The deregulation of sexual relationships

Times have changed. For example it is commonly accepted in Australia today that marriage can end in divorce, which the canon law and common law never accepted. Thus the federal government's own definition of marriage from the Marriage Act – "for life", i.e. permanent – is contradicted by the same government's own Family Law Act, which in effect defines marriage as lasting only until 12 months separation.

Also, at the time when the common law came up with its definition of marriage – in the middle ages - adultery was punishable under the canon law. And until the nineteenth century a spouse could sue the adulterer for damages for the tort of "criminal conversation". Yet in contemporary Australia adultery is not a crime or a tort, and often perhaps not regarded as seriously wrong. But the point is, it is none of the government's business.

For another example, why must people promise permanence if they want, say, a fixed term? You might not want it for yourself, but that's not the point.

Also many contemporary married people agree to extra-marital relations. Again, the question is not whether you personally agree either for yourself or others. The point is that, since it is common ground that marriage must be voluntary, therefore there is no reason why bigamy should be any more of a crime than adultery. The inflexible prejudice of the feminists against bigamists is no better than the inflexible prejudice of the conservatives against homosexuals. Both groups need to learn to mind their own business, learn some tolerance, and learn to stop sucking lemons and declaring other people's consensual private relations to be abusive or a matter of public policy.

Since serial polygamy is normal in Australia, and recognised and provided for by multiple federal and state legislation and policy, why should it be a crime punished by imprisonment for marriage to involve more than two people at the same time? Why is that any more of the government's business than if the parties are homosexual? And how can the gays for whom multiple simultaneous marriages are unequally legal, claim to be in a worse position, or claim to be seeking "marriage equality" by ignoring this while seeking the same exclusive status of traditional marriage for themselves?

The same-sex marriage lobby says gay marriage elsewhere has not justified any "slippery slope" arguments. This is to admit that same-sex marriage operates to continue to exclude those other forms of sexuality further down the imagined slippery slope. Hence they contradict their own claims to be about marriage equality.

But if the government itself doesn't even follow its own definition of marriage, why should anyone else be constrained, let alone criminalised, by the definition of marriage taken from either the Marriage Act or the common law, and originally from the canon law?

Whatever one's view of it, the question is not whether you approve of homosexuality, or adultery, or divorce, or swinging, or bigamy, as a matter of morality, because even if you don't, that is not a reason for the State to impose your values on others.

The real question of marriage equality is why should contemporary law favour some consensual sexual relationships either as to their formation or dissolution?

Real marriage equality does not mean extending to homosexuals the governmental conferral of an exclusive status of approval on some officially favoured sexual relationships, while it equally arbitrarily imposes marginalisation, disabilities or punishment on other consensual intimate relationships.

Real marriage equality, real respect for diversity, means that government should not be in the business of registering sexual relationships in the first place. Government registration of sexual relationships should be abolished, and consensual intimate relationships should be de-regulated. The consent of the parties answers all questions of morality, property and equity. It is not a legitimate function of government to interfere with them based on the ossified standards of the mediaeval church.