Is Same Sex Marriage a “Human Right”?
The question posed by the title of this post is simply this: is it a denial of a fundamental human right, for a legal system not to extend the category of marriage to include marriage between parties of the same sex? The question was posed in a stark way by recent reported comments of the President of the Australian Human Rights Commission , Prof Gillian Triggs . Prof Triggs, for whom I have great respect as a scholar and academic, was delivering the annual Sir Anthony Mason Lecture at Melbourne Law School on 4 August, 2016. She strongly criticised a lack of commitment to human rights in recent decisions of the High Court of Australia, and the Commonwealth Government. In a short paragraph near the end of her address , she also said the following: A recent example of the failure of Parliament to protect fundamental rights is the decision to hold a plebiscite on marriage equality. Why do we hold an expensive, potentially divisive compulsory but non–binding nationa...