gay marriage

via Stuff

It seems to be the in-thing to call for Inquiries, Official Inquiries and Referendums.

Horan, who voted against Gay Marriage, now has submitted a supplementary order paper calling for a referendum on the issue :   Read more »

Someone should put Pauline Hanson back in jail.

Pauline Hanson has clashed with 2Day FM hosts Kyle Sandilands and Jackie O over the issue of gay marriage in her first interview since announcing her return to politics.

The former One Nation leader, who plans to stand in this year’s federal election, invoked the Diggers in her argument against same-sex marriage and urged listeners to “think of the children”.

She also warned that “someone [will] pay the price” if gay marriage becomes legal.

“The fact is I don’t agree with gay marriages, or gays adopting children or [having] in vitro fertilisation,” she told the hosts, adding that she has “a lot” of gay friends who support her stance.

Read more »

H/T:  Kevin Hague

Maryland sure knows how to celebrate the new year in style, reining in 2013 with its first gay marriage after the new law came into effect at 12am on New Years Day.

James Scales, 68, was married to William Tasker, 60, on Tuesday shortly after midnight by Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake inside City Hall.

“It’s just so hard to believe it’s happening,” Scales said shortly before marrying his partner of 35 years. Read more »

This is the best argument yet presented by anyone against gay marriage. And it isn’t from Clin Craig, or anyone from teh clergy, or moral crusaders or any of the usual bigots..it is from James Delingpole…and his argument has nothing at all to do with morals, religion or the sanctity of marriage and other such bollocks:

Have a look at this chart and then ask yourself a question. “Which do I care about more: the fact that Rupert and Tarquin currently can’t get married in Holy Trinity, Brompton or the fact that the pound in my pocket is worth 20 per cent of what it was twelve years ago thanks to cynical and deliberate debasement of our currency by the ever-burgeoning state?”

Well, call me a great big homophobe but I know what bothers me more. Sure, Rupert and Tarquin are almost certainly thoroughly delightful chaps, who’d like nothing better than to have their partnership solemnised in the eyes of God, perhaps at an all-singin’, all-dancin’, all-smiling happy clappy ceremony presided over by some grinning OE Alpha Courser. Or Catholic priest. Or ultra orthodox rabbi. Or imam. Or Jedi. But I just don’t think it’s any of parliament’s business to be concerning itself with such essentially private matters. In fact, more than that, I think it’s an insult to the electorate and that it represents grave abuse of parliamentary responsibility.

Indeed, as I argue in more detail here, for David Cameron to be wasting parliamentary time talking about gay marriage is a bit like Winston Churchill, on the eve of the Battle of Britain, deciding to throw his weight into a vitally important new Bill on the practice of docking the tails of pedigree dogs.

Does no one in parliament get this? Passing few, it would seem. We know that Douglas Carswell is with the programme. Steve Baker, too. But how many other MPs are there out there who understand that the world is facing not just the worst economic crisis since the Thirties but the worst economic crisis in history, that few if any governments anywhere in the world are taking the necessary measures to deal with it, and that, as a result, we are still slouching towards Armageddon?

The Armageddon he speaks of is not moral, but financial…and he says our priorities are all wrong.

Then again, I may be wrong and the Tim Montgomeries may be right. Perhaps, rather than slashing the size of the state it really is more important that the Conservative party shows how fluffy and nice it is by making sure that every dole-scrounging tossball has at least one, decent flat-screen TV in his council house, and perhaps even by working towards the glorious day when all of us – gay, straight, bisexual or transgender – can be bound in holy union by the lesbian bishop of our choice.

Louisa Wall’s Marriage (Definition of Marriage) Amendment Bill has passed the first reading by 78 votes to  40 votes with no abstentions.

UPDATE: It appears that the proxy votes of John Banks and peter Dunne weren’t cast or recorded properly and now the vote has been amended to reflect their votes. 80 votes in favour (now including John Banks and Peter Dunne) and 40 votes against.

Now serious debate can be undertaken in select committee.

This was the speech in favour by Jami-lee Ross:

I have been talking about marriage equality for months now – yes, even before Louisa’s Bill was pulled out of the ballot.  As you all know I generally run an open comment policy, choosing to allow free speech and hoping that other commenters will provide some balance – and usually they do.

A long time reader sent me through this post from Slate.com.  I should note that it is very rare for me to go into such a site as most of it is leftist rubbish but I think this post is spot on when it comes to some of the anti-gay commenters here and over on the Pinko blog.

This blatant tactic of painting all “faggots” as depraved, concupiscent creatures rife with infectious disease, and who enjoy wallowing in each other’s feces and smelly assholes, is alarmingly effective at keeping anti-gay bigots from seeing gay men as fellow human beings. It also shields them from the realization that they are, in fact, bigots, and not heroes who alone have the courage to protect a snoozing, media-duped society from an infiltration of moral degenerates.

We needn’t dwell on the obvious: that anal sex is not limited to gay men, that not all gay men have anal sex, that straight people can acquire HIV through intravaginal sex, that condoms exist, that vaginas don’t always smell of roses either, and that gay men are no less repulsed by feces than are any other human beings. In fact, the only documented cases that I could locate in the scientific literature of coprophilia—a rare paraphilia involving an erotic attraction to feces—were of heterosexual males.

Given the anti-gay bigots’ preoccupation with gay men’s anuses, the claim that homosexuals can’t keep their sex lives to themselves (on hearing stories such as Anderson Cooper coming out of the closet, or a lesbian couple kissing in a park) is patently absurd. But because of disgust rhetoric, they have sexualized gays and lesbians to such a degree that all they can see in them is contaminated bodily excretions. Lofty emotions such as love and romance are for actual straight human beings like them, not for filthy animals fornicating and spreading disease.

As the debate over marriage equality gets going here, there are some poll results int he UK that suggests that bigots exist in all parties but mostly in the Conservatives where support has bled away as a result of David Cameron’s stance on marriage equality:

Almost six out of 10 people who attend services regularly say they are less likely to vote Conservative at the next election because of the plans to redefine marriage.

More than a third of those polled said it had no effect on whether they would support the Conservatives but most of them would never vote for the party anyway.

Support among churchgoers for Labour and the Liberal Democrats was also damaged by their stance on the marriage question but the biggest impact by far was on the Conservatives.

It suggests that the issue has caused a major breach between the party and religious voters, who have traditionally been viewed as part of its heartland.

Churches are supposed to believe in commitment and sacrifice, and yet they wish to raise barriers, or rather keep barriers in place to prevent others having the same commitment and sacrifice.

So far in New Zealand it is only the labour that is professing a split in support with the introduction of Louisa Wall’s bill. Colin Craig meanwhile continues to dog whistle the bigots.