Left-wing Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, continues to fight marriage equality in the name of defending traditional marriage. She also continues to refuse to marry her long-time male partner while do so.
Now, one Australia's more conservative states has legalized gay civil unions. In Australia marriage is entirely regulated by the federal government and while states can vote for civil unions they are forbidden to vote on marriage—the sort of centralized system that conservative Republicans are now trying to foist on the United States.
Same-sex civil partnerships were voted in law in Queensland by a 47-40 vote.
Meanwhile Gillard is having to fight her own party. Given widespread public support for same sex marriage, the Labor Party delegates are starting to feel that their party is out of sync with the voters. Now 400 delegates from the Australian Labor Party are holding their meeting in Sydney. And delegates are going to be asked to buck Gillard and openly support equality.
A measure will be introduced by Andrew Barr, a leader of the conservative wing of the Labor Party. And it will seconded by Penny Wong, the second highest official in the Labor government. Wong is in a same-sex relationship and she and her partner are expecting a child shortly. Barr has said that enough delegates from the right wing of the party will support the delegates from the left wing, and that the party platform will be changed.
Meanwhile the relatively small fundamentalist Christian sects are up in arms trying to scare members of parliament into supporting inequality of rights.
But five of the eight Australian states have already spoken. And public opinion polls show a clear majority of Australians are in favor of marriage equality. As things stand, only Gillard is stopping marriage equality from happening now, through her use of office to prevent the Labor Party from adopting equality. If the party platform is change she will lose and Labor MPs will have to vote with the platform, meaning marriage equality will become a reality.
Below is an ad from Australia on marriage equality that has taken Youtube by storm.
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