AUSTRALIA - Actor Lily Tomlin has criticised the United States and Australian governments over their opposition to same-sex marriage, saying everyone should have the right to wed.The openly-gay Hollywood veteran, 66, has been with her female partner, Jane Wagner, a writer and producer, for 35 years.
While she and Wagner have no plans to marry, Tomlin feels all people should have the choice.
US President George W Bush and Australian Prime Minister John Howard have both spoken out against same-sex marriage, and the Federal Government recently quashed ACT legislation allowing homosexuals to create civil unions.
"I am happy for anybody who wants to get married and I think they should have every right to," Tomlin said today. "It is an aggressively negative rejection," she said of the governments' responses to the issue.
"You have had an amendment here against same sex marriage. We have, too, in many of the states (in the United States) and I expect it will get more."
Tomlin, most recently known for her role as Deborah Fiderer in the Emmy-award winning political drama The West Wing, suggests the gay community could even create an alternative arrangement to marriage.
"It would be a profound thing if it was done (same-sex marriage was legislated for) because, basically, in the eyes of most people, it is a religious fundamental issue," she said.
"I am not a religious person and to me it is a kind of imitation of straight society.
"If anything, we could be more forward thinking and we could maybe create something different."
Tomlin, originally from Detroit, has been acting since the early 1960s when she scored a spot on Laugh In with her character Ernestine the telephone operator.
She's been nominated for an Academy Award, won a number of Emmys and Tonys and been in countless films, including Nashville, Nine to Five and Big Business.
from News.com.au
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