The Australian government will soon ask voters whether the law should allow same-sex couples to marry in the Australian Marriage Law Postal Survey.

Unfortunately, misinformation persists about the likely impact of amending the Federalif most Australians reply ‘Yes’.

I come to the marriage equality debate with my own biases, knowledge, and experiences.

Professionally, I have a law degree with first-class honours, graduating from the Australian National University with the Prize for Commonwealth Constitutional Law.

For 3 years, I helped to edit an encyclopedia on the High Court,(2001), and for 7 years I worked with senior lawyers on some high profile cases, including landmark constitutional cases.

As for my personal life, my parents raised me in a strict Roman Catholic household. I dutifully attended church every Sunday until age 38.

I was a member of the Liberal Party of Australia in 1993 and again in 2010.

Against this brief background, I present my responses, as factually as I can, to dispel some of the most misinformed commentary spreading around the Internet and the mainstream media about same-sex marriage in Australia.

Here are nine of the most persistent myths about same-sex marriage in Australia.

Myth 1: ‘Gays already have legal equality!’

In 2008, federal legislative amendments corrected a lot of the legal inequality that lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex (LGBTI) people faced in Australia. But those amendments can go only part way while the law denies the legal status of marriage to LGBTI people.

The status of ‘being married’ cascades through not only federal laws but also State and Territory laws across many subjects, such as succession and property. When people marry, they acquire an automatic bundle of legal rights (and responsibilities) that come with ‘marriage’:

The status of ‘being married’ thus triggers legal consequences, and these few examples come from just one State.

For a real life example of the inequality LGBTI people face (this time in Tasmania), consider the circumstances that gay man Ben faced when he couldn’t organise (or even attend) his deceased partner Nathan’s funeral. When a person marries, they become the spouse’s next of kin. But, in Ben’s case, authorities failed to recognise Ben as Nathan’s next of kin. Instead, Nathan’s estranged mum took over Nathan’s funeral arrangements. If Ben and Nathan had been married under Australian law, then no doubt about their kinship would have existed.

The legal inequality still facing LGBTI Australians provides one reason the Australian Medical Association supports marriage equality:

“The lack of legal recognition can have tragic consequences in medical emergencies, as a person may not have the right to advocate for their ill or injured partner, and decision-making may be deferred to a member of the patient’s biological family instead.”

Even apart from these particular examples, a more fundamental kind of legal inequality confronts LGBTI people. Legally, if you’re straight, you can marry the person you love. But if you’re LGBTI, you can’t marry the person you love. How does that count as legal equality?

Image via Getty.

By law, it doesn’t matter whether a couple can or cannot have children. Legally, you don’t have to marry in order to have children; and you don’t have to have children in order to marry.

Infertile couples, for example, can’t have children, either; yet infertile couples can still marry. So, the ability of a couple to conceive children through procreative sex cannot comprise a relevant difference between those who can legally marry and those who cannot.

Some people argue that an opposite sex couple provides ‘biological complementariness’ or ‘sexed twoness’ and that this makes a difference. Yet, as a matter of physical reality, it makes no difference: such couples have as much chance of conceiving children naturally as same-sex couples. And, again, as a matter of law, the ability to conceive children naturally makes no difference whatsoever for the purposes of secular marriage.

Others sometimes claim ‘But if everyone were gay, the species would die out!’ This argument overlooks a simple fact: changing the federalwill not make same-sex marriage, or homosexuality, compulsory.

More than enough heterosexual couples, married or unmarried, and enough LGBTI couples, married or unmarried, will continue to populate the over-populated earth and to raise kids — straight kids, gay kids, bisexual kids, transgender kids, and intersex kids.

And LGBTI people will still nurse them, teach them, heal them, entertain them, and nurture them. Your life will go on as normal whether or not LGBTI people can wed.

People also overlook the fact that many gays and lesbians have children already, either through prior relationships or through adoption, altruistic surrogacy, and IVF.

Marriage law differs from and exists separately to, laws on adoption, surrogacy, and access to assisted reproductive technologies. LGBTI people will have neither fewer kids or more kids if marriage equality becomes law. And their kids will do just fine (see, below).

You may object to commercial surrogacy or to assisted reproductive technology, but those objections apply equally to heterosexual couples as homosexual couples, and marriage equality will make no difference to those objections.

If marriage brings benefits to kids of heterosexual couples, then why not extend those benefits to kids of LGBTI couples?

Some Conservatives support marriage equalityof the children of LGBTI parents, notchildren of LGBTI parents. Those Conservatives believe marriage brings stability and cohesion to all families — and to society.

Myth 3: ‘If same-sex marriage is legalised, what’s next? Polygamy? Bestiality? Pedophilia? Incest? People marrying objects?’

Allowing two LGBTI adults to marry each other provides the natural stopping point for marriage equality. ‘Equality’ means treating like cases alike, and the other kinds of relationships frequently mentioned in the ‘slippery slope argument’ arelike same-sex marriage.

Consent provides the big difference between two LGBTI adults marrying each other and the other kinds of relationships. Two adults can consent to marry. An animal, object, or child cannot consent (though, disturbingly, as late as 1942, an adult man in Australia could marry a girl as young as 12; South Australia raised the age from 12 to 16 as late as 1957. The amendment to theallowing two adults to marry regardless of gender won’t upset the criminal laws against child sexual abuse and bestiality, change the minimum marriageable age, or make it possible for people to marry objects.

True, adults in a polygamous relationship can consent to marry, but other facts differentiate polygamous marriages from monogamous LGBTI marriages. For example, in polygamous relationships, questions of identity arise: who is married to whom?

A husband might have married several wives, but have the wives married each other? When a man marries several women, particular power imbalances might develop. Spouses might get jealous. And consequences for children in any such polygamous marriage require consideration.

Whatever you think of these considerations, your objections (or otherwise) will remain whatever happens with same-sex marriage. Thus, no causal link exists between same-sex marriage and polygamous marriage. In fact, commonly, where same-sex marriage has been legal, polygamous marriage has been illegal; and where same-sex marriage has been illegal, polygamous marriage has been legal. Further, the law already recognises polygamous marriage for many purposes. For example, s6 of the1975 (Cth) says:

"For the purpose of proceedings under this Act, a union in the nature of a marriage which is, or has at any time been, polygamous, being a union entered into in a place outside Australia, shall be deemed to be a marriage."

Also, social security law recognises polygamous relationships for some purposes, as does judge-made law (see [2013] HCA 55 at 32 and footnote 46).

The limit on the number of people who can marry will remain unchanged if Parliament amends theto allow same-sex couples to marry.

As for incestual marriage, Australian law lets you marry your first cousin. You can also marry your niece or nephew or your aunt or uncle (s23(2)1961 (Cth)). But you can’t marry your brother or sister, or one of your parents, grandparents, or your own child or grandchild.

The prohibition against marrying these close relatives will remain after any amendment to allow same-sex marriage. Straight people can marry their nieces and nephews, but two (unrelated) LGBTI adults in love can’t marry each other. How does that make sense?

Image via Troy Simpson.

The same-sex marriage debateprecisely about marriage. Parliament will simply reverse the Howard government’s amendments to the federalthat Parliament made in 2004, which for the first time expressly excluded same-sex couples from marriage.

Amending the Federalwill not, and cannot, affect religious freedoms. Only the secular, legislative meaning of marriage will change (see below,); the law will not interfere with the religious or sacramental meaning of marriage.

The Constitution protects the free exercise of religion, albeit as a narrow limit on federal law-making power. In several States and Territories, the law now protects religion as a ‘protected class’, making vilification and discrimination on the basis of religion unlawful. Thewill likely even include express (and unnecessary) provisions relating to religious freedom.

Changing the, a federal law, will make no difference to State and Territory laws that already outlaw discrimination and vilification on grounds of sexual preference. Already, businesses cannot legally deny services to people on the grounds of sexuality. Those anti-discrimination and anti-vilification laws exist prior to, and in addition to, the federal.

Parents will continue to have the freedom to teach their kids the parents’ own beliefs on gender, sexuality, and marriage. A simple amendment to thet will have no impact whatsoever on what parents can teach their kids, and nor could it. The government cannot intrude into the family home in this way.

As for the Safe Schools program, the States and Territories take responsibility for schools, not the federal government; the federal government no longer even funds Safe Schools. For example, in the ACT, the Safe Schools program continues with ACT funding. Even Catholic schools have implemented their own LGBTI-focused anti-bullying programs.

Changing theto allow same-sex couples to wed will not adversely affect what schools teach kids. The federal issue of marriage and the State issue of education