John Howard ruined my sister's wedding

I went to my sister's wedding on Saturday.  Haven't been to a wedding in years.  So I was unpleasantly surprised at the beginning of the ceremony to hear the celebrant come out with this:  "Marriage,  in Australia,  is the union of a man and a woman,  to the exclusion of all others".

It's not that I'd never heard that before,  of course;  it's the definition of marriage notoriously enshrined in the Marriage Legislation Amendment Act passed by John Howard's government back in 2004,  in order to explicitly ban gay marriage in Australia.  The sentence was all too familiar to me.  I just didn't expect to hear it proclaimed at my sister's wedding.  It was as if Howard himself had stuck his head up out of the ground to spew forth his homophobic bile.  It made me quite angry and I couldn't get it out of my head for the rest of the ceremony.

Of course it turns out that all civil celebrants are now required by law (by said Amendment Act, to be precise) to utter those words during the course of the ceremony.  Which is quite literally adding insult to injury.  It's not as though the ban is any less effective if celebrants do not declare it at every wedding.  Hearing those words is like receiving a small slap in the face,  which is no doubt exactly what Howard and his cronies had in mind.

That evil little bastard isn't in power any more,  but there's no likelihood of this little bit of ugliness being removed from wedding ceremonies any time soon,  since Kevin Rudd and his Labor Party not only supported Howard's gay marriage ban back in 2004 but continue to support it today,  despite their claim to be opposed to discrimination against same-sex couples.  If Labor had drafted the law I very much doubt they would have included this offensive ceremonial extra,  but they can't very well repeal that bit and not the rest without looking even more hypocritical than they already do.  The only solution is to have a religious ceremony,  since the wording of those is not bound by the law.  I'd recommend your local Unitarians, for preference.

The whole business has actually turned me into a fervent supporter of gay marriage.  I think I feel more strongly about this ceremonial proclamation than I do about gay marriage itself;  I'd always sympathized with those who want to achieve marriage equality by banning heterosexual marriage as well...  but that's probably never going to happen,  so I'm now prepared to do just about anything to further the gay marriage cause.  Because I never want to have to hear those words again.

With that in mind,  I'll end with one of the best presentations I've ever seen in favour of same-sex marriage  -  from the folks in California,  who are facing a slightly uglier situation than the one in Australia: