I've seen a lot of misinformation about what took place in Australia this week regarding a marriage equality bill that has been introduced into our Senate by Sen. David Leyonjhelm, a libertarian senator.
Here's what actually happened.
In some weeks, our governing Liberal Party meets on Tuesday to discuss internal party matters. This past Tuesday, there was the possibility of the party deciding on whether or not to allow a conscience vote on marriage equality. Some explanation may be required here. In our parliament, the leaders of the parties have the ability to force members to vote one way or another, and punishment can be administered in the party for not doing so. The current policy of the Liberal Party is to oppose marriage equality, and in the past, they have denied a conscience vote, forcing their members to vote against it.
Ultimately, marriage equality was not discussed this past Tuesday. (The meeting was of all the parties that form the coalition government.) The party was simply too busy. They were talking about other things. Seeing that there was no word on if a conscience vote would be granted (a not-negotiable if the bill is going to pass), Sen. Leyonjhelm decided not to make the second reading speech of the bill, which would trigger a debate. He felt that a debate could be much more productive and persuasive if Liberal Party members could speak honestly, free of the fear of retaliation from PM Abbott. This postpones consideration of the bill until at least May, when Parliament returns to deliver a budget. I'm pleased with this because I think we're close to a critical mass of support within the Liberal Party, and a couple more months of lobbying could provide it.
So ultimately, nothing changed this week. But if you read any right-wing Christian conservative site, you'd find that they just won.
The Australian Christian Lobby made the following statement:
The Australian Christian Lobby has welcomed news that the Liberal Party will continue to vote as one on marriage.
With advocates for redefining marriage aggressively lobbying Liberal MPs and senators ahead of this morningâs party room meeting, more than 20,000 Australians responded by emailing Liberal parliamentarians urging them to continue to vote as one.
âThe response from supporters of marriage has been magnificent,â ACL Managing Director Lyle Shelton said.
âLegislating a family structure which requires a child to miss out on their mother or father should not be supported by mainstream political parties.
âIt is quite appropriate that the Liberal Party has a party position supporting marriage between a man and a woman.â
This was contradicted by
a report in The Australian newspaper:
Liberals reject Australian Christian Lobby same-sex marriage claim
The Liberals have rejected the Australian Christian Lobby's claim that their MPs today decided to maintain their monolithic opposition to same-sex marriage.
[...]
"The issue did not come up," a joint party room spokesman said when asked about the ACL's statement.
NOM's also on board with this narrative (incidentally, for some reason, posts on their blog did not appear for 10 days in a row until today, and then appeared all at once, having been written a long time ago):
And the movement in defense of marriage is gaining traction internationally as well.
Just this week, plans to advance on same-sex marriage came to a halt as debate over the posed legislation was postponed after 20,000 people emailed politicians in support of marriage.
Funnily enough, it does seem that they got more people emailing MPs than we did. Australian Marriage Equality got 7,634 people to send emails. When it comes up again, I'll be ready to be one of them, and hopefully bump than number higher.
For all the talk of a win to the anti-equality side, the tide does seem to be turning in the other direction. We all know that this has been happening for a long time, but critically, it seems now to be taking place in the Liberal Party. (For a long time, the people have supported marriage equality overwhelmingly. It's just that the politicians are lagging behind.)
Here's some news of what has happened this week:
"Since the beginning of the year, 11 Coalition MPs and senators have privately indicated to us they have switched to supporting marriage equality from being opposed or undecided," Australian Marriage Equality national director Rodney Croome told Fairfax Media.
"It is still hard to be sure exactly what the numbers are, but the trend is clear."
Some MPs have been hesitant to publicly declare their position because they don't want to be seen as undermining Tony Abbott's authority. The Prime Minister is a strong supporter of maintaining the status quo definition of marriage.
And:
Attitudes towards same-sex marriage are softening within the Liberal party, consistent with community views, the assistant treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, said.
[...]
Frydenberg is confident that views within the Liberal party have shifted in favour of same-sex marriage, but said he âcanât put my finger on what the number would actually beâ.
(Incidentally, Josh Frydenberg is elected from my electorate, the equivalent of America's congressional districts.)
Finally, if the Australian Christian Lobby is serious about civility, having recently denounced Rodney Croome's reasonable reaction to the Launceston City Council rejecting a motion to support marriage equality, and denouncing the boycott against Dolce & Gabbana, maybe they'll want to say something about the threat to kill David Leyonjhelm, which Rick discusses here.