Official Report
Nov. 29th, 2009 04:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
highlyeccentricSO! Yesterday!
National Day of Action For Marriage Equality - rally in Civic. Drew about a hundred people, I think. Not enough to make a really impressive rally, but enough to fill a block and a bit as we went ambling around through the shopping district getting funny looks from people in cafes. Doug tells me we were about three times as many as were at the rally in August, so it looks like the campaign's gathering momentum.
The Senate enquiry declared the issue "too emotive" and "too controversial" for politics. WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK, FUCKERS? WHAT ELSE IS POLITICS FOR?
We get to keep our civil ceremonies in the ACT, but only in addition to the three-day paperwork rigmarole. So... not so much with the legally binding ceremonies, but better than nothing.
The speakers were mildly interesting, and the guy from Agenda Agenda, the transgender group, was REALLY interesting. He pointed out that both sides of the debate frame the argument in terms of "should marriage be only between a man and a woman?" But no one has actually asked if marriage, currently, IS only between men and women - after all, he (the speaker) is recognised as male by most Commonwealth authorities, and yet his marriage to his husband is still perfectly valid. And, while there are definitions in C'wlth and State law for practically everything you could ever need to define (Acts Interpretation Act 1901, ladies and gentlemen), NOWHERE, not in the Marriage Act or anywhere else, is there a definition of "man" or "woman" for the purposes of Commonwealth or State law. We should be questioning the validity of a definition of marriage based on two undefined categories - and we should be resisting any new definitions which retain the same gender binaries. Not only because, as was this speaker's point, such binarism excludes a fair chunk of the queer community - but also because, as I see it, until we can say that marriage is a social contract between two (or more?) *individuals*, which meets certain parameters, it's ALWAYS going to look like same-sex marriage is a corruption of "real" marriage.
I got very sunburnt. It is not a good idea to wear a froofy scoop-neck top when marching about in the sun in the name of equal rights.
National Day of Action For Marriage Equality - rally in Civic. Drew about a hundred people, I think. Not enough to make a really impressive rally, but enough to fill a block and a bit as we went ambling around through the shopping district getting funny looks from people in cafes. Doug tells me we were about three times as many as were at the rally in August, so it looks like the campaign's gathering momentum.
The Senate enquiry declared the issue "too emotive" and "too controversial" for politics. WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK, FUCKERS? WHAT ELSE IS POLITICS FOR?
We get to keep our civil ceremonies in the ACT, but only in addition to the three-day paperwork rigmarole. So... not so much with the legally binding ceremonies, but better than nothing.
The speakers were mildly interesting, and the guy from Agenda Agenda, the transgender group, was REALLY interesting. He pointed out that both sides of the debate frame the argument in terms of "should marriage be only between a man and a woman?" But no one has actually asked if marriage, currently, IS only between men and women - after all, he (the speaker) is recognised as male by most Commonwealth authorities, and yet his marriage to his husband is still perfectly valid. And, while there are definitions in C'wlth and State law for practically everything you could ever need to define (Acts Interpretation Act 1901, ladies and gentlemen), NOWHERE, not in the Marriage Act or anywhere else, is there a definition of "man" or "woman" for the purposes of Commonwealth or State law. We should be questioning the validity of a definition of marriage based on two undefined categories - and we should be resisting any new definitions which retain the same gender binaries. Not only because, as was this speaker's point, such binarism excludes a fair chunk of the queer community - but also because, as I see it, until we can say that marriage is a social contract between two (or more?) *individuals*, which meets certain parameters, it's ALWAYS going to look like same-sex marriage is a corruption of "real" marriage.
I got very sunburnt. It is not a good idea to wear a froofy scoop-neck top when marching about in the sun in the name of equal rights.