Australian Marriage Equality

Australian Marriage Equality (AME) is an advocacy group driven by volunteers who have come together to pursue the legalisation of same-sex marriage in Australia. AME partners with a diverse range of organisations and supporters across the country to end the exclusion of same-sex LGBTIQ couples from marriage in Australia. It is the pre-eminent group campaigning for same-sex marriage in Australia.

AME was founded in 2004 prior to the Federal Parliament's passage of a bill amending the Marriage Act 1961 to rule out the legal recognition of marriages between same-sex couples.

The co-founders and first national co-conveners of AME were Luke Gahan and Geraldine Donoghue. Luke, grandson of the former Mayor of Prahran George Gahan, had been a member of the Australian Labor Party and Treasurer of the Gay and Lesbian Rights Lobby. In a 2011 book called Speak Now Gahan spoke openly about being the youngest 'gay married' Australian, and subsequently Australia's first 'gay divorcee'. Gahan is still involved in LGBTIQ activism, now a sociologist based at Melbourne's La Trobe University where he was one of the authors of "Writing Themselves in 3", the third national study on the sexual health and wellbeing of same-sex attracted and gender-questioning young people.

The second national Convener of AME was Peter Furness. Furness was a former South Sydney Councillor for the Australian Democrats.

The third national Convener of AME was Sharon Dane, who is a social psychologist and an Adjunct Fellow of the School of Psychology at the University of Queensland. Dane was the lead author of "Not So Private Lives", the first national study to examine same-sex Australians' preferences for relationship recognition, since the introduction of de facto status for same-sex couples at a federal level. She presented findings from this research at the hearing of the Senate Inquiry into the Marriage Equality Amendment Bill 2009. Dane married her partner Elaine Crump in Toronto, Canada on 23 July 2008.

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