The Sydney Morning Herald on Tuesday called for full marriage equality in an editorial headlined “Whatever the Gender, All Marriages Should Be Equal.”

The Australia Labor Party has called on the federal government to amend Australia’s Marriage Act to provide “equal access to marriage, regardless of gender of either party.” But Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has indicated that he not only opposes that plan but also disagrees with the Australian Capital Territory’s compromise of allowing same-sex couples to celebrate civil unions.

But according to the Morning Herald, civil unions aren’t enough: “If this legal stratagem prevails, however it will have the paradoxical effect of creating two classes of legally recognized domestic partnership, but with the M-word and its popular connotation of full union only available to one. That would be progress, no doubt, but not equality.”

Read the full editorial here.