Australian Buddhists supports same-sex marriage

[biggyboy]

Why not! Kudos to Australian Buddhists who supports that.

There is so much talk about human rights and yet there are laws to ban same sex marriage and discrimination against homosexuals and lesbians. So much about human rights. Aren’t homosexuals and lesbians human? Don’t they have rights? If one truly believes in human rights, we should respect that they (homosexuals and lesbians) too have rights to choose their own partners and they have rights to choose their own way of life.  So let us show love and understanding and compassion to them and stop the discrimination and stop harassing them. People are quick to judge and often impose their own values on to others thinking that theirs is the correct way.

[hope rainbow]

Once my boss shared with me his theory that in the future marriage will become redundant.  Everyone probably knows about how divorce statistics are growing, how fertility rate is dropping, how men and women are getting married later... these trends shows that the idea of marriage and the importance place on it is changing, and these ideas are perhaps more prevalent in developed countries.  It is a matter of time that all countries become developed and follow this trend.  If this is indeed going to be the case in the future... what is the big hooha about who can marry who now?

The world is becoming more "gay friendly", and this way of thinking is consistent with Buddhist thinking.  People finally are appreciating the fact that gay or not, we all want happiness, we don't want suffering, we find happiness in different packages.

Marriage may become redundant.
Marriage may be a bourgeois reliquary.
Marriage may be the end of the freedom years of homosexuality, the end of its subversive and under-ground culture too.
But at least marriage will give the gay and lesbian community the opportunity to choose for themselves if they prefer to marry or not instead of having to accept a decision forced upon them by society.

[buddhalovely]

The heart of Buddhist thought is its insight philosophy, which uses critical inquiry to challenge dogma and to reveal how seemingly fixed ideas are more arbitrary than we might think. Applying this philosophy, we see that social customs are not fixed laws but evolving conventions that serve a purpose in a particular culture and time. Marriage is one of these conventions. It is not a rigid law but a social custom that evolves.

The history of marriage supports this view. Throughout most of Western history, marriage was a negotiated arrangement between families, not a romantic choice. Women were not accorded the same marriage rights as men, interracial marriage was forbidden, interfaith marriage was shunned, and divorce was often illegal or granted only with permission.

Today, Western marriage is almost unrecognizable compared to these earlier forms. Marriage is now a consensual choice. Women have equal rights, laws banning interracial marriage have been struck down, interfaith marriage is common, and individuals can divorce freely.