If only the USA was so advanced. The situation shows that criminals are less criminal then religious zealots

“Who cares what you think? Show me social science that backs up your position, or shut up.”

Of course, this all started as a discussion on gays and adoption. Not really an issue in Canada, and it wasn’t at the time marriage was expanded to gays. Clearly it is an issue in Oz. In the European countries that were early to move on civil unions or marriage, most had to come back and revisit the issue of adoption. In the US, there is no Federal law on this, but the right-wingers have used the issue as a weapon at the state level. It was easier for gays to adopt when DOMA was passed than it is now. Florida is just one state barring gays from adopting, yet it alone is almost equal in population to Australia. Ohio’s laws against gay marriage are at least as vengeful as Florida’s, but Ohio law doesn’t bar gays from adopting.

Canada has put almost all these issues to rest. Oz is further along than the US, but it should be noted that both Oz and Canada concentrate far more of their population in far fewer cities. In the US, we have more people who have more room to be ignorant fools, but that doesn’t mean we come close to having a monopoly on discrimination.

Homosexuality is segal and diversity celebrated in all Australian states and territories. Legal frameworks have undertaken dramatic law reform nationally under the current national government and social change has taken place in a similar fashion via each of the progressive state governments.

One of the last bastions for equality reform is the issue of same-gender relationship recognition. Currently our Australian G&L community is internally divided over the need or otherwise to use the work “marriage” just as the devoutly religious are laying claim to this language. One clear uniting point amongst a vast majority of Australians (some surveys suggest 80%!) is the need for equality in the rights that recognition of relationships provide to the participants in the union, regardless of gender.

I hope one day that the USA will embrace similar progressive attitudes in each State of the Union. Maybe Budbub should get out a bit more and smell the roses.

Hi to you all from a progressive and bloody cold (sorry for the Aussie slang Budbub) Melbourne!

I’m an openly gay teenager and in my daily life in the typically straight suburbs of working/middle class Sydney I get no problems whatsoever. People just don’t care and if they do, they don’t tend to vocalise their disapproval anyway.

You can’t help but love Australia

oh and fyi budbud. Most people I know are scared of American prejudice rather than any prejudice we encounter here.

you are WAY off base!

I love Australia because of its multiculturism and acceptance.

America frightens me because of its fanaticism.

Religion has to a significant extent been perverted from “Love thy Neighbor as thyself”, which Jesus said was the only commandment (other then to love God) to “Love thyself, to hell with your neighbor.

Bishop Spong of Canada pointed out a few years ago that religion has become, in my transliterated words, a refuge from the confusion and complications of everyday life. It provides a rules based, frozen in a time warp, comfort zone for so many people. And that prevents any change in their mentality. Example would be I think it was not until 1962, 17 years after the horrors of the Holocaust became widely known, that the Catholic Church, in Vatican II in a mealy mouthed way, removed their official positions which denigrated Jews. And believe it or not, my very orthodox Roman Catholic friend, with whom I debate fiercely, said the his church is splitting. Prob thanks to the Pope, who is about 81 yrs old, but mentally is living in the 10th century.

There are opportunities here to capture Good catholic people to the cause, though the real barrier will be the word marriage, vs a CU or equiv. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and ingrained attitudes frozen in this time warp by the church’s super-gluing of the mind (brainwashint) will continue to be a problem. BTW, surveys say 50% of Catholics under 30 support gay MARRIAGE. I volunteer with a number of them at HRC.

KEep working at it. Don’t let the intimidation and losses get you down.

This is why so many religions are frozen, and it takes a long time to move them forward. But we are making progress. From 2003 to 2009, in 6 years, after the seminal event of the appointment of a Gay Bishop – Gene Robinson, that church, always considered moderately conservative, has become very progressive. 3 new asst. Bishops are expected to be appointed who are gay. An official “marriage ceremony” – maybe a “committment ceremony wordwise”, is being worked on at the national level, and BTW, back in 2004 I attended a gay commitment ceremony in DC. Absolutely a marriage in all but name, but unfortunately no legal value then.

Sure, the old fogies will break away, good riddance to them. The divide is very much age group related. The Evan Lutherans may well do the same thing this month, the PresbyterianUSA didn’t make it at their convention last month, but came much much closer then a few years ago.