Education Policy Analysis Archives

Running head: POLICY ANALYSIS
Policy Analysis
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author Note:

1POLICY ANALYSIS
Introduction
The LGBTQ community all over the world has faced much challenges when it comes
to their rights as humans. They have faced violence and discriminations all over the world
and are still experiencing many social stigma and lack of social support due to their sexual
preference or orientation (Kolstee & Hopwood, 2016). The legislative amendments all over
the world has been slow to uptake the issues related to the LGBTQ community. Though US
and many other western countries have legalized and normalized same sex marriage, many of
the countries still retain their laws of discrimination against these people. The greatest reason
behind that is the minority status of these people and their lack of representation in the
political area. The human right commission has recognized homosexuality as human rights
but has also stated that they have limited power to anything to ensure that all the countries
follows that (Aihw.gov.au. 2018). Most of the religious countries still criminalize same sex
relationships and much struggle continues for the human rights of the community. In
Australia, the Marriage Equality act was proposed in 2012 and was finally passed in 2017. In
this paper, the policy of Marriage equality is analyzed using the Bacchi WPR framework.
Discussion
Context
The context of equality in right to marry has been controversial in many cases. In
most countries, earlier, only marriage between a man and a woman was considered to be
valid and the right of the people having different gender preference or orientation was not
considered much. The reason behind this is the religious beliefs of people (Perales, Bouma &
Campbell, 2019). Most of the religions, mainly Christianity, considers homosexuality as
abomination and abnormal, and punishable by religious law, most of the legislations reflected

2POLICY ANALYSIS
that. As people become more accepting and flexible, started questioning the religious
teachings, the marriage laws too, were questioned by human rights activists.
The Human rights commission has recognized same sex marriage as natural and as
their right. The minority status of the LGBTQ community all over the world, especially in
Australia, is also another reason why this issue has been overlooked so long. Only 5% of the
Australia’s population recognize themselves as belonging to the particular community,
according to the 2016 census (Gay Marriage Around the World. Pew Research Center's
Religion & Public Life Project. 2020). They do not have much voice and representation in the
political situation. Moreover, they face social stigma and discrimination on the grounds of
their sexual preference. There have numerous medical experiments and initiatives that wanted
to normalize the orientation of this people to heterosexuality by surgery or hormonal therapy
(Gay Marriage Around the World. Pew Research Center's Religion & Public Life Project.
2020). All this has led to the lack of support from social context that has led to a reduced
health outcome from this community. Thus, improving the scenario and providing them with
equal rights in marriage was becoming important.
History
The Marriage act of 1961 defines marriage as a union which happens between a man
and a woman. This explicitly says that only a man and woman can marry thus denying the
rights of the LGBTQ community to marry their spouses. Moreover, the law also does not
allow the people of LGBTQ community to change their gender identity which are forcing
them to remain married to their spouses (Marriage Equality (2012) | Australian Human
Rights Commission. Humanrights.gov.au. 2020). This is a clear violation of human rights of
the LGBTQ community of Australia and there have been much discussion regarding this.