Brody's Scribbles... Weighing In On The Australian Marriage Issue

Editor's Note: BN&S columnist Bart Vogelzang weighs in on the Australian Marriage Equality Amendment Bill in a letter to Ms Julie Dennett, the Committee Secretary for the Australian Parliament's Senate Legal and Constitutional Committee.

Dear Committee Secretary,

Please find attached my submission to the inquiry into the Marriage Equality Amendment Bill 2010.

Ms Julie Dennett, and the Senate Legal and Constitutional Committee, I apologize for taking up your time with this submission. As you are no doubt aware, I am Canadian, and living in Canada, therefore it would seem that I have no ‘relationship’ to the subject of this inquiry, however, that is absolutely not the case.

Any time, and anywhere, that discriminatory practice is condoned, and worse, enacted, it is an affront to every human being on the planet. Just because some people feel that discrimination is permissible, those feelings are generally being brought forward by the same irrational feelings and training of their parents.

For thousands of years, women were thought to be less than human, chattel to be bought and sold. For hundreds of years, non-whites were treated as less than human, held as slaves, and treated with the utmost disrespect. Now, in a relatively short and recent time span, homosexuals have been targeted with just as much unreasonable and discriminatory disdain.

Gays, lesbians, bi-sexuals, and transgendered people are equally as human as anyone else; having feelings of pain, frustration, loneliness, anger, and love. Equality in marriage discussion is NOT simply a matter of marriage equality, but of equality and recognition of our very humanity. It is a discussion over our very right to be treated as human beings.

In Canada there is full and equal marriage between same sex people, and it has not destroyed us as a nation, and it has not destroyed families, and it has not hastened the demise of moral values. If anything, it has aided those values, in that people are more accepting of variations, and same gender parents can raise respectful, respected and diverse families of their own. Equality has given hope and respect to thousands, many of whom might in the past have been crushed, defeated in misery, loneliness and despair.

Can Australia not do the same, and firmly declare that each and every person has a right to exist in loving legal harmony with any other?

Yours truly,

Bart Vogelzang