NSW upper house votes to back gay marriage

May 31st, 2012

FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda

The NSW upper house has passed a motion calling on the federal government to allow gay marriage, despite a Liberal MP saying that change could lead to polygamy.

Greens MP Cate Faehrmann’s private members’ motion passed 22 votes to 16 in the Legislative Council, with both major parties allowing a conscience vote.

NSW has now joined Tasmania and the ACT in having a parliamentary chamber call for the 1961 commonwealth Marriage Act to be amended to allow same-sex marriage.

Shortly before the vote, Ms Faehrmann likened a ban on gay marriage to 1950s laws prohibiting Aboriginal men from marrying white women.

During the debate, Labor MP Helen Westwood described being in a lesbian relationship and having eight grandchildren.

“There’s just no evidence that my children or my grandchildren have been disadvantaged by being raised in a same-sex relationship,” she told the chamber on Thursday.

But Labor’s leader in the upper house Luke Foley, who hails from the party’s left faction, said that as a practising Catholic he believed civil unions were more appropriate for gay couples than marriage.

“I do believe that homosexual relationships are different to a married relationship,” he said, adding a “procreative relationship open to the possibility of children” was an “essential feature of marriage”.

Liberal member Matthew Mason-Cox argued same-sex marriage could lead to polygamy.

“Indeed, if one was to take the notion of equality of marriage to its logical conclusion, then there would be no reason to stand in the way of polygamist marriages, or other variants,” he said.

“This is the so-called slippery slope in this debate which has manifested itself overseas in some jurisdictions where same-sex marriage has been allowed.”

Fellow Liberal Catherine Cusack, however, said denying gay people the right to marriage caused “enormous harm and hurt” and was a 19th century approach to relationships.

“The rights that we have all been able to take for granted – myself, my husband, my parents – ought to be extended to all couples,” she said.

Premier Barry O’Farrell declined to confirm whether he backed the motion.

“It’s an issue for the upper house, should it come to the lower house I’ll make my views clear then,” he told reporters in Sydney.

Mr O’Farrell dismissed suggestions the motion would put pressure on federal Opposition Leader Tony Abbott to allow a conscience vote when several gay marriage bills come before federal parliament.

But Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young and Australian Marriage Equality convenor Alex Greenwich said the motion had put pressure on Mr Abbott to allow a conscience vote on the issue.

The upper house passed an amendment from National Trevor Khan for religious groups to be exempted from having to perform gay marriage ceremonies.

But the Legislative Council rejected amendments from Christian Democrats MP Fred Nile and Labor’s Greg Donnelly, which noted the European Court of Human Rights did not consider homosexual marriage to be an inherent right.

The Australian Christian Lobby’s NSW director David Hutt said it was disappointing the NSW Parliament had allowed itself to be “co-opted into an activist campaign” to change the federal Marriage Act.

Federal Attorney-General Nicola Roxon criticised Mr Abbott for not allowing the party’s federal MPs to have a conscience vote on the issue.

“He is trying to impose his own beliefs on the consciences of his frontbench,” Ms Roxon said in a statement.

Ms Roxon said Mr Abbott was worried about how federal Liberals would vote if they were given a conscience vote.

“Is he afraid of what Mr Turnbull would do? Is he afraid of what Senator Birmingham would do?”