Not all change is bad

In places like Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan and Nigeria, homosexuals are not only unable to marry, they’re put to death.

This isn’t a coincidence. Same-sex marriage and polygamy are not just different, they are utterly incompatible.

Polygamy, as it’s generally practised, is about a man ruling the lives of several women. It is an arrangement that comes from a time when women were considered less valuable and capable than men, restricted to the house and to childrearing, and made their husband’s property.

This is reflected in the legal status of the wives in polygamous relationships. Generally they lose their rights and autonomy when they marry, are punished much more harshly for adultery, and can be the divorcee but not the divorcer.

Wherever values like this prevail same-sex marriage is inconceivable.

Where all husbands are legally dominant and all wives mere submissive extensions of their mate, it is absurd and profoundly threatening for there to be an official union between two husbands or two wives.

Where marriage is the union of a bread winner who must always be male and a child-carer who must always be female, it is economically unsustainable for people of the same sex to marry.

Same-sex marriage only begins to make sense in a society where there is social and economic equity between men and women and legal equality between marriage partners.

It only becomes possible for two men or two women to marry if men and women are already free to choose how we lead our lives regardless of their gender.

Seen this way, same-sex marriage is about more than love and commitment, as important as these things are.

Unlike polygamy, same-sex marriage is also about equality of the sexes and individual freedom of choice. These are values which represent the best and most precious inheritances in the western tradition and they are values which most Australia hold dear.

Not all change is bad. When it is guided by the values which underpin society it can actually enhance us.

By confirming that Australia is a free and egalitarian society, same- sex marriage will do just that.