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Homosexual relationships in australia

Lord Penzance defined marriage in the case of Hyde vs Hyde and Woodmansee (1986) LR 1 P.&D. 130 when he started ‘I conceive marriage, as understood in Christendom, may be defined as the voluntary union for life of one man and one woman, to the exclusion of others’. It has been confide both in section 46(1) of the Marriage Act and section 43(a) of the Family Law Act. Marriage is therefore defined as ‘the union of a man and a women’. Consequently same sex couples are not able to legally marry under Australian law. However in 1984 the legal system acknowledged that relationships outside of the traditional or legal form of marriage did exist. The De facto Relationships Act 1984 (NSW) provided protection and recognition for such alternative relationships involving people of the opposite sex. Where previously homosexual relationships are illegal under the law, as was homosexual intercourse.


In section 4 of the Property (Relationships) Act 1984 defines a de facto relationship as...

Posted by: Novelett Roberts

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