In a turnaround whose timeliness points to the opposite hemisphere and the influence of the occupant of a certain white house, John Key, the leader of the National Party and current Prime Minister of New Zealand, said hours ago that
he would give initial support to a proposed bill allowing gay marriage.
Ding!
The opposition Labour party has been in at least lukewarm support of marriage equality since 2005 when then Labour Prime Minister Helen Clark said that she thought it was discriminatory not to allow same-sex couples to marry. Labour and the Greens supported the Legalise Love Campaign by New Zealand LGBT groups in 2011, but Key's National Party never came around. Now
Labour's rainbow caucus chair Louisa Wall said she was drafting a private members' bill which would... enable same sex couples to be wed. The bill... would have to be drawn from a ballot before it went before Parliament...
Key this morning said he would vote for the bill's first reading if it was pulled from the ballot.
(I have no idea what "drawn from the ballot" means, but I assume it is a process through which a bill can get consideration by Parliament.)
Three days ago, Key began his own evolutionary process by saying that he was
not personally opposed to gay marriage.
whereas previously he had refused to state a position. It seems that Darwinian processes take less time in Wellington than in Washington!
With the leader of New Zealand's governing party now willing to have a debate and seemingly a vote on the matter, and with the opposition Labour and Green parties now in support, and with what little polling there is showing that by an almost 2:1 margin, 60% - 34%, New Zealanders support marriage equality, the prospects are looking far better now than they ever have for same-sex Kiwi couples to be able to get married.
There's little doubt in my mind that this issue would still be on the backburner in New Zealand had not the President of the United States stated five days ago that he supported the right of same-sex couples to be married. And I wouldn't be surprised if, in the near future, we saw similar scenarios play out in out countries such as Uruguay, Ireland and Finland, where legislation legalizing same-sex marriage has been talked about but seems to have lost momentum.
Unfortunately, Australia is not on that list. New Zealand's neighbor's leader seems immune to Ofluence. When asked to comment about President Obama's change of position, Australia's Prime Minister Julia Guillard stated
My view's not changing... I believe what I believe.
With the more conservative Liberal party pretty much united against marriage equality, and the Prime Minister in opposition despite her party's preference, there seems little prospect of legislation becoming law in the near future.
Still, consistent polling shows same-sex marriage rights favored by a supermajority of Australians. And Guillard now finds herself alone the leaders of major English-speaking nations in her complete lack of support. Perhaps conversion, if only political and not personal, is more likely than it appears.