Using children as an excuse to prevent gay couples from getting married is wrong.

One of the arguments against same sex marriage you are sure to hear over the coming days and weeks, if you haven’t already, is that if gay people get married it will somehow deny children access to their basic rights.

That is, children have a right to have a mother and a father and to have both figures present in their lives.

Furthermore, that a nuclear family consisting of a mother and a father is the best model for the care of children.

Read more: “What my four-year-old child taught me about same-sex marriage.”

As the Government lurches from shutting down internal debate on marriage equality entirely, to grappling with the constitutional niceties of a referendum or a plebiscite, anti-marriage equality advocates think they have spied an opening in the public consciousness to sneak their message through.

The Marriage Alliance, a lobby group of traditional marriage advocates, loudly proclaims that “the rights of children are being subjugated by arguments about equality between gay and heterosexual adults.”

The Alliance’s spokesperson, Sophie York says, “attacking the institution of marriage between a man and a woman - which in every culture on earth is naturally designed to create a family unit – at its very heart takes away the rights of a child to have a mum and dad.”

It's time for marriage equality. We love this moving video from Get Up. Post continues after video...

Of course, what advocates for marriage equality have on their side is: a) the overwhelming support of the Australian community, b) a huge majority of support from Australian churchgoers, c) a morally correct position and d) well, simply put, love.

The anti same sex marriage lobby have seriously misjudged the landscape.

Setting aside the many failures of political judgement and strategy on the part of both the Government and proponents of so-called ‘traditional marriage’ (hopefully someone has pointed out to them that traditional marriage was a financial transaction between a husband and father) there’s a simple point of logic that they seem to have missed entirely.

Your fertility is not unlocked by virtue of a wedding ring.

Your partner is not firing blanks before you walk down the aisle.

You can, in fact, conceive and carry a baby at any point in time, regardless of your relationship status.

Not only that, but gay people are already having children and the law already recognises that. There was a legislative change years ago that allows same sex couples to be listed as the parents of children.

Under the law, gay parents are recognised, and yet the anti marriage equality lobby are using the rights of children to stop a change to law to allow them to marry.

What nonsense.

This is nothing but discrimination against LGBTIQ people wrapped up in a panicked cry of, “won’t someone think of the children".

Do you support marriage equality?