The arrogance is jaw dropping.
The group was met by MPs from Labour, National, Greens, Maori and Mana after marching from Civic Square.
The bill’s sponsor Labour MP Louisa Wall was introduced as “New Zealand’s own Rosa Parks”.
She told the crowd that the discrimination in New Zealand’s marriage laws needed to be amended.
She also asked church leaders and other opponents to be tolerant as the bill was debated.
“Please do not fear what this bill will do,” she said.
So an MP who was gifted a safe seat for life and puts up a silly bill that merely changes a label and gives no real new rights is compared to someone who literally risked her life, got arrested and lost her job to fight racism.
What an incredible insult to the civil rights movement.
Oh, and we’re all supposed “be tolerant” (translation: shut up and let us do what we want) while this lunacy is debated.
The “you know your place” implication is especially ironic in this context don’t you think?
Something should go here, maybe later. 
I think this cuts to the heart of the Marriage Equality debate. Most people think it would be fine to introduce, and we may as well. However, on either side there are small group who are idiotically grandstanding on it, be they Colin Craig or Louisa ‘Rosa’ Wall. I mean, really, does anyone sensible think anything will change after this bill is passed? Might as well just hurry it through, grant marriage equality for those who want it, ignore those who falsely think their lives will be ruined by it and move on.
You’re not following this debate very closely at all, are you?
The bill is not about “marriage equality for those who want it”. It’s about granting one, and only one additional type of relationship the right to marry while explicitly denying it to a dozen types of loving relationships.
It is also not about ruining anyone’s lives. No one’s real marriage is going to be ruined by gay marriage and no one is seriously saying that it will. What they are saying is that doing this damages society as a whole – much the same way that inflation doesn’t necessarily destroy any given person’s value, it just undermines the currency as a whole.
This Bill will mean that Minister may be made to conduct gay marriages, even though it is not consistent with their beliefs and the beliefs of the church in general, where the concept of marriage was invented. What’s wrong with civil unions?
That’s debatable, but I agree with your side of the debate.
However, I think the greater problem is the way government is placing itself as the arbiter of even the most fundamental concepts in our society, and is willing to change them at whim. Nothing good lies down that road.