While this doesn’t directly affect me or my immediate family, the issue does affect my friends and it affects my children’s view of the world they live in and affects how I see the community at large. Are we going to continue allowing bigoted laws and values to prevent equity?

If religious groups say things like they wish to refuse to symbolically marry people (which is what religious weddings are) then shrug. That’s an argument that can be taken up later. It doesn’t prevent people getting married and having the exact same rights (personally I’d ban all discrimination by religious groups in general).

If the suggestion is that businesses trading in the public sphere can discriminate then I think it’s ‘all hands to battle stations’.

I don’t ‘do’ religion but I think that having rights in the real world is more important and the right to equity in the real world is not negotiable.

THIS^^^^^^

Hard to not feel utterly embarrassed & ashamed to say I’m an Aussie with these backwards, blow-hard wankers so busy arse-kissing those Neanderthals “in-charge” (of the USA) asylum.

Malcolm & Tony & that Smith idiot need to ALL move there.

Earlier attempts with an unequal age of consent and negating riders were at one point sabotaged by LGBT lobbyists who circulated a fake white paper to all members of parliament misrepresenting the bill’s aims, to ensure it would fail. The bill was duly withdrawn until the political climate matured. Three decades later, and I can now marry the same man I could have gone to jail for loving in 1985.

Senator Dean Smith’s private member’s bill, that the government will most likely allow to go ahead following a Yes majority, could pass loaded up with amendments. If this threat materialises, then I think LGBT lobbyists must withdraw support and pressure Senator Smith to shelve his bill and wait for a propitious change of government.

Even if law reform is not achieved, at least a Yes vote will have clarified that that problem is not Australian animus against same-sex marriage, thereby paving the way for a future government to pass the bill unamended.

Dean Smith’s bill was arguably a reasonable effort before this “statistical survey” was imposed on the Australian community despite it failing to pass Parliament. But now it’s going to be the people who have spoken because they have had this forced upon them and the conservatives in Parliament can go fuck themselves. They had their chance to do this much better and cheaper than they have, they blew it, they can only blame themselves for what happens next.