Australian legislation on same-sex couples helpful, but not enough

Commentary

Australian legislation on same-sex couples helpful, but not enough

May 13, 2008 09:34:00 am

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Stephen Page [partner, Harrington Family Lawyers]: "Australia, like the USA, has a two party system. On the left side of the fence is the Australian Labor Party and on the right the Liberal/National coalition. Australia is now at an historic point because for the first time in its history, with the election of Kevin Rudd as Prime Minister, there are Labor governments in every State and Territory and at the Federal level.

Labor policy is to oppose same-sex marriage, but to remove other discrimination against same-sex couples, and to allow for State based relationship registers for same-sex and de facto couples along the Tasmanian model. So far this year both Victoria and the Australian Capital Territory have passed (or are about to pass) legislation for relationship registers. Similarly, the Rudd Government has announced legislation to remove discrimination against same-sex couples in 100 pieces of Federal legislation (except for the Marriage Act, which remains one man and one woman).

The Rudd Government, like the Howard Government before it, indicated that it would veto legislation from the ACT that would allow civil unions, because they "mimic" marriage, which it is argued can only be between a man and a woman. The argument between the two governments got down to the nature of the ceremony! Instead the ACT government has now allowed for its Registrar of Births, Deaths and Marriages to preside over "non-legal" ceremonies for de facto and same-sex couples, whatever that might mean. It's not what the ACT wants, but what it's stuck with.

The words of the President of the Law Council of Australia Ross Ray QC are apt: "Any step towards eliminating discrimination brings us closer to meeting our international human rights obligations, makes us a fairer, more just community and ought to be greeted with strong approval"; but "as long as the Government remains intent on preserving a special class of state-sanctioned relationship which is closed to same-sex couples, discrimination will persist."

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Martin Luther King Jr. wrote his Letter from Birmingham Jail

On April 16, 1963, an incarcerated Martin Luther King, Jr. (arrested for demonstrating in defiance of a court order) wrote his Letter from Birmingham Jail in response to a published statement by eight fellow clergymen from Alabama.

Part of the letter read: We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God-given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence, but we stiff creep at horse-and-buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging dark of segregation to say, "Wait." But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son who is asking: "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"; when you take a cross-county drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading "white" and "colored"; when your first name becomes "nigger," your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are) and your last name becomes "John," and your wife and mother are never given the respected title "Mrs."; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness" then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience. Read the full text of the Letter.

Former communist countries admitted for EU accession

On April 16, 2003, the 2003 Treaty of Accession was signed by 10 countries, admitting them for European Union (EU) ascension. After Malta and Cyprus, eight of the ten new EU nations (Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania) were former communist countries. The signing of the treaty in Athens marked the first time that former members of the Soviet Bloc joined the EU.

Learn more about EU expansion from the organization's website.