Australia rejects same-sex marriage bill which would allow a national vote on whether to legalise gay weddings Australia's parliament late Monday rejected the government's proposal for a national vote on whether to legalise same-sex marriage. The upper house Senate voted 33-29 against the coalition government's bid to hold a plebiscite on the issue. Attorney-General George Brandis introduced the bill into the Senate, where the government does not hold an outright majority, despite expectation the opposition Labor and Greens parties would scupper it. The government has repeatedly warned that a defeat would delay same-sex marriage in Australia for years. Brandis urged the upper house to 'stop playing politics with gay people's lives'. 'Get out of the way,' he said in a fiery debate. The opposition said the plebiscite would have sparked harmful debate against the gay and lesbian community and demanded a direct vote in parliament instead. Debate on gay marriage in Australia has gone on for more than a decade and conservative Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull hoped to resolve the issue via a plebiscite on February 11. But Labor said the proposed plebiscite of 15 million voters would be expensive and divisive, and also potentially harmful to those in same-sex relationships and their families. Despite strong popular support for marriage equality, Australia is seen as lagging behind other nations which allow homosexual couples the right to wed. Same-sex couples can have civil unions or register their relationships in most Australian states, but the government does not consider them married under national law. Click here for the rest of the article: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3913032/Australias-sex-marriage-bill-voted-down.html
I think in terms of the Australian political circus, you would have to conclude that the debate is resolved in the public conscious already. Surveys suggest that as many of 75% of the general population are in favour. Indeed as many as 60% of people who go to Church. Those two figure may also relate to the significant skew in the statistics meaning that there is a much greater level of support in the younger voters and a much higher level of resistance in older voters, and given that Church congregations reflect an older sociodynamic these days it really suggests that Church attendance has little bearing on the way you feel about this matter. Indeed on the Australian Anglican Bench of Bishops there are people holding both views. And well we may ask why has this debate been lost. The two factors I would identify, and first of them is that those who are opposed have never presented a model of marriage, what it really is and what it really is about. They spoke of the contract between the two parties, and missed the contract with the wider society that is also invested in the right, and further they failed to engage in discussing the sacramental nature of the bond, and what it might be declaring to us. The second factor is that those who argued for the proposition made a very good case for it as a justice issue, and sure that may well have been helped by Lady Ga Ga (I was born that way). I am not actually taking sides in the debate at this point, simply providing a sense of social commentary. At the last election the Lib's said if elected they would have a plebiscite on the matter, and the Labor Party said they would just do it. The result has been that the Lib's one, but without a majority in the Upper House, and so the Libs moved for the plebiscite and the Labor Party blocked it in the Senate. This means that if it is not resolved in the interim, this is likely to be a stand out issue at the next election and will see Labor returned to office. 30 High profile CEO's write to the Prime Minister urging action and got told to 'stick to the knitting'. My read of it is that they have read the circumstances and would prefer a Liberal Party return and the next election and so moved to nudge the Prime Minister on this. I don't know anyone in Australia who thinks it is not going to happen, however most of us imagine it will happen within the next three years.