Thursday 16 February 2017

Senate rejects religious discrimination on marriage equality


A cross party senate inquiry has moved forward on marriage equality co-operatively, and rejected proposed discrimination against gays by secular celebrants who have religious views against gay marriage. 

Those taking part in the inquiry have been buoyed by the level of agreement across party lines, and so encouraged that marriage equality may actually come to pass in this term of gov.


Personally I can't see it happening, but I hope I'm wrong. I still think that the only way to achieve marriage equality is to get rid of this gov.

A Senate inquiry into marriage equality has unanimously rejected several proposed forms of discrimination against LGBTI people, including the ability for civil celebrants to reject their weddings.

The Senate committee on the government’s same-sex marriage bill exposure draft released its consensus report on Wednesday, winning praise from advocates and raising hopes of cross-party co-operation to legislate it in this term of parliament.

The report recommends creating a new category of independent religious celebrants who would be allowed to refuse to marry couples on the basis of the celebrant’s religious belief.

Civil celebrants would be required to marry any couples that are legally allowed. Ministers of religion would retain their current right to refuse weddings on grounds of sex, sexuality and family status.

The committee recommended removing the ability to reject same-sex weddings on the basis of “conscientious objection”, noting it was “unprecedented” to allow the concept to justify discrimination against a class of people.

However, the ability to reject gay weddings based on religious beliefs, including for “religious bodies and organisations”, would remain. The Guardian

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