Roundup: Marriage equality, Indigenous rights, immigration detention

UnitingJustice marriage equality submission

Adopting a rights-based approach grounded in the international human rights statutes to which Australia is a signatory, UnitingJustice believes that this situation be amended to give those in same-sex relationships the same rights and benefits through marriage as are bestowed upon heterosexual couples whose relationship is recognised by the state.

Bill Loader’s submission to Senate inquiry

Social attitudes have changed for the better in recognising that understanding all people of same sex orientation as necessarily engaged in wilful perversion or pathology, as the ancient saw it, is a genuine misapprehension at best, and at worst, a gross injustice.

Christmas Island immigration centre still a ‘prison’

A church delegation has just returned from the Christmas Island immigration detention centre in the Indian Ocean. The delegates were visiting the joint Anglican-Uniting Church chaplain who serves the island’s detainee population; it’s currently around 200 people.

Policy driving Indigenous from lands

Amnesty’s 2012 human rights report says Australia continues to violate the rights of Indigenous people, and is driving them from their homelands.