Costello to legalise gay marriage?

Costello to legalise gay marriage?

Same-sex marriage will one day be made legal by a Peter Costello-led Liberal Party, according to radio presenter Julie McCrossin.

Speaking at a forum on gay marriage last Thursday at the University of Technology Sydney, McCrossin predicted it will be the Liberals who give it to us because they have a passionate commitment to the rights of the individual.

It would most likely happen with Costello as prime minister because he belonged to the Anglican Church, which in Australia allowed homosexuals to serve as bishops, she said. Labor, on the over hand, was too worried about wooing the Catholic vote.

I reckon we’ll get Costello to allow same-sex marriage a damn sight quicker than we’ll get the Labor Party, because they rely on the Catholics and the pope’s still influential, McCrossin said.

A spokesperson for Costello told Sydney Star Observer she was unable to comment on McCrossin’s prediction but said the federal treasurer had made his position on the issue clear in the past.

Our view is that marriage is a partnership between a man and woman and that is the definition we’ve got in legislation. I think that has always been the understanding of marriage, Costello said during a radio interview in August last year.

Obviously people have relationships, and they might be long-term relationships between people of the same sex, but to have a marriage, it has to be people of the opposite sex.

Gay rights activist Rodney Croome, who also spoke at the UTS forum, said he’d heard Costello was vehemently opposed to same-sex marriage.

Croome told the Star he thought the Liberals were just as likely as Labor to support gay marriage in the future on the basis of conservative arguments, such as it will bolster the institution of marriage in general and make homosexuals more respectable. That’s certainly what’s bringing moderate Republicans to the gay marriage table in the United States, he said.

But the Liberal Party would only allow it once they had lost government and reinvented themselves as a centre-right party rather than a far-right party, Croome said.

We have to remember the Conservative Party in Britain, which 10 years ago was considered one of the most homophobic parties in the Western world, is now developing its own gay and lesbian rights agenda to differentiate itself from Labour, he said. This only happened because they lost power, did some soul-searching and are emerging as a centre-right party.

It’s perfectly reasonable to think the Liberal Party would do the same thing if they lose power. Historically it makes sense.

You May Also Like

Comments are closed.