Australian Labor Senator Louise Pratt, who has a transgender partner, gave an emotional floor speech on Monday arguing for the need for marriage equality, fighting back tears as she told the few fellow lawmakers assembled that the bill is "personal" for her.
Said Pratt:
"I am one of those hundreds of thousands of Australian citizens who knows that the laws of our nation hold our capacity for love and for commitment to be lesser because of the gender of our partner…One of hundreds of thousands of Australian citizens who knows that the laws of our nation say we are less deserving of rights, respect and recognition. We know that those ideas are not true and that the laws that reinforce them are not right. This debate has a personal impact for me."
She added:
"I think it is one of the bitterest, bitterest ironies of this debate that historically gay people have been stigmatized as promiscuous and immoral while being denied by the law the right to demonstrate the importance and consistency of their relationships in the way that any other Australian can. Think about that."
Pratt argues powerfully for the rights of LGBT as well as intersex individuals. Hopefully YouTube will give Pratt's speech a wider audience.
Watch, AFTER THE JUMP…
