Australia: Why I don’t think we should redefine marriage to include same sex couples
In a recent opinion piece on news.com.au Jane Gilmore argued that the Sydney Anglican booklet- What has God Joined Together? is a “logic fail”.
Further, she
accused the church of trying to take ownership of the homosexual marriage debate.
As one of the
authors of the booklet, nothing could be further from my mind. I don’t want to
own this debate but I do want to move it from startlingly superficial to a far
better place.
I should
explain that the booklet, which you can read
here,
is a still a draft, written to help Sydney Anglicans engage in the public
debate about whether Australia should redefine marriage to include homosexual couples.
Now, I know
that Christians shouldn’t expect that any special privilege attaches to our
views. In a secular liberal democracy like Australia, we have no more right
than others — and no less right than others — to present our point of view, and
to seek to persuade others that our view might be good for society generally.
The booklet
doesn’t expect that people should follow “God’s pattern for marriage” because
Jesus says so. For people who don’t believe in God, that argument is nonsense.
But I have
some sympathy for Jane and others — because after two years of what passes for
discussion on this subject they are only now being confronted with some of the
real issues. Again, we don’t own these issues — these are for all people.
Someone has said elsewhere — “legal secular marriage is all about social
validation and requires majority support”. So you would think we should all
join a debate, not just about the perceived benefits for any one group but the
real consequences for society that flow from changing the definition of
marriage.
There are
consequences for families and children, consequences of removing gender
difference from our societal structure and consequences for freedom of speech.
At the moment
the debate has been a little like an episode of Married at First Sight. Let’s walk down the aisle and see what happens.
What are the
implications of shifting the focus of marriage away from its present
family-centric focus to a couple-centric one?
What are the implication of this
for kids? Let’s have a conversation about this.
Will the
removal of gender difference from marriage move us toward a genderless society?
Let’s have a conversation about this.
Will the use
of anti-discrimination legislation to enforce a particular legal definition of
marriage be “greatest threat to religious freedom we will ever have seen in
Australia”?
Curiously, Ms
Gilmore argued that “Marriage equality is about the Federal Government enacting
legislation that discriminates against one specific section of our society.”
This is probably a typo, and yet it is true in a way that she perhaps does not
realise.
Redefining
marriage will mean that a significant slice of the Australian population will
hold a view of marriage that is out of step with the legal definition.
Christians and others who continue to hold a traditional view are likely to
feel the weight of anti-discrimination legislation. We need to have a
conversation about this.
This is not
to suggest that the booklet necessarily has the right answers. But it is asking
questions that ought to be answered.
Whether
Australia enacts same-sex marriage or not, we need to have a more sophisticated
and robust discussion about our differences. As a secular liberal democracy, we
need to work out better ways to live together with our deepest differences, to
make space for majority and minority views and to disagree well.
That is not
what we have had in the same-sex marriage debate so far, and it is time for a
new conversation.
