Does not compute, or am I being dim?

(You must be joking! - Ed.)

OK, what's all this about then? It seems that Australian embassies are declining to provide their citizens with certificates attesting to their 'single' status, necessary for them to marry in many other countries.

It seems the motive behind the refusal is to make it impossible for Australian citizens to contract same-sex marriages overseas, where these are permitted, as such marriages are abhorrent to the Australian authorities. Fair enough, or at least not fair enough at all(!!), but bear with me please.

It's not clear from the PlanetOut article, but this surely implies that Australian citizens have to ask their government for permission to marry by disclosing the name (and presumably gender) of the prospective spouse. Surely they can have no objection to a hot-blooded Australian man bagging some foreign 'sheila', or is this simply a blanket-ban on marriages scheduled to take place in countries which permit same-sex marriage, even if it's not a same-sex marriage that's being contemplated. The blood must be rushing to poor old John Howard's head way down-under, methinks.