Labor candidate supports gay marriage
Australian Marriage Equality has applauded comments made by the new Labor candidate for Melbourne, Cath Bowtell, supporting gay marriage.
Bowtell was preselected for outgoing finance minister Lindsay Tanner’s seat last night and told The Age she personally supports same-sex marriage.
“I would obviously advocate that as hard and as strongly as I could within the Labor Party forums,” Bowtell told The Age.
Australian Marriage Equality (AME) national convenor Alex Greenwich said Bowtell’s stance is more consistent with Labor’s principles of inclusion and equality than Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s.
“Cath Bowtell’s statement puts pressure on other Labor candidates, particularly those in inner-city electorates with large numbers of gay voters, like Tanya Plibersek in Sydney and Anthony Albanese in Grayndler, to publicly put their personal views on the record,” Greenwich said.
“The shared values and union backgrounds of Cath Bowtell and Julia Gillard again raises the question — why does Gillard oppose same-sex marriages? The nation deserves an explanation.”
AME has been letterboxing the Melbourne electorate and inner-city Sydney seats on the issue.
The two leading candidates for Melbourne both support marriage equality, with the Greens Adam Bandt standing strong on the issue last week after Gillard stated her personal opposition.
Bandt told Southern Star the Greens would push the issue during the election campaign.
“Overwhelmingly, people do support change,” he told SSO last week.
This issue is about what the majority of voters want, not a select group.
Joe, if the Greens take out Grayndler, Sydney and Melbourne, you’d be surprised how quickly the ALP changes their tune on the issue if they think it’s the difference between government and opposition. Voting the same way time and time again and expecting different results is just stupid….
What could Greens do? Ask the ALP to support SSM or they’d block supply on something else. The Greens are far too idealistic to negotiate in such terms. Harradine would support contentious issues in order to get his issues through. The Greens are so idealistic that they won’t compromise to get wins for SSM, the carbon emissions trading scheme is an example of this. All the Greens would do is more of what they are doing now, which is important as the Alp isn’t standing up for SSM rights, however they can’t implement SSM. Only the ALP or Coalition majority can, which is why we need more progressive people in the ALP parliamentary caucus who support SSM not less.
If the greens take out seats like Grayndler, Sydney & Melbourne that is three less avid supporters of changing the ALP’s position in caucus, making it easier for idealistic Christian ALP members to argue in favour of keeping a SSM ban in place with the support of the Coalition and ignoring the Greens.
I think your wrong, Joe. When someone or some party has the BOP in the Senate they are in a powerful position to negotiate.
Remember back to Sen Harridine and how much he was able to achieve. Or the Australian Democrats when they still had some principles.
If the Greens get the BOP in the Senate then they just be able to do something about marriage equality.
It’s great that the Greens support SSM. But what can they actually do in parliament except jump up and down about the issue. They will never have a majority to implement legislative change.
We need more ALP members like Cath to work to change the conservative elements of the ALP. Even if the Greens gain the balance of power the ALP + COAL will still have a majority and could jointly sink any move to implement SSM.
The Greens have been fighting for equal rights for same sex couples since the beginning. I believe The Greens are the only decent party standing strong on this issue. Greens leader Bob Brown is openly Gay and recently introduced a marriage equality bill into the Senate, however it didn’t pass as the ALP, Liberals and Family First voted against the bill. Unlike the ALP Melbourne Candidate, I really do think Adam Bandt will carry our voice to Parliament.
It’s time. It’s the 21st century.
Onward to full civil and marriage equality rights in the 21st century,
Joe Mustich, Justice of the Peace,
Washington, Connecticut, USA.
It is all very well for these MPs and “wanna be” MPs to state what their personal view may be – but if they fail to carry that through into parliament then their personal view is meaningless.
Plibersek is a typcial example. She’ll wheel herself out near elections and run around attempting to swing some gay votes her way making platitudes about how she “sympathises and understands”. But the moment she is re-elected she’s back to toeing the Labor Party Line in public and private, and same-sex issues don’t get a look in.