WHAT THE CONSTITUTION DICTATES...

Article 41 – The Family

SECTION 1.

Subsection 1: The State recognises the Family as the natural primary and fundamental unit group of Society, and as a moral institution possessing inalienable and imprescriptible rights, antecedent and superior to all positive law.

1.2 The State, therefore, guarantees to protect the Family in its constitution and authority, as the necessary basis of social order and as indispensable to the welfare of the Nation and the State.

SECTION 2.

Subsection 1: In particular, the State recognises that by her life within the home, woman gives to the State a support without which the common good cannot be achieved.

2.2 The State shall, therefore, endeavour to ensure that mothers shall not be obliged by economic necessity to engage in labour to the neglect of their duties in the home.

SECTION 3

Subsection 1: The State pledges itself to guard with special care the institution of Marriage, on which the Family is founded, and to protect it against attack.

3.2 A Court designated by law may grant a dissolution of marriage… [Divorce amendment] Note: The courts have interpreted marriage as the lifetime union of one man and one woman, but this does not mean they would not reinterpret it in a different way if the law was changed.

Nonetheless, significant legal opinion is that the references in Article 41 to ‘the family,’ to ‘mothers’ and to the ‘home’, are sufficiently strong that any proposal to introduce homosexual marriage would require the approval of the people through referendum.