I see Warren Entsch's ill-advised cross-party bill on same-sex "marriage" has died a natural death - at least for the moment. Common sense should have told him that the Coalition had no choice but to refuse a "conscience vote" on the issue. For a start, you can't have a free vote on a moral issue, because it implies that it is legitimate to vote for an immoral law. (The same thing, of course, goes for a plebiscite.) Apart from that, the only reason "conscience votes" are called is to allow the government to get their way without splitting the party, and to deflect from the party itself the popular odium the law may bring. This is undemocratic enough when done by a government; it is ridiculous when it is contrary to government policy. What the minority of Coalition extremists wanted was the right to join with the Labor Party in the hope of overturning majority policy. Why would the majority agree to that?
And the irony is, there has no renewed support for same-sex "marriage". All that has happened is that its proponents have been shouting more loudly in the wake of the Irish referendum and the decision of five of the nine people who really make the law in the US. But although a lot of people may be prepared to accept it, the only groups who really want it are (a) about half the homosexual community, equating to about 1% of the community, and (b) the extreme left, who will never vote Coalition anyway. However, the Coalition would lose a lot of their natural supporters if they supported this unnatural policy. So what on earth were the rogue Coalition MPs thinking? And why don't the rank and file come out in force argue against it? Well, since they don't appear to want to do so, here are the reasons. And - guess what? - they have nothing to do with religion.
