Thursday, August 05, 2004

Marriage Wedge in Australia

Right-wing Austrlian Prime Minister John Howard has taken a page out of the Bush-Christian Right playbook with a Marriage Legislation Amendment Bill 2004.

The bill is seen as a tactic to unsettle the Opposition, and a potential ‘wedge’ to divide Labor voters.

The bill seeks to amend the 1961 Marriage Act to prescribe that ‘marriage means the union of a man and a woman to the exclusion of all others, voluntarily entered into for life’. It further amends the 1975 Family Law Act by specifying that ‘certain unions are not marriages.

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