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Same-sex marriage. “Openly lesbian” Labour MP Louisa Wall in a civil union, has no marriage plans

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Ms Louisa Wall, the “openly lesbian” 41-year old Manurewa Labour MP who is “the architect of the most significant change to New Zealand marriage law”, is reported in the NZ Herald today to have “an admission to make – she has no plans to get married”. She is currently in a civil union which could be ‘upgraded’ to a ‘marriage’ if her bill is passed, but she is not interested in doing so.

Her private members bill – the Marriage (Definition of Marriage) Amendment Bill – was selected from the ballot and introduced to parliament on 26 July 2012 and is expected to be voted into law at its Third Reading in parliament tonight. It amends the Marriage Act 1955 to legalise same-sex ‘marriage’.

In an interview published in Womens Weekly earlier this year, Louisa Wall said she has been in a civil union since 2011 with partner Prue Tamatekapua (Prue Kapua), a mother-of-two and a lawyer specialising in Treaty of Waitangi issues, whom she met in 2007.  They had their civil union ceremony at Te Mahurehure Marae in Point Chevalier, Auckland, where 200 guests helped celebrate their union in 2010.

Louisa told the NZ Herald:

“For Prue and I the most important thing when we wanted to formalise our relationship was to have our parents there. Having a Civil Union satisfied us.”

She added: “That was the only choice we had. If the law does change, and we can marry, then we will be able to have a conversation about that.”

The new bill will mean that couples in a civil union can simply ­fill in a form to change their status to that of a married couple. But Louisa and Prue aren’t going down that route, she told Womens Weekly.

While comfortable with her own personal situation, Louisa believes it’s vitally important for individuals and couples to have options.

Opponents of her bill have every reason to question her motivation and integrity in promoting her bill given that she and her LGBT (lesbian, “gay”, bisexual and transsexual) supporters have been pushing for “gay marriage” based on claims that civil unions are largely “meaningless” for their community and they need “marriage” instead to be truly happy, fulfilled and able to jointly adopt children. If so, why has the “champion” of this bill shown so little interest in getting married even though her lesbian partner has two children?

When did Louisa Wall conclude that she was a lesbian?

She said she had been too distracted by netball at high school – she was New Zealand’s youngest-ever Silver Fern – to question her sexuality, but began to feel she might be “gay” at age 19.

When she was 21, Ms Wall found a partner and came out to her parents.

“I’ve never not been out,” she told Womens Weekly. “I think I realised I was gay in my late teens and from then on I’ve had female partners. “For me, it’s always been a part of who I am, so I’ve never felt a need not to share that.”

[If it’s true that she’s “never not been out” then how come she only discovered she might be a lesbian at the age of 19? The two statements are incompatible]

After she “drifted apart” from her partner of 10 years, she met Prue while working at the Waiatarau Branch of the Maori Women’s Welfare League.

Womens Weekly reported:

“Now, with Prue at her side and achieving recognition as one of Parliament’s youngest MPs, there is only one thing missing in Louisa’s life – a baby. While she would love to be a mother and has tried to conceive in the past, her efforts have been unsuccessful.”

What is far clearer is that Louisa Wall and her supporters have failed to convince the majority of New Zealanders that there is any good reason that the Marriage Act 1955 should be amended to redefine marriage to include same-sex couples. Over half the country oppose her bill. It is  clear that Louisa Wall’s bill has split the country and a lesbian woman who has no interest in marriage herself is prepared to go to extraordinary lengths to undermine an institution that has served the public good well. Not only does the bill make a mockery of the terms “husband” and “wife” and “marriage”, but it is an attack on the natural and normal sexuality that is engaged in by those joined in the traditional marriage bond. New Zealanders are being sold the lie via state legislation that heterosexual sex within marriage is equal or equivalent to the forms of sexual expression engaged in by homosexuals.  

References:

Gay marriage: Wall has no marriage plans. By Isaac Davison

April 17, 2013

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10877993

Labour MP Louisa Wall: Fighting for our rights. By Vicky Tyler

New Zealand’s Women’s Weekly. 28th March 2013

http://www.nzwomansweekly.co.nz/celebrity/labour-mp-louisa-wall-fighting-for-our-rights/

Meet “your” gay and lesbian MPs
By GayNZ.com Daily News staff
28th November 2011

http://www.gaynz.com/articles/publish/33/printer_11118.php

Poll: “Does equality require same-sex marriage?” – NZ Herald’s loaded ‘question’

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Today the NZ Herald is running a ‘poll’ on the ‘same-sex marriage’ bill based on the loaded question: “Does equality require same-sex marriage?”

See: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10877696

The background article presents the case for the bill (“Yes”) put by Sam Clements, followed by the case against (“No”) by Professor of Law from Otago University, Rex Ahdar.

Sam Clements begins his case (quoted in italics) by stating:

It is logically flawed, and a nonsensical argument to suggest the redefinition of marriage by the state is in effect an attempt “‘to abolish it”. How absolutist and sweeping a statement.

Response from SPCS

Mr Clements has failed to distinguish between the effect of an action by a person or agent and their intention. They are two quite distinct matters. Likewise he fails to appreciate that the effect (consequence) of any action may be intended or unintended. His simplistic comments overlooks these matters. Clement’s accusatory sweeping and simplistic statement is itself logically flawed.

Traditional (conjugal) marriage is universally recognised as an honourable institution and highly beneficial to society. If its universally accepted meaning as involving one man and one woman is degraded, altered, negated, or compromised by tampering with its definition, for whatever reason, this will undoubtedly have a negative social/societal impact, in particular in relation to the welfare of children.

It is not logically flawed to claim that the effect of legalising same-sex ‘marriage’   (SSM) could or will lead to the ‘abolition’ of the true meaning of the term “marriage”. It is quite another matter to assert that the state is deliberately attempting to do this. Many of those opposed to the bill do see it as an attack on religious freedom and the institution of marriage, given that it renders the concept “marriage” meaningless. Why? Because expanding it to include SSM degrades it as SSM is an oxymoron.

Many homosexual activists pushing for the bill have publicly stated that civil unions are “meaningless” even though they campaigned so passionately for them in 2002 to 2004. What utter hypocrisy!  Just nine years ago homoxsexuals were dancing in the streets applauding the passage of the Civil Union Bill into law, now they say it is largely irrelevant after having got on their knees before the select committee to plead with them to accept their claim that civil unions are so meaningfull to their communities.

Sam Clements continues:

This bill seeks to grant same-sex couples the ability to marry, and in so doing bring formal societal recognition to their committed and loving relationships, which are no different to those of heterosexual couples.

Comment from SPCS

The so-called “equity” argument he uses is deficient. Of course all persons have the human right to love (within lawful bounds) whom they will. A woman school teacher can fall in love with her 14 year-old female student and the feeling may be mutual, but that does not entitle her to lawfully have sexual relations with her student, let alone ‘marry’ her. Loving relationships expressed intimately within the marriage bond are fundamentally different to ‘loving’ (commercial) relationships expressed between a man a prostitute even if she happens to have a deep affection and love for him.

Conjugal traditional marriage is not equal to same-sex marriage. The first involves the complementarity of the two sexes – physically, emotionally, psychologically and spiritually which SSM does not. It also has a biological orientation towards procreation which SSM does not. No amount of sexual activity between members of a same-sex couple will ever result in a child. Those in traditional who chose to adopt a child, often when they cannot have their own, can offer that child a mother’s and father’s love. A homosexual couple cannot.

Sam Clements continues:

Some appear fixated with the idea that “sexual union” is only truly possible from a marital perspective when it is between a man and a woman.

In essence, placing the ability to procreate as emblematic proof of this. This is one of the sadder and more naive statements often raised by opponents of the bill.

Response from SPCS

Clements: In a condescending tone Clements describes the bill’s opponents as sad cases who are naive.

For from it. Opponents of the bill actually understand the true nature of traditional marriage and why it must be differentiated from SSM (as noted above), while bill supporters ignore them.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10877696

Sam Clements holds graduate degrees in arts and commerce from the University of Auckland. He is a lifetime inducted member of international honour society Beta Gamma Sigma. samclements9@gmail.com

To view a decisive rebuttal of Clement’s position read Rex Ahdar’s view below Clement’s.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10877696

 

Same-sex ‘marriage’ v. real marriage: Consummation, intimacy and covenant relationship

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The gay lobby and their useful id##ts in the government and media have brilliantly manipulated the limited public debate about same-sex marriage by capturing the word ‘equality’. But by framing it as an equalities and human rights issue they have messed with our language and wilfully disregarded the underlying realities.

The problem is that biology, nature or God (which I prefer, of course) has ensured that a same-sex couple can never undertake the act of marriage no matter how much they love each other or how long they live together. Two men (or two women) are physically unable to be naturally intimate and consummate their union through an activity that unites them and has the potential to reproduce and provide the next generation.

This is the essence of marriage and, further, in its purest ideal it is the private act that follows the public exchange of vows and signing of public documents; it is the intimate deed of physical and spiritual union that on the marriage night completes the coming together of two individuals and engages them in the mystical mathematics of procreation: 1+1 = 1 = 3+. It is consummation which transforms the marriage ceremony from a contract to a covenant.

I’m aware of course that the ideal is more honoured in the breach than the observance as today few couples refrain from sexual relations until the wedding night and many choose to co-habit rather than marry. But, for instance, financial honesty is another ideal that is vital to society’s wellbeing and is enshrined in the nation’s law. The fact that it is breached by everyone from corporate fat-cat tax fiddlers to single mums who falsely claim benefits and students who bunk the bus doesn’t deny the importance of the ideal. We have not (yet) attempted to redefine honesty and make it more inclusive …..

I am also aware that by choice or disability some married couples do not procreate. But this too doesn’t change the marriage ideal or its social value.

Of course two men or two women can have a legally-defined relationship which may or may not be called a civil partnership. A lesbian couple or two spinster sisters may love each other and live together all their adult lives; certainly where necessary the state ought to provide for them by statute. (The state currently and unfairly provides for the first but not the second) But they can no more be married than they can defy gravity.

Consummation is so central to marriage that it too is enshrined in the nation’s law which decrees that marriage is voidable if it is not consummated.

See: http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1973/18#section-12

This is the crux of the matter: the hard reality is that consummation physically cannot take place except between heterosexuals so the government has been forced to fudge and create a fundamental inequality in its ‘equal marriage’. Through the legislation and unlike heterosexual couples, same-sex couples will be exempted from any need to consummate their ‘marriage’.

So what’s in the word? They are married but not married. They are one but not one. They are the same but not the same. They are equivalent but certainly not equal.

It is Through The Looking-Glass stuff and a socially destructive confusion of the meaning of marriage by the government: “When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in a rather scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less”.

In the next post we will look at other inequalities and the discrimination against minorities that will be created if the Bill becomes law. Meanwhile I’m praying that politically the Dumpty in Downing Street has a great fall over his Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill.

Source: For complete article see:

Unequal Marriage – 1. Posted 22/03/2013 by Alan Angle

http://www.alansangle.com/?cat=135

For details on Alan Angle see: http://www.alansangle.com/?page_id=2

Family First NZ’s “21 Reasons Why Marriage Matters” mailout brochure ruled within advertsing laws

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The Chairman of the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) in a ruling dated 12 April 2013, stated that it had “No Grounds to Proceed” over a formal complaint lodged by “A. Charman” on 25 March 2013 about Family First’s “21 Great Reasons to Keep Marriage as is” brochure (Complaint No 13107).

To view and download the outstanding 24-page colour full brochure, highly recommended by SPCS and supplied to all MPs, go to:

http://www.nzmarriage.org.nz/21-Reasons-Why-Marriage-Matters.pdf

The complainant claimed that the brochure’s “extraordinarily offensive” on the grounds that it allegedly equates same-sex marriage with paedophilia and incest; denigrates children of same-sex couples and advocates for the need for children to have “a mother and a father” which was hurtful to children of single-parent and same-sex families.

The complainant also said the brochure was “inflammatory, largely incorrect and was filled with biases”.

[SPCS has assessed these complaints and determined that they are spurious and absurd and would not be supported by any reasonable-minded New Zealander]

However the ASA says the brochure is an advocacy advertisement of a religious nature which presents a point of view from a particular organisation which, in this case, advocates against the Marriage (Definition of Marriage) Amendment Bill that’s currently before Parliament.

Its Chairman “acknowledged the sincere concerns” of the person who complained, but says the law allows for robust expression of belief or opinion in ads, irrespective of the message.

Please download and distribute this valuable resource: http://www.nzmarriage.org.nz/21-Reasons-Why-Marriage-Matters.pdf