Australia postal vote gay marriage
A year after the same-sex marriage postal vote, we're still wounded from a brutal campaign
The letter arrived in the early evening: "I don't know what to pack".
Under the pressure of the marriage law postal survey, my shut friend felt compelled to come out to his family.
While his siblings and cousins intended to vote Yes in the survey, his parents were less supportive. They reacted as if someone had died and home life became intolerable.
He left his family home and slept on my couch.
Friends sent him messages to communicate their admiration and visited to demonstrate their love.
Meanwhile, the tenor of the public debate soured almost immediately.
Experts and community leaders had warned of the harms a widespread vote would inflict but their suggestion fell on deaf ears. Far from the promised "respectful debate", television and online media circulated anti-LGBT messages on a daily basis.
An insult to our dignity
For many gender and sexually diverse people the postal vote campaign remains a challenge to process.
Verbal and physical assaults against LGBT people doubled in the aftermath of the survey, accompanied by a dramatic increase in force,
Australia's heated same-sex marriage debate
BBC News, Sydney
Twenty years after Tasmania became the last remaining Australian state to decriminalise male homosexuality, the country is having its say on same-sex marriage.
Voting is under way in a non-binding, voluntary postal survey to measure support for reform. It has been, at times, an repulsive and bruising process.
On Friday, the Australian media was awash with reports of an alleged headbutt on Tony Abbott, the former Australian prime minister and opponent of homosexual marriage. A 38-year-old DJ called Astro Labe was charged following the incident.
Witnesses said he was wearing a badge supporting same-sex marriage, but he told Australian media that his actions were not connected to the debate and he did it "because I didn't consider it was an opportunity I'd get again". Mr Abbott described the incident as "politically motivated violence".
Elsewhere, employees have complained they face punishment or unfair treatment at work if they don't show their backing for a "Yes" vote, while police in Sydney were called to a confrontation between
The Constitution Unit Blog
Legislation legalising same-sex marriage completed its corridor through the Australian parliament last week. This followed a strong vote in favour of the change in a postal survey, held from September to November. Paul Kildea argues that, while the survey proved effective in bringing about marriage equality, the process was deeply flawed and should not be repeated.
Australia’s political year ended on a high with the legalisation of queer marriage. There were jubilant scenes in the House of Representatives as it approved a alter to the legal definition of marriage from ‘the union of a human and a woman’ to ‘the union of 2 people’. The first weddings will take place on 9 January.
The road to marriage equality was convoluted and messy. For many years politicians resisted growing people calls for modify, and in the end opted to hold a national poll as a precursor to legislative action. This was constitutionally unnecessary and expensive, but the resounding result – 61.6% of respondents supported same-sex marriage – provided a clear endorsement that parliament could not ignore.
What is particularly noteworthy about this national poll is th
Australia plans postal vote on gay marriage
SYDNEY (AFP) - Australia will hold a voluntary postal vote on whether to legalise same-sex attracted marriage if parliament rejects plans for a plebiscite on the contentious issue, the prime minister said on Tuesday (Aug 8).
Parliament's upper house, the Senate, last November rebuffed plans for a national plebiscite involving 15 million people, with the Labor rivalry, Greens and crossbench MPs arguing it would be expensive and spark divisive debate.
Several gay senators made impassioned pleas against the plan at the second, saying it would manage to denigration of their families and subject them to hate speech.
Many male lover rights campaigners agree and instead favour a free vote among MPs in parliament, with politicians not restricted to party policy.
But Malcolm Turnbull's government made an election pledge to hold a plebiscite and he plans to deliver the legislation back to the Senate as preceding as this week.
The verdict Liberals do not hold an majority in the upper house, meaning it faces almost certain defeat again.
If this happens, Turnbull has committed AUD$122 million (S$131 million) to a postal vote, run by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, wi
Marriage equality
Decriminalisation of homosexuality
From the 1960s the socially linear South Australian Labor government wanted to repeal laws criminalising homosexuality.
However, it was not until the May 1972 murder in Adelaide of Dr George Duncan, a law lecturer and gay man, that premier, Don Dunstan, assessed that the community mood was receptive to reform.
Dr Duncan’s murder led to revelations of how commonplace aggression and harassment against queer people was.
South Australia’s Criminal Law (Sexual Offences) Operate, was enacted on 2 October 1975. It was a landmark in LGBTQIA+ rights in Australia because it fully decriminalised queer acts.
Equivalent law reform was passed by the Australian Capital Territory in 1976, Victoria in 1980, the Northern Territory in 1983, New South Wales in 1984, Western Australia in 1989, Queensland in 1990 and Tasmania in 1997.