Same-sex marriage law passes first major hurdle in Australia

Same-sex marriage could be 100% legal in Australia by next week
Australia’s same-sex marriage Bill has just cleared its first major hurdle and was today passed in the Federal Senate.

It is the first marriage equality Bill to ever pass any of the Houses in the Australian Parliament.

It will now go in to the House of Representatives for debate next week, but advocates believe the legislation should pass without too much hassle.

Australia recently held a national non-binding postal survey that asked eligible voters if they agreed that the ‘law should be changed to allow same-sex couples to marry’.

It was revealed on 15 November that 61.6% of Australians agreed that marriage equality should be legalized.

On the same day, Liberal Party Senator Dean Smith introduced his Consensus Marriage Equality Bill into the Senate. Smith’s Bill had cross-party support from all sides of the Senate chamber.

In the past two weeks the Senate has debated the Bill.
Same-sex marriage could be 100% legal in Australia by next week
BREAKING: Same-sex marriage law passes first major hurdle in Australia
Facebook via Australian Marriage Equality
Australia has voted 'yes' to marriage equality
29 November 2017
Shannon Power

Australia’s same-sex marriage Bill has just cleared its first major hurdle and was today passed in the Federal Senate.

It is the first marriage equality Bill to ever pass any of the Houses in the Australian Parliament.

It will now go in to the House of Representatives for debate next week, but advocates believe the legislation should pass without too much hassle.

Australia recently held a national non-binding postal survey that asked eligible voters if they agreed that the ‘law should be changed to allow same-sex couples to marry’.

It was revealed on 15 November that 61.6% of Australians agreed that marriage equality should be legalized.

On the same day, Liberal Party Senator Dean Smith introduced his Consensus Marriage Equality Bill into the Senate. Smith’s Bill had cross-party support from all sides of the Senate chamber.

In the past two weeks the Senate has debated the Bill.

On Tuesday night and Wednesday morning the Senate debated 13 potential amendments to the Bill.

Some of the amendments included; guaranteeing religious freedoms and allowing civil celebrants to decline performing same-sex marriages based on a ‘conscientious objection’. Another amendment was to allow service providers such as bakers and florists to deny service to gay couples getting married.

But most of the amendments were convincingly voted down in the Senate, including all the amendments put forward by the Australian Greens party.
Conservative Tasmanian Senator Eric Abetz stood up to speak ahead of the vote and spoke longer than any other Senator in the chamber, including leaders of the major parties.

He said he would vote ‘no’ to the Bill ‘in solidarity with those over 100,000 Tasmanians who voted no’. This was despite the fact the majority – 63.6% – of Tasmanians voted in favour of same-sex marriage.
It’s a yes

But shortly after 1.30pm in the national capital, Canberra, the Senate voted in favour of passing the same-sex marriage Bill. It was voted 42 in favour, with 12 senators voting against it.

The "religious freedoms" thing is a massive furphy. It's one thing to allow a church to refuse to perform a same-sex marriage, and I agree that a church shouldn't have to do it if they are against it. It's quite another to suggest that a service provider should be able to refuse service to someone because they happen to subscribe to a particular religion. "Service providers" includes civil marriage celebrants. The reason we have those in the first place is because of a thing called separation of church and state. Marriage has significance in religions, but it also has legal status quite separate from any religion, hence the need for civil marriages for those who do not identify with a religion. For a civil celebrant to refuse to conduct a marriage is the same as a baker refusing to provide a cake or a suit hire service refusing to let you hire one of their suits. It's called "discrimination". If someone refuses to do their job, for whatever reason, they should lose their job. I can't understand why this is even an issue. "Conscientious objection"? I object to many of the policy decisions made by the government, so maybe I should conscientiously object to paying my taxes.

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Regarding MPs who vote in a manner contrary to the majority vote of their electorate, there has been a lot of nonsense talked about this. People elect their MPs to represent them, but they do so after weighing the merits of each candidate and their views on a number of issues. No one expects the MP to hold a gathering of their electorate before ever single parliamentary sitting to determine how they will vote. Eric Abetz is perfectly within his rights to vote "No", despite the majority of Tasmanians voting yes. They already knew Abetz's views on the matter. Likewise, Jason Clare in Blaxland is free to vote yes, despite the majority in his electorate voting no. And this is why the postal survey was a massive waste of public money, and why I'm holding off celebrating until the legislation is actually passed.

And a few minutes ago, the Same Sex Marriage legislation was finally passed in the Lower House, meaning that it is now law!

And in other breaking news, the sky is falling in...