The Definition of Marriage Bill, which would legalise gay marriage in New Zealand, passed through Committee of the Whole yesterday.
This is basically the last real hurdle before the passage of the Bill. As the Parliament website notes, there are only two hurdles left to cross: the vote at the Third Reading and the Royal Assent, where the Governor General signs the Bill into law. Bills almost never fail at the Third Reading, and the Royal Assent has never been refused to a Bill that was passed by Parliament.
At this stage it seems near-certain that gay marriage will be legalised in New Zealand, probably next month.
On a related note, I can heartily recommend this blog post using The Princess Bride to show why gay marriage should be legalised.
Many congratulations to New Zealand and its citizens!
Have a good time at the weddings soon to follow, James.Report
A cautious Woohoo!Report
Must. Resist. Sheep. Joke.Report
you’re baaaaaaaaaaaaaad.Report
Just a wild and wooly kind of guy.Report
“Marriage is hereby defined as being solely the union of one human being and one human being.”Report
It’s better than those that have a hobbit of posting bad puns.Report
I gotta say that the “Princess Bride” doesn’t do it for me. But congratulations to New Zealand.Report
You don’t like the Princess Bride? Inconceivable!Report
I think I need to edit The Commenting Policy to state that negative comments about The Princess Bride constitute a violation resulting in an immediate three-day ban from posting.Report
The book (abridged version), or the movie? I’ve never seen the movie, but the book is a lot of fun, largely because of the wit of the narrator which is something that it’s hard to carry over into a film.Report
The movie. Until you mentioned it, I wasn’t aware there was a book. Maybe I should look into reading it.Report
The book is fun in its own right — as stated, some of the “narrator”s comments are very fun.
If you’ve seen the movie, there’s a wonderful anecdote that Reiner and Golding tell: Golding didn’t visit the set often, but stopped by as they were filming the ROUS scene. Even though he wrote the book and was familiar as anything with the scene (the film is as close as possible to the book), he still jumped when the fire-marsh went off.Report
The more recent editions include a fair amount of meta-fiction written about making the movie, etc.Report
To be clear, I can’t pinpoint anything about the movie that is “bad,” either aesthetically or any other “-ally.”
It just isn’t really my cup of tea, and it rubs me the wrong way even to the point of making me angry. Similar to the effect “Dr. Strangelove,” another “great movie” has on me. I guess there’s no accounting for taste.
As you might guess, I can be a difficult person to live live.Report
“live live”…..errr, “live with.”Report
Princess Bride makes no sense if you didn’t have a love/hate relationship with the old Errol Flynn and Douglas Fairbanks swashbucklers. Woody Allen’s best joke illustrates the problem I can’t listen to that much Wagner. I start getting the urge to conquer Poland. Report
I hadn’t heard that Allen quip before. I chuckled.Report
Congrats! Commonwealth power!Report