I hesitate to write a piece on the Society for Promotion of Community Standards again, but they've really rather outdone themselves expending much vitriol and little substance over same-sex marriage. On its newly refurbished website, SPCS spews venom at Jools Joslin and her parrtner, for daring to lobby for (gasp) same-sex marriage, on the basis that "most New Zealanders oppose it." If that's their only reason to maintain discriminatory marriage laws, then they're in deeper trouble than I thought. And it's no good referring to Quilter v Attorney General endlessly either. While Quilter did settle the current status of New Zealand marriage law and its erstwhile exclusion of same-sex couples, Parliament has sovereignty in this regard. Granted, I don't think that we'll attain same-sex marriage in a great hurry. I still think we have about five to ten years before the Marriage Act is finally amended, and in any case, substantive issues like inclusive adoption reform trump issues of formal equality like same-sex marriage. We have civil unions and associated relationship reforms, and they'll suffice for the time being. "Most New Zealanders oppose" same-sex marriage? In order to ascertain that, one would have to commission an independent poll on the issue, and it is several years since one was taken. Moreover, in most of those polls, younger generational cohorts aren't opposed to same-sex marriage. And as for tying up cash in appeals to the United Nations, this is utterly hypocritical coming from the Christian Right, which spared no taxpayer expense when it came to anti-abortion groups trying to sabotage set procedures for abortion access through invasion of hospital premises during the eighties and nineties, and Privy Council hearings. And who's being 'aggressive' here? At the moment, there's no organised lobbying effort from our communities for same-sex marriage. Why is it not 'aggressive' when the Christian Right tries to mangle the Bill of Rights in a fanatical attempt to pre-emptively ban same-sex marriage, as Gordon Copeland and the Christian Right tried to do in December 2005? Mind you, we have the luxury of time. Judging from the hysterical tone of this piece, it's entirely possible that SPCS may be running out of that... Craig Young - 11th October 2007