PPAU Policy: Marriage (revisited)

I’m new to this process. Does the Pirate party make stands on policy to signal ideals, or is to reflect how they would make policy for an outcome that progresses towards its ideals?

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I would say more the latter.
There’s a focus on solutions that tend to leverage our slightly unique left/libertarian perspective to find a new way.

Have a read of the policies, especially the preambles that tend to provide the rationale, and I think you’ll get the gist.

The policies are generally really good and well thought out. However, the policy on marriage should clearly state that the PPAU would prefer the marriage act without a restriction on same-sex couples, but I don’t think it does.

It kind of says it (in the negative):

The Marriage Act in current form denies many couples a human right which is taken for granted in mainstream, heterosexual society. The Marriage Amendment Act 2004 made this outcome worse by imposing a declaration, compulsorily recited at all weddings, that marriage in Australia is an exclusionary institution available only to certain types of relationships

But then it becomes absolutist

The only effective way to stop this abuse of rights is to abolish the" Marriage Act.

This should be changed to say something along the lines of

Removing restrictions on same-sex couples from the Marriage Act is an improvement. Ultimately and the most effective way to reduce unnecessary government intervention is to replace with civil unions

(Im bad writer so please understanding)

Two thoughts on this part of the policy which you can ignore, but I am indulging myself to point out

  • Civil unions shouldn’t be restricted just to couples (as it goes on to describe), isn’t that just another assumption on the nature of relationships written into law?
  • The policies keep referring to “Rights” which sound ideological/intellectually emotional
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Join the PDC here … https://pirateparty.org.au/gettinginvolved/

thank’s @twisty . I’m keen to submit a policy amendment after I get some sense of the lay of the land here.

As I mentioned way up above, the policy explicitly does not say anything about members of a civil union being in other civil union(s). For the algorithmically inclined amongst you, consider what civil union structures you can build from that non-restriction.

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Well, you don’t want policy to be too dry and technical. It needs to espouse principles. It’s not legislation or anything near that. It has to convey the essence of our ideological stance because it gets used to market the party. Avoiding emotions is contrindicated for that purpose :slight_smile:

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I just found the LDP’s Marriage Policy by chance…

Their stance is pretty similar to us (from a Libertarian perspective) and it is very succulently well put (except for their unsubstantiated claims about it’s history which I’m a bit dubious about)

They could go either way on Abolishing it (1st preference) or making it Fair (recognising the sentimental value in it), and absolutely not relying upon “Civil Unions” as a band-aid. It is more like making the “Marriage Act” the “Marriage Registrations Act”.

TL;DR:

Marriage is simply a formal declaration by two individuals of their commitment to each other. In every sense it is a private matter, based on the personal choice of those involved, and in legal terms comparable to a private contract. The role of government is to record that choice, not regulate or approve it. Having government define, control or sanction marriage, or give advantages (or disadvantages) to people based upon their marital status, is beyond the protection of individual rights. It is certainly not valid for the government to purport to give or withhold approval to marry on the basis of the sexual preference of those involved or the fact that the marriage involves two people of the same gender.

The Liberal Democrats do not endorse or reject marriage – it simply regards it as a personal decision that anyone should be entitled to make free of government interference, irrespective of their sexual orientation or lifestyle choice. Thus the Liberal Democrats’ preference is not to seek the granting by governments of equal rights for same-sex marriages, but the withdrawal of government so that it remains a private domain.

The Liberal Democrats believe the Australian electorate is willing to accept same-sex marriage on simple fairness grounds. That includes recognition that some same-sex couples want to be formally married.

I would actually advocating pirating most of their policy on this one. Piracy is in our blood, we should actually do it with one of our Policies for once based on if we actually think that we should adopt it. The idea of our Policies is to spread awareness of our ideas and we want them to be pirated, but no reason why this can’t go both ways (if they don’t mind too much) if the policy is actually good. Who knows maybe they might want to pirate some of our ideas in return.

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I believe the LDP pirated our copyright policy at some point along the line anyway, so it would be poetic.

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Whilst it certainly is a libertarian position to want to privatise marriage, it is also a libertarian position to have laws apply equally to all citizens. This is how David Lleydonhjelm of LDP and David Boaz from Cato Institute America both position it.

The two goals neednt be in conradiction to eachother. In fact, one can argue in terms of practicality that the removal of arbitrary discrimination is lower hanging fruit than the complete privatisation.

That’s roughly my position - equality first, other more philosophical stuff later.

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I think we already agreed to this point earlier.
Marriage Equality is a step in the right direction, so we support it. We’d just like it to go further.

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cool. The platform position is still in support of civil unions though through a Civil Union Act.
ALP has said they would support a SSM bill even if the vote returns NO.
I personally am not against this more middle ground position, but i think many progressives are more strong on Marriage Equality. If thats the position, should it be updated on the platform?

https://pirateparty.org.au/wiki/Platform#Marriage

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No. There’s no point.
If you want to update the platform, you’d need to put it to Congress that happens next July in 2018. By then, the situation will have changed.
Meanwhile, we have made public Statements in the form of press releases, to the effect that we do support SSM.

We have learned the hard way, that we should not put transient or time sensitive position in out platform. They just accumulate into a lot of outdated content. Instead, we prefer the platform to contain more generic positions.

We do have another new tool at our disposal … “Position Statements”. These we’re voted in as a concept at the 2016 Congress, but are not currently in use.

Position Statements can we written and approved by the NC. They may not introduce new policy positions, but they may contextualize and connect existing policies together and to relate them to current issues.

A position statement relating our marriage policy to the current SSM debate could be quite appropriate.

As an example, here is a Position Statement on Transgender and Intersex issues. There are several policy positions scattered throughout the platform that touch on these issues. The position statement connects them.
https://pirateparty.org.au/wiki/Pirate_Congress_2016/Motions/Position_Statements/Transgender_and_Intersex_Issues

I also need to have a chat with @rundll about how Position Statements should integrate into our website. He’s kinda busy at the moment, so this will probably have to wait, but there’s nothing stopping you from writing a proposal for a Position Statement on SSM and submitting it to the NC for approval in the meantime. Maybe collaborate with the PDC. Maybe put it up here in Discourse for critique first. Go for it.

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Good example.

On a side note, I just noticed a flaw in that draft policy which either needs to be fixed through the PDC or at the next Congress (or both). I’ve added some notes on what it is and why (including a relevant citation) on the policy’s talk page so it’s easy to find later on.

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I think also tying the marriage rights to the bill of rights might be useful to point out that the Bill of Rights assumedly wouldve prevented the plebiscite (aka postal vote) like it did in America?

This can be argued as an economical benefit too and wouldve saved $122m.
Also a good argument against LDP, since Lleydonhjelm voted strongly in support of the plebiscite.

46 PM

Now that SSM has been signed into law, do we maintain our policy of replacing the marriage act with a civil unions act?

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Good question. PDC?

Time to completely retire the policy IMO. It could be taken incredibly offensively to someone who supports SSM that Pirates appear to advocate taking away something which had been worked so hard for.

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The question at this point remains:

“What relationships (if any) does PPAU think the State should recognise, and how?”