Labor candidate supports gay marriage

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 Southern Star last week.

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4 responses to “Labor candidate supports gay marriage”

  1. Actually SSM it is already Victorian State ALP policy through the hard work of people like Cath – inside the party, agitating for change and ‘moving this issue forward’. Aside from numerous ALP State Members supporting SSM, Cath would not be the first Federal Labor MP to do so – but she would be one more strong voice and vote for change in the Federal Labor caucus. That’s going to make a hell of a lot more difference than Adam Bandt on his own on the cross benches.

  2. I’m tired of supporting Labor on progressive issues: so far they’ve run away from climate change, refugees, and now Julia’s declared that her party’s view and her PERSONAL view is that marriage is between a man and a woman. Full stop. I will not support a candidate from that party now, no matter what she says. Cath could agitate all she likes, but she’s not going to change the party by winning a seat for them. The voters of Melbourne now have a chance to elect someone from a party of principle whose party platform supports us.

  3. Actually the Greens talk is cheap. How are they ever going to legislate for same-sex marriage? Even if they get the balance of power they are not going to do a trade or negotiate on the issue. It will only be a Labor government who can actually legislate for change and we need more progressive people like Cath who are willing to take up the fight to the ALP caucus.

    A noisey Greens minority can be as idealistic as they like but they will never be in a position to change the ALP’s party platform, and achieve change. Rather than target people like Cath who support SSM why not target conservative members of the ALP who don’t, they are the ones preventing change.

    Cleary Australian Marriage Equality is just a front for the Greens.

  4. The issue is not whether she will advocate strongly within party forums, but whether she would be prepared to lead a group of her colleagues to cross the floor and vote for a Greens equal marriage bill. Talk is cheap.