I have been giving a great deal of thought to the forthcoming postal survey – not to the pros and cons of the survey itself but to the question the survey is asking. Should Australian law be amended to allow same-sex couples to marry? For me this question is both universal and personal: to deny same-sex couples the legal rights enjoyed by heterosexual couples offends my sense of justice, but also, a couple of years ago, one of my children came out. Unfortunately it seems that a polite exchange of views between the opposing parties is no longer possible. It saddens me that there appears to be nothing that my LGBTI friends or I could say that would make a difference, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try. Read more