Thank God for Marriage Equality in Australia
The operative word here is ‘equality’. The issue that was raised was discrimination arising from religious beliefs. We are all born equal. Some may find homosexuality strange but it is a fact in a diverse world. The real work is questioning fear which his not love. If God is Love then love wins the day as people can express their love through marriage like everyone else.
I had a family member who voted No who was saddened by the outcome. I found that hard to understand given another person’s sex and relationship life is not going to affect me. What they do in their life is their business not mine to judge. So wouldn’t we want people to be happy? Is that not the purpose of life?
The postal vote flushes up more extreme or strongly held views as distinct from a proper mandated voting system where all have to vote. I am sure the numbers would be much higher in a census. For a postal survey normally you get 10% returning their survey and within that only those who feel strongly fill it out. I’ve just done a quick analysis on the voting population and the total who voted were 79.1%. That is extremely high. So it is a representative vote. That is excellent.
So for Australia this is the first step in directly approaching the population to vote on social issues.
My guess about why the government spent $120 million was because there was division in the Liberal Party about same sex marriage. Apparently it was an election issue. It raises for me the Christian influence in politics. It is very important that politicians are drawn from a cross section of Australian society, in my view mirroring the demographics and with a background in social issues, community service and ethics. What we see is many of them are lawyers given the legislative complexion of Parliament rather than focused on social policy and issues. At the end of the day the question is –
Is Parliament about controlling the population (rules, laws) or is it about serving the will of the people (representation)?
The parties do reflect these differences to some extent but with business people increasingly donating to political parties they are garnering undue influence. This is an issue that must be debated and discussed by the wider society given tax payer priorities are decided on the basis of beliefs and perceptions.
So this vote yesterday was a good result. I was very pleased for the gay community. I personally have friends who are gay and they are great parents, very loving and just like you or me. It is a non issue.
As for God, clearly God allowed it.
Same-sex marriage results: Where the ‘yes’ case was won
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Peter Martin
Voters in electorates held by Liberal members of Parliament are more likely to support same-sex marriage than voters in Labor electorates, a Fairfax Media analysis shows.
Taken together, voters in Australia’s 60 Liberal-held seats supported same-sex marriage by an above-average 63.3 to 36.7 per cent.
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Same-sex marriage: Sydney celebrates
Sydneysiders rejoice at Prince Alfred Park as the ABS announces a 61.6 per cent ‘yes’ vote for same-sex marriage.
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We spoke to supporters of same-sex marriage at the announcement of the marriage survey results to see how they felt about the win for the YES campaign.
Voters in the 69 Labor seats were less keen, voting in line with the Australian average at 61.7 to 38.9 per cent.
Voters in the 16 National Party electorates gave the “yes” case well below average support at 56.8 to 43.2 per cent.
Eclipsing the Liberal-held electorates in support for the “yes” case were those held by the Greens, independent Andrew Wilkie and the Nick Xenophon Team, which recorded “yes” votes of 83.7 per cent, 73.8 per cent and 64.7 per cent.
In part, that’s because “yes” votes followed education and ethnicity.
By contrast in the 12 NSW seats that recorded a majority “no” vote, only 25 per cent had graduated from university. In the two Victorian seats that recorded a majority “no” vote only 20 per cent had graduated from university.
But not all of the seats that delivered high “yes” votes were strongly populated with university graduates.
In NSW, the electorates of Richmond near the Queensland border and Shortland on the Central Coast were among the 10 seats with the biggest “yes” votes. But each had unusually low proportions of university graduates, making up just 17 and 15 per cent of electors. Perhaps offsetting this, each had a very high proportion of electors born in Australia – 76 and 85 per cent.
In Victoria, the electorates of Ballarat and Dunkley in Melbourne’s south-east were among the 10 biggest supporters of the “yes” case but were made up of only 18 and 17 per cent of university graduates. Each had high proportions of Australian-born voters: 82 and 72 per cent.
In each of the 10 biggest “yes” voting electorates in NSW and Victoria the most common reported ancestry was “English”.
In none of the 10 biggest “no” voting electorates in NSW was English the most common ancestry. In five it was “Australian”, in two Chinese, in two Lebanese, in one Vietnamese, and in one Indian.
Only 28 per cent of electors in the NSW electorates that voted “no” were born in Australia. In the two “no” voting Victorian electorates 47 per cent were born in Australia.
All up, only 17 of Australia’s 150 electorates voted “no”. If voters had been choosing between candidates whose only point of difference had been same-sex marriage, the incoming government would have a majority the like of which Australia has never seen.
“Yes” carried the day in every state and territory, from the Northern Territory where it gained 60.6 per cent of the vote to the Australian Capital Territory where it gained 74 per cent. Victoria was the state with the biggest “yes” vote (64.9 per cent) followed by Western Australia (63.7 per cent), Tasmania (63.6 per cent) and South Australia (62.5 per cent). NSW and Queensland were the states with the lowest “yes” votes: 57.8 and 60.7 per cent.