How does a piece of legislation which doesn’t affect you impinge on your personal sovereignty?
What determines personal sovereignty as being more important than non-discrimination?
How do you propose that the past acts of discrimination be corrected?
Give back to the people, that which is theirs.
The people already have it, it was not taken away, merely duplicated.
How about non-religious folk who used a legal marriage ceremony to express their love in front of almighty government, is their weddings now worthless?
Did these people choose to take government out of their marriage even though YOU think that they should
How about people who hold special meaning to their marriage under the Marriage Act no longer having that marriage?
Oh man they are going to be pissed off when you tell them that their Marriage Certificate is worth sandpaper.
They signed up to the scheme and expect certain meaning from it
It still sounds like you want state approval as a requirement for being married. Your system would still treat marriage as a favour to be dispensed at the whim of government, rather than the innate common right that it should be.
Also dismantling the marriage act is not akin to dismantling marriage. Any more than dismantling censorship laws will dismantle speech. Removing the controls on a thing does not dismantle it. It just means everyone gets to join in.
I am an atheist, and here’s a little story.
My wife and i got married in front of our friends and families, and a celebrant to ensure it flowed well.
The government didn’t send a representative.
At the end, there was a government “license” to sign.
I hadn’t seen one before. I thought of government licenses as things like dog or car licenses. I was expected to ask their permission for my own relationship.
I asked, “When does this expire?”.
Quick as a flash someone responded, "When you do."
Laughter all round. It was that sort of occasion.
Only a few people understood my question as political commentary. Probably just as well.
Absolutely not! But it should be an option
Some couples have based their marriage OFF the Marriage Act.
Some LGBTI peoples’ life’s work is on campaigning for equal recognition on the Marriage Act.
I think that we need to respect that some people want government as much as some people don’t.
At the end of the day we are a political party trying to make change in Government, not to dismantle it. That is Anarchism.
And dismantling one Act completely, compared to reforming it, would make zero difference in dismantling government. There are thousands more Acts where that came from.
We also have to be realistic that Pirate Party are not going to win government anytime soon (unfortunately) and get that policy through, so Libertarian Ideals need to be weighed up against Practical Reality.
Also it makes us look like really bad to people who aren’t hardcore Libertarians.
I am not opposed to the principle of dismantling needless regulation but this is not one of them. If it was reformed there would be barely any regulation (only who who gets to put the word “Church of Christ” on their Certificate) and no requirement to use it. In fact if a fair chunk of the population was against it (i.e. The Church) that would be a benefit to change the status quo that Legal Marriages under the Marriage Act must be entered into, and bring attention to it being optional. In effect, psychologically returning the effect of marriage to the people and the religion they choose to subscribe to.
As a compromise solution I would not be against putting in Grandfather and Sunset clause into the Marriage Act… let same-sex and intersex people get married for X years just like everyone else has been allowed to for the past 56 years, and then close off the Marriage registrar to new registrations.
Well the Celebrant had actually been appointed by the government to act as their rep.
Congrats you were tricked into a marriage between you, your wife and the government, just like me.
Should have not signed and kept it between yourselves.
We need more “Civil Celebrants” around (and The Church to reject the Marriage Act) to make it clear even to Hetro people that not legally marrying under the Marriage Act is a valid option.
Some couples probably wanted it official with the government though.
Well, if you’re on social security of any kind, the government likes to check if you’re intimate with anybody else. If so, they take money off you. Basically the same relationship as a pimp.
Oh, there was no tricking. I already knew, but the alternative was having to adopt my own children.
You mean they are not your children until the government recognises it?
I’m only kidding.
Maybe at the time you got married, it was a deciding factor with regards to how Family Law works. These days you can have children without marrying your partner and everything is considered the same.
So essentially the government tricked you into marriage as not to fuck with the status of your children.
I love that analogy with pimps by the way 
I’m wondering a little how you missed the Pirate <==> Liberty connection. It’s right there on the box … https://youtu.be/pMhfbLRoGEw
Sometimes you need laws to guarantee freedom.
i.e. Bill of Rights (if we had one)
I am unconvinced that demolishing marriage laws entirely on the basis that it’s a laws created by Government is a battle worth fighting.
But lets say that it was the still the consensus of the party to have a Libertarian Stance on this, then at the very least the Policy needs to be rewritten to make that perfectly clear, where we are coming from and market it better about returning control to the people rather than get it confused with Civil Union stuff which should really be a footnote.
Yep, and I helped write that policy too.
It’s not about eliminating all law.
Some laws are created to free the majority from the tyranny of the state. Others are created for the opposite reason.
There was a reason for separating church and state. The former likes to tell us how we should live our lives and the later has the power to enforce it.
Don’t connect these things or else real tyranny ensues.
Leave them disconnected, and both seem to behave more reasonably.
Marriage laws are one of the last vestiges of this dangerous alliance.
That’s why it’s more important to flip it around and turn it back onto them.
The Marriage Act has the potential to be used for freedom.
There is nothing in our constitution which says “The Australian Christian Lobby has complete jurisdiction over the wording of the Marriage Act”. The biggest FU for keeping it so discriminatory all these years would be to co-opt it for a righteous purpose.
Marriage Act is still important to a lot of people and we should strive to make it the best it can be without forcing it onto others who don’t want it.
If the LGBTI community broadly didn’t want it, they would be calling to abolish it. Instead, most are asking to be part of it.
We could try convincing them that they shouldn’t want to be part of it, but that’s not realistic, and means that some people will never get the legal government-sanctioned marriage which they so desire.
They just want an actual legal marriage like everyone else, not just to end the discrimination.
Ah, there’s nothing like the smell of political discourse in the morning.
Better than https://youtu.be/bPXVGQnJm0w
In case anybody was wondering what “the smell of political discourse in the morning” smells like, it smells like breakfast 
I mostly agree with the policy as written, however there’s one bit which I don’t particularly like:
No legal basis will be provided for any attempt to force any organisation to provide marriage services where such an act would be at odds with organisational values.
What services are being referred to here? Weddings? Pieces of paper saying “this church recognises this union as a marriage”?
How is this different to “religious freedom” exceptions for functions unrelated to the state that allow for otherwise illegal discrimination?
Forcing Priests/The Church to legally marry gay people even though it goes against their religious beliefs of what constitutes a marriage.