Australian Prime Minister Says He's Not Anti-Gay

John Howard has declared that his stance against same-sex marriage is not driven by an opposition to homosexuals.
The Prime Minister rejected yesterday the charge by ACT chief minister Jon Stanhope that Mr Howard's opposition to the ACT's plan to recognise gay unions meant there was "no place in Howard's Australia for homosexuals".
"That's wrong. This is not an anti-homosexual gesture," Mr Howard said, adding that it was intended to preserve the "special and traditional place of marriage as a heterosexual union for life of a man and a woman in Australian society".
Mr Howard told the Ten Network that there was scope to remove discrimination against gay couples, but not to equate a gay union with a traditional marriage.
Mr Stanhope said that if Mr Howard's opposition to his law was not driven by homophobia, he should act to remove discrimination against homosexuals from commonwealth legislation.
Mr Stanhope said he would revise the ACT's proposed legislation to see if there were ways of meeting the commonwealth's concerns.
A spokeswoman for Mr Stanhope said that the ACT's legislation was principally designed to remove legal discrimination against gay couples and did not equate their unions with marriage.
She said these mostly involved "end-of-life" issues, such as the legal rights of partners in disputes over wills.
She said the ACT legislation would not affect rights at the Family Court, which is the commonwealth's jurisdiction.
The Howard Government's main problem with the law is that it refers to achieving "functional equality" between civil unions and marriage. The problem the ACT is wrestling with is that it is hard to write law that gives civil unions equal rights to marriage without mentioning the word "marriage".
The ACT has indicated it will establish its own register of celebrants to overcome the federal ban on celebrants, which it licenses, from assisting same-sex unions.
from The Australian