Greens Mardi Gras marriage plea
The NSW Greens will today urge state MPs to support a motion in support of marriage equality ahead of Mardi Gras celebrations this weekend.
Greens MLC Cate Faehrmann gave notice of a motion on February 14 which calls the NSW Parliament to support marriage equality and calls on the federal Parliament to amend the Marriage Act to allow same-sex couples to marry.
Faehrmann will be joined in a press conference in Sydney this afternoon by Mardi Gras chair Peter Urmson, Australian Marriage Equality national spokesman Alex Greenwich, PFLAG national spokeswoman Shelley Argent, and US researcher Professor Lee Badgett to seek support for the motion.
Both Coalition and Labor Party MPs have been granted a conscience vote on the motion.
The motion uses identical language to a Greens motion passed by the Tasmanian Parliament last year.
The Tasmanian and South Australian Greens have also put forward legislation to legalise same-sex marriage at a state level to put further pressure on the federal Government.
Today’s announcement also coincides with I Do Day today.
I Do Day badges calling for marriage equality will be sold in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane today to raise money for AME.
INFO: Specific locations of badge sellers can be found at www.facebook.com/IDoDay
I haven’t a clue about where I am not accepted – perhaps in neighborhoods I really wouldn’t want to be seen in or by people I would not want to be associated with… Exactly where do you live , Stuart? Do you have a double wide, or is your trailer just bog standard ? Is your work shirt green or orange flouro? (that is a big word for brightly colored).
I have decided that 2012 will be the year of “adopt a bogan as me friend”. Will you be me friend, Stuie?
Sorry Stuart, we are already accepted …. just not by you. But that’s ok, I accept you with all of your ………
Sorry folks. No amount of marriage equality, anti-discrimination legislation or new floats in Mardi Gras will ever see homosexuality accepted.
The Federal Government has defined Marriage, for better or worse, as a Rewards Club. With over 1084 pieces of legislation that refer to it, the Marriage Rewards Club affords members many goods and services, from tax breaks, to inheritance rights, to family law protection regardless of which State you live in. This, while at the same time, excluding GLBTI people from the Federal Equal Opportunity Act.
Gillard and Abbott are advocating against equity in society on the basis of someone being same-sex attracted. They do not own your marriage. You can marry now. They only own, for better or worse, the discrimination against your marriage.
They have worked hard to get you to think if you had a ceromony, a celebration with your family and friends, that you are not married, but you are. In recent history, that is all that was required -the government and Church had no say, it was up to the couple. Gillard and Abbott are simply discriminating against those married, and trying to create an illusion for those who want to get married. The only thing they can do is deny you the Government Marriage Rewards program. You own your marriage!