OPINION:
Australia is about to become the next government that rubber-stamps gay marriage.
At least this time — unlike in America — the majority of voters seem to have approved.
Twelve million, seven-hundred thousand Australians voted on a recent survey about gay marriage. And on the question of whether it should legal or not, 61.6 percent said yes; 38.4 percent said no.
That’s not only a high turnout. That’s a referendum.
“The Australian people have spoken and they have voted overwhelmingly ’yes’ for marriage equality,” said Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, The New York Times reported. “They voted ’yes’ for fairness, they voted ’yes for commitment, they voted ’yes’ for love.”
Well, when you put it that way …
And really, that’s how gay marriage came into lawful being in most first places. Long regarded as offensive to those with traditional and biblical views of marriage, same-sex unions moved into the category of acceptance on a slow creep of arguments that spoke of equality and justice — of love and beauty.
God was pushed from the picture.
Notions of fairness — fairness according to humankind — entered. And when the case for gay marriage started taking a turn down social justice lane, that’s when the tables of support started turning.
That’s how Canada’s gay marriage laws came into being, back in 2005. It was a yearslong cultural shift that saw Canadians largely in the camp of “no gay marriage” sweeping into one of reluctant yays. Why? The pro-arguments started shaping as equality fights and the con-camp was slowly convinced.
In America, it took a bit more. It took the courts — specifically, the U.S. Supreme Court, stripping states of their individual rights to decide. In the case of Obergefell v. Hodges, five of the nine justices found that the 14th Amendment did indeed secure marriage as a fundamental liberty, and that marriage, as defined, included same-sex couples. Overnight, states and voters opposing gay marriage — and there were many — found themselves in violation of the Constitution.
It was only a matter of time before the lawsuits would start. Most states folded and began issuing same-sex marriage licenses — and recognizing the marriages of gays from other states — in order to avoid the costly litigation.
At least in Australia, the matter may take a more democratically approved path.
The vote doesn’t usher in gay marriage in Australia. But it does lay the groundwork for Parliament to establish a legal door. And what of those of traditional marriage views?
“Millions of Australians will always believe the truth about marriage, that it’s between one man and one woman,” said Lyle Shelton, a Christian lobbyist who stands steadfast against same-sex unions, The New York Times reported. “It could take years, if not decades, to win that back.”
At the same time, he said he would “accept the democratic decision.”
Yep. That’s pretty much the grudging view of most Christians living in societies where gay marriage is OK’d by the government — feet in the world, heart in heaven, eyes on afterlife.
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