Tony Abbot + Prime Minister Julia Gillard Might Disagree on Australian Politics, But They Agree on Marriage Discrimination

Speaking before the Australian Christian Lobby, Australian Rep. Tony Abbot, leader of the Liberal Party, found himself siding with his opponent Julia Gillard, the sitting prime minster and Labor leader, supporting equal protection for gays and lesbians so long as they don’t try to steal that marriage word.

Amusingly enough, when addressed by an female audience member at another forum, “I’m a taxpayer, I’m a law abiding and I want to be able to say to that woman that I love, ‘Will you marry me?” not, ‘Will you civil union me?,” Gillard responded: “I and the Labor Party have a clear policy and our clear policy is that we won’t be amending the Marriage Act.”

So surely she, too, must have the backing of Australian Christian Lobby? Not so fast, relayed ABC last week:

But perhaps most surprisingly, she has just agreed to answer questions put to her by the Australian Christian Lobby later today. Her answers will be videoed and posted on the ACL’s website in place of Kevin Rudd’s address to the Lobby in June this year.

Recall that, just days after deposing Kevin Rudd, Gillard told the ABC’s Jon Faine that she does not believe in God. When Faine pressed her over whether she was worried that she wouldn’t be able to attract “the vital Christian vote,” she said quite definitively, “I am not going to pretend a faith I don’t feel. For people of faith, I think the greatest compliment I could pay to them is to respect their genuinely held beliefs and not to engage in some pretence about mine.”

Now, it seems, the “real Julia” has decided that she can’t ignore the Christian vote. This comes on the day that the Australian Christian Lobby has launched its “Australia Votes” website, which presents the responses by the various political parties to a set of twenty four questions posed to them by the ACL.

So the prime minster respects everybody’s right to practice what they believe, so long as it doesn’t conflict with what she believes to be morally acceptable. Got it.

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