Discussion of Gay Marriage
MY EVALUATION
Below is a round table discussion of a variety of people from boths sides of the gay debate. I note that the prohibitions on homosexuality as listed by scripture are absent, and not even referred to. The argument tend to be limited in logic. The God of scripture is ignored and self generated human rights are presented as superior to God's law. The myth of youth suicide is again pushed as a reason for gay marriage. Many believe Gay Marriage will remove discrimination against gays from society. The sin of homosexuality, God's view of it and removal of restraints against it clearly points to the fact that homosexuality will never be accepted ever....but perhaps only in the minds of those who are lost in this particular sin and darkness.
Geraldine Doogue invites six people to dinner to explore arguments for and against same sex marriage in Australia.
Last week Compass featured the stories of three same sex couples who would dearly like to get married - if only they could. This week we hear a range of different views on this issue: Anglican Bishop The Right Reverend Robert Forsyth, Baptist minister Reverend Nathan Nettleton, Catholic Jesuit priest Father Frank Brennan, Professor Dennis Altman, broadcaster Julie McCrossin and dad Geoff Thomas. In a lively and robust dinner discussion with Geraldine Doogue each makes their case, and argues the pros and cons of allowing same sex couples to marry in Australia.
Story
Geraldine Doogue
Hello there, I'm Geraldine Doogue. Welcome to a Compass dinner on a social issue that just refuses to go away, despite the best efforts of many on various sides of politics. And it's an issue on which people have very strong opinions. There are people pro it, and people against it. I'm talking of course same sex marriage. And maybe a whole host of Australians who run right down the middle, who just don't know quite what they think.
So with me tonight are people who are going to flesh out the various nuances of this debate.
Bishop Rob Forsyth, the Rev. Nathan Nettleton, Geoff Thomas, Father Frank Brennan, Julie McCrossin and Dennis Altman.
Thank you all for joining us.
And just to kick us off - I'm going to go around the table - I would like each of you to make your case about same sex marriage.
Geoff?
Geoff Thomas, Dad & gay rights advocate
Look I grew up homophobic. I come from very working class family in Richmond in Melbourne. My father hated gays. Everyone around me hated gays. About six years ago my dear wife, just before she passed away from cancer, handed me the phone one night and said your son has got something to tell you. So he told me that, he said "Dad I want to tell you that I'm gay." So I was actually taken from the sideline into the game if you like.
Geraldine Doogue - Narration
Geoff Thomas, by his own admission, grew up "blokey." The army and later a trade did nothing to challenge his self-proclaimed homophobia.
But when Geoff's 32 year old son Nathan finally found the courage to "come out", Geoff was forced to re-evaluate his attitude towards homosexuality.
His recent appearance on Q&A catapulted Geoff into the public eye when he revealed his personal experience to the nation.
Geoff Thomas
This is one other aspect about this discussion, is the ripple effect. We're not just talking about gay people, we're talking about their extended families here.
Geraldine Doogue
In essence for you it was a very personal metamorphosis, change of mind.
Geoff Thomas
Absolutely. And when you look at it in its simplest form, and I'll say this, religion doesn't own marriage in this country. Australia is a secular society. We have a situation in Australia where the only people essentially that can't get married as gays and lesbians. In Australia. It's unbelievable.
Geraldine Doogue
Frank Brennan, what's your view on it?
Fr Frank Brennan, Jesuit Priest
Well I'm a Catholic priest. I'm not married and I don't have a life partner, so that makes me an expert I suppose.
Geraldine Doogue
Certainly the Catholic Church thinks so.
Geraldine Doogue - Narration
Jesuit priest Frank Brennan is Professor of Law at the Australian Catholic University and comes from a long line of Catholic lawyers.
He shot to prominence in the late-80s, and 90s when the landmark Mabo and then Wik native title cases were before the High Court, drawing attention to Aboriginal social justice and land rights issues.
Frank Brennan has never shied away from tackling tough social issues and he's an outspoken advocate for human rights in Australia.
Frank Brennan
But I think, oh I agree with Geoff, that religion doesn't own marriage in this country, but I'd say that I'm a Catholic priest, I'm part of a worshipping community, for whom we have a sacramental notion of marriage, that it's the union of the man and the woman for life, open to the bearing and procreation and nurturing of each other's children.
Geraldine Doogue
You once said to me that the trouble with not being able to marry as a Catholic priest was that it did not allow you the intimacy that called you to account. And I've never forgotten it. I think it's a beautiful phrase. Why did you come up with that?
Frank Brennan
I came up with it because I've seen it in married couples and others who have life partners. Where there is the intimacy, the love, but where they can correct each other. And I've often thought to myself, well I go home at night after pontificating around the nation and there's just not the same thing there.
Geraldine Doogue
Nathan?
Rev. Nathan Nettleton, Baptist Minister
My own view is twofold here. And as a Baptist I have a strong commitment to the separation of Church and State, and therefore to the State not privileging any particular religious view, even mine. We actually need to look at it in terms of justice, of compassion, of equality for all people. And so I think the case would need to be made that allowing same sex marriage would actually be detrimental to the community in some way before I would argue that the State should legislate against it.
Geraldine Doogue - Narration
Reverend Nathan Nettleton firmly believes his unorthodox career pathway has been the perfect preparation for Christian ministry.
He's had a failed marriage, was kicked out of Bible college and drove a truck for a living before being ordained a Baptist minister in 1994.
Many years on he has remarried and is the pastor at the South Yarra Community Baptist Church in Melbourne.
Nathan Nettleton
For myself I actually support it and would be willing to conduct a same sex wedding were such things allowed.
Geraldine Doogue
And did you always think this?
Nathan Nettleton
Oh no. No I didn't. I began as quite homophobic and quite hostile to any form of acceptance of gay people in church.
Geraldine Doogue
Julie?
Julie McCrossin, Journalist & comedian
When I left school and went to university, it was 1972. In 1972 homosexuality, male homosexuality, was a criminal offence and it stayed that way in the State I lived in, NSW until 1984. It stayed that way in Tasmania until 1997. So when I left school, a Christian school, and went to university it was bad, it was mad, and it was also against God's will.
Geraldine Doogue - Narration
Journalist, lawyer, comedian and Christian, Julie McCrossin was advocating for marriage equality for same sex couples as far back as the late-90s - when it wasn't a headline grabbing issue.
What motivated her then, as it does now, is her experience of family: For 16 years she's been in a lesbian relationship. In that time she's helped raise her partner's two children from a former marriage.
Julie McCrossin
So I look at this discussion, about whether we have access to the institution of civil marriage, in exactly the same way as I looked at the discussion about whether it was a mental illness or whether it was a crime.
Rational, caring, nice people like Rob Forsyth or Frank Brennan...
Frank Brennan
You seem pretty normal to me.
Julie McCrossin
...two men for whom I have the highest respect. It was just those sort of people who said it needs to stay a criminal offence and it needs to stay a mental illness.
Geraldine Doogue
And you were recognising in yourself at that point. We should say that you are homosexual.
Julie McCrossin
Oh absolutely. Absolutely. And it was a terrible burden. My whole adult life we've been fighting just for equality. And fundamentally, access to civil marriage is about equality before the law.
Geraldine Doogue
What does marriage, actual marriage itself mean to you Bishop Rob Forsyth.
Rt Rev. Robert Forsyth, Anglican Bishop South Sydney
Marriage for a man and a woman is a different order of reality than a committed, sanctioned partnership of two men and two women. And to call them by the same name is confusing. And I think the fundamental difference is that the marriage as it's inherited from the past is particularly about preserving the connection between biological parents and children. Not only, but that's its main public good.
Geraldine Doogue - Narration
Robert Forsyth was raised a Methodist, but as a young man, after much soul-searching, he became an Anglican.
He studied at Moore Theological College in the early 1970's, raised a family and was appointed Anglican Bishop of South Sydney in 2000.
He is outspoken in his opposition to same sex marriage, arguing that marriage has always been and must remain exclusive to a man and a woman.
Rob Forsyth
I have certain views as a Christian minister which go beyond that, but I'm thinking as a public policy question, the State should not be interfering in these matters. And if you change it, you're going to changing in my view, the whole connection between biological parents and their children.
Geraldine Doogue
Hang on can I just let Dennis have his say.
Prof. Dennis Altman, La Trobe University
In a sense I agree with everybody, which is very odd. My position is simply that I don't think the State should define the way in which people enter into lifelong partnerships. And we make a clear distinction between what people who believe in certain religious teachings may choose to do according to the precepts of those religions, and what the State regulates.
And in response to Julie I'd say, I don't actually feel what you feel. I've had a partner for 20 years. I think our partnership is stronger, precisely because we haven't had to depend upon State and Church to legitimise it. I'm very proud of that. I don't feel the need to grovel to bishops or priests or an appallingly bogan Prime Minister to get her approval.
Geraldine Doogue - Narration
Professor Dennis Altman grew up at a time when homosexuality was illegal.
As a Fulbright scholar in the 60's, he worked with leading gay activists in the United States, and was at the forefront of the gay rights movement back in Australia.
Today's he is professor of politics at Melbourne's La Trobe University. He's spoken, written and published widely on gay liberation, but doesn't see marriage equality as central to the fight against homophobia.
Dennis Altman
The first order of business is at the moment, as we talk here tonight, there are young kids out there who are homosexual who are contemplating suicide because of the ongoing and vicious prejudice. Real ...
Geraldine Doogue
Four times more likely to attempt suicide.
Dennis Altman
Exactly. And a huge amount of bullying and a huge amount of victimisation still. And we look at what is going on in many parts, particularly of Africa, and the role the churches are playing in fostering criminal homophobia; homophobia that leads to people actually being killed, tortured, victimised. That to me is a prime issue. It is a prime issue that people who are religious need to face up to.
And this is why I think Julie and I fundamentally disagree. Not about the outcome, not about equality, but about what the really crucial issues about recognition of us as equal people are. That's what we should be talking about.
Geraldine Doogue
I do want to just quiz the men of faith here a little bit more about why it seems to matter to people of religion so much.
Rob Forsyth
In the New Testament the Lord Jesus Christ, when asked the question about marriage, goes back to the primeval text in Genesis, I think it is the second chapter.
A man shall leave his father and mother, be joined to his wife and the two become one flesh.
The word marriage is not used there. In fact, the word marriage is not used often in the bible at all. The notion of one flesh, that God made us male and female as Jesus said, personally I believe that it's God's will that men and women form a new kinship in which children are possibly to be born.
I think you will be totally pro gay but still believe that marriage is a different order from a gay relationship. In other words, inviting a gay person into a marriage changes marriage irrevocably. It's not like there's a thing which stays the same and you're being excluded from. The thing itself will be changed because it is about men and women.
Julie McCrossin
Rob can I just ask you, why can't you allow the State to change the Commonwealth Marriage Act so that people who wish to have a civil marriage, to go to a civil ceremony. Just to finish. Because there's 65% of Australians right now don't go to church, synagogue or mosque. And then you can deny a religious ceremony.
Rob Forsyth
It's not about ceremony, not for us. My own personal view, the view about marriage is for all marriages not just for Christian marriages. You are one flesh and man and woman whether you've never heard of God or you are atheists. It's not a special Christian privilege. It's that marriage is...
Geraldine Doogue
A structure of society.
Rob Forsyth
Here's a question I want to ask is, what's at stake in this debate is, what is marriage really about? What is this thing? We've inherited it, we didn't invent it. We all woke up and there it was. And what's it about? And how much do we change it before we change what it really is?
Nathan Nettleton
I think you're on very thin ground there bishop. I think you're on thin ground in arguing that there's been one concept of marriage and it's been unchanging and we've simply inherited it.
When you argue that, if we do this we will change the meaning of the word marriage. We've been changing the meaning of the word marriage progressively for generations.
Rob Forsyth
You've misheard. That's not my argument. My argument is not that. My argument is at the heart of what the word marriage points to is a deep reality to do with husband, wife and children which cannot be reproduced in a gay marriage. Not because gay people are bad, because they're not a man and a woman.
Geoff Thomas
This is a very shallow argument. We know that gay people have biological children. We know that gays and lesbians adopt children. We know that they foster children, and we know statistically that they're considered to be good parents.
Nathan Nettleton
The problem I have with the argument that the possibility of procreating is intrinsic to the definition of marriage is that if we were consistent about that we would actually outlaw marriage of post menopausal couples or infertile couples and so on. But actually the churches have never been consistent with that.
Rob Forsyth
I understand it. The argument is not literally every couple married, it's structurally, that is - until you've got some clarity on that it's not something we can just fiddle around with because the day we have a new idea. What was it really about? I think it was about guaranteeing that husbands were fathers. Biological linking.
But that I think is the key in the social function of marriage, and that is destroyed, damaged when a gay couple cannot have one of the members of that partnership a biological parent.
Frank Brennan
People often ask why religious people often get hung up about this or whatever. I think part of it is that for a lot of religious people, I think, they might say well we're happy to tolerate, we become more tolerant, we're happy to be more respectful. But here we're being expected to endorse what they view as a lifestyle or what they view as a mode of relating which they think is different from that in their own marriage relationship.
Julie McCrossin
But you see people used to sincerely believe it was a mental illness. They sincerely did it. When I was a young woman at university in the early 70s I knew men who went to Macquarie Street and medical specialists gave them electric shocks while they looked at pictures of men. Aversion therapy it was called. This was considered a professional practice. And I just don't see why this isn't just a continuation of prejudice.
Geraldine Doogue
But Julie if you look back through history as I've done for preparing for this, in all the incredible changes of form of marriage, marriage as property, marriage as dynasty etc, there's never been to the best of my knowledge man to man or woman to woman. It has always been a man and a woman. So why should that change now?
Julie McCrossin
Well Gerry why should women be allowed to have an education, why should women be allowed to use contraception, why should women be allowed to work? If we go through the history of the world, right now is a tiny fragment of human history. Gerry why should women be able to be presenters on television? When we were young...
Rob Forsyth
How is that relevant?
Julie McCrossin
Let me finish.
What I'm saying is fundamental institutions in society change progressively. That's what this is all about. This is about progressive social change. There is now an acknowledgment it is not unlawful, it is normal.
Geraldine Doogue
Dennis is itching to say something.
Dennis Altman
I'm finding this very difficult actually to say anything. Because historically I think marriage was based upon the subordination of women to men. You see I find this very strange. I'm sitting at this table, the only feminist I think?
Geraldine Doogue
No, no.
Dennis Altman
I think I am. There was a tradition among feminists of saying we want to get away from marriage because precisely of its historical origins. And I think Rob you're absolutely right. Yes it was about men knowing that they were the biological parents' of the children.
What worries me about it? Let us take the reverse of your position. As increasing numbers of kids grow up with single mothers or in mixed families, or with lesbian and gay parents, or in all sorts of changing family relationships, because the world is changing very rapidly as Julie has been pointing out, what happens to those kids with people like you constantly saying, but really the only acceptable form...
Rob Forsyth
No I'm not saying.
Dennis Altman
Well yes you are. Sorry you are trying to have it both ways and you can't have it both ways. I've actually given you a solution which is pull the church out. Which means stop lobbying the government to enforce your views. And in that sense I'm totally with Geoff. I mean this is a secular society. It is a secular country. It is becoming less and less so as we fund more and more school chaplains which I find deeply distasteful.
Rob Forsyth
I'm not trying to enforce my views.
Dennis Altman
Yes you are.
Rob Forsyth
No I'm not. I'm trying to understand the social utility. I'm not trying to give a religious argument. What is a social, what is a liberal secular society...
Dennis Altman
Your argument, in the end, falls back on a biblical interpretation of a never changing….
Rob Forsyth
No it doesn't.
Geoff Thomas
This argument is always about religion or law. It's a legal issue.
Geraldine Doogue
But you can have both. They're not mutually exclusive surely are they?
Geoff Thomas
I'd be the last person, and gay people and lesbian people are the last people to say that the Catholic Church shouldn't be able to marry people or have its own rules about marriage. But what we're talking about is a change in law in Australia that treats, at the end of the day, everybody the same.
Julie McCrossin
I just have to make this point. The institution of marriage is a flexible and muscular institution that has changed throughout history, and it can absorb this tiny proportion of the population. Gay and lesbian people…
Geraldine Doogue
But this is a big structural shift, Julie. You think it can cope with that?
Julie McCrossin
Oh, I think we really...
Geraldine Doogue
You've no doubt about it?
Julie McCrossin
I've got no doubt. We're reinforcing the core values.
Geraldine Doogue
OK, so if we are really saying who can own the debate around marriage I would ask you Dennis Altman, how much can society reinvent marriage? Because in a way that's what I'm hearing here. A confidence about reinventing this very basic institution.
Dennis Altman
Well let's take the Royal Wedding this year. The Royal Wedding this year took place between two people who were known to have had a long period of sleeping together in a family where the divorce rate was far higher than the national average. His aunt before him, Princess Margaret, was not allowed to marry a divorced man. The nature of marriage is changing radically. The nature of family structures are changing radically.
Geraldine Doogue
But on gender grounds?
Dennis Altman
Largely on gender grounds.
Geraldine Doogue
When marriage is purified you want to join in.
Dennis Altman
I don't want to join in, no.
Geraldine Doogue
Can we just go to Geoff please because Geoff...
Geoff Thomas
The benefits to gays and lesbians who get married are the same as the benefits to heterosexuals who get married.
Rob Forsyth
They can't be
Julie McCrossin
Let him finish Rob. Let him finish.
Geoff Thomas
Absolutely. And persisting with this line, the religious line, which simply, in my opinion, perpetuates the discrimination against gays and lesbians and treating them as second class citizens in this country is appalling in my opinion.
Geraldine Doogue
So you're saying then that marriage can be reinvented.
Geoff Thomas
Absolutely.
Geraldine Doogue
Sufficiently, to include everybody who seeks to get married, whoever they are.
Geoff Thomas
I'm told there are six words to be changed in the Act to treat people in this country equally.
One thing that does intrigue me here, and this is a fact, I'm sitting amongst a group of people tonight, some of whom are the very first people, apart from some politicians I met in Canberra a couple of months ago, that are actually opposed to same sex marriage.
Geraldine Doogue
Does your son wish to get married Geoff?
Geoff Thomas
My son wants the right to be able to get married.
Geraldine Doogue
Can I just come to Nathan, because as I understand your position, it wasn't until you were a divorced man in your faith, and you went as you say into the wilderness. You were forced to the outside in your faith tradition. And you began to look around for who else was on the outside and excluded. And you realised that gays were in a similar position.
Nathan Nettleton
Yes.
Geraldine Doogue
Now I just wonder how for you that leads you to believe that bringing them in can best be done by fiddling with marriage? I just would like to hear that argument.
Nathan Nettleton
Where the argument sometimes goes, and I hope I'm not misrepresenting you bishop in saying this. That there is a concept of the ideal marriage and we endorse and legislate for the ideal.
There are many people who cannot be the ideal for any number of reasons. Does it mean that all of those positions that don't conform to the ideal have no legitimacy and can be offered no affirmation at all.
It runs to the same in the question about parenting. I've never met an ideal marriage that is the absolute perfect environment for bringing up children. We bring up children in a whole range of environments that are less than perfect.
Geraldine Doogue
There is an argument that people who might want to be in a bigamist relationship or a polygamist relationship, who would say we will do a very good job for children and we love each other. Why can't the law sanction us.
Nathan Nettleton
I think that's actually a really important question. One of the interesting things that happened with the Senate debate last year was that actually the proposal didn't only remove the words "man and woman". It also removed the words "to the exclusion of all others," which was a separate issue. And then for me I was suddenly, no I don't support the removal of those words.
Why not?
Nathan Nettleton
Now Dennis would.
Dennis Altman
Well I would support removing the State.
Rob Forsyth
But why don't you support the removal of those words.
Nathan Nettleton
Because I actually think that, and this is where Dennis and I part company, I actually do think that sexual fidelity is intrinsic to the definition of marriage.
Rob Forsyth
Why? Why do you think that?
You're not going to use the words of the Lord Jesus Christ and the bible, which I'm happy to move off the table.
Nathan Nettleton
Who said I'm not? I'm a Christian minister but I'm not expecting that the State will legislate my view.
Rob Forsyth
Therefore why are you troubled with the State? Let the State remove that. Why do you want it to be exclusive?
Julie McCrossin
This is not an academic issue to me. It's a personal issue.
So at one level I believe the underpinning of marriage actually has great consistency across hundreds of years. But when you come to the legal issue, that has been modifying for hundreds of years. It's been changing. Right now most Australians don't say words about obedience and so on, they write their own vows with a civil celebrant.
The law sets down a very minimum form of words that has to be said and people are making all sorts of commitments to each other.
The great joy of the Common Law, its strength is that we change it. It used to be that Aboriginal people had no Common Law right to land. And the High Court created the right of Native Title. So we can remember when Aboriginal people had no Common Law right, and now they do.
And one day ladies and gentleman I will remember when I didn't have a Common Law right to marriage and then I will. We change the Common Law. It is not rigid.
Geraldine Doogue
Why then isn't a really aspirational civil union good enough.
Julie McCrossin
I don't think you can be a little bit equal. Like I don't think you can be a little bit pregnant if I could use that old cliché.
But can I particularly just emphasise, I'm not saying the churches shouldn't, the synagogues and the mosques shouldn't be able to do whatever they wish when it comes to the sacrament of marriage. And there will be debate and diversity. I'm saying when it comes to equality before the law, Justice Michael Kirby, former High Court Judge: Kerryn Phelps, former head of the AMA; Julie McCrossin, a lesser creature, radio presenter; we should be able to do the same as the other heterosexual people.
It's just discrimination.
Dennis Altman
Now I don't believe that because they could walk down the aisle of your church and you marry them. I know you wouldn't, but I don't believe that would fundamentally change anything.
Rob Forsyth
I agree with you entirely.
Dennis Altman
I'm with Julie and Geoff, I'm with all of you in saying, "yes there needs to be legal equality." But I think at the same time let us recognise that for homosexual people there are role models, there are successful models out there of long lasting couples. In fact that's true of the people you referred to just now Julie, of Karen of Michael. We should be proud of that.
Geraldine Doogue
What we're saying is couples matter for our definition of marriage. Are we right in saying couples?
Rob Forsyth
No.
Geraldine Doogue
Well couples. But then you get into the question of whether you can have same sex or otherwise.
Rob Forsyth
No far from it. Couples because a man and a woman make a child.
Geraldine Doogue
Frank?
Frank Brennan
I'd like to ruin the argument with a couple of statistics. It's almost half the number of people in Australia marry today as used marry back in the 1970s.
Another observation is that back in the 1970s, the percentage of people who cohabited before marriage I think was much less than 20%. Now it's 78%. But I think for a lot of people marriage, even civil marriage, has become an institution where it's quite optional. And what is the fundamental thing in moving from cohabitation to getting married? With most of them, I think it's about the decision to have kids.
Geraldine Doogue
Isn't there a strong argument that marriage actually furthers the notion of fidelity and stability in relationships. Why wouldn't you use that for it, Frank Brennan?
Frank Brennan
Look for me there are still two issues which stand out in contra distinction. One is to do with complementarity.
Geraldine Doogue
What do you mean?
Frank Brennan
The social institution of marriage which brings together men and women, those of opposite gender, who often have quite different and complementary aspects to each other. And the second is in relation to there being open to the bearing and nurturing of each other's children.
Now I say to Julie and Melissa, look I espouse your relationship. I not only tolerate it, I endorse it. I admit not every church person would endorse it. But I do endorse it.
Julie McCrossin
And can I say just one quick thing Gerry, if I may. And I understand of course there is diversity within the Catholic Church on this. I think the current Pope...
All
No!
Julie McCrossin
The current Pope described homosexuality I think - if I could just make this point - that the current Pope did describe homosexuality as intrinsically disordered. So there's clearly a different view. But the main point I want to...
Frank Brennan
His language is not helpful.
Julie McCrossin
Could I just say this, that I can remember it's not that long ago where a priest in the Catholic Church would not have said I endorse your relationship.
Geraldine Doogue
Would you like a church wedding Julie?
Julie McCrossin
Oh definitely. But there are clearly religious people right now who would happily marry myself and Melissa.
Look I think if the civil law change comes, I think that it would not be long before it would be possible to have a church wedding. Can I also say some synagogues are already offering weddings.
And I won't speak obviously for Muslims which I imagine would be a more difficult journey. But I go to a Uniting Church, same sex couples and gay and lesbian people are welcome. Not only that you can be ordained a minister.
Dennis Altman
Well I would go back to something I said early on. I am enormously proud of the fact that I am in a relationship that has been all the things you all want from relationships, with the exception of sexual fidelity which I think is crap for most people and doesn't exist by and large. I've been in a relationship for 20 years without depending upon these external legitimations.
Frank Brennan
Dennis could I ask do you have children?
Dennis Altman
No.
Frank Brennan
Would your view on the need for fidelity perhaps be different if children were central to the relationship?
Dennis Altman
No I don't think it would. And the interesting thing about fidelity is that it seems to me it makes sex far more important than it actually is. The thing that maintains a loving long-term commitment to someone as the primary person in your life is not whether you occasionally have sex with somebody else.
Geraldine Doogue
Spoken like a real man of the 60s and 70s.
Dennis Altman
I'm sorry, my age is showing. Somebody has to be able to say this on Compass Geraldine.
Nathan Nettleton
Actually heterosexual marriage is under threat in a number of ways. Just statistically it's falling apart at a rate that has never fallen apart before and so on. But I think that it's actually under threat from within. It's under threat from the commodification of sex and from the treatment of all things as ephemeral to be replaced as soon as a newer model becomes available. And so we start treating marriage and relationships in that same way.
But I think within the churches, there's often this fear that we don't know how to cope with that. And so one of the typically human ways of dealing with that level of fear is to find a group to blame. And that some group is undermining heterosexual marriage. It must be the gays.
Rob Forsyth
Can I just say, I find this ad hominem argument distasteful to me personally. There may be people like that but that's not the serious case, people like myself...
Nathan Nettleton
I agree, I separated you from it.
Rob Forsyth
So why are you raising it? Because there are some real issues, serious issues. I'll give you one. I don't believe that it's discriminatory at all to say, there's no law preventing you getting married as long as you'll fulfil the conditions.
There's no law stopping me being the captain of the Australian Cricket team if I have the relative qualities. I don't.
It's not like an arbitrary law that says gay people can't get married. There's no law. It says marriage is man and woman. Now if you can't fulfil that it's why short people can't play basketball. It's not an arbitrary restriction.
Geraldine Doogue
It's part of a natural law for you.
Rob Forsyth
Exactly. It's part of the way it is, and that's why the notion I'm somehow self-righteously stopping people...
Geraldine Doogue
Slavery was once too, wasn't it.
Nathan Nettleton
And we've changed on a number of things. I was the first divorcee to be ordained by the Baptist Union of Victoria and I'm not an old man. So it's not that long ago that the churches…
Rob Forsyth
Well whether that's a good move or not we don't know.
Nathan Nettleton
I may not be the pinup boy for it.
Rob Forsyth
I don't mean you personally. It would be very interesting if we do get opening marriage for gay people. How does it look in 100 years time, when children's parents are not automatically the partners of their mother or father.
Geraldine Doogue
But science already does that. That's already the case...
Rob Forsyth
No it's not.
Nathan Nettleton
And adultery does exist Rob. There are children born within marriages that are not...
Rob Forsyth
Don't patronise me. Of course I know that. It's called adultery. No no you misunderstand my argument.
My argument is biological parents have a right to care for their children. That's a basic human right that every society recognises. Marriage nurtures and supports that right. Not perfectly. I agree entirely there's adultery, there's break up. But if you want to say "throw that away," you're actually accelerating what could turn out to be a disastrous outcome. Because when you separate biological children from parents, when you have two parents, why not three parents? Parent one, parent two, parent three. Once you break with man-woman why have only two?
God did it if you like, don't blame me, blame God, he made us male and female.
Geraldine Doogue
Frank Brennan, what's your view on it?
Frank Brennan
My own view is that if we move straight to same sex marriage that basically all of the complex questions about children in the future get subsumed simply under the issue of non discrimination.
Geraldine Doogue
What do you mean complex questions about children?
Frank Brennan
Well, for example, we know that the breakthroughs that's going on at the moment.
Geraldine Doogue
With science you mean?
Frank Brennan
We're within cooey that we will be able to produce children from just two ova or two sperm. And I don't think it is discriminatory to say the State has an interest in ensuring when children are created in future that as far as possible we maintain that ideal that a child would have a known biological mother and a known biological father.
Rob Forsyth
There are two view of marriage at the table and I'll put them out. One is that marriage is fundamentally about relationship between the partners.
Geraldine Doogue
Adults?
Rob Forsyth
Adults, yes. I've heard that eloquently put by Julie and I respect that. Another is marriage is that plus, the structure of childbearing whether in fact it happens or not. That's what Frank and I are saying. Frankly those two structures lead to different answers.
Frank Brennan
May I respectfully ask Julie, if you and Melissa were married tomorrow do you think there would be any entitlement by the State or interfering do-gooders or whatever, to say to you and Melissa, no whatever the developments in technology you cannot create your own child just by using material from the ova of each of you.
Julie McCrossin
Look can I just talk about my actual life not a fantasy life.
Geraldine Doogue
But he has posed you a question. I think that's important Julie.
Julie McCrossin
Well why I'm wary of it Gerry is that, with due respect to Frank, he's representing the Catholic Church, and the current Catholic Church has very passionate views about interference with the creation of children. To the extent that you still don't support contraception. So I don't want to be drawn into an arcane argument about whether two ova...
Rob Forsyth
I believe in contraception.
Julie McCrossin
Please let me finish. When I met Melissa, just nearly 16 years ago, the children were three and six.
It is absolutely clear from research, as well as my own direct observation, that stability and consistency and repetition is good for children. And that the loving partnership between Melissa and myself and their father Michael. We have worked together as a team mutually respectful, with the best interests of the children at heart, and there is no question in my mind that fidelity is a positive good for children. It really is. And I do think my views have been influenced by the experience of child rearing.
Geraldine Doogue
So since we are talking about children, last week on Compass we interviewed three groups of gay couples who all wanted to get married. And one of them said that her child turned to her and said why can't you get married? Now I just wonder Rob Forsyth how would you answer that child?
Rob Forsyth
Because I'm not in love with a man. If it was a woman.
Geraldine Doogue
That's what you would say to a child who's being raised, if you think about it...
Rob Forsyth
What with two mothers?
Geraldine Doogue
Yeah. If a child came to you and said I've got two mothers, why can't they get married Bishop Forsyth?
Rob Forsyth
I'd say because marriage is for a man and woman. It's as simple and difficult as that.
Geraldine Doogue
But a bright child would say "But here I am Bishop Forsyth. I'm here, I've been born."
Rob Forsyth
And I would say "who is your biological father?"
Geraldine Doogue
You would not say that to a child. Don't tell me you'd say that to a child?
Rob Forsyth
No, but the question is, that biological father has a stake in that child. He has a right over that child, a care, a responsibility to that child. We recognise that immediately. You can't, it's the one right that the State cannot interfere with. They cannot take children away, except in extreme cases.
I'm a conservative I'll admit that. I wouldn't even mind if there was something called gay marriage. Just one thing. One word, a new institution that mimicked marriage and everything else except it wasn't called marriage.
Julie McCrossin
But Rob it's happening.
Rob Forsyth
And Julie I think that if the law was to change so it was still called marriage, the distinction that exists today would still exist in people's minds. That is marriage would just become wider to include two kinds of marriage.
Nathan Nettleton
And that's okay.
Rob Forsyth
No it's not okay. You'll never get the situation that you long for, that a gay relationship, not full acceptance, is regarded as the same as. But my feeling is they will still say that's marriage and that's a different kind of marriage.
Geraldine Doogue
What do you think will happen if it does occur. What will change or not. Dennis?
Dennis Altman
Look I have no doubt that same sex marriage is going to happen. In a sense, it seems, this entire conversation will be looked back as a strange piece of early 21st century nostalgia.
There's a study that's been done in the Netherlands which has had same sex marriages for a while. One could say not long enough for us to be sure. But I think the reality is not very much changes. The evidence suggests that there's virtually no impact on the larger society.
Geraldine Doogue
Rob?
Rob Forsyth
I don't know the future. It may be that in 100 years time we look back with horror, I don't know.
A friend of mine, I mentioned I was coming to this and he is a very liberal progressive kind of Christian guy. But he said, if this is changee I'll feel my relationship with my wife has been changed by the law. He felt somehow, although happily married, that somehow the change would change and although those who have feel a grief if this happens. Now I hope that you are all right. I hope that happens and is all for the best. But I must say I'm not optimistic.
Geraldine Doogue
Julie?
Julie McCrossin
For people of my generation it would matter deeply to me. I would feel like some form of internal furniture would finally lock in an Ikea sort of a way into place. And I feel deeply about this Geraldine and I assume it's because I was traumatised.
I believe change will happen and I think it is going to happen reasonably quickly now. And for two fundamental reasons. One is because something in the order of 10 to 14 comparable countries have already done it: Spain, Portugal and so on. They have actual marriage not civil union.
But fundamentally the reason I think it will happen is because of Geoff's story. Homosexuality is a bipartisan issue. It turns up in all sorts of families. And often people don't change their views until they know someone they love within their family, and suddenly it's not an issue. It's about Jim or Susan, and that's what shifts people.
Geraldine Doogue
Frank?
Frank Brennan
I remain of the view that the Blair government got it right in the United Kingdom six years ago with civil unions. I mean if it comes to pass, yes. I mean people like Julie and Melissa will feel that this is a better country to live in, and Geoff will be happy for his son.
And I for one will say well that's a good thing. But I think there will be ongoing issues for us as a society, particularly in terms of the place of religious communities.
Geraldine Doogue
Nathan?
Nathan Nettleton
If we've got people knocking on the door saying we've been excluded from this institution that values fidelity and we want in. Anything that we do that actually says yes to the valuing and endorsing of fidelity has to be something that strengthens fidelity.
Geraldine Doogue
Geoff?
Geoff Thomas
Well for me, I think the sensibilities of some religious people will be offended. And I don't think it will impact on their lives essentially one bit. I think a lot of gay couples will finally realise that they're treated the same as everybody else in this society. I think their children will gain the respect that they currently lack.
Geraldine Doogue
Alright. We could go on and on and on but it's just been a fabulous discussion and I know that some of you have really laid yourself out and I respect that, so thank you all.
Dennis Altman thank you to you; Julie McCrossin, Father Frank Brennan, Geoff Thomas, Rev Nathan Nettleton and Bishop Rob Forsyth. Thank you very much indeed for joining us for Compass for dinner tonight.
Hello there, I'm Geraldine Doogue. Welcome to a Compass dinner on a social issue that just refuses to go away, despite the best efforts of many on various sides of politics. And it's an issue on which people have very strong opinions. There are people pro it, and people against it. I'm talking of course same sex marriage. And maybe a whole host of Australians who run right down the middle, who just don't know quite what they think.
So with me tonight are people who are going to flesh out the various nuances of this debate.
Bishop Rob Forsyth, the Rev. Nathan Nettleton, Geoff Thomas, Father Frank Brennan, Julie McCrossin and Dennis Altman.
Thank you all for joining us.
And just to kick us off - I'm going to go around the table - I would like each of you to make your case about same sex marriage.
Geoff?
Geoff Thomas, Dad & gay rights advocate
Look I grew up homophobic. I come from very working class family in Richmond in Melbourne. My father hated gays. Everyone around me hated gays. About six years ago my dear wife, just before she passed away from cancer, handed me the phone one night and said your son has got something to tell you. So he told me that, he said "Dad I want to tell you that I'm gay." So I was actually taken from the sideline into the game if you like.
Geraldine Doogue - Narration
Geoff Thomas, by his own admission, grew up "blokey." The army and later a trade did nothing to challenge his self-proclaimed homophobia.
But when Geoff's 32 year old son Nathan finally found the courage to "come out", Geoff was forced to re-evaluate his attitude towards homosexuality.
His recent appearance on Q&A catapulted Geoff into the public eye when he revealed his personal experience to the nation.
Geoff Thomas
This is one other aspect about this discussion, is the ripple effect. We're not just talking about gay people, we're talking about their extended families here.
Geraldine Doogue
In essence for you it was a very personal metamorphosis, change of mind.
Geoff Thomas
Absolutely. And when you look at it in its simplest form, and I'll say this, religion doesn't own marriage in this country. Australia is a secular society. We have a situation in Australia where the only people essentially that can't get married as gays and lesbians. In Australia. It's unbelievable.
Geraldine Doogue
Frank Brennan, what's your view on it?
Fr Frank Brennan, Jesuit Priest
Well I'm a Catholic priest. I'm not married and I don't have a life partner, so that makes me an expert I suppose.
Geraldine Doogue
Certainly the Catholic Church thinks so.
Geraldine Doogue - Narration
Jesuit priest Frank Brennan is Professor of Law at the Australian Catholic University and comes from a long line of Catholic lawyers.
He shot to prominence in the late-80s, and 90s when the landmark Mabo and then Wik native title cases were before the High Court, drawing attention to Aboriginal social justice and land rights issues.
Frank Brennan has never shied away from tackling tough social issues and he's an outspoken advocate for human rights in Australia.
Frank Brennan
But I think, oh I agree with Geoff, that religion doesn't own marriage in this country, but I'd say that I'm a Catholic priest, I'm part of a worshipping community, for whom we have a sacramental notion of marriage, that it's the union of the man and the woman for life, open to the bearing and procreation and nurturing of each other's children.
Geraldine Doogue
You once said to me that the trouble with not being able to marry as a Catholic priest was that it did not allow you the intimacy that called you to account. And I've never forgotten it. I think it's a beautiful phrase. Why did you come up with that?
Frank Brennan
I came up with it because I've seen it in married couples and others who have life partners. Where there is the intimacy, the love, but where they can correct each other. And I've often thought to myself, well I go home at night after pontificating around the nation and there's just not the same thing there.
Geraldine Doogue
Nathan?
Rev. Nathan Nettleton, Baptist Minister
My own view is twofold here. And as a Baptist I have a strong commitment to the separation of Church and State, and therefore to the State not privileging any particular religious view, even mine. We actually need to look at it in terms of justice, of compassion, of equality for all people. And so I think the case would need to be made that allowing same sex marriage would actually be detrimental to the community in some way before I would argue that the State should legislate against it.
Geraldine Doogue - Narration
Reverend Nathan Nettleton firmly believes his unorthodox career pathway has been the perfect preparation for Christian ministry.
He's had a failed marriage, was kicked out of Bible college and drove a truck for a living before being ordained a Baptist minister in 1994.
Many years on he has remarried and is the pastor at the South Yarra Community Baptist Church in Melbourne.
Nathan Nettleton
For myself I actually support it and would be willing to conduct a same sex wedding were such things allowed.
Geraldine Doogue
And did you always think this?
Nathan Nettleton
Oh no. No I didn't. I began as quite homophobic and quite hostile to any form of acceptance of gay people in church.
Geraldine Doogue
Julie?
Julie McCrossin, Journalist & comedian
When I left school and went to university, it was 1972. In 1972 homosexuality, male homosexuality, was a criminal offence and it stayed that way in the State I lived in, NSW until 1984. It stayed that way in Tasmania until 1997. So when I left school, a Christian school, and went to university it was bad, it was mad, and it was also against God's will.
Geraldine Doogue - Narration
Journalist, lawyer, comedian and Christian, Julie McCrossin was advocating for marriage equality for same sex couples as far back as the late-90s - when it wasn't a headline grabbing issue.
What motivated her then, as it does now, is her experience of family: For 16 years she's been in a lesbian relationship. In that time she's helped raise her partner's two children from a former marriage.
Julie McCrossin
So I look at this discussion, about whether we have access to the institution of civil marriage, in exactly the same way as I looked at the discussion about whether it was a mental illness or whether it was a crime.
Rational, caring, nice people like Rob Forsyth or Frank Brennan...
Frank Brennan
You seem pretty normal to me.
Julie McCrossin
...two men for whom I have the highest respect. It was just those sort of people who said it needs to stay a criminal offence and it needs to stay a mental illness.
Geraldine Doogue
And you were recognising in yourself at that point. We should say that you are homosexual.
Julie McCrossin
Oh absolutely. Absolutely. And it was a terrible burden. My whole adult life we've been fighting just for equality. And fundamentally, access to civil marriage is about equality before the law.
Geraldine Doogue
What does marriage, actual marriage itself mean to you Bishop Rob Forsyth.
Rt Rev. Robert Forsyth, Anglican Bishop South Sydney
Marriage for a man and a woman is a different order of reality than a committed, sanctioned partnership of two men and two women. And to call them by the same name is confusing. And I think the fundamental difference is that the marriage as it's inherited from the past is particularly about preserving the connection between biological parents and children. Not only, but that's its main public good.
Geraldine Doogue - Narration
Robert Forsyth was raised a Methodist, but as a young man, after much soul-searching, he became an Anglican.
He studied at Moore Theological College in the early 1970's, raised a family and was appointed Anglican Bishop of South Sydney in 2000.
He is outspoken in his opposition to same sex marriage, arguing that marriage has always been and must remain exclusive to a man and a woman.
Rob Forsyth
I have certain views as a Christian minister which go beyond that, but I'm thinking as a public policy question, the State should not be interfering in these matters. And if you change it, you're going to changing in my view, the whole connection between biological parents and their children.
Geraldine Doogue
Hang on can I just let Dennis have his say.
Prof. Dennis Altman, La Trobe University
In a sense I agree with everybody, which is very odd. My position is simply that I don't think the State should define the way in which people enter into lifelong partnerships. And we make a clear distinction between what people who believe in certain religious teachings may choose to do according to the precepts of those religions, and what the State regulates.
And in response to Julie I'd say, I don't actually feel what you feel. I've had a partner for 20 years. I think our partnership is stronger, precisely because we haven't had to depend upon State and Church to legitimise it. I'm very proud of that. I don't feel the need to grovel to bishops or priests or an appallingly bogan Prime Minister to get her approval.
Geraldine Doogue - Narration
Professor Dennis Altman grew up at a time when homosexuality was illegal.
As a Fulbright scholar in the 60's, he worked with leading gay activists in the United States, and was at the forefront of the gay rights movement back in Australia.
Today's he is professor of politics at Melbourne's La Trobe University. He's spoken, written and published widely on gay liberation, but doesn't see marriage equality as central to the fight against homophobia.
Dennis Altman
The first order of business is at the moment, as we talk here tonight, there are young kids out there who are homosexual who are contemplating suicide because of the ongoing and vicious prejudice. Real ...
Geraldine Doogue
Four times more likely to attempt suicide.
Dennis Altman
Exactly. And a huge amount of bullying and a huge amount of victimisation still. And we look at what is going on in many parts, particularly of Africa, and the role the churches are playing in fostering criminal homophobia; homophobia that leads to people actually being killed, tortured, victimised. That to me is a prime issue. It is a prime issue that people who are religious need to face up to.
And this is why I think Julie and I fundamentally disagree. Not about the outcome, not about equality, but about what the really crucial issues about recognition of us as equal people are. That's what we should be talking about.
Geraldine Doogue
I do want to just quiz the men of faith here a little bit more about why it seems to matter to people of religion so much.
Rob Forsyth
In the New Testament the Lord Jesus Christ, when asked the question about marriage, goes back to the primeval text in Genesis, I think it is the second chapter.
A man shall leave his father and mother, be joined to his wife and the two become one flesh.
The word marriage is not used there. In fact, the word marriage is not used often in the bible at all. The notion of one flesh, that God made us male and female as Jesus said, personally I believe that it's God's will that men and women form a new kinship in which children are possibly to be born.
I think you will be totally pro gay but still believe that marriage is a different order from a gay relationship. In other words, inviting a gay person into a marriage changes marriage irrevocably. It's not like there's a thing which stays the same and you're being excluded from. The thing itself will be changed because it is about men and women.
Julie McCrossin
Rob can I just ask you, why can't you allow the State to change the Commonwealth Marriage Act so that people who wish to have a civil marriage, to go to a civil ceremony. Just to finish. Because there's 65% of Australians right now don't go to church, synagogue or mosque. And then you can deny a religious ceremony.
Rob Forsyth
It's not about ceremony, not for us. My own personal view, the view about marriage is for all marriages not just for Christian marriages. You are one flesh and man and woman whether you've never heard of God or you are atheists. It's not a special Christian privilege. It's that marriage is...
Geraldine Doogue
A structure of society.
Rob Forsyth
Here's a question I want to ask is, what's at stake in this debate is, what is marriage really about? What is this thing? We've inherited it, we didn't invent it. We all woke up and there it was. And what's it about? And how much do we change it before we change what it really is?
Nathan Nettleton
I think you're on very thin ground there bishop. I think you're on thin ground in arguing that there's been one concept of marriage and it's been unchanging and we've simply inherited it.
When you argue that, if we do this we will change the meaning of the word marriage. We've been changing the meaning of the word marriage progressively for generations.
Rob Forsyth
You've misheard. That's not my argument. My argument is not that. My argument is at the heart of what the word marriage points to is a deep reality to do with husband, wife and children which cannot be reproduced in a gay marriage. Not because gay people are bad, because they're not a man and a woman.
Geoff Thomas
This is a very shallow argument. We know that gay people have biological children. We know that gays and lesbians adopt children. We know that they foster children, and we know statistically that they're considered to be good parents.
Nathan Nettleton
The problem I have with the argument that the possibility of procreating is intrinsic to the definition of marriage is that if we were consistent about that we would actually outlaw marriage of post menopausal couples or infertile couples and so on. But actually the churches have never been consistent with that.
Rob Forsyth
I understand it. The argument is not literally every couple married, it's structurally, that is - until you've got some clarity on that it's not something we can just fiddle around with because the day we have a new idea. What was it really about? I think it was about guaranteeing that husbands were fathers. Biological linking.
But that I think is the key in the social function of marriage, and that is destroyed, damaged when a gay couple cannot have one of the members of that partnership a biological parent.
Frank Brennan
People often ask why religious people often get hung up about this or whatever. I think part of it is that for a lot of religious people, I think, they might say well we're happy to tolerate, we become more tolerant, we're happy to be more respectful. But here we're being expected to endorse what they view as a lifestyle or what they view as a mode of relating which they think is different from that in their own marriage relationship.
Julie McCrossin
But you see people used to sincerely believe it was a mental illness. They sincerely did it. When I was a young woman at university in the early 70s I knew men who went to Macquarie Street and medical specialists gave them electric shocks while they looked at pictures of men. Aversion therapy it was called. This was considered a professional practice. And I just don't see why this isn't just a continuation of prejudice.
Geraldine Doogue
But Julie if you look back through history as I've done for preparing for this, in all the incredible changes of form of marriage, marriage as property, marriage as dynasty etc, there's never been to the best of my knowledge man to man or woman to woman. It has always been a man and a woman. So why should that change now?
Julie McCrossin
Well Gerry why should women be allowed to have an education, why should women be allowed to use contraception, why should women be allowed to work? If we go through the history of the world, right now is a tiny fragment of human history. Gerry why should women be able to be presenters on television? When we were young...
Rob Forsyth
How is that relevant?
Julie McCrossin
Let me finish.
What I'm saying is fundamental institutions in society change progressively. That's what this is all about. This is about progressive social change. There is now an acknowledgment it is not unlawful, it is normal.
Geraldine Doogue
Dennis is itching to say something.
Dennis Altman
I'm finding this very difficult actually to say anything. Because historically I think marriage was based upon the subordination of women to men. You see I find this very strange. I'm sitting at this table, the only feminist I think?
Geraldine Doogue
No, no.
Dennis Altman
I think I am. There was a tradition among feminists of saying we want to get away from marriage because precisely of its historical origins. And I think Rob you're absolutely right. Yes it was about men knowing that they were the biological parents' of the children.
What worries me about it? Let us take the reverse of your position. As increasing numbers of kids grow up with single mothers or in mixed families, or with lesbian and gay parents, or in all sorts of changing family relationships, because the world is changing very rapidly as Julie has been pointing out, what happens to those kids with people like you constantly saying, but really the only acceptable form...
Rob Forsyth
No I'm not saying.
Dennis Altman
Well yes you are. Sorry you are trying to have it both ways and you can't have it both ways. I've actually given you a solution which is pull the church out. Which means stop lobbying the government to enforce your views. And in that sense I'm totally with Geoff. I mean this is a secular society. It is a secular country. It is becoming less and less so as we fund more and more school chaplains which I find deeply distasteful.
Rob Forsyth
I'm not trying to enforce my views.
Dennis Altman
Yes you are.
Rob Forsyth
No I'm not. I'm trying to understand the social utility. I'm not trying to give a religious argument. What is a social, what is a liberal secular society...
Dennis Altman
Your argument, in the end, falls back on a biblical interpretation of a never changing….
Rob Forsyth
No it doesn't.
Geoff Thomas
This argument is always about religion or law. It's a legal issue.
Geraldine Doogue
But you can have both. They're not mutually exclusive surely are they?
Geoff Thomas
I'd be the last person, and gay people and lesbian people are the last people to say that the Catholic Church shouldn't be able to marry people or have its own rules about marriage. But what we're talking about is a change in law in Australia that treats, at the end of the day, everybody the same.
Julie McCrossin
I just have to make this point. The institution of marriage is a flexible and muscular institution that has changed throughout history, and it can absorb this tiny proportion of the population. Gay and lesbian people…
Geraldine Doogue
But this is a big structural shift, Julie. You think it can cope with that?
Julie McCrossin
Oh, I think we really...
Geraldine Doogue
You've no doubt about it?
Julie McCrossin
I've got no doubt. We're reinforcing the core values.
Geraldine Doogue
OK, so if we are really saying who can own the debate around marriage I would ask you Dennis Altman, how much can society reinvent marriage? Because in a way that's what I'm hearing here. A confidence about reinventing this very basic institution.
Dennis Altman
Well let's take the Royal Wedding this year. The Royal Wedding this year took place between two people who were known to have had a long period of sleeping together in a family where the divorce rate was far higher than the national average. His aunt before him, Princess Margaret, was not allowed to marry a divorced man. The nature of marriage is changing radically. The nature of family structures are changing radically.
Geraldine Doogue
But on gender grounds?
Dennis Altman
Largely on gender grounds.
Geraldine Doogue
When marriage is purified you want to join in.
Dennis Altman
I don't want to join in, no.
Geraldine Doogue
Can we just go to Geoff please because Geoff...
Geoff Thomas
The benefits to gays and lesbians who get married are the same as the benefits to heterosexuals who get married.
Rob Forsyth
They can't be
Julie McCrossin
Let him finish Rob. Let him finish.
Geoff Thomas
Absolutely. And persisting with this line, the religious line, which simply, in my opinion, perpetuates the discrimination against gays and lesbians and treating them as second class citizens in this country is appalling in my opinion.
Geraldine Doogue
So you're saying then that marriage can be reinvented.
Geoff Thomas
Absolutely.
Geraldine Doogue
Sufficiently, to include everybody who seeks to get married, whoever they are.
Geoff Thomas
I'm told there are six words to be changed in the Act to treat people in this country equally.
One thing that does intrigue me here, and this is a fact, I'm sitting amongst a group of people tonight, some of whom are the very first people, apart from some politicians I met in Canberra a couple of months ago, that are actually opposed to same sex marriage.
Geraldine Doogue
Does your son wish to get married Geoff?
Geoff Thomas
My son wants the right to be able to get married.
Geraldine Doogue
Can I just come to Nathan, because as I understand your position, it wasn't until you were a divorced man in your faith, and you went as you say into the wilderness. You were forced to the outside in your faith tradition. And you began to look around for who else was on the outside and excluded. And you realised that gays were in a similar position.
Nathan Nettleton
Yes.
Geraldine Doogue
Now I just wonder how for you that leads you to believe that bringing them in can best be done by fiddling with marriage? I just would like to hear that argument.
Nathan Nettleton
Where the argument sometimes goes, and I hope I'm not misrepresenting you bishop in saying this. That there is a concept of the ideal marriage and we endorse and legislate for the ideal.
There are many people who cannot be the ideal for any number of reasons. Does it mean that all of those positions that don't conform to the ideal have no legitimacy and can be offered no affirmation at all.
It runs to the same in the question about parenting. I've never met an ideal marriage that is the absolute perfect environment for bringing up children. We bring up children in a whole range of environments that are less than perfect.
Geraldine Doogue
There is an argument that people who might want to be in a bigamist relationship or a polygamist relationship, who would say we will do a very good job for children and we love each other. Why can't the law sanction us.
Nathan Nettleton
I think that's actually a really important question. One of the interesting things that happened with the Senate debate last year was that actually the proposal didn't only remove the words "man and woman". It also removed the words "to the exclusion of all others," which was a separate issue. And then for me I was suddenly, no I don't support the removal of those words.
Why not?
Nathan Nettleton
Now Dennis would.
Dennis Altman
Well I would support removing the State.
Rob Forsyth
But why don't you support the removal of those words.
Nathan Nettleton
Because I actually think that, and this is where Dennis and I part company, I actually do think that sexual fidelity is intrinsic to the definition of marriage.
Rob Forsyth
Why? Why do you think that?
You're not going to use the words of the Lord Jesus Christ and the bible, which I'm happy to move off the table.
Nathan Nettleton
Who said I'm not? I'm a Christian minister but I'm not expecting that the State will legislate my view.
Rob Forsyth
Therefore why are you troubled with the State? Let the State remove that. Why do you want it to be exclusive?
Julie McCrossin
This is not an academic issue to me. It's a personal issue.
So at one level I believe the underpinning of marriage actually has great consistency across hundreds of years. But when you come to the legal issue, that has been modifying for hundreds of years. It's been changing. Right now most Australians don't say words about obedience and so on, they write their own vows with a civil celebrant.
The law sets down a very minimum form of words that has to be said and people are making all sorts of commitments to each other.
The great joy of the Common Law, its strength is that we change it. It used to be that Aboriginal people had no Common Law right to land. And the High Court created the right of Native Title. So we can remember when Aboriginal people had no Common Law right, and now they do.
And one day ladies and gentleman I will remember when I didn't have a Common Law right to marriage and then I will. We change the Common Law. It is not rigid.
Geraldine Doogue
Why then isn't a really aspirational civil union good enough.
Julie McCrossin
I don't think you can be a little bit equal. Like I don't think you can be a little bit pregnant if I could use that old cliché.
But can I particularly just emphasise, I'm not saying the churches shouldn't, the synagogues and the mosques shouldn't be able to do whatever they wish when it comes to the sacrament of marriage. And there will be debate and diversity. I'm saying when it comes to equality before the law, Justice Michael Kirby, former High Court Judge: Kerryn Phelps, former head of the AMA; Julie McCrossin, a lesser creature, radio presenter; we should be able to do the same as the other heterosexual people.
It's just discrimination.
Dennis Altman
Now I don't believe that because they could walk down the aisle of your church and you marry them. I know you wouldn't, but I don't believe that would fundamentally change anything.
Rob Forsyth
I agree with you entirely.
Dennis Altman
I'm with Julie and Geoff, I'm with all of you in saying, "yes there needs to be legal equality." But I think at the same time let us recognise that for homosexual people there are role models, there are successful models out there of long lasting couples. In fact that's true of the people you referred to just now Julie, of Karen of Michael. We should be proud of that.
Geraldine Doogue
What we're saying is couples matter for our definition of marriage. Are we right in saying couples?
Rob Forsyth
No.
Geraldine Doogue
Well couples. But then you get into the question of whether you can have same sex or otherwise.
Rob Forsyth
No far from it. Couples because a man and a woman make a child.
Geraldine Doogue
Frank?
Frank Brennan
I'd like to ruin the argument with a couple of statistics. It's almost half the number of people in Australia marry today as used marry back in the 1970s.
Another observation is that back in the 1970s, the percentage of people who cohabited before marriage I think was much less than 20%. Now it's 78%. But I think for a lot of people marriage, even civil marriage, has become an institution where it's quite optional. And what is the fundamental thing in moving from cohabitation to getting married? With most of them, I think it's about the decision to have kids.
Geraldine Doogue
Isn't there a strong argument that marriage actually furthers the notion of fidelity and stability in relationships. Why wouldn't you use that for it, Frank Brennan?
Frank Brennan
Look for me there are still two issues which stand out in contra distinction. One is to do with complementarity.
Geraldine Doogue
What do you mean?
Frank Brennan
The social institution of marriage which brings together men and women, those of opposite gender, who often have quite different and complementary aspects to each other. And the second is in relation to there being open to the bearing and nurturing of each other's children.
Now I say to Julie and Melissa, look I espouse your relationship. I not only tolerate it, I endorse it. I admit not every church person would endorse it. But I do endorse it.
Julie McCrossin
And can I say just one quick thing Gerry, if I may. And I understand of course there is diversity within the Catholic Church on this. I think the current Pope...
All
No!
Julie McCrossin
The current Pope described homosexuality I think - if I could just make this point - that the current Pope did describe homosexuality as intrinsically disordered. So there's clearly a different view. But the main point I want to...
Frank Brennan
His language is not helpful.
Julie McCrossin
Could I just say this, that I can remember it's not that long ago where a priest in the Catholic Church would not have said I endorse your relationship.
Geraldine Doogue
Would you like a church wedding Julie?
Julie McCrossin
Oh definitely. But there are clearly religious people right now who would happily marry myself and Melissa.
Look I think if the civil law change comes, I think that it would not be long before it would be possible to have a church wedding. Can I also say some synagogues are already offering weddings.
And I won't speak obviously for Muslims which I imagine would be a more difficult journey. But I go to a Uniting Church, same sex couples and gay and lesbian people are welcome. Not only that you can be ordained a minister.
Dennis Altman
Well I would go back to something I said early on. I am enormously proud of the fact that I am in a relationship that has been all the things you all want from relationships, with the exception of sexual fidelity which I think is crap for most people and doesn't exist by and large. I've been in a relationship for 20 years without depending upon these external legitimations.
Frank Brennan
Dennis could I ask do you have children?
Dennis Altman
No.
Frank Brennan
Would your view on the need for fidelity perhaps be different if children were central to the relationship?
Dennis Altman
No I don't think it would. And the interesting thing about fidelity is that it seems to me it makes sex far more important than it actually is. The thing that maintains a loving long-term commitment to someone as the primary person in your life is not whether you occasionally have sex with somebody else.
Geraldine Doogue
Spoken like a real man of the 60s and 70s.
Dennis Altman
I'm sorry, my age is showing. Somebody has to be able to say this on Compass Geraldine.
Nathan Nettleton
Actually heterosexual marriage is under threat in a number of ways. Just statistically it's falling apart at a rate that has never fallen apart before and so on. But I think that it's actually under threat from within. It's under threat from the commodification of sex and from the treatment of all things as ephemeral to be replaced as soon as a newer model becomes available. And so we start treating marriage and relationships in that same way.
But I think within the churches, there's often this fear that we don't know how to cope with that. And so one of the typically human ways of dealing with that level of fear is to find a group to blame. And that some group is undermining heterosexual marriage. It must be the gays.
Rob Forsyth
Can I just say, I find this ad hominem argument distasteful to me personally. There may be people like that but that's not the serious case, people like myself...
Nathan Nettleton
I agree, I separated you from it.
Rob Forsyth
So why are you raising it? Because there are some real issues, serious issues. I'll give you one. I don't believe that it's discriminatory at all to say, there's no law preventing you getting married as long as you'll fulfil the conditions.
There's no law stopping me being the captain of the Australian Cricket team if I have the relative qualities. I don't.
It's not like an arbitrary law that says gay people can't get married. There's no law. It says marriage is man and woman. Now if you can't fulfil that it's why short people can't play basketball. It's not an arbitrary restriction.
Geraldine Doogue
It's part of a natural law for you.
Rob Forsyth
Exactly. It's part of the way it is, and that's why the notion I'm somehow self-righteously stopping people...
Geraldine Doogue
Slavery was once too, wasn't it.
Nathan Nettleton
And we've changed on a number of things. I was the first divorcee to be ordained by the Baptist Union of Victoria and I'm not an old man. So it's not that long ago that the churches…
Rob Forsyth
Well whether that's a good move or not we don't know.
Nathan Nettleton
I may not be the pinup boy for it.
Rob Forsyth
I don't mean you personally. It would be very interesting if we do get opening marriage for gay people. How does it look in 100 years time, when children's parents are not automatically the partners of their mother or father.
Geraldine Doogue
But science already does that. That's already the case...
Rob Forsyth
No it's not.
Nathan Nettleton
And adultery does exist Rob. There are children born within marriages that are not...
Rob Forsyth
Don't patronise me. Of course I know that. It's called adultery. No no you misunderstand my argument.
My argument is biological parents have a right to care for their children. That's a basic human right that every society recognises. Marriage nurtures and supports that right. Not perfectly. I agree entirely there's adultery, there's break up. But if you want to say "throw that away," you're actually accelerating what could turn out to be a disastrous outcome. Because when you separate biological children from parents, when you have two parents, why not three parents? Parent one, parent two, parent three. Once you break with man-woman why have only two?
God did it if you like, don't blame me, blame God, he made us male and female.
Geraldine Doogue
Frank Brennan, what's your view on it?
Frank Brennan
My own view is that if we move straight to same sex marriage that basically all of the complex questions about children in the future get subsumed simply under the issue of non discrimination.
Geraldine Doogue
What do you mean complex questions about children?
Frank Brennan
Well, for example, we know that the breakthroughs that's going on at the moment.
Geraldine Doogue
With science you mean?
Frank Brennan
We're within cooey that we will be able to produce children from just two ova or two sperm. And I don't think it is discriminatory to say the State has an interest in ensuring when children are created in future that as far as possible we maintain that ideal that a child would have a known biological mother and a known biological father.
Rob Forsyth
There are two view of marriage at the table and I'll put them out. One is that marriage is fundamentally about relationship between the partners.
Geraldine Doogue
Adults?
Rob Forsyth
Adults, yes. I've heard that eloquently put by Julie and I respect that. Another is marriage is that plus, the structure of childbearing whether in fact it happens or not. That's what Frank and I are saying. Frankly those two structures lead to different answers.
Frank Brennan
May I respectfully ask Julie, if you and Melissa were married tomorrow do you think there would be any entitlement by the State or interfering do-gooders or whatever, to say to you and Melissa, no whatever the developments in technology you cannot create your own child just by using material from the ova of each of you.
Julie McCrossin
Look can I just talk about my actual life not a fantasy life.
Geraldine Doogue
But he has posed you a question. I think that's important Julie.
Julie McCrossin
Well why I'm wary of it Gerry is that, with due respect to Frank, he's representing the Catholic Church, and the current Catholic Church has very passionate views about interference with the creation of children. To the extent that you still don't support contraception. So I don't want to be drawn into an arcane argument about whether two ova...
Rob Forsyth
I believe in contraception.
Julie McCrossin
Please let me finish. When I met Melissa, just nearly 16 years ago, the children were three and six.
It is absolutely clear from research, as well as my own direct observation, that stability and consistency and repetition is good for children. And that the loving partnership between Melissa and myself and their father Michael. We have worked together as a team mutually respectful, with the best interests of the children at heart, and there is no question in my mind that fidelity is a positive good for children. It really is. And I do think my views have been influenced by the experience of child rearing.
Geraldine Doogue
So since we are talking about children, last week on Compass we interviewed three groups of gay couples who all wanted to get married. And one of them said that her child turned to her and said why can't you get married? Now I just wonder Rob Forsyth how would you answer that child?
Rob Forsyth
Because I'm not in love with a man. If it was a woman.
Geraldine Doogue
That's what you would say to a child who's being raised, if you think about it...
Rob Forsyth
What with two mothers?
Geraldine Doogue
Yeah. If a child came to you and said I've got two mothers, why can't they get married Bishop Forsyth?
Rob Forsyth
I'd say because marriage is for a man and woman. It's as simple and difficult as that.
Geraldine Doogue
But a bright child would say "But here I am Bishop Forsyth. I'm here, I've been born."
Rob Forsyth
And I would say "who is your biological father?"
Geraldine Doogue
You would not say that to a child. Don't tell me you'd say that to a child?
Rob Forsyth
No, but the question is, that biological father has a stake in that child. He has a right over that child, a care, a responsibility to that child. We recognise that immediately. You can't, it's the one right that the State cannot interfere with. They cannot take children away, except in extreme cases.
I'm a conservative I'll admit that. I wouldn't even mind if there was something called gay marriage. Just one thing. One word, a new institution that mimicked marriage and everything else except it wasn't called marriage.
Julie McCrossin
But Rob it's happening.
Rob Forsyth
And Julie I think that if the law was to change so it was still called marriage, the distinction that exists today would still exist in people's minds. That is marriage would just become wider to include two kinds of marriage.
Nathan Nettleton
And that's okay.
Rob Forsyth
No it's not okay. You'll never get the situation that you long for, that a gay relationship, not full acceptance, is regarded as the same as. But my feeling is they will still say that's marriage and that's a different kind of marriage.
Geraldine Doogue
What do you think will happen if it does occur. What will change or not. Dennis?
Dennis Altman
Look I have no doubt that same sex marriage is going to happen. In a sense, it seems, this entire conversation will be looked back as a strange piece of early 21st century nostalgia.
There's a study that's been done in the Netherlands which has had same sex marriages for a while. One could say not long enough for us to be sure. But I think the reality is not very much changes. The evidence suggests that there's virtually no impact on the larger society.
Geraldine Doogue
Rob?
Rob Forsyth
I don't know the future. It may be that in 100 years time we look back with horror, I don't know.
A friend of mine, I mentioned I was coming to this and he is a very liberal progressive kind of Christian guy. But he said, if this is changee I'll feel my relationship with my wife has been changed by the law. He felt somehow, although happily married, that somehow the change would change and although those who have feel a grief if this happens. Now I hope that you are all right. I hope that happens and is all for the best. But I must say I'm not optimistic.
Geraldine Doogue
Julie?
Julie McCrossin
For people of my generation it would matter deeply to me. I would feel like some form of internal furniture would finally lock in an Ikea sort of a way into place. And I feel deeply about this Geraldine and I assume it's because I was traumatised.
I believe change will happen and I think it is going to happen reasonably quickly now. And for two fundamental reasons. One is because something in the order of 10 to 14 comparable countries have already done it: Spain, Portugal and so on. They have actual marriage not civil union.
But fundamentally the reason I think it will happen is because of Geoff's story. Homosexuality is a bipartisan issue. It turns up in all sorts of families. And often people don't change their views until they know someone they love within their family, and suddenly it's not an issue. It's about Jim or Susan, and that's what shifts people.
Geraldine Doogue
Frank?
Frank Brennan
I remain of the view that the Blair government got it right in the United Kingdom six years ago with civil unions. I mean if it comes to pass, yes. I mean people like Julie and Melissa will feel that this is a better country to live in, and Geoff will be happy for his son.
And I for one will say well that's a good thing. But I think there will be ongoing issues for us as a society, particularly in terms of the place of religious communities.
Geraldine Doogue
Nathan?
Nathan Nettleton
If we've got people knocking on the door saying we've been excluded from this institution that values fidelity and we want in. Anything that we do that actually says yes to the valuing and endorsing of fidelity has to be something that strengthens fidelity.
Geraldine Doogue
Geoff?
Geoff Thomas
Well for me, I think the sensibilities of some religious people will be offended. And I don't think it will impact on their lives essentially one bit. I think a lot of gay couples will finally realise that they're treated the same as everybody else in this society. I think their children will gain the respect that they currently lack.
Geraldine Doogue
Alright. We could go on and on and on but it's just been a fabulous discussion and I know that some of you have really laid yourself out and I respect that, so thank you all.
Dennis Altman thank you to you; Julie McCrossin, Father Frank Brennan, Geoff Thomas, Rev Nathan Nettleton and Bishop Rob Forsyth. Thank you very much indeed for joining us for Compass for dinner tonight.
