Same-sex marriage bill

Senator Sarah Hanson-Young of the Greens has introduced the Marriage Equality Amendment Bill 2009. It’s been referred to the a Senate committee, due to report on November 26.

Plenty of time for a raft of both enlightening and cringeworthy commentary to materialise as public submissions. The bill isn’t going to get far, of course (though I will be happy to be proven wrong). The ALP seems to be walking a path of compromise that it hopes will be minimally acceptable to the maximum number of voters; i.e. they do not support same-sex marriage, but they support everything that same-sex marriage is about.

Personally, I think that the same-sex marriage issue, more than almost anything else, shows vividly just how much sway religious and social dogma has over our society, compared to empathy and rational thought. There just isn’t any remotely intelligible argument against allowing same-sex marriage – just a haphazard collection of inane and fearful pronouncements. There are precious few political issues where I’d feel comfortable saying that.