The Australian government will soon ask voters whether the law should allow same-sex couples to marry in the Australian Marriage Law Postal Survey.
Unfortunately, misinformation persists about the likely impact of amending the Federal Marriage Act if most Australians reply ‘Yes’.
I come to the marriage equality debate with my own biases, knowledge, and experiences.
Professionally, I have a law degree with first-class honours, graduating from the Australian National University with the Prize for Commonwealth Constitutional Law.
For 3 years, I helped to edit an encyclopedia on the High Court, The Oxford Companion to the High Court of Australia (2001), and for 7 years I worked with senior lawyers on some high profile cases, including landmark constitutional cases.
As for my personal life, my parents raised me in a strict Roman Catholic household. I dutifully attended church every Sunday until age 38.
I was a member of the Liberal Party of Australia in 1993 and again in 2010.
Against this brief background, I present my responses, as factually as I can, to dispel some of the most misinformed commentary spreading around the Internet and the mainstream media about same-sex marriage in Australia.
Here are nine of the most persistent myths about same-sex marriage in Australia.
Myth 1: ‘Gays already have legal equality!’
In 2008, federal legislative amendments corrected a lot of the legal inequality that lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex (LGBTI) people faced in Australia. But those amendments can go only part way while the law denies the legal status of marriage to LGBTI people.