Problems Repeating...

Dear Andrew Leigh,

I am writing to you as a student living in your electorate and a comrade of your own party, to make you aware of my support for the community movement requesting revision of the marriage act to allow same sex couples to marry.

First of all I would like to start with a story which I was told by a fellow student at the ANU, who happens to be gay and indigenous, recently he was shopping with his mother, a child of the stolen generation, whilst she overheard to older ladies who were discussing the issue of same sex marriage and how immoral they thought it was. It was then his mother confronted the two and told them her story of how only five years before she married her non-indigenous husband and she told the ladies of how in the day they faced great harassment about how immoral her marriage was. She asked the ladies “do you have a problem with my marriage?” and they replied “no”. Then she put the question to the ladies “what is the difference between that and my son marrying a man?” to which they had no response. I ask you to consider this when the issue of gay marriage comes up later this year at national conference, especially given that homosexuals make up approximately 10 percent of the population where indigenous people only make only 1-2 percent of the population. Why should the government be allowed to pick and chose which minority groups they can discriminate against?

I am aware of the reason as to why the government practises this form of discrimination and it is quiet simply because of the influence of the Christian right in politics, however I, like the Labor party also claims to, believe in a secular society in which the church is free to exist and celebrate their beliefs however these beliefs should not impede on the rights of people within the society. Furthermore, on the topic of the religious objection to same-sex marriage I raise an idea which is seldom discussed however should definitely be consider, religious organisations claim that same-sex marriages impede on their rights however this is an extremely fallacious argument as same-sex marriages will not reduce the rights of Christians they will only make the rights of homosexuals equal to that of Christians, which is a core value of the Christian faith that all men were created equally. 

Finally, I would like to bring one final thing to your attention that is the United Nations declaration of human rights, I refer to --- where marriage is defined as between men and women, it does not state between a man and a woman.

I urge you to support the reforms to the marriage act as to not further marginalise an already marginal, which has a particularly large presence in the ACT branch of the ALP.

Yours sincerely 

Brett Jones