspring the next generation. The most obvious feature of this is the inequality the difference. The male. The female. Opposites put together to make a new being. Although my two hens will still lay eggs they are sterile without the rooster. Our deep friendships our private affairs our transient loves even our lifelong bonds make few demands on the wider society and the one we treat differently is the one that is about having children. It is the young breeding couples raising the next generation who are bringing an immense value to the whole society. This is not about fairytale weddings and giving people who feel different a chance to feel better about themselves. It is about the ordinary mums and dads and their kids. Far from being about equality it is the average mums and dads trying to raise their children who are pushed to feeling like second-class citizens while same-sex marriage is hogging all the spotlight.
73% of Australian children live with their mother and father.Although a third of children are born out of wedlock most of those parents marry. The Institute of Family Studies has come out again: stable families produce stable children. Children are better off with mum and dad. We need policies that help married families and we need the government to be focusing on giving famlies more status rather than hiving off their benefits to any man and his goat who wants to get the tick of social approval for his relationship.
The push for gay marriage could succeed only because of a long debasement in normal heterosexual marriage. We aren’t reviewing and digesting the outcomes and consequences of a long series of decisions and laws that have changed and undermined marriage stability. Instead we are heaping further erosion on the damage already done. The radical social deconstructionists have planned a long and deliberate attack on marriage and they have done a lot of damage already. That is no justification for doing more.
At the ALP National Conference it was also agreed that a vote in Federal Parliament on same-sex marriage should be a conscience vote for ALP MPs. In part this was as a result of a concern that if some ALP MPs were forced to vote for gay marriage along party lines they might leave the party forcing the ALP out of government. If there is an ALP conscience for on same-sex marriage in Parliament and the LNP votes on party lines which are not in support of same-sex marriage then a same-sex marriage bill would not pass.
Now the LNP is considering a conscience vote also with Malcolm Turnbull pushing Tony Abbott to make the change. If the LNP allowed a conscience vote it is likely a same-sex marriage bill would pass. Tony Abbott has presented himself as pro-family. How he plays this out remains to be seen.
So it does indeed make a difference what position our LNP Federal MPs Peter Dutton and Jane Prentice take on same-sex marriage after all. At the moment we do not have any information from them on their position but we will ask them. Would you like to know?
In local discussions around same-sex marriage there has been quite a deal of care taken not to raise any questions about the legitimacy of homosexual behaviour keeping the discussion carefully to marriage not homosexuality per se. However more and more I am questioning why this is the case.
Reading the arguments back and forward about same-sex marriage time and again I read things like how if you are a young gay man you’re four times more likely to commit suicide than other young men and are confused angry or ashamed because you feel different. This is quoting something written by a gay man!. When I read this I think we should be talking about why this is the case. Why on earth does anyone think giving a gay relationship a nice bandaid marriage label will make these feelings all go away? What part does envy play – envy of the ordinary mums and dads raising their children when this is something that is simply not part of nature’s design in same-sex relationships even if high-tech can artificially cobble together some sort of pseudo-family. Is it as simple as dismissing any effect of the behaviour itself as the root of the feelings of shame and difference? How do we so easily ignore the dramatic figures of AIDS related to male same-sex sexual behaviour?
Do these questions matter here in our largely married community in the upper Kedron Brook valley? Do they make a shred of difference to how we vote? What we think about? What we talk about with each other? Have we stopped at all to ask ourselves whether we have anything of value to lose if marriage is changed to something not about mums and dads raising their children together any more?