Wandering innocently along the edge of Sydney's Hyde Park on the weekend, my attention was caught by a flourish of rainbow flags down the end of an adjoining street.  As the rainbow flags approached and the chants from three or four thousand marchers becane audible, I realised that I had stumbled across a rally for same sex marriage.

At the front of the rally was a very strong voiced lesbian woman, whose cries of "waddawewant?" and "whenawewantit?" were met with very resounding responses of "equal rights!" and "now!", respectively.  Fair enough - this was a parade with a very clear purpose.

But as my partner and I briefly joined the rally in search of a good photo, it occurred to me that the cause that this crowd was marching so passionately for was in the process of being dealt a very severe blow, with the religious right wing of the New South Wales Liberal Party in the middle of a highly orchestrated, and ultimately successful, coup against its moderate leaning, climate change believing and gay friendly leader Malcolm Turnbull.

Make no mistake, the leadership ructions within the Federal Liberal Party over the last week were not about personalities, leadership style or electability - they were about policy, philosphy and the political underpinnings of the Liberal Party itself.  The Liberal Party has always been an alliance between true small "l" liberals, who believe in free enterprise and the freedom of the individual, and right wing capital "C" Consveratives, who also believe in the freedom of the individual, except in areas of religious or philisopical importance to them.  Capital "C" Conservatives are often characterised by opposition to same-sex marriage, abortion and other personal matters on relgious grounds.  The new Liberal leader, Tony Abbott, is one of these.

The result of today's leadership ballot, which saw Mr Abbott defeat Malcolm Turnbull by a margin of only one vote shows that there are many progressive people within the Liberal Party.  However, the fact that Mr Abbott prevailed is bad news for people who thought that the defeat of the Howard Government and ultimate ascension of Malcolm Turnbull would steer the Liberal Party and, hence, Australia in more progressive, forward thinking and tolerant direction.  This progressive experiment is over and so is any hope of bi-partisan support for things like emissions trading, the republic and same-sex marriage.  While others may disagree, I truly felt that, with Mr Turnbull as leader, there was some hope of same-sex marriage reform in the dying days of a Gillard Government or in the early days of a Turnbull Government.

The last Liberal Prime Minister, John Howard, sought political advantage by introducing ammendments to the Marriage Act in 2004 to ensure gay and lesbian people could not marry our partners.  If anything, Mr Abbott is regarded as being more conservative than Mr Howard on issues such as these, meaning that we cannot expect Liberal Party support for same-sex marriage reform anytime soon.

AND ANOTHER THING

Today marks the 21st anniversary of World AIDS Day.  In 2009, and in its 24th year of operation, the WA AIDS Council remains at the forefront of the fight against HIV / AIDS.  To learn more about the WA AIDS Council, click here.

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Comments (4)

• |14:31 01-12-2009 Ross Mackenzie  - A setback? I prefer opportunity.
  I would agree with the article above that Tony Abbott is not only a somewhat disconcerting turn of events and a rather disappointing "Conservative" but that he is somewhat of an inconvenience. Although, I would also argue that the idea of Gay Marriage is now just that much further away from 12 o'clock, and not unlike nuclear armament the further it gets away from the strike of twelve the more hope I have in the ultimate survival of humanity, that maybe, just maybe, it is also a sign of intelligence. Gay marriage is a stupid idea...as is marriage of any kind. It has a 50% failure rate for a reason. It is a really crap idea. Here's a tip. Let's forget marriage and invest money into equality for all. Not stupid assimilation and acceptance of clearly unsuccessful ideals not only in this century but in every century since humans learned how to, well, have sex. My guess is that was a long time ago.
  
  
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• |08:29 02-12-2009 Gary
  
  
  Marriage is the thing for only two persons, or also for the government.
  
  Really hard to define the same-sex marriage is right or wrong, but at least the two persons want it, so it deserved.
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• |07:31 03-12-2009 mel c
  There was also a rally held on Saturday in the Perth in the Hay St Mall. The turn out was appalling, probably only 80 people turned up. Maybe we, as a community need to go out and actually support it a little more instead of sitting at home and grunmbling over the fact we have no rights. Its a little hard to change something when you dont do anything to help change it.
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• |07:52 03-12-2009 Daniel Smith
  Mel, I had no idea it was on here in Perth - any idea who was organising it and how it was promoted?
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