CANBERRA, Australia, March 24, 2015 (LifeSiteNews.com) — The push for same-sex “marriage” in Australia has suffered a setback in what has been optimistically described as a “stall.”
The Abbott federal government was set to have a party room discussion today on whether to have a conscience vote on the issue, which, if passed, would have allowed members of the government party to vote in favor of same-sex “marriage.”
The government had gone to the last election with the policy of supporting traditional marriage, meaning that the government MPs would be bound to vote against same-sex “marriage” on a party basis if a bill is put forward.
Liberal Democrat Senator David Leyonhjelm had hoped to bring forward debate on his “Freedom To Marry” bill if the push for a conscience vote was successful.
However, in the party room meeting today, the issue of a conscience vote was not listed on the agenda nor raised by any government member of Parliament.
Continuing what has been a change in momentum against the gay “marriage” lobby for the past two weeks, over two million emails were sent to members of Parliament in response to a campaign by the Australian Christian Lobby and other pro-family and traditional marriage groups. The volume of correspondence generated in support of traditional marriage was four times that of the gay marriage lobby.