First up: The Liberal-National Party (LNP) is our Republican party. They're far more left-wing than the republicans, being only a little right of centre. Without further adeau...

Secondly: The Australian Labor Party (ALP) are our democrats. They're also far more left wing than your democrats, being roughly centre-left.

I fired off an email on Friday night through one of those 'Christians for Gay Marriage' sites, but took the time to clear out the boring, standardized response, and wrote a proper email. It went to a number of people, but I was very surprised, when, this evening, I opened my email to find that LNP senator Gary Humphries (my local LNP senator who had been Cc'd) had actually taken the time to respond. Here's my email, and his reply. I'll see if I can't start up a brief correspondence, so if you've got any reasonable questions that you feel are worth asking, I'll throw them in. My email: From: Elm11 Sent: Wednesday, 15 August 2012 11:42 PM To: [email protected]? Cc: Humphries, Gary (Senator); Lundy, Kate (Senator); Leigh, Andrew (MP); Brodtmann, Gai (MP) Subject: Christians support equality Dear Mr Leigh, I urge you to support the upcoming vote to equalise marriage laws for homosexuals. As a young, practising Catholic in a modern society, I can see more clearly than most the harm that the church is causing through its antiquated beliefs. What right do we have, as heterosexuals, regardless of colour, creed or belief, to single out a minority within our community and deny them a major symbolic right which we are privy to, based on the teachings of a 3,000 year old scripture. We do not burn wiccans on the bases of Reformation era beliefs, nor sacrifice goats to the God we worship, despite it being written in scriptures. Why are we permitted to pick and choose the beliefs we adhere to, when doing so results in the persecution of others? Mr Leigh, before the church can remove its blinders and begin recognising that the world of today is not the world of 200 years ago, the government must do so first. Marriage is no longer a power of the church, but one of the State. Lead the way in making Australia a place where people are not discriminated against because of their beliefs and preferences. Pass this law and show the world that we are a nation of equality. Regards, Elm11. Note: In hindsight, I feel like I was being more than a little radical, but I was in a rotten mood when I wrote it, and promptly forgot that I had done so. My views on the matter aren't nearly as radical as they appear above. Mr Humphries' response: Dear Mr Elm11, Thank you for cc’ing me into your email regarding same sex marriage. As you may be aware, I personally supported the removal of discrimination in legislation based on sexuality, to remove legal impediments to same sex partners receiving benefits or entitlements, including the right to superannuation payments and general inheritance from a deceased partner. I also took the more dramatic step of crossing the Senate floor on two occasions during the life of the Howard Government to stand up for the right of the ACT legislative Assembly to legislate for civil unions between people in a same sex relationship. In that spirit I acknowledge that there are many happy and loving relationships between same sex partners. However, I do not support the recognition of same sex marriage in Australian law, for the following reasons. I support the definition of marriage as ‘a union between a man and a woman, to the exclusion of all others, entered into voluntarily for life’. My opinion is not based on views regarding homosexuality or discrimination, but rather on the concept of the institution or sacrament of marriage. Marriage, of course, was originally a religious sacrament conferred by the church. Over many centuries, certain legal rights became attached to marriages which were not available outside this institution. In recent centuries lawmakers began to realise that it was unfair to exclude people not in a religiously-sanctioned relationship from the entitlements which the law attached to marriage, and accordingly a form of civil marriage was developed to confer many of those rights. In more recent decades in Australia and elsewhere, laws have begun to separate those legal entitlements from the concept of marriage altogether, leading to the point where today it is difficult to identify any legal impediment that a person in an established same-sex relationship endures which a person who is married does not. It therefore appears to me that the only substantive argument for allowing access to marriage by same-sex couples is to allow them to share the symbolism of this institution. However, I believe that, since the state no longer needs the church-originated concept in order to confer certain rights, it should allow the church to retain a measure of ‘ownership’ over the institution which it created. For the state to ‘borrow’ the tradition of marriage from the church, only to mock or corrupt it (as would be the view of the church if same-sex marriage were permitted), would be unreasonable in my view. To illustrate my point, if it was right for the state to ‘appropriate’ this religious institution for its own purposes, why not for other purposes? Why, for example, would the state not be entitled to appoint priests on the basis that the church should no longer enjoy this monopoly? I believe such a step would clearly be unreasonable. As I commented on the Insight program in May 2004, “Marriage isn’t a term the government invented, and to change that definition is false logic – it’s something we neither have nor want the authority to change”. The Labor Party policy has now, of course, changed its stance on same-sex marriage. Although I respect that party's right to change its position, I note that it is the total reversal of the policy it took to the 2010 election. Doubtless there will be some who voted for it who will be upset by this. On my part, I promised at the last election to support marriage as the union between a man and woman. I prefer wherever possible to keep faith with those who elected me. Thank you for making your views know to me about this contentious issue. Yours sincerely, Gary Humphries SENATOR FOR THE ACT Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Shadow Attorney-General Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Defence Materiel I've sent him another email, largely to thank him for his response: Dear Mr Humphries, Thank you for taking the time to respond to my email. In all honesty, I wasn't expecting a response, and presumed that most emails of this kind were disregarded - not out of malice, but simply because you likely have very little time to respond to each and every email. While I don't necessarily agree with the viewpoint you present in your email, I admit that you certainly make a compelling argument as to the right of the Church to define 'marriage'. I appreciate that you respect my own opinion, and would like to convey my thanks to your response and explanation of your position concerning gay marriage. It is nice to know that those in our governing bodies do take the time to receive and consider the feedback of Australian citizens, and I appreciate the effort it must take to respond to these inquiries. My current understanding of the upcoming gay marriage vote in federal parliament is that the LNP will not be allowing its members a conscience vote, while the ALP will allow a conscience vote. If this is correct, why, in your opinion, is the LNP disallowing its members to vote on their own conscience, when they may disagree with the party line they are expected to tow? I realise the LNP permits its members to cross the floor without any defined consequences, while the ALP imposes harsh penalties for those who 'break ranks', but is there any adequate justification for preventing LNP members from voting for what they feel may be the 'right' moral choice? Many thanks, Elm11