One “nonsense” argument. One brilliant response.
If you’re one of the vast majority of Australians who support same sex marriage, parts of last night’s Q&A probably made you want to hurl your remote at the TV in rage.
It was part two of the show’s same sex marriage debate, and panelists included Greens leader Richard Di Natale, Labor’s Sam Dastyari and Liberal Kelly O’Dwyer.
They were joined by international guests Katy Faust, a self-described bigot and American anti-same-sex marriage advocate raised by lesbian mothers, and Spiked Online editor Brendan O’Neill, from the UK.
Yes, things got heated. Yes, insults were hurled. And yes, some of the arguments against same sex marriage felt like we’d gone back in time to the 1950s.
The stand-out performer was Di Natale, who summed up the “nonsense” of the same-sex marriage debate in one eloquent argument, as well as explaining why it was unrelated to the issue of same sex parenting.
Check out Di Natale’s perfect speech here:
“We support as a society the right of same sex couples to be parents, and we do it because look, there’s lots of pseudo-science and gobbledy-gook out there about the effects on kids – almost every study demonstrates that the most important factor is whether a child is raised in a loving household,” he said.
“It’s not biology that influences whether you’ve got a happy, healthy, well-balanced child, it’s whether they grew up in a loving household – and if there’s any issue that kids growing up in an environment with same sex parents have to face, its the discrimination towards their parents, and it’s that issue we should be tacking, not this nonsense argument about whether people of the same sex should be able to raise a child. We’ve had that debate. That’s gone. We’re now having a debate about marriage, and whether people should be able to marry.”
“The issue with marriage is this for me: marriage is an expression of love and commitment between two people. Why do we say that one couple should be entitled to express that love and commitment publicly and yet another couple can’t do that? The only justification is that you think that the love between those people is somehow lesser, it’s worth less, it’s not as important and it’s different. And that’s what prejudice is.”
Thank you, Richard Di Natale, for putting so eloquently what most of us have been thinking for so long.
Now it’s time for the government to listen.
Do you think it’s time same sex marriage was legalised in Australia?
Want more? Try these:
18 arguments against gay marriage – and why they’re bollocks.
Top Comments
How many couples do you know who have requested that the marriage vows don't contain the traditional lines regard having children? There has been a shift away from traditional marriage vows for many years, indicating that marriage is the recognition of a loving relationship between 2 people. It seems to me that heterosexual couples have already redefined marriage.
The debate on the subject of gay marriage shows a lack of understanding of what marriage is. It is found in all cultures because all the humans on earth have to deal with the same biological realities.
Human children need two parents, and men want to know that the children they are raising are their own. While it is obvious who a child's mother is, because the baby comes out of her body, the identity of the father is unknown.
Until the invention of DNA testing a few years ago, the paternity of a child was determined by a man's social relationship with the child's mother. Marriage assigned paternity. Hence the enormous importance attached to female fidelity.
Once upon a time, a prudent woman did not indulge in sexual gratification until she had a legally binding contract with a man, in which he undertook to support her children until they were grown, and to share with her his home and his income, until she died.
The 1975 Family Law Act eliminated marriage as a legally binding contract. If either spouse can dissolve the marriage on no grounds at all, against the wishes of the other spouse, then how can marriage be said to exist at all?