Same Sex Marriage Thread-Part 2

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awesome, and the right thing, but isn't it strange that Republicans only seem to find compassion when their self-interest is at stake?
 
Ax, Cobbler, what's the view of people in Australia on gay marriage, from what you can gather? Are most people okay with it, or more homophobic ish(I'd predict the bogan's don't quite like it but I may be wrong with that)?
 
this is lovely as said by Portman:

British Prime Minister David Cameron has said he supports allowing gay couples to marry because he is a conservative, not in spite of it. I feel the same way. We conservatives believe in personal liberty and minimal government interference in people’s lives. We also consider the family unit to be the fundamental building block of society. We should encourage people to make long-term commitments to each other and build families, so as to foster strong, stable communities and promote personal responsibility.

One way to look at it is that gay couples’ desire to marry doesn’t amount to a threat but rather a tribute to marriage, and a potential source of renewed strength for the institution.
Click to expand...
 
:crack: Oh by the way, there's this big uproar in Turkey apparently that a mother, whose children were put up for adoption for various reasons, claims she wants her child back because he's being raised by a lesbian, married couple. They also bitch about Turkish children being raised by Christian couples, that it should be allowed. Geez...
 
Then go to an agency that will go along with your preferences. Did she know beforehand who were going to adopt her child? I don't know how Turkey does it, but I assume this wasn't a closed adoption.
 
Galeongirl said:
Ax, Cobbler, what's the view of people in Australia on gay marriage, from what you can gather? Are most people okay with it, or more homophobic ish(I'd predict the bogan's don't quite like it but I may be wrong with that)?
Click to expand...

Most polling shows there's quite strong popular support, I think around about two-thirds of the population. When the gay marriage bill last year failed, a lot of people pointed out that parliament did not at all reflect the opinion of Australia as a whole. The main opposition to gay marriage comes from some bogans and the more vocal fundamentalist religious types.
 
Axver said:
Most polling shows there's quite strong popular support, I think around about two-thirds of the population. When the gay marriage bill last year failed, a lot of people pointed out that parliament did not at all reflect the opinion of Australia as a whole. The main opposition to gay marriage comes from some bogans and the more vocal fundamentalist religious types.
Click to expand...

A lot of the politicians who voted it down did so because they toed the party line as well.
 
cobl04 said:
A lot of the politicians who voted it down did so because they toed the party line as well.
Click to expand...

I was genuinely surprised no Liberal backbenchers defied party policy and crossed the floor, especially in the Senate where a couple had made noises about it. Although ALP members are banned from crossing the floor, no such prohibition exists within the Liberal Party, and up until fairly recently some Libs - especially a handful in the Senate - fiercely maintained their independence. There was one, I think from Tasmania, who crossed the floor 150 times in his career.

The fact only about half of the ALP voted for gay marriage despite having a conscience vote shows just how out-of-touch they are with their constituents and popular sentiment in general. It's also showing up the growing disparity between Labour in Australia and New Zealand. The ALP is increasingly being torn between its socially conservative and liberal factions and can't quite decide whether it is left wing or centrist, while New Zealand Labour is clearly a party of the left (or at least centre-left). New Zealand Labour is technically voting on gay marriage as a conscience vote, but it might as well be party policy - only 3 of their 33 MPs are voting against it.
 
Pearl said:
Then go to an agency that will go along with your preferences. Did she know beforehand who were going to adopt her child? I don't know how Turkey does it, but I assume this wasn't a closed adoption.
Click to expand...

We got more info today in the paper. Apparently the family was dysfunctional and her three kids were taken after this boy ended up in hospital 5 months old covered in bruises. These three have been with the lesbian couple since, the boy is now 9 years old. The biological mother has already kidnapped his older twin brothers to Turkey to have their grandparents raise them, but that coup failed and the boys were returned to their adoptive parents. Who have been raising them lovingly, and also sent them to Turkish lessons so they learn about their biological descent. They have been nothing but great parents to the boys for almost 9 years, yet now the biological mother whines to the Turkish prime minister about it and their entire country goes into an uproar against ours? :coocoo: The feck is wrong with people?



Apparently Erdoghan will be visiting our country soon, so that'll be fun. :crack: There's chance for demonstrations in The Hague. Bloody ridiculous. If you don't want a perfectly fine lesbian couple to take care of your kids, take proper care of them yourself!! :doh:
 
Axver said:
Most polling shows there's quite strong popular support, I think around about two-thirds of the population. When the gay marriage bill last year failed, a lot of people pointed out that parliament did not at all reflect the opinion of Australia as a whole. The main opposition to gay marriage comes from some bogans and the more vocal fundamentalist religious types.
Click to expand...

:hmm: Okay that's quite a lot then. Shame it didn't go through, but maybe that'll happen sooner or later when the majority becomes more vocal so the politicians realise that their follow actually do support it.
 
Galeongirl said:
:hmm: Okay that's quite a lot then. Shame it didn't go through, but maybe that'll happen sooner or later when the majority becomes more vocal so the politicians realise that their follow actually do support it.
Click to expand...

Unfortunately I'm not confident. Gay marriage may be a big issue, but it's not the biggest issue in Australian politics right now. Elections at the moment are largely decided in bogan parts of western Sydney and Queensland. They hate taxes and they've been convinced that the current government's price on carbon is a tax when it's no more a tax than parking fines are a tax on driving. They want more middle class welfare ("zomg we've pulled little Jimmy out of the state-run school and put him in a private school and now there are fees?!?!? We want the government to pay for that too!!!!1!!11"). They're xenophobic, so the rather benign matter of asylum seekers has been whipped up into a racist fervour that poisons any and all political discourse that comes into contact with it. And these are also the places where you're most likely to find homophobic types.

The current state of play with the major parties is:
Labour (centre-left): Currently in power, has adopted gay marriage as party policy but members of parliament are permitted a conscience vote rather than having to follow party lines. Some right-wing unions are quite powerful within Labour and their leadership is socially conservative, hence the failure for more than half the party's members to vote for gay marriage. Labour's historically been based around the working class and had an emphasis on class conflict; it is struggling to adjust to modern progressive politics and the reality that almost everybody in Australia now sees themselves as middle class.
Liberal (centre-right): Will almost certainly win the September election. Party policy at the moment opposes gay marriage. Due to the nature of Aussie politics, the Libs will almost certainly be in power for the next six years if they win, and probably nine. However, some prominent members do support gay marriage and the party might revise its policy to permit members a conscience vote in the next few years. The combined vote of socially liberal Liberal and Labour politicians alongside the Greens might be enough to get gay marriage over the line, but I don't see this scenario happening until at least 2016-17.
Nationals (centre-right agrarian): Minor partner of the Liberals in coalition. Represent rural constituencies that are socially conservative. Definitely won't support gay marriage.
Greens (left): The only major party at the moment that is actually committed to supporting gay marriage.

It's depressing! Right now the best hope is that individual states will pass gay marriage laws and then seeing how the High Court interprets the constitution (since it's debatable whether states can legislate for gay marriage or not). It's likely that a gay marriage bill will pass in at least one state this year.
 
Ironically enough Tassie is probably the closest state to passing it, which is pretty good considering it was the last state to decriminalise homosexuality and NSW has the Mardi Gras.
 
By the sounds of it, Tassie's definitely going to make another push this year to pass a gay marriage bill after last year's one narrowly failed in the upper house. Some members of the legislative council that were on the fence apparently were swayed to vote against it due to concerns that it would not be legal under the constitution, so marriage equality supporters have been gathering legal advice - and I think the point's moot anyway, because what we really need is a state to pass a bill and have it go to the High Court as a test case. The constitution's a bit vague and the matter won't be settled any other way than a state passing a bill and seeing what happens to it, because even if all legal advice says they can do it, the bigots are going to make a federal appeal anyway.

South Australia and NSW have also been making quite prominent noises and might beat Tassie to the punch.
 
I've always thought that Labor were centre-left in the same way that the Democrats were centre-left, ie. they aren't.
 
Labor were historically centre-left in economic matters, which makes sense given their origins. That should not be confused with the grab-bag of 'socially left' (although why some of those social concerns should be exclusively left is beyond me) issues that have been tacked on with greater or lesser commitment since the 1960s. And of course since then, like social democrat parties everywhere, Labor have surrendered much of the economically 'left' ground. Hence where we find ourselves today.

The Democrats were a breakaway from the Liberal party. Their perceived trajectory to the 'left' (into the early 1990s anyhow) exactly mirrors in reverse the fate of the old DLP from Labor to Coalition affiliation.
 
Y'know, I studied politics for a semester last year. I still haven't got a fucking clue what socialism, communism, capitalism, etc mean, nor do I have any idea what the "economy" is besides "people work and get money and buy things". I think I'm gonna give up.
 
In the end it's about wealth and how it is distributed. And make no mistake, whatever corner of the political spectrum holds power, it is distributed.
 
u dont comunism its when bad people kill u and take all ur mony n ur not aloud 2 breath
 
Vlad n U 2 said:
I've always thought that Labor were centre-left in the same way that the Democrats were centre-left, ie. they aren't.
Click to expand...

What Kieran said. One of the reasons why the ALP has struggled so much to adapt to the "new" progressive/left wing landscape is because its left wing credentials were based largely around its attitude towards the economy. Keep in mind this party had communists, social democrats, and other Marxists in very high profile positions right up until at least the seventies. However, its emphasis on the working class has lost a lot of its resonance now that most Australians are either middle class or perceive themselves to be; practically nobody self-identifies nowadays as "working class". Furthermore, many of the unions that have been essentially central to its existence have been socially conservative and racist. The ALP was quite happy to uphold the White Australia Policy, in part to protect the jobs of white Australian workers. The fact that progressive politics has now shifted to a greater emphasis on social issues has really fucked them around; the greater environmental emphasis has been somewhat easier to manage, though not smooth.

On an economic scale, I would say until the Hawke years, the ALP were left. Hawke/Keating, they drifted a bit to the centre in line with the general global trend. Post-Howard, Rudd and Gillard have had to deal with the reality that the majority of Australia is wedded to Howard-era middle class welfare (and Howard-era xenophobic dog whistling) and they have had to maintain that despite contradictions with their own rhetoric and ideology. They're centre-left only because the centre has shifted more to the right in the wake of Howard.

New Zealand Labour has coped a bit better because of two factors: they were able to absorb the new social concerns of progressive politics with a greater degree of ease, and their members who leaned right economically departed in the late eighties to create a new small-l liberal party, ACT, that now sits a bit to the right of the Nationals. The ALP never quite got the luxury of discarding its equivalents to New Zealand's Roger Douglas, Richard Prebble, etc. (Though the comparison is imperfect, since ACT is true to its liberal principles and supports most socially progressive causes, while the right wing of the ALP - and its effectively dead DLP offshoot - are socially conservative.)
 
Of course in relation to all that, I'd be more than a little inclined to describe the self image of the overwhelming majority of Australians as 'middle class' to be a bit of an American trojan horse. Take away all those little subsidies and benefits and see how middle class you feel, eh?

If working class means pulling levers in a factory, then no, not many of us are that now.
 
Axver said:
Unfortunately I'm not confident. Gay marriage may be a big issue, but it's not the biggest issue in Australian politics right now. Elections at the moment are largely decided in bogan parts of western Sydney and Queensland. They hate taxes and they've been convinced that the current government's price on carbon is a tax when it's no more a tax than parking fines are a tax on driving. They want more middle class welfare ("zomg we've pulled little Jimmy out of the state-run school and put him in a private school and now there are fees?!?!? We want the government to pay for that too!!!!1!!11"). They're xenophobic, so the rather benign matter of asylum seekers has been whipped up into a racist fervour that poisons any and all political discourse that comes into contact with it. And these are also the places where you're most likely to find homophobic types.

The current state of play with the major parties is:
Labour (centre-left): Currently in power, has adopted gay marriage as party policy but members of parliament are permitted a conscience vote rather than having to follow party lines. Some right-wing unions are quite powerful within Labour and their leadership is socially conservative, hence the failure for more than half the party's members to vote for gay marriage. Labour's historically been based around the working class and had an emphasis on class conflict; it is struggling to adjust to modern progressive politics and the reality that almost everybody in Australia now sees themselves as middle class.
Liberal (centre-right): Will almost certainly win the September election. Party policy at the moment opposes gay marriage. Due to the nature of Aussie politics, the Libs will almost certainly be in power for the next six years if they win, and probably nine. However, some prominent members do support gay marriage and the party might revise its policy to permit members a conscience vote in the next few years. The combined vote of socially liberal Liberal and Labour politicians alongside the Greens might be enough to get gay marriage over the line, but I don't see this scenario happening until at least 2016-17.
Nationals (centre-right agrarian): Minor partner of the Liberals in coalition. Represent rural constituencies that are socially conservative. Definitely won't support gay marriage.
Greens (left): The only major party at the moment that is actually committed to supporting gay marriage.

It's depressing! Right now the best hope is that individual states will pass gay marriage laws and then seeing how the High Court interprets the constitution (since it's debatable whether states can legislate for gay marriage or not). It's likely that a gay marriage bill will pass in at least one state this year.
Click to expand...

:rolleyes: Those bogans sound like fun people. At least they're trying to get their kids educated, I guess...


Woah, so if one party wins they are in charge for six to nine years? :yikes: THat's a helluvalong time!
But perhaps a sensitive approach to the topic would help. I mean, if the party's openly pro-gay, the bogan's aren't voting on them and they won't win the election. By revising it after, that could work. May take a couple years but they might get there after all.


Do your states work the same as The US? They can figure out their own laws and stuff like that?
 
Kieran McConville said:
Of course in relation to all that, I'd be more than a little inclined to describe the self image of the overwhelming majority of Australians as 'middle class' to be a bit of an American trojan horse. Take away all those little subsidies and benefits and see how middle class you feel, eh?

If working class means pulling levers in a factory, then no, not many of us are that now.
Click to expand...

Agreed. But as long as self-perception is of membership to the middle class, traditional rhetoric about the working class is not going to have much resonance and the ALP desperately needs to adapt.

Galeongirl said:
Woah, so if one party wins they are in charge for six to nine years? :yikes: THat's a helluvalong time!
Click to expand...

Well, basically, incumbent governments in Australian elections don't tend to lose often. Since the end of World War II, we've had just one single-term government, and that was in extraordinary circumstances. You can basically guarantee that when a party enters power, they will win their first and probably their second election as incumbent. Since elections are every three years, that gives the six to nine year figure (and the Liberal Party once held on 1949-72!).

Do your states work the same as The US? They can figure out their own laws and stuff like that?
Click to expand...

Similar, but our federal government exercises more control over the states.
 
Lol, here most parties don't actually end up serving full term. As it's usually a coalition of a few smaller parties(yeah, we have a fuckload of them here, ridiculous!) they will disagree on points, and to get laws through they have to find a majority. If they can't, it won't pass, and eventually the disagreements break up the parliament and they crash.

If it wasn't for the bloody control of the country, it'd actually be pretty funny. But yeah, it's sad.
 
I may be almost 31 years old, but I could see why that age group overwhelmingly supports SSM. We came of age when gay rights gained momentum and sympathy for LGBT increased because of Matthew Shepard and the movie Boys Don't Cry. Unlike previous generations, we were more likely to know someone who was gay at a younger age. The LGBT community wasn't that foreign to us, so it's no wonder why we're more supportive.
 
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