As the Constitutional Court’s deadline for a revised, gay-marriage inclusive constitution looms, lawmakers are still tripping over just what “equality” means.
365 Gay reports:
The office of the state law advisor is warning that provisions in South Africa’s Civil Union Bill are unconstitutional. Enver Daniels has told a parliamentary committee holding public hearings on the legislation that the separate but equal law will not gain approval of the Constitutional Court.
…
rather than amending the marriage act to make it gender neutral the government angered LGBT rights groups by introducing a separate bill that allows for marriage and also would recognize non married gay and non-gay couples.The proposed bill also would allow people who conduct civil marriages to refuse to perform same-sex ceremonies based on “moral grounds”
Needless to say, this is not equality. Now, we understand that plenty of people don’t like the gays. That’s fine. There are plenty of people that we don’t like (namely, the people who don’t like us), but haven’t people learned anything from apartheid?
At least the ANC’s not hating. If only Nelson Mandela were still president…
How about we take this to the next level?
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Alan
You may find this article interesting about the debate raging in SA about gay marriage. It mentions a way of complying with constitutional equality while satisfying the religious bigots:
The solution ultimately proposed by commissioners is novel and creative, and for that alone, it is a mercy that publication of the report has been permitted.
Take the existing Marriage Act, they say, and fix it by adding a simple phrase so it will apply to heterosexual as well as homosexual couples. Then introduce a new law, that could be called, for example, the Orthodox Marriage Act, and make this law for the exclusive use of partners wanting to marry under religious rites and who have problems using the generic marriage law. This new law would be identical to the updated and now all-embracing “old” law, except for the addition of a limited definition of “orthodox marriage” — and for being limited to opposite-sex couples.
Couples could then choose to marry under the law that most suited their religious, moral and other views.