Legislation that would ensure the legal validity of religious marriages has been narrowly defeated in a 16-20 vote of the New South Wales Legislative Council. Source: The Catholic Weekly.
The July 1 commencement of the sex self-identification provisions of the Equality Legislation Amendment (LGBTIQA+) Act 2024, which enable a person to change the sex on their birth certificate using an administrative process, presented a challenge for the civil validity of religious marriages.
In submitting the amendment, Liberal MLC Susan Carter noted that under the federal Marriage Act 1961, for a minister of religion to validly celebrate a marriage under the civil law, the marriage must be valid within the rights of the relevant religion.
With no indication on a revised birth certificate that it had been changed, a challenge would arise in the case of, for example, a same-sex couple presenting themselves to a priest and asking for a Catholic wedding, but with one party holding an altered birth certificate to make it appear that they were an opposite sex couple.
Even if the priest was deceived into celebrating the marriage, the marriage would still not be valid under canon law and therefore, it would not be valid under the Marriage Act either, because the legality of the civil marriage depends on its religious validity.
Ms Carter’s amendment would have permitted the priest to request a copy of the original birth certificate from the Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages, however, the Government and the Greens combined to defeat the amendment on October 15.
While the possibility of the marriage fraud occurring might have seemed theoretical prior to the commencement of the sex self-identification procedures, initial reports show that close to 800 people changed the sex on their birth certificate within the first three months of the law’s operation.
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Marriage amendment narrowly defeated (By Monica Doumit, The Catholic Weekly)
