Letter to Andrew Broad, Federal Member for Mallee

To: mallee@aph.gov.au
CC: ctesta@sunraysiadaily.com.au

RE: Marriage Equality

Saturday, February 13, 2016
Andrew Broad,
Federal Member for Mallee

Dear Mr. Broad,

I read with interest the recent attention concerning your comments on marriage equality have generated. I hope you will be able to elaborate on some matters that logically arise.

In an article in the February 6 2016 issue of the Sunraysia Daily ("Plebiscite will decide, says Broad") you are quoted as saying the following:

"I can put the rams in the paddock and they might mount one another but no lambs will come out."

You are indeed wise enough to recognise that homosexual behaviour is widespread among many animal species, perhaps unlike some your parliamentary colleagues who are apparently less cognisant of country matters. You may wish to refer them to the well documented material (e.g., Aldo Poiani, A. F. Dixson, "Animal Homosexuality: A Biosocial Perspective", Cambridge University Press, 2010; Simon Levay, "Gay, Straight, and The Reason Why : The Science of Sexual Orientation", Oxford University Press, 2011) that indicates a prevalence among social animals and those who engage in sexual acts primarily for pleasure (humans, apes, sheep, dolphins, penguins etc).

However I am perplexed by the implication of your comment that only biologically fertile heterosexuals should be awarded the privilege of the social institution of marriage. This strikes me as an unusual position given the number of marriages that have not resulted in offspring, marriages between infertile couples, and children born out of wedlock, etc.

Will you entertain further new policy proposals that logically follow from your implied requirement between offspring and marriage?

- That group heterosexual marriages are to be allowed as long as all participants are fertile? After all, from my understanding one ram can impregnate many ewes.

Et sequentia ..

- That heterosexual contraception devices be prohibited and marital sexual congress can only occur in the period immediately prior to ovulation, depending on the virility of the male sperm?

- That if any member of a heterosexual union is infertile, then they will be prohibited to marry? Likewise that enforced separation occur when one of the partners becomes infertile?

- That if pregnancy occurs between a heterosexual union, that marriage will be enforced? Clearly because it is the ability to produce offspring that is of paramount importance whether the sexual congress was consensual or not is quite irrelevant.

- That when the technology develops that allows for the admixture of genetic material from same-sex sources that you will advocate their right to marriage equality? For example through in vitro gametogenesis (see for example César Palacios-González, John Harris, Giuseppe Testa, "Multiplex parenting: IVG and the generations to come", Journal of Medical Ethics, 7th March, 2014).

I am delighted to see that there is a politician who is prepared to grasp the ram by the horns, so to speak, in what is clearly a more complex matter than glib remarks to the press would indicate. Certainly the principle you advocated leads to more delicious complexity than those who argue that marriage should simply represent but a free and informed public declaration of love.

Yours sincerely,

--
Lev Lafayette, BA (Hons), GradCertTerAdEd (Murdoch), GradCertPM, MBA (Tech
Mngmnt) (Chifley)
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