We really do have trouble with sex in this country.

And please don’t take that as a comment about what goes on behind the doors of your bedroom. As long as it involves consenting adults that’s rightly your business.

It’s the sex that’s not our business that seems to get us into a real tangle.

A week ago the Rudd government announced changes to a number of Commonwealth laws to address discrimination against gays.

More than 100 areas of legislation addressing everything from superannuation to health care will be affected.

Attorney-General Robert McClelland has described the moves as long overdue and said they would recognise same-sex couples in de facto relationships.

The changes however do not recognise same-sex marriage.

I have to wonder, “Why not?”

Heterosexual couples who marry may do so in a church, by civil celebrant or at a registry office.

By law to be considered married, the union must be registered under the state and comply with the provisions of the Marriage Act of 1961, amended in 2004.

It may appear a choice between the registry office and the church, but in fact the most important piece of paper under the law that you sign on your wedding day, irrespective of venue, comes from the state.

I am not about to mount an argument that churches should open their doors to same-sex unions.

But given the societal realities that the state has chosen to address through Mr McClelland’s reforms, what has stopped the government going the last step?

Freedom of religion allows the church right to its taboos. The state though has broader responsibilities which it shirks by denying same-sex couples - an increasing number of whom are finding ways to have children - the rights all Australians should enjoy.

Australian Marriage Equity Group president Peter Furness told journalists that ending discrimination was not just about money.

"It is about how we, as gay and lesbian Australians, are valued as human beings in our own country," he said.

The new Rudd government took a giant step forward when it confronted underlying racism by issuing a formal apology to Aborigines.

By overriding the Australian Capital Territory government’s legislative changes to recognise same-sex marriage it has missed the opportunity to take another one.

It has acted in a manner not dissimilar to the Howard government’s overturn of Northern Territory legislation to allow euthanasia for the terminally ill.

Kevin Rudd’s brave new world appears increasingly to be one of hope and disappointment.

Australian Christian Lobby managing director Jim Wallace claims his group had been successful in lobbying the government to block the ACT move.

“We are not a Christian right (group), we are people with very conventional Christian views reflective of the great majority of people who attend church,” he said.

Mr Wallace described same-sex unions as “unnatural” and potentially harmful to children.

I would be very surprised if those bigoted and illogical views – which appear to ignore the well-documented harm inflicted on some children by both members of the clergy and their own families – swayed the government.

I doubt it though. I suspect as with all politicians the present government’s god is power and justice for minorities will continue to be at the mercy of Kevin Rudd’s confidence in his mandate. Despite being named one of Time Magazine’s 100 most influential people last week, the PM appears to have a very conservative view of that.

It’s not rude
Good luck to Free Beach Australia campaigner Anita Grigg in her bid to bring nudity out into the open.

It is a measure of how uncomfortable we are with ourselves and also our underlying battle with sex and sexuality that this should be an issue at all.

But both mayor Bob Abbot and Noosa MP Glen Elmes were struggling last week with calls for a designated nudist beach on the Sunshine Coast.

Mr Elmes didn’t want a bar of it, declaring nude beaches off limits for Coolum and unsuitable for young families, a view at odds with the vast numbers of kids that shed every skerrick of clothing at the first sight of sand.

Mr Abbot was less committal but way, way too busy to entertain a delegation any time soon.

Again there would appear to be more politics than logic at play in both responses.