09-08-2017, 03:14 AM
Professor E, can you please list the arguments against the amendment? It seems that there really is only a religious objection, apart from the ridiculous argument from Corey Bernardi that if gay marriage is allowed then people will end up marrying animals, children, inanimate objects or more than one person (the floodgates argument).
I have no problem with religious freedom. If you're a staunch Roman Catholic, then I agree that no law should compel you to marry someone from the same sex or have an abortion. But I have nothing but contempt for the spin that has developed in the US - that religious liberty entails being able to punish and discriminate against others who are deemed by your religion to be immoral. In the US, this marketing spin is being used to drive legislation exempting those who are opposed to homosexuality from anti-discrimination laws. They call them religious liberty laws. Because liberty is always a good thing, isn't it? I guess calling them "right to discriminate" laws didn't have the same beautiful ring to it.
So it was that a clerk of courts in Kentucky, Kim Davis, refused to register same-sex marriages after the Supreme Court ruled that same-sex marriage was a right protected by the Constitution. And you have bakers refusing to sell wedding cakes to gay couples.
What the hell? Unless you're being forced into a same-sex marriage at gunpoint, what right does anybody have to discriminate against someone else? By all means, have your religious views. But render unto God the things that are God's and to Caesar the things that are Caesar's. That's the basis of the Church/State distinction in Australia.
I have no problem with religious freedom. If you're a staunch Roman Catholic, then I agree that no law should compel you to marry someone from the same sex or have an abortion. But I have nothing but contempt for the spin that has developed in the US - that religious liberty entails being able to punish and discriminate against others who are deemed by your religion to be immoral. In the US, this marketing spin is being used to drive legislation exempting those who are opposed to homosexuality from anti-discrimination laws. They call them religious liberty laws. Because liberty is always a good thing, isn't it? I guess calling them "right to discriminate" laws didn't have the same beautiful ring to it.
So it was that a clerk of courts in Kentucky, Kim Davis, refused to register same-sex marriages after the Supreme Court ruled that same-sex marriage was a right protected by the Constitution. And you have bakers refusing to sell wedding cakes to gay couples.
What the hell? Unless you're being forced into a same-sex marriage at gunpoint, what right does anybody have to discriminate against someone else? By all means, have your religious views. But render unto God the things that are God's and to Caesar the things that are Caesar's. That's the basis of the Church/State distinction in Australia.