Caring for justice
A Christan Jewish and Muslim interfaith group has a proposal it thinks
will take the heat out of Victoria's controversial proposed
relation****ps register: have a register but remove all reference to ***.
The bill, being debated in Parliament this week, will establish a
relation****ps register that effectively gives homo***ual and de facto
couples the same benefits as married couples in areas such as
inheritance, tax and social security law, plus property division and
maintenance.
NB: I've updated this post at the end.
Rabbi ****mon Cowen, spokesman for The Ad Hoc Interfaith Committee, says
removing reference to *** will still provide the desired rights to
homo***uals. It will also broaden the concept, as the Government
originally said it intended but left out of the legislation, to include
relation****ps between invalids and carers or elderly siblings living
together in a household.
``Marriage, a committed ***ual union of a man and a woman, is a whole
series of legal relation****ps. It's not only ***ual union and loyalty
but a financial responsibility to each other during and after the
relation****p,'' Dr Cowen says.
``We don't want to endorse homo***ual union with this significance, but
let them have all the benefits through contracts so they have the
entitlements.''
The Ad Hoc Interfaith Committee has Catholic, Uniting, Presbyterian,
Anglican, Pentecostal, Orthodox, Jewish and Muslim representatives.
It attracted attention when it wrote to every state MP in December
opposing what it claimed was ``social engineering'' in the state
reproductive technology legislation.
It has written to Premier John Brumby about the Relation****ps Bill,
saying it is wrong to focus only on couples rather than other people in
interdependent relation****ps and also to require ***ual intimacy as a
criterion to establish the relation****p.
The Tasmanian legislation - which served as a model for Victoria's bill
and has been cited approvingly by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd - provided
both for ``significant'' relation****ps for couples regardless of gender,
and ``caring'' relation****ps involving domestic sup****t and personal
care without payment. Dr Cowen, son of former Governor General Sir
Zelman Cowen, says the interfaith committee would prefer a single
category of interdependence to meet all needs.
This seems to me an entirely sensible proposal. It ends a painful
discrimination against homo***ual couples but also extends the
protection to vulnerable members of the community who suffer the same
lack of protection but do not have such a powerful voice. At the same
time it does not threaten the particular position of marriage so
im****tant to religious groups and many other Australians too.
Update: Lyn Morgain, chief executive of the ALSO Foundation, a gay
advocacy group, says the religious leaders' sup****t for the register is
marvellous spiritual leader****p.
``It's absolutely wonderful, as much as anything for the symbolic value
for members of the gay community, older members of whom faced
criminalisation and associated social stigma, and younger members who
are looking for acceptance and validation at this difficult time in
their lives,'' she says.
But gay philosopher and devout Catholic John Heard says the unnecessary
insistence on including a *** test in the bill isthe product of an
extreme ``homo-activist'' ideology.
In a speech on Tuesday night to the Melbourne Catholic Lawyer's
Association, Mr Heard said: ``The only reason to to include a *** test
is to elevate a (homo***ual) *** act to equality with procreative ***.''
He says said the proposed bill is relatively modest but should still be
opposed because it threatens marriage and family. Nor has the Tasmanian
model worked, he says, having attracted only 86 couples on the register
and one carer's relation****p.
What do you think? Are there im****tant principles at stake besides the
obvious one of justice? Should the Government rethink the bill to extend
these rights, or should ***ual relation****ps be recognised as a separate
category? What are the key aspects that make particular relation****ps
special and worthy of legal recognition?
Posted by Barney Zwartz
March 11, 2008 10:22 AM
http://blogs.theage.com.au/thereligiouswrite/archives/2008/03/caring_for_just.html
--
Shalom/Salaam/Pax! Rowland Croucher
http://jmm.aaa.net.au/
(20,000 articles 4000 humor)
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