Fridae

Although the Federal Government banned gay marriage in June this year, state Liberal backbencher and Member for Unley, Mark Brindal presented a Civil Unions Bill to parliament, making it the first state in Australia to consider same-sex civil unions.

The proposed bill attracted heated opposition from Family First's Andrew Evans in the state's Upper House.

"It's a backdoor to gay marriage, and so I just don't understand why they need it. Marriage is something that happened before politics ever was started. It was long before the Bible was even written. Marriage was, as always, between a man and a woman. And I think it should stay that way."

Brindal argued that civil unions are entirely different from marriage to "allow same sex couples who want to be more than de factos, to formalise their relationship in the eyes of the law."

While he admitted that Australians might not be ready to accept gay marriage "because it's got ancient meaning according to the Church and Christian tradition", he added that it "doesn't mean that the Australian people want to, or seek to deny to human beings a basket of rights which people deemed to be married, or deemed to be a de-facto, take for granted."

"So this is an attempt to actually say, look, you might be same sex attracted, you might define your family different to the way I'll define my family, but that doesn't mean that I should marginalise you or deprive you of rights that every human being's entitled to," he said on local radio.

He added: "Where there's an injustice in society it's got to be fixed. A century ago we were looking at children and industrial rights for children, education for children. Then we moved on and we looked at workers, with things like trade unions. And women, in the last twenty or thirty years. They are great causes, all of them deserving causes. And I think one of the causes now is the cause of people who are marginalised because of sexual preference."

Brindal expects the issue to be debated again early next year, to give South Australians time to consider the issue.