Page 1603 - Week 05 - Thursday, 11 May 2006
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Warren Entsch, the Liberal member for Leichhardt in far north Queensland and a “fierce heterosexual”, said:
We want equal treatment for two people that are committed to each other. You’re always going to get those fundamentalists whom you’re never going to convince, but the more I talk to people about it, the more support I get.
What is really at play here is a battle between the progressives and the conservatives for control of the social agenda in this country. The late Professor Manning Clark spoke in his History of Australia of this struggle in Australian life in terms of the enlargers taking on the straighteners. He said:
This generation has a chance to be wiser than previous generations. They can make their own history. With the end of the domination by the straighteners, the enlargers of life now have their chance. They have the chance to lavish on each other the love that previous generations had given to God, and to bestow on the here and now the hopes and dreams they had once entertained for some future human harmony.
I call on those members of the Liberal Party who still hold liberal values to stand up now and oppose the straighteners. If they do not take a stand on these issues, the Liberal Party will have given up its last vestiges of liberalism and the transformation to fundamentalism will be complete. I also call on the Liberal Party to stand up for our local democracy. If there is any member opposite who supports their federal party vetoing this legislation, they should resign from this place right now. They not only show disrespect to their constituents; they are saying that they do not believe in local democracy and that they do not believe in the right of ACT residents to make decisions about how they are governed and by whom they are led.
There are often those motivated by religious convictions who believe that same-sex relationships are immoral and that those relationships should be discouraged at every turn. They are, of course, entitled to hold such views. But, just as we tolerate the right of this minority to disagree—and let us be clear that they are a small minority of Canberrans—I would welcome, as would the community, a reciprocal tolerance to put the alternative view.
We live in a secular liberal democracy and, while much of our tradition is based on a Christian ethic, I do not believe that organised religion has the monopoly over morality or ethics. Governments permit divorce, abortion, sex before marriage and child-bearing out of wedlock. None of these things has affected the right or ability of Christians to live by their religion, and there is no reason why civil unions will either.
Another great furphy in this debate is that civil unions are some way of undermining marriage. This is simply not the case. Civil unions do not undermine marriage. The easiest way to assess this is by applying the general principle: does the conferring of rights on a minority ever undermine the majority? The answer is no, it never does. I do not think anyone’s marriage is undermined because Andrew and Anthony living next door to them will have their relationship recognised in law.
We often also hear that marriage has a special place in society and should be elevated to a status above all other relationships. But what does this mean in practice? Should a
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