Legal Implications Of Same Sex Marriage: Chinese People's Opinions In Australia

Sampling Technique

Discuss about the Legal Implications of Same Sex Marriage.

The main aim of this research is to assess the debates between the Chinese people who reside in Australia over the issue of same-sex marriage or gay-marriage. Gay-marriage refers to the marriage which takes place between two people of the same gender (Gerstmann, 2017). The equality of marriage refers to the fact that both the kinds of marriage – between same sex and between opposite sex are considered equal. Around the 20^th century, same sex marriage became very common and that also without any legal recognition. With this increasing interest in people for same sex marriage, the Australian government in 2017 has finally decided to run a survey for the opinions of people on this issue (Olson, Cadge & Harrison, 2016). This proposal was rejected twice before by the senate of Australia.

A very small part of the population of the country Australia has been considered in this research to get a brief understanding of what the Chinese people residing in Australia think of this same-sex marriage. Thus, the research is aimed to assess the opinions of people of China on this major issue of gay marriage in Australia. Since, there is a huge increase of interest among the people of the country to undergo gay marriage, it is hoped that most of the people of the country would give positive feedback about this issue (Brewer, 2014).

To undergo this research, a survey questionnaire has been designed and it has been distributed to 25 people of the country chosen randomly. All the chosen persons were Chinese who resides in Australia. The research questionnaire contains a total of 15 questions and responses of the participants were recorded. These research questions will be analyzed using appropriate statistical techniques in Excel and then the results of the analysis will be compared to the current situation of Australia.

The method that has been chosen here to run the analysis is the Qualitative data analysis. This is the best method to analyze qualitative data obtained from the survey questionnaire. With the help of the qualitative analysis, the data can be represented graphically from which any person can have an idea of the situation that is of major concern (Rossi, Wright & Anderson, 2013).

The research was aimed to analyze the opinions of Chinese people on the issue of gay marriage in Australia. Thus, 25 Chinese residents in Australia were chosen randomly in order to fill the survey form. The responses given by the selected respondents were thus recorded for the purpose of analysis. Random sampling technique was used to choose the respondents as the error of sampling is minimized in this type of sampling (Best & Kahn, 2016). On the other hand, it can be said that the sampling technique was not completely random as only the people of Chinese nationality were chosen in the sample. This has been done in order to meet the research objective.

Results and Discussions

The selected sample was asked specific questions on their demographic status. They were asked about their ages, their gender and their nationality. In this case, the nationality of all the respondents was Chinese. The age of the respondents were divided into four groups – below 18, 18 – 25 years, 25 – 32 years and more than 32 years. The gender of the respondents had two options – male and female.

For this research, a sample of only 25 respondents was selected. This sample size should not be enough to draw any conclusion about the opinions of all the Chinese people residing in Australia. Moreover, for this research, responses of only the Chinese people were considered. To get a better view of the opinions of people on this rising issue of gay marriage, people of different kinds of nations should be considered for future research.

In Australia, this issue of same sex marriage has been extremely prevailing as this type of marriage has been taking place in the country even without any government recognition (Foster, 2016).

To run the analysis, at first the demographic conditions of the respondents were analyzed. From the analysis in table 4.1, it can be seen clearly that among the selected respondents, 12 were female respondents and 13 were male respondents. Thus, it can be said there will be opinions from both the genders equally. The distribution of the gender o the people have been shown diagrammatically with the help of a pie chart in figure 4.1.

The second demographic condition that has been analyzed is the age of the respondents. It can be seen from the table 4.2 that most of the respondents belong to the age group of 18-25 years followed by the age group of under 18. Thus, it can be said that the responses that have been received are mostly the perspectives of the young generation. The thought of the young generation on the matter of gay marriage has been recorded in this research. Figure 4.2 shows the age distribution of the respondents.

The third factor that will be discussed here is whether there are any homosexual people around the respondents. Very little percentage of the people has said no. Thus, it can be said that most of the respondents reside near a homosexual. Thus, it can be said that the homosexual people of Australia reside near the Chinese community. Figure 4.3 shows the distribution of the homosexual people residing near the Chinese respondents.

Ethical Issues

From table 4.4, it can be seen clearly that the respondents do not prefer in discriminating the gay people from the normal people. Most of them have said that they never discriminated anyone preferring gay marriage and a lot of people never thought about the matter. Thus, it has been seen that a very little of the Chinese community in Australia cannot agree to the idea o gay marriage whereas most of them have accepted this issue. The responses are shown diagrammatically in figure 4.4.

The next issue that will be studied is whether there is more preference towards discrimination of gay marriage with respect to gender. From table 4.5, it can be seen clearly that there is not much difference in the thoughts of males and females over the discrimination of gay marriage. This distribution of the opinions of males and females are shown diagrammatically in figure 4.5.

The next issue that will be studied is whether there is more preference towards discrimination of gay marriage with respect to age. From table 4.6, it can be seen clearly that there is some difference in the thoughts of the people of different types of ages. Here, most of the respondents are young and the people aged under 18 years have not shown any discrimination towards the gay marriage issue but the people aged between 18-28 years have shown discrimination over this issue of gay marriage. The older people have not much thought about the matter or have not discriminated anyone over this issue.  Figure 4.6 clearly shows this distribution of the opinions of different age groups of the respondents.

In order to run a research, a few ethical issues have to be kept in mind. These issues are very important to conduct a survey analysis. The major ethical issues that the researcher needs to keep in mind are Confidentiality of the respondents, Safety of the research and Sensitivity of the issue.

• Confidentiality: The respondents taking part in the survey are sharing a lot of information to the researcher. They may not be comfortable in doing so for safety issues. Thus, the respondents must be completely assured that the responses of the survey will not be assessed by anybody who is not directly related to the survey.
• Safety: Care must be taken to carry out the research and careless mistakes must be avoided. The results of the research must also be stored safely.
• Sensitivity: The issue considered in this research is extremely sensitive. Thus, it has to be kept in mind that the results must be presented in such a way so that nobody ends up getting hurt personally after the research.

Conclusions

This study has been conducted based on only the Chinese population in Australia. The selected respondents were equally distributed as males and females. Most of the respondents included for the research were found to be of age less than 25 years.  Most of them reside in the neighborhood where homosexual people also reside. The respondents do not much discriminate this issue of gay marriage. No such discrepancies have been observed in terms of gender for gay marriage. The people of the age group of 18-25 years have shown a little discrepancy in the issue. Moreover, the Chinese people do not have any problem with this rising issue of gay marriage or marrying people of the same sex. Here, responses are mainly based on the teenagers or the young generation. If the older aged people were considered in the study, the result might have been somewhat different. The older people of the community might not accept the fact of same sex marriage gladly.

References

Best, J. W., & Kahn, J. V. (2016). Research in education. Pearson Education India.

Brewer, P. R. (2014). Public opinion about gay rights and gay marriage.

Foster, N. J. (2016). Legal implications of same sex marriage for Christian life and ministry.

Gerstmann, E. (2017). Same-sex Marriage and the Constitution. Cambridge University Press.

Olson, L. R., Cadge, W., & Harrison, J. T. (2016). Religion and public opinion about same?sex marriage. Social Science Quarterly, 87(2), 340-360.

Rossi, P. H., Wright, J. D., & Anderson, A. B. (Eds.). (2013). Handbook of survey research. Academic Press.