Portia De Rossi ... disappointed that Julia Gillard and Australia haven't taken a lead.            Portia De Rossi ... disappointed that Julia Gillard and Australia haven't taken a lead.


Today, parliament carried by the slimmest of margins, 73-72, a Greens motion on gay marriage.
Not to grant legal status to gay marriage, mind you.
No, this vote was just to give parliamentary weight to MPs talking to their constituents about gay marriage - and seeking their views.
It's significant progress, no doubt.
Despite this result, it continues to be the rigid stance of Prime Minister Julia Gillard - who has ruled out changing the party's policy on the issue until Labor's national conference - that has arguably sparked the most discussion.
And now, she's begun to attract some heavyweight celebrity criticism.
Renowned expatriate actor Portia de Rossi today declared her dismay at Gillard's lack of leadership - and she did most articulately; with a passion hard to dismiss as mere Hollywood sideline sniping.
Striking all the right notes, de Rossi - married to talk show megastar Ellen DeGeneres - urged Australia to take a lead on an issue she insisted was a matter of "equality for every citizen".
It didn't "seem right to treat gays and lesbians as second class citizens," she said.
"I always thought Australia would pass this equal rights law . . . long before America would," she told ABC radio this morning - adding she was "a little bit disappointed in the new prime minister''.
"But I am hoping Australia will be a leader in this."
But leadership appears to be in short supply; especially from our politicians.
And if the following comment is anything to go by, there may not be a lot of point in parliamentarians talking to their electorates.
One enthused news site commenter posted the following on an article arguing for gay marriage: "Who said Guy marrigers (sic) must get the nod, it is immoral & against nature, to explain it in the simplist (sic) terms we are here to keep the species alive. Look at the Dinosausers, (sic) they all turned gay, now were (sic) are they?"
Never mind meteorites, climate change or the challenge presented by the evolution of mammals. 'Dinosausers', more commonly referred to as dinosaurs, living in uncivilised times without a gay marriage ban, were apparently not able to help themselves being attracted to the same sex of their species causing a drastic drop in reproduction, leading ultimately to their demise. The implication being that if we allow gay marriage today, along with the problems of so called "immorality", a similar epidemic of homosexuality could wipe our species off the planet. The theory suddenly explains all those coupled male fossils they've been finding.
Now, perhaps more illuminating than this new and clearly scientific theory that I would suggest all paleontologists examine closely, is the fact that people out there may actually take the underlying premise of marriage as procreation vs homosexuality seriously. All I can say is let's hope this guy is a great satirist trolling and misspelling his way across news sites heavily laden with dollops of irony.
But a different type of gay dinosaur is still walking the earth with the political lay of the land for gay marriage remaining perfectly preserved in a tar pit of conservatism and tradition. The motion to be voted on today has ALP support but the PM remains firm against the idea of a conscience vote or a change to the Marriage Act, which currently defines marriage as between a man and woman.
This is despite moves from within the ALP, with Labor minister, Mark Arbib, federal backbencher, Stephen Jones and government MP Kirsten Livermore all dissenting from the official party line. Funnily enough for Ms Livermore, a recent survey showed her electorate as one with a large amount of anti-gay sentiment. The seat of Capricornia, currently on a margin of 3.7 per cent, had 44.7 per cent of respondents agreeing with the idea that homosexuality was immoral and only 33 per cent thought gay adoption was a good idea. The survey also spelled out the obvious, that anti-gay sentiment remains entrenched in outer-suburban and regional areas and in strong Coalition seats. Overall 27 per cent of respondents to the survey, conducted over two years, believe homosexuality is immoral.
Independent MP Bob Katter summed it up nicely; asked about the Greens' motion to promote a conversation between MPs and their electorate, he said he didn't need to talk to them: "I think I know their attitudes . . . Their attitude is not in favour." We know that areas like Bob Katter's electorate of Kennedy in North Queensland don't tend to be very receptive to the idea of gay marriage, but that doesn't mean it's not the right thing to do, or that it's not the will of the majority.
Still, it is more than likely that Labor is going to take the cautious road on this one. The dinosaurs are not the ''gay ones'' that died out according to our commentator's theory above, but the ones in parliament directed by those voters stuck under a fossil somewhere. The movement on this issue has been glacial with small increments towards a more progressive stance, including the vote this morning which doesn't even approach the strength of a conscience vote but instead is simply a promise to talk. You've got to hope that as we enter a different paleontological age, these gay (marriage) dinosaurs evolve or die out.
Bella Counihan works in the Canberra Press Gallery and writes for The National Times.