GAY couples in Australia are on the verge of winning equality in tax, health, superannuation, aged care and other areas as the Federal Government moves to rush through laws to overturn same-sex discrimination.
The Age believes Attorney-General Robert McClelland will announce today that he will introduce amendments to Parliament as early as next month to alter around 100 federal laws.
Depressing news:
The changes will not allow gay marriages or same-sex couples to adopt children, and the issue of access to the Family Court for same-sex couples is still being resolved.
When this discrimination against gays is - as it will inevitably be - a bizarre historical foot-note, like slavery or the refusal to grant women or aborigines the vote, people will look back at this time and say "oh well, you can't judge people then as being the ridiculous bigots we'd see them as being today... you've got to judge them according to the standard of the time."
Well, every modern MP who opposes completely equal treatment for gay people under the law (apparently most members of the Labor and Liberal parties) - you're on notice. You do not have the excuse that no-one pointed out to you that this discrimination was unjust. You're not just following orders. You're not ignorant of the consequences of what you're doing. You're deliberately participating in a continuing travesty of justice with weasel words and a lack of moral courage. And you deserve to be judged by history accordingly. You don't get to go "we didn't know any better" - you know perfectly well "better", it's just that you're too cowardly to do what you know is the right thing.
(I exclude the religious bigots from this, because you at least genuinely think you're doing God's work. But you're a cranky minority, and you would not still be able to get government to do your dirty work if the gutless wonders in parliament didn't keep capitulating to you.)
And absolutely unreasonable news:
"For instance, if there was a person in a same-sex relationship currently receiving unemployment benefits, the means test that would be applied after the reforms would consider the total income of the household as opposed to that individual's personal incomes.
"In that sense there will be people who may potentially lose benefits."
Yes, we're finally going to screw over poor gay people just like we screw over poor heterosexual people! Yay! Equality in being screwed over for poor people of all sexual orientations. If you want companionship, it's gonna cost you...
Hey, Parliament - now that you're looking at the couples' pension, would you mind fixing the archaic and unjust system that basically enacts a sex tax? Of course the couple's pension should be twice the single pension - how could anyone seriously argue otherwise? Why should people living on a subsistence payment suddenly have to survive on less just because they're sleeping with each other? You can share housing expenses without being in a couple - and many people on the pension do, to survive - why are you suddenly presumed to be able to take a pension cut just because you've found some companionship in your poverty?
I mean, it's nice that we're not screwing poor people inconsistently based on their sexual orientation now, but how about NOT SCREWING THEM AT ALL? Worth a thought?
