Jan Logie One of the Green Party's spokespeople on Rainbow issues Jan Logie believes marriage equality can be achieved under the current Government. She discusses the Obama-led momentum of the past few days and has a giggle at the know all anti-equality brigade. "It's a great thing," Logie says of Obama's pro-equality stance. "The States have been going backwards and forwards and different states have taken different positions. So it's really encouraging to see the President take a lead on civil rights again." It had a direct impact here at home: after sidestepping the issue the best he could for the past few years, our Prime Minister John Key, took something of a stance when he then conceded he 'wasn't opposed' to gay marriage, putting the issue into the spotlight in New Zealand. Logie says she prefers Key's most recent response of being 'open' to marriage equality, saying it reflects where the public is at, according to the latest survey. "It's a human rights issue and it doesn't need public support. However the public does support this, so it's good to see him moving with that." She believes MPs haven't been pushed on the issue enough, and points out that while marriage equality is clear policy for the Greens and policy for Labour, she believes enough National MPs would also be in favour for change to progress. In fact the Green Party has been working away on legislation to change the marriage laws, something Labour has also been doing. "It's really good synergy," she laughs. When it comes to the likes of Family First's Bob McCoskrie, who has already released a lengthy statement on why he doesn't think marriage should be 'redefined', Logie isn't bothered. McCoskrie's statement included claims that 'gays' don't want to get married and such gems as 'a five-year-old boy cannot marry' and 'a football team cannot enact group marriage'. Logie says it cracks her up when other people tell us what we think. "And he's making statements about what we want," she laughs. "And he's ill-informed. When he makes comments about the purpose of marriage being procreation - one of the functions of marriage was also treating women as chattels and property. That was the function of marriage: transferring the property of the woman from father to husband. And that's not really the practice now, I think we've moved on and marriage is more about the sanctioning of relationships. And the drive to marriage equality is about recognising that is a human right." The Green MP agrees moves towards marriage equality should go hand in hand with adoption reform, saying it just makes sense, and for a lot of people it's part of the motivation for marriage equality. She says when it was written the Adoption Act was about treating children as property, another thing which doesn't make sense as we have developed. "There are a lot of issues in there we need to fix up," she finishes. Jacqui Stanford - 12th May 2012