Australia votes "yes"

https://www.theguardian.com/austral...-same-sex-marriage-postal-survey-results-live

Australians were asked whether they supported amending laws to allow same-sex couples to marry. 79.5% of eligible voters responded (huge for a voluntary vote!) of whom 61.6% voted "yes" and 38.4% voted "no". All states and territories voted majority "yes", as did 133/150 federal electorates.

The result is not legally binding; the law still needs to be changed in Parliament and the "no" faction is already demanding exemptions from anti-discrimination laws. But it's a good outcome.

Great outcome!

The weird thing is how much the politicians have been out of touch with the public opinion, and keep insisting that the public is wrong.

A big step has been taken towards same-sex marriage in Australia.

The country's Senate has passed legislation on the issue, dismissing conservative efforts to let religious objectors refuse to provide wedding services to gay couples.

(...)

The bill has now been forwarded to the lower house of parliament where it is expected to be passed next week.

Australians overwhelmingly backed same-sex marriage in a postal survey run by the national statistics agency.

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http://www.euronews.com/2017/11/29/australian-senators-approve-same-sex-marriage-law

Less publicised, but still important: as of yesterday, trans kids will no longer need court approval for hormone therapy if their parents and doctor agree to it. (Previously we had a rather pointless situation where even if everybody involved agreed, kids still needed to go to court.)

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-11-...ed-court-approval-for-hormone-therapy/9212072

Which lends weight to the idea that democracy is a sham because real authority, even over your own body, rests with the state. English Law is based on a primitive feudalism fucked up with religion.

Only saying

I'm kind of mixed in some areas here. I have no issue with the main topic; you should be able to be with whoever you choose. And Government and employers should not be able to refuse benefits, etc. I can see extending it to housing rights, financial services, insurance, medical, etc.

But when it comes down to private businesses and whether or not they should be compelled to serve all customers, I get a little fuzzy. And I don't just mean preference here. I mean all areas except race. I believe business owners need some rights also, even if it costs them business and possibly causes them to close.

Ah, the cake shop again. Well you've already qualified your business-owners rights by mentioning race and until the mid 20th century such racial prejudice would have been condoned in the US. Society changed. It's 'religious convictions' that are tha last bastion of prejudice, despite the teaching and moral philosopy expounded by its founders. After all, homosexuality was accepted in Greek and Roman society when Christianity gained a foothold and nowhere in the St James bible translation is there any explicit rejection of homosexuality.

Do the wedding cake makers have rights? Of course and they should have written into their terms and conditions the right to refuse business, but without being explicit to say why. If their T&C stated "we do not serve homosexuals" it clearly would have been illegal. As I understand it, they brought their own personal beliefs into the argument and that is the problem. It is not about the rights of business, but the rights of that cake-making person to act in a prejudicial way based on their beliefs. IMO opinion they did it to make a point.

You may have looked into this case in more detail than me, but this is my understanding of it.

No, not that. Any business. There have been a number of cases with different aspects about what businesses can and cannot do. I personally think a private business owners should be able to refuse service to people driving red cars if they so choose. Or baptists. Or long haired freaky people.

...and if red car owners or baptists were being persecuted or denied their rights, they would be protected by the law as well, but they're not

Not sure how we got here topic wise, but I disagree with jaFO. It's easy to forget if you live in a densely populated area, but there are remote villages that have exactly one grocery store. Businesses should not be allowed to refuse service based on the [ethnicity, religion, gender, sexual orientation] of the customer. The idea of such laws is to protect groups of people that are traditionally persecuted.

hylas_ said:

Not sure how we got here topic wise

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well... we were complaining on that other thread that we'd lost a space to talk about LGBT life so I'm happy to discuss things here as they come up. tbh there aren't that many places on Lit that are free of trolls and assholes

hylas_ said:

Not sure how we got here topic wise, but I disagree with jaFO. It's easy to forget if you live in a densely populated area, but there are remote villages that have exactly one grocery store. Businesses should not be allowed to refuse service based on the [ethnicity, religion, gender, sexual orientation] of the customer. The idea of such laws is to protect groups of people that are traditionally persecuted.

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Yup. And at the risk of stating the bleeding obvious: queer people don't actually want to give their money to homophobes, because duh.

There are plenty of legal ways for a business to indicate that they'd prefer not to cater gay weddings or whatever. Stick a sign in your window that says "We believe in the sanctity of man-woman marriage as ordained by God" or some such, and you can be pretty sure that no gay couple will even try to buy a cake from you. And I'm pretty sure the Bible encourages Christians to be outspoken about their beliefs!

But most of these guys prefer not to advertise their homopho^WReligious Concerns like that, because it might cost them a lot of business from straight people who'd choose to go elsewhere. They want the right to pick and choose who they do business with, but they don't want to be disadvantaged by others exercising that same right.

See also: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DPBbItAUMAAtbTl.jpg

You mean they want their cake and eat it?
it had to be said
c'mon

Bramblethorn said:

But most of these guys prefer not to advertise their homopho^WReligious Concerns like that, because it might cost them a lot of business from straight people who'd choose to go elsewhere. They want the right to pick and choose who they do business with, but they don't want to be disadvantaged by others exercising that same right.

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That's my point though. While I think they should have the right, I'm not saying it would be a successful business practice. Doing so may cause them to close.


I tend to stay out of places that display religious symbols. Unless you're a religious business selling those items, I don't really want to see it. I try to avoid Hobby Lobby, but sometimes I have to go in if I can't find what I want at Michael's or other places.

"The Supreme Court has never held that for-profit businesses have a free speech right to discriminate against anybody. And for good reason: Carving out a First Amendment exception to nondiscrimination laws would blow a hole through the modern civil rights regime, fatally undermining legal protections for all minority groups."
Full article

jaF0 said:

That's my point though. While I think they should have the right, I'm not saying it would be a successful business practice. Doing so may cause them to close.

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In some places, yeah.

OTOH, well, have a look at how the Alabama senate election is shaping up, especially in rural areas where that "only store in town" issue is most significant. Being a bigoted piece-of-shit homophobe isn't necessarily bad for business. That's the sort of area where civil-rights protections are critical.

And the bill has passed both houses of Parliament!

Not long ago you had an idiot PM who was a complete homophobe. What happened to him and his obnoxious school policies? Abbott wasn't it?

stickygirl said:

Not long ago you had an idiot PM who was a complete homophobe. What happened to him and his obnoxious school policies? Abbott wasn't it?

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He ate it, it seems:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...ngratulates-gay-sister-Christine-Forster.html

Cumference said:

He ate it, it seems:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...ngratulates-gay-sister-Christine-Forster.html

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Fuck - is he BB?

stickygirl said:

Not long ago you had an idiot PM who was a complete homophobe. What happened to him and his obnoxious school policies? Abbott wasn't it?

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Okay, so.

Abbott got dumped a couple of years back by his own party. There were a bunch of things, but as an example, he was fairly widely ridiculed for bringing back knighthoods and immediately giving one to Prince Phil. (As some wit put it, "that's like buying Jay-Z a Beyoncé album for Christmas.)

He was replaced by Turnbull, who was seen as being on the moderate wing of his party. (To confuse things, our main right-wing party is called the Liberal Party.) However, because he needed to maintain the support of his right wing, Turnbull was a bit of a disappointment to many who'd hoped for more of a change.

Abbott promised there would be "no wrecking, no undermining, and no sniping" of Turnbull, which, um, there's a widespread perception that his subsequent conduct was not entirely consistent with this.

Abbott insisted that marriage equality should only happen through a plebiscite, and in the end that's what we got (something which many LGBT people were extremely unhappy about - the "yes" result was great, but the campaign's been rough). His own electorate voted strongly "yes" for equality but despite being one of the main drivers of the plebiscite, he absented himself from Parliament for the final vote.

His sister is also a well-known politician who's been in a lesbian relationship for a long time and has been campaigning for marriage equality. Abbott has talked about how he'll happily attend her wedding (which he campaigned hard to prevent), but it's not clear whether he's actually been invited, and I don't envy her having to make that decision in the spotlight.

Thanks B, I was confused about all that.
Oh yes - she's got to invite him to the wedding!! Nothing better that your spiteful relative at a wedding

stickygirl said:

Thanks B, I was confused about all that.
Oh yes - she's got to invite him to the wedding!! Nothing better that your spiteful relative at a wedding

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Something I missed: their father died last month, a week after the plebiscite results were announced. I have no idea whether she would've invited him, or if he'd have accepted, but I guess it's a moot point now.

I feel sad for all the people who are able to marry now, but will be going through these "if only X was still alive for this" scenarios :-/