Local MP’s Reply to Same Sex Marriage Letter

For those who follow my blog at all, you’ll know that the other day I wrote a letter to the MP’s around South Australia in support of Same Sex marriage, and petitioning for them to accept change. So far I have received 2 letters back.

The first letter back is from Kate Ellis. To be honest, my hopes had been highest on her. That is, I was hoping you should empathise more with the situation. While the letter did say that her office checked out this website, she simply palmed a response off to my ‘local’ MP for an answer. Her response was (via a Office plep):

Hi Brodhe,

Thankyou for your email. I understand from your site that you have also
sent this message to Mark Butler the Member for Port Adelaide. As he is
your local Federal Member I’ve contacted his office and am informed they
will be responding to you in due course.

Kind regards,

Liam Golding
Office of Kate Ellis MP

The other response that I received (just this morning) was a little more indepth. It was from my local MP’s office, Mark Butler. His response was more empthetic, but it clearly outlines that the “widely held view in the community is that marriage itself is between a man and a woman”. I would love to see how they obtained those statistics. His offices reply was:

Dear Mr. McGee,

Mark thanks you for your email and has asked me to reply on his behalf. He and the
Australian Government believe that people are entitled to respect,
dignity and the opportunity to participate in society and receive the
protection of the law regardless of their sexuality.

As you mention, this Government has recently brought in laws to prevent same sex couples and their children being discriminated against in Commonwealth laws. Same-sex relationships will now be
treated in the same way that opposite sex de facto relationships are
treated for the purposes of Commonwealth entitlements and programs.
The general areas of laws that have been
reformed are taxation, superannuation, social security, health, aged
care, veterans? entitlements, workers? compensation, employment
entitlements, immigration and other areas of Commonwealth
administration.

These laws were
identified in the landmark Human Rights and Equal Opportunity
Commission report Same-Sex: Same Entitlements and through an audit
conducted by the Attorney-General’s Department. The focus of the
Commission?s report was on financial and work-related legislation that
discriminates against same sex couples and their children.

It is the
Government?s view that couples who have a mutual commitment to a shared
life should be able to have their relationships recognised. The
Government?s policy on relationship recognition supports a state-based
nationally consistent scheme for the registration of committed adult
relationships that are not marriages.

I do appreciate that you are not just advocating for the legal recognition of same-sex relationships and to have them on a par with heterosexual de facto relationships but also to broaden the definition of marriage. The widely held view in the community is that marriage itself is between a man and a woman and the Government’s policy reflects that. The legal recognition of same-sex relationships is an enormous step forward and, in the same manner as formal recognition of heterosexual de facto relationships, will play a major role in challenging social attitudes.

Yours sincerely,

Lisa Sedgwick

Electorate Officer

Office of Mark Butler MP