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EMOTIONAL CELEBRATIONS ERUPTED across Australia today as voters emphatically endorsed same-sex marriage after more than a decade of divisive debate, and political leaders immediately took the first steps to enshrine the historic shift in the law.
Thousands of marriage equality supporters took to parks and squares across the vast continent, hugging, dancing and singing under clouds of glitter when the results of the two-month-long postal survey were announced.
“This means everything, this means everything,” shouted Chris at a huge rally in Sydney, fighting back tears and hugging his partner Victor.
“It has been fantastic. I have been with my partner for 35 years and he was so joyed up that he burst into tears,” added another reveller, Gerry Boller.
61% of the 12.7 million people who participated voted Yes to the question “Should the law be changed to allow same-sex couples to marry?”.
38.4% voted No, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, which carried out the poll.
Irish-born Qantas Airlines chief Alan Joyce, who is openly gay and campaigned strongly for the Yes campaign, also fought back tears as he spoke of his delight.
I was so proud of Ireland in May 2015 when they became the first nation in the world to vote for marriage equality… But today I am even more proud of Australia, the country of my selection.
Nearly 80% of eligible voters took part in the poll, with the Yes vote winning a majority in all of Australia’s states and territories.
[image alt="Australia Gay Marriage" src="http://cdn.thejournal.ie/media/2017/11/australia-gay-marriage-13-296x191.jpg" width="296" height="191" credit-source="David%20Crosling" credit-via="AP" caption="People%20celebrate%20after%20the%20announcement%20of%20the%20same-sex%20marriage%20postal%20survey%20result%20in%20front%20of%20the%20State%20Library%20of%20Victoria%20in%20Melbourne%2C%20Australia" class="alignnone" /end]
‘Yes for love’
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, a moderate conservative who backed the Yes camp, hailed the result of the non-binding vote and vowed to move a bill in favour of marriage equality by Christmas.
Australians “voted yes for fairness, yes for commitment, yes for love,” Turnbull said at a press conference in Canberra.
“Now it is up to us, here in the Parliament of Australia, to get on with it. To get on with the job the Australian people have tasked us to do and get this done, this year, before Christmas. That must be our commitment.”
[image alt="Australia Gay Marriage" src="http://cdn.thejournal.ie/media/2017/11/australia-gay-marriage-14-296x191.jpg" width="296" height="191" credit-source="Rick%20Rycroft" credit-via="AP" caption="Celebrations%20in%20Sydney%2C%20Australia.%20" class="alignnone" /end]
Within hours of the vote result, Dean Smith, a Senator from Turnbull’s Liberal Party who is gay, introduced a bill that would legalise gay marriage while allowing religious institutions and clergy to refuse to celebrate same-sex unions if it conflicts with their beliefs.
https://twitter.com/newnewspage/status/930666445708636160
Hardline opponents in Turnbull’s party have pressed for more extensive religious protections to allow commercial service providers to reject same-sex weddings and let parents pull their children from school programmes they feel undermine heterosexual traditions.
They have support notably from Muslim and some conservative Christian communities which returned a high percentage of No votes in the survey.
But Turnbull rejected those calls this week and he and the opposition Labor Party are expected to back a bill based on Smith’s proposal when it comes to a “conscience vote” in the two houses of parliament.
A survey of federal politicians by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation published Tuesday found that 72% of House members and 69% of Senators would support the change to marriage laws.
https://twitter.com/TurnbullMalcolm/status/930575993294635008
Ireland’s Independent Minister Katherine Zappone, who along with her late wife Ann Louise Gilligan campaigned for marriage equality in Ireland, said of tonight’s result:
The YES result shows that when given a chance people across our world will speak out and demand equality for all. The outcome will boost marriage equality campaigners in Northern Ireland and elsewhere. It will also send a message of solidarity to those who cannot express their love because of threats of discrimination, prosecution and even violence.
“All who campaigned in Australia are to be congratulated. This is their moment, as it was ours in May 2015.”
- © AFP 2017 with reporting by Hayley Halpin
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Maybe its because men die younger so there are proportionally fewer older men available to die from the virus.
@Paul Quinn: Women live longer and because this thing effects older people in the vast majority of cases it makes perfect sense. Can we now also have a Oireachtas Committee to hold a special session to examine why men die younger than women?, no did not think so.
@Peter Hughes: Some men die younger than women because they tend to not look after themselves as well as some women. Not going to the doctor’s as frequently, more men are alcoholics, etc.
@Paul Quinn: but that applies internationally too – it doesn’t explain the disparity between the Irish experience and other countries
Maybe because women are more likely to get tested for things, whereas us men don’t do doctors and tests?
@Diarmuid O’Dubhlaoich: I think that sounds likely.
@Diarmuid O’Dubhlaoich: But the death rate for women is higher. That would only make sense if it was just the confirmed cases. Makes sense to me that it’s more women in nursing home and more women carers etc.
@Fandandi: The states women’s death rate 6% men’s 8%
So 50/50 death rates (as good as) meaning almost total equality except the fact a higher percentage of men who contracted it died is turned into a “but women need more support” diatribe? What about men and their mental health? What about their physical health? What about support to get men to see doctors earlier? Do men have the same access to GPS? Do more women have medical cards etc? The fatality rate for men being 33% higher than women is just accepted and the article talks about women doing homeschooling with the kids?
@Dino: You’re an awful clown. The best thing you could do is shut up and read a few books.
@Niall Byrne: Great counter arguement Niall.
Covid is sexist. Maybe the SJW’s will cancel it.
@Peter Denham: pathetic
@Louis Jacob: They are indeed.
@Peter Denham: Tut.
@Louis Jacob: you’re some bag of misery, Louis.
@Peter Denham: No I’m not actually. I just found out today I’m back at work next week. I actually cried with happiness today. I was just winding you up. I’m sorry.
@Peter Denham: precious.
@Louis Jacob: OK Smeagol.
@Peter Denham: oh dear. Whose miserable now?
@Louis Jacob: Yours.
@Peter Denham: Are you a Suffolk Denham or a Yorkshire Denham? Give me a clue Snoopy.
@Louis Jacob: Well this has gone downhill fast.
@Cormac Laffan: Yeah. Kind of creepy. Peter finds you and snoops around in your Facebook page. I’ll probably stop using The Journal I think.
@Louis Jacob: wha? I didn’t go near your FB page. Why do you say that?
@Peter Denham: creep on.
@Louis Jacob: Jaysus, no need to tell lies.
@Louis Jacob: Genuinely, you’ve lost me.
@Peter Denham: So it turns out Louis thought my comment “Smeagol” was a comment on his looks (he thought I was looking at his pictures), when actually it was a response to his random comment “precious.”
Headline is a bit misleading in that it lumps deaths and COVID positive cases together. The death rate is the most important one and that shows a 50/50 split between men and women. The reason more women are COVID positive is that there are more of them in the caring professions looking after COVID patients.
@Fionn Darland: I think that’s it and as someone said above, women are probably more likely to have the cop on to get tested.
@Louis Jacob: It boils down to demographics. Higher proportion of nursing home residents are female. Higher percentage of caring profession are women. And now higher proportion of journalists working for the journal are women. Story.
The places of work that stayed open is huge in this, most of the people that serve you in tescos dunnes at the tills will be massively proportionally women, similarly most nurses who were on the frontline are women, those factors must be a huge part to it surely?
White middle class women take a short interlude from instagramming black lives matter memes to tell us that a virus is sexist. Bravo ladies.
@SkepticalHippoEyes: oh dear
Well first the death rate is about 50/50 so there is that I am also guessing it is because A lar
ge amount of people working in hospitals and other caring roles are female also if women live longer than men there would be more in old folks homes so that
It’s easy to know why and it’s laid out there in the article. 57% of cases are women, driven by the fact over 30% of cases are healthcare staff, which is predominantly female. Deaths are currently 50.5% female, driven by the fact residential nursing homes have a higher proportion of females than males. Why that is is another question but if I had to guess its because in a lot of cases males will have dies by the time they need nursing home care. Why this trend is higher than rest of world? Maybe to do how some countries are not reporting all nursing home deaths.
51% are women and account for 50.5% of deaths? So that means women are disproportionately affected? Am I missing something?
50.5% of deaths being female here is the slimiest of slim majorities. Silly, sensationalist title but that’s the ‘news’ these days.
The real question is how come the majority of deaths world wide are male?
The Brookings Institute has said that taking age into account, COVID-19 is far more deadly for men.
I would imagine that part of the problem is men’s own fault. We just don’t look after ourselves the way women do but there’s more to it then just that.
Reading thro the Comments here I think all the answers as to “why more women” are in there.
Therefore may I suggest that rather than pay some group of “experts” shedloads of money to do a “review” (standard practice in this country), as Stephen Donnelly suggests, the government should extract the answers from here and pay the Commentors!!
@Virus-free Turkey: I know you’re trying to be funny but the point being made here in the comments is there is no need for an investigation, it doesn’t even need an explanation and would be a waste of time and money. As for Donnelly, you’d think he’d make sure he had his tweet right before sending (or whoever sent on his behalf), especially around something as sensitive a subject as deaths from coronavirus. He stated 57% of deaths were female when it’s actually 57% of cases are female.
Strange anomaly. It’s hardly relevant but Irish women are the best anyway.
@Louis Jacob: “Irish women are the best…..” . Is that not racist, implying that women from other countries are worse?
#MCAS potentially more prevalent in females in IRL?
Just guessing…
Look at the otherajor figure, nearly a third of cases were from. Health care workers. A female dominated profession. And we didn’t provide adequate ppe for our health staff. So I’d say this has alot to do with it……
There is a serious problem with presenting data on coronavirus which has shown internationally to disproportionately to take more male than female lives. Comparing like with like data for March internationally the article states “males accounted for 64% of deaths in China, 58% in France, 62% in Germany, 59% in Iran, 71% in Italy and 54% in South Korea” whereas for end of March in Ireland males accounted for 73% of all deaths. This trend continued into April where males accounted for 53% of all deaths in Ireland – https://bit.ly/2ULhYJJ. Clear data, declaring the number of deaths by gender each day became obscured in the public service website. The question is how did the internationally recognised vulnerability identified in males globally to this virus become inverted in public data figures in Ireland? The gender vulnerability to coronavirus data cannot be relied upon in Ireland where other facts were not provided in the recording of the data and death rates by gender and by circumstance. Deaths in residential homes emerged in April and May where it was not explained whether those populations included more females to males. Indeed, there are questions to answer how the gender data was gathered, reported and assigned. It would be a huge mistake to expend greater resource as proposed rather than how can we provide against the internationally known fingerprint of the impact of coronavirus on gender and how it affects males more than females in terms of death rates. Make no mistake but a second wave is coming and applying real strategies to protecting the most vulnerable by age, gender and illness is critical. As a carer for a cancer patient throughout this period I know what distress protecting the most vulnerable means each and every day.
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