On Civil Unions
The Federal Government used its constitutional powers to prevent the ACT’s homosexual civil union legislation coming into force.
Is there a stronger argument for why civil unions should not be accorded a legal status akin to that of marriage – given that heterosexual de facto relationships are akin to marriage – than the policy/values position that marriage is between a man and a woman only? Because the position assumes many things about the state of values in contemporary Australia …
[Update – This briefing paper, on the legal recognition of same sex relationships, is from the Parliament of New South Wales.]
Is there a stronger argument for why civil unions should not be accorded a legal status akin to that of marriage – given that heterosexual de facto relationships are akin to marriage – than the policy/values position that marriage is between a man and a woman only? Because the position assumes many things about the state of values in contemporary Australia …
[Update – This briefing paper, on the legal recognition of same sex relationships, is from the Parliament of New South Wales.]
posted by MH at 9:00 am
2 Comments:
Well, what would the possible candidates for this 'stronger argument' look like?
1. Same sex relationships fail some other test that we normally might attribute to heterosexual couples. This could include something as ephemeral as some measure of how much they ‘love’ each other to something as physical as the ability to procreate with each other.
These tests would be failed by many existing heterosexual married couples. I would dispute that such a test that rules out same-sex couples but does not rule out any heterosexual couples could be developed.
2. Marriage has a religious aspect that Civil Unions do not.
Many people get married in ceremonies that include little or no religious content. And yet these are legally recognised. Conversely, there is nothing in the concept of ‘Civil Union’ that precludes the inclusion of a religious aspect.
3. The Ontological Approach: Marriage is by definition something only between a man and woman.
This may well be true, but even if it were, the definition of ‘marriage’ in this way does not automatically mean that the same is true for ‘marriage-like’. So we might consider the following:
4. Only a man and woman can have a ‘marriage-like’ relationship.
If we admit that a same sex couple can meet a reasonable definition of ‘marriage-like relationship’ with the exception of being homo rather than hetero – sexual, then it seems doubtful that this assertion can be sustained. Certainly Centrelink assumes that same-sex couples can have relationships that are marriage-like enough for it to effect the provision of welfare payments. Furthermore plenty of couples that are not same-sex fail utterly to produce a relationship that is even vaguely marriage-like.
This, in my opinion, leaves us only with:
5. The majority of people do not think that same sex couples should be able to have the recognition that hetero-sexual couples enjoy.
In the A.C.T. this just seems flat-out untrue. Even in the rest of the country I would estimate it to be a fairly close call. The vote on the Sunrise phone in poll yesterday was split by only 3%, which is quite significant as it does not have the most radical audience ever.
But even if it were true that the majority were against it, this by itself would not cause a federal government to change its course. One would only have to remember the protests prior to the current deployment in Iraq to see the lack of effect that public opinion can have.
Hence, we arrive at my point – there does not seem to be a strong argument for the intervention, only an interesting policy decision …
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