It's interesting that you think this vote covers all these extra topics, especially when as you said we haven't seen any particular legislation. It's just a vote about whether or not people support two people getting married, regardless of gender. The legislation will come later but I'm sure you'll agree there would be outrage if it over-reaches.

A no vote is not "protecting basic rights". You and everyone else lose nothing from same-sex marriage becoming a thing. And even though this vote is a single issue question of opinion, people like yourself keep conflating it with all these other problems that, for bonus points, aren’t even factual anyway. The Safe Schools program is not as raunchy as people make it out to be (it's really a slight amendment to basic sex education previously in place, nothing more).

Our marriage laws have changed multiple times since first written up. They will continue to change. This change is critically important to some of your fellow countrymen, and has zero negative effect on the rest. Even if you won't be directly affected by it, some of your friends, family and fellow citizens desperately want these equal rights. Not extra rights. Equal. 

Jenny Moxham mentions in her letter (September 4) “In lands where all animals have their throats sliced open while they are fully conscious and where animal awaiting death must look on in terror as their trusted and tried companions meet their gruesome grisly fate.”

No doubt you and all the members of PETA are aware of the fact that also in Australia, tonnes of thousands of animals are slaughtered ritually by having their throats sliced open by Muslim slaughtermen, and then slowly die until bled dry?

This is a totally un-Australian way of killing animals just for the purpose of declaring the meat ‘halal’ so that it is acceptable for Muslims to eat it. The general Australian opinion is that if immigrants choose to live in Australia then they choose to adopt the Australian way of life and assimilate and enjoy the benefits or our freedom, democracy and welfare. But this is not acceptable to the Muslim minority who have swayed our political leaders to legally approve of the Muslim way of slaughtering animals.

So, thanks to our lenient political leaders, this totally un-Australian way of slaughtering animals has become legal – ‘we must be tolerant of other religions’ musn’t we?

And if the Muslim leaders had their way, the Muslim sharia laws would openly or stealthily become more and more introduced and enforced as they in face have been in other non-Muslim countries.

So, be aware and forewarned. In exposing these facts the intention is not to stir up friction or hatred but to be fully aware of the realities of life and to watch like hawks what our political leaders allow to happen and to not allow them to ruin our freedom of democracy and our valued way of life by so-called tolerance.