Marriage Bill

United Future’s Marriage (Gender Clarification) Amendment Bill will come up for a vote shortly.

It is a strange bill as it seeks to define the law as “a marriage must be one
man and one woman” which is already the law as ruled by the Courts.

Are United Future worried that there is a loophole which allows a man to marry his pet rabbits? Or that a woman might have three husbands?

Of course what United Future is worried about is gay marriage. Now it is quite legitimate to have a view that marriage should retain its traditional definition, but even if one does, this bill is unnecessary. It will not stop a future Parliament changing the law.

Tony Milne predicts that the bill will be defeated, unless National doesn’t allow MPs a conscience vote on the issue (which would be highly surprising).

Frankly Parliament has enough important legislation to take ups it time, that throwing this out at the first reading would in my opinion be a good move. It might be different if there was a lack of clarity over the current law, but the Courts have very explicitly already said that the current law does not allow gay marriage.