Last September my partner Gregory and I met with his federal Member of Parliament Kelly O’Dwyer to discuss her position on Marriage Equality. You can read about our meeting here.
Today in The Sydney Morning Herald it is reported:
11:31am: Over in the Federation Chamber (a parallel chamber for parliamentary business) Liberal MP Kelly O’Dwyer has told MPs she supports changing the Marriage Act to recognise same sex marriage.
“There will be some people in my family who will be disappointed,” Ms O’Dwyer says.
“”There will be others in my family who will be able to marry [if laws are changed].”
Ms O’Dwyer has been targetted by marriage equality campaigners due to the high level of support for change in her Melbourne seat.
Tellingly, Ms O’Dwyer says the Coalition party room has not yet debated what its election policy on this issue will be.
to which Gregory asked of Kelly (via Twitter):
Almost immediately after this tweet went out I saw that Kelly O’Dwyer had stated her new position on Marriage Equality:
I believe that changing the Marriage Act by extending the definition to include same-sex couples will not lessen the status of families. On the contrary, I think that it will strengthen it by building stronger bonds of commitment between two people regardless of gender and sexual orientation.
So thank you Kelly, thank you for understanding that all people deserve equal rights. Now please help Tony Abbott understand this too.
I was happy to reTweet Gregory’s Tweet to Ms O’Dwyer.
This is a great example of what can happen when people speak up and voice their opinions to politicians.