Barry O’Farrell has said he opposes a NSW same-sex marriage law because only a federal law can provide “true equality”. But this ignores the aspiration at the heart of the marriage equality movement: that same-sex couples be allowed to legally marry.
A state law does this as well as a federal law. A state law allows same-sex partners to be included within the language, traditions, rights and responsibilities of marriage.
It allows us to embrace an institution that strengthens relationships and brings families closer together. This is why opponents of same-sex marriage like Fred Nile oppose the NSW same-sex marriage bill as much as an equivalent federal law.
It’s also why it is nonsense for some commentators to call state same-sex marriages “civil unions”. Such unions were designed to exclude same-sex couples from marriage by deliberately not using the m-word. State same-sex marriages overcome this damaging exclusion.
Granted, state parliaments can never provide equality in the fullest sense. They can only pass legislation for same-sex couples and they can only do it within their borders.
But to stop same-sex couples from marrying under a state law just because heterosexuals can’t marry under the same law is petty.
It ignores the fact that most couples don’t care how the law under which they marry is framed, or who passed it, but only that they can marry. Most older Australians neither knew nor cared that they married under state laws if they tied the knot before 1961.
So today, most same-sex couples think the right to make legally binding vows of lifelong commitment and to have that called marriage is much more important than the legislative backstory.
Criticism of a state same-sex marriage law also ignores how our federal system works.
In Australia, personal relationships have always been recognised state by state and gender by gender.
For example, heterosexual and same-sex de facto relationships were recognised at different times in different states in a 40-year process that culminated in their equal recognition in national law.
It’s the nature of federalism that the states provide a path forward for sensible and popular reform when the federal government ignores public opinion and blocks that reform. It’s the same overseas, where same-sex marriage has occurred first at a state level in every other federal nation that has moved forward on the issue, including Canada, the US, Argentina and Mexico.
Even in the UK, same-sex couples can only marry in England, not Scotland, and do so under legislation separate from the Marriage Act.
NSW MPs who don’t want to deal with the issue of same-sex marriage will inevitably sugarcoat their opposition with phrases like “true equality”. But in the end what they’re really saying is “not us, not here, not now”.
Such excuses don’t wash with those of us who see older same-sex partners die before they can marry and fear Australia is lagging behind.
Publication: The Telegraph
Author: Rodney Croome
Date: 8 November 2013