Australia: Marriage equality: Labor promises private member's bill when parliament resumes

Australia: Labor has signalled it will bring a private member’s bill on marriage equality in the new parliament but the shadow attorney general, Mark Dreyfus, has said it is unlikely to pass because the prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, will not allow a free vote. The Coalition took its policy for a marriage equality plebiscite to the 2 July election.

Even key supporters of same-sex marriage in the Coalition – including the MPs Warren Entsch, Trent Zimmerman and Tim Wilson – now support a plebiscite as the way forward. Although, as recently as March, Zimmerman promised to cross the floor and support a substantive bill on marriage equality, on Wednesday his spokesman said Labor’s bill was not on the government’s agenda to be debated. Zimmerman a homosexual has chosen not to allow all Australians the right to vote on changing the definition of marriage.

Greenwich noted that both AME and Australians 4 Equality opposed a plebiscite and were committed to achieving marriage equality through a parliamentary vote. The gay lobby is now split and shattered. Greenwich said assessments of whether a plebiscite could be stopped would be affected by the Senate crossbench and cross-party discussions. Greenwich has attacked churches in the past. Many Australians oppose homosexual marriage and know the LGBT movement wants to go way beyond homosexual marriage - they want primary kids taught about homosexuality, church removed from schools and storybooks about two mums and two dads.