Australia Waits for Same-Sex Marriage, but Gordon Waitt asks if We Should Be So Focused on Marriage At All?
Australia’s same-sex marriage debate looks set to rattle on for some time now. Sadly, 2015 will not be the year that gay marriage becomes legal down under.
There’s an election to get through first, but there’s hope.
2015 was, after all, the year in which the Republic of Ireland voted YES to gay marriage. And that victory came from a country that
only legalised divorce in the mid-90s.
Australia will legalise same-sex marriage; we
absolutely genuinely believe that, but it just won’t be done right now.
Our money says 2016, but we’ll see.
Here at Pink Wedding Days, we’re not exactly *ahem*
high-brow, but we thought we’d pass this scholarly article onto our readers.
Gordon Waitt has written a short article for
Australian Geographer about the shortfalls on both sides of the Australian same-sex marriage debate.
His suggestion seems to be that neither side is willing
to consider a way beyond the institution of marriage, and I think he has a
point. We’re all so wrapped up on marriage as being the ultimate expression of
love, but is it? Should it be?
Marriage is, after all, a construct that made far
more sense centuries ago than it does now. Should we show more consideration to
those who choose not to use state apparatus to express their love to someone
else?