Page 2650 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 10 August 2016
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ACT government actively engage in that and actively make the case in support. I am prepared to support that today because I believe it is the right and decent thing to do. I will be supporting Ms Burch’s motion as it is and without the amendment.
MS BERRY (Ginninderra—Minister for Housing, Community Services and Social Inclusion, Minister for Multicultural and Youth Affairs, Minister for Sport and Recreation and Minister for Women) (4.21): In 2013 when this parliament legislated for marriage equality I asked local couples to let me read their stories into Hansard as recognition of the impact that discrimination has on people’s lives. One of those couples was Jess and Amy who, at the time, were six-months pregnant with their first child. They said that marriage equality mattered to them because “when our child asks us if we are married, we would like to be able to say we chose not to and not to have to say that we could not”.
It makes me personally angry that their child is now old enough to ask that question and his mums still cannot give the answer his family deserves. From people who support a plebiscite, there has been a call for respectful debate on marriage equality. Sadly, I do not know that that is possible. Even if we put aside the hurtful statements that have been made by the likes of Lyle Shelton and Chris Miles that I refuse to amplify by repeating in this place, I still fail to see how it is possible to have this debate in a way that is respectful to families like those of Jess and Amy.
I fail to see how it is possible to respectfully say that someone should not be equal under law. I do not know how you can say with any kind of respect for a person that they are not worthy of an institution that for many people represents stability and family. I fail to see how someone can respectfully say that their own beliefs or faith should be recognised to the exclusion of faiths that choose to recognise same-sex relationships. And I genuinely do not know what a respectful version of the message that the gender of people in a relationship determines their value as parents could ever look like.
What I do know is that the attitudes of our laws endorse the divisive language that has been used when the LGBTIQ community has pushed for recognition and it has a lasting impact on people’s lives. We have come so far it is so easy to forget that a 50-year-old today was 10 when the debate about the decriminalisation of homosexuality raged in South Australia, 18-years-old when it passed in New South Wales, 24 when Queensland amended their laws and 31-years-old when a High Court challenge finally delivered change in Tasmania in 1997.
There is a generation of working-age LGBTIQ Australians who have spent their lives hearing from the state, from their elected representatives and from very loud voices in their community that it was they who were illegal and immoral. When I speak to gay and lesbian people of that generation who survived those messages—I do not know how they did—I am struck by the way that they defined their own self-worth, changed attitudes in our community and forever broadened the definition of family.
Their courage has led to the place where we are now, trying to protect another generation of young people from damaging messages and legal discrimination. It is my deepest hope that we do not have a plebiscite on marriage equality. It requires no constitutional change and it can and should be passed by a vote of parliament.
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