The Salt Shakers talk about Same sex couples in Victoria

It’s four years since Victoria’s ‘Relationships Register’ commenced operation…

Not only four years, but also a change of government, and unlike the Queensland experience no changes to the laws have been made.

The 2011 census found that there are around 33,714 same-sex couples in Australia.

The majority of those live in NSW (12,731) and Victoria (8,722), with most living in the capital cities.

The 2011 census gave same-sex couples the opportunity to define their relationships. The vast majority – 96% – classified their relationship as ‘de facto partner’. Some reported their relationship as ‘husband’ or ‘wife – but this only applied to 1,338 couples.

With all the talk of relationships and marriage, few same-sex couples have chosen to formalise their relationship even when states have formal legislation that allows them to do so.

So?  The super mining tax also raised no tax.  What’s your point?

In Victoria, the Relationships Register began four years ago – on December 1, 2008. But only 572 same-sex couples have actually registered their relationship in those four years.

That’s just 6.5% of the homosexual couples in Victoria (using the census data).

So?  It wouldn’t matter whether it was 1 couple or all couples, the point is that 572 couples were able to do so.  Those couples consider it important to do.  Good for them.

The homosexual media claim that the low figure for ‘relationships registers’ is because same-sex couples want to be able to ‘marry’ so are flying overseas to do so.

That’s not strictly true – the ‘homosexual media’ printed a statement from Australian Marriage Equality.  A spokesman from AME made a comment.  Like it or not when couples go overseas they do so to marry, not ‘marry’.  It’s real.  They get a certificate and everything!  The quote marks around the word marry are sort of saying. “Like they go overseas to get like, quote married, unquote and like its not like its like marriage or sumfink”

They state that 1,338 couples have done this – a figure taken from the 2011 census. However, this is still a very small proportion of the total 33,714 same-sex couples. The census question allowed people to self-report as to whether their ‘partner’ was a ‘husband’ or wife’ – and these could have occurred over a number of years.

Even if half of these ‘married’ couples were from Victoria, that only makes a total of 1241 couples (669 + 572) who have legally formalised their relationship. Overall, that would mean that only 14.2% of all same-sex couples had taken either of these steps to formalise their relationship. This is still a very small proportion!

And?  What does it matter the size of the proportion?  Are you suggesting that it’s a waste of time?

Perhaps more concerning is the fact that heterosexual couples are choosing to register their relationship rather than getting married. In the past four years, 900 heterosexual couples have registered under the Victorian Relationships Register.

So?  People should be allowed to have their relationships recognised as they see fit.  A straight couple can make a choice between registration or marriage.  I can’t.  That’s wrong.

Thankfully, this is still only a small percentage of those who are getting married – in Victoria 27,503 couples married in 2011. In the past four years there have been 111,038 marriages.

Who cares whether people get married, it’s none of your business.  People get married because they love each other, not because some whacked out christian needs to be thankful.

So 900 heterosexual couples registering their relationship is only 0.8% of all couples who have legally formalised their relationship!

It’s so nice when people do math.  I wonder if he had a calculator.

However, we need to remember that, in Scandinavian countries, the introduction of Registered Partnerships (from 1989 onward) – for homosexual and heterosexual couples – eventually led to a decline in the number of heterosexual couples getting married.

This trend of ‘registering’ heterosexual relationships really does lead to the undermining of marriage.

No it doesn’t.  You can’t know the intention of the heterosexual couples registering instead of marrying.  Perhaps they never wanted to get married.  There’s no evidence to suggest that just because couples don’t marry that marriage is somehow undermined, how the hell do you undermine marriage anyway?  People are not being told not to get married.

These different schemes are designed to meet the expectations of a changing world.  Not everybody sees marriage as the only way to be in a relationship.  For some people it’s a hangover from earlier times when a woman was considered nothing more than property.  For some it has too many religious overtones, some people just don’t see the point and then some do.  Big deal.  Everyone should have a relationship recognised the way that best suits them.

We need to do all we can to promote the benefits of marriage between a man and a woman – the commitment it entails, the benefit it provides for the nurturing and protection of children and the fulfilling of God’s design for humanity as laid out in Genesis 1 and 2.

We need to do all we can to promote the benefits of healthy relationships between couples – the commitment it entails, the benefits of being in a healthy relationship help the nurturing and protection of children. Nobody really believes that a god has any design for humanity.  If you treat Genesis as anything other than a myth then you need to do a check on your version of reality.