Marriage - a Christian view: rest of article

• Doesn’t the traditional concept of marriage sacrifice some people’s fulfilment for others?

4.44    This objection is best considered by disclosing its hidden assumptions:

(a)   Fulfilment is impossible without regular outlets for sexual release.

(b)   Meaningful intimacy is impossible without sex.

(c)   Fulfilling relationships require legal recognition.

(d)   Homosexual orientation is such that any State which does not actively accommodate it equally in every sense necessarily harms or disregards a class of human beings.

4.45    In respect of the first assumption that fulfilment is impossible without regular outlets for sexual release, the days are long since past when the State will prevent any likeminded people from making their own private arrangements.

4.46    However, the State cannot give same sex unions what is truly distinctive of marriage. That is, it cannot make them actually comprehensive, oriented by nature to children, or bound by the moral norms specific to marriage. At most the State can call such unions marital, but such designation would not – because, in moral truth, it cannot – make them so; and it would, to society’s detriment, obscure people’s understanding about what truly marital unions do involve. In this sense, it is not the State that keeps marriage from certain people, but their circumstances that unfortunately keep certain people from marriage.

4.47    This is so, not only for those with exclusively homosexual attractions, but also for people who cannot marry because of, for example, prior and pressing family obligations incompatible with marriage’s comprehensiveness and orientation to children, inability to find a mate, or any other cause. Those who face such difficulties should in no way be marginalised or otherwise discriminated against, and they deserve our support in the face of what are often considerable burdens. But none of this establishes the first mistaken assumption, that fulfilment is impossible without regular outlets for sexual release – an idea that devalues many people’s way of life.

4.48    In contradiction to the second assertion that meaningful intimacy is impossible without sex, what we wish for people unable to marry because of a lack of any attraction to a member of the opposite sex is the same as what we wish for people who cannot marry for any other reason: rich and fulfilling lives. In the splendour of human variety, these can take infinitely many forms. In any of them, energy that would otherwise go into marriage is channelled toward ennobling endeavours: deeper devotion to family or nation, service, adventure, art, or a thousand other things. But most relevantly, this energy could be harnessed for deep friendship, and we must not nor are entitled to conflate depth of friendship with the presence of sex.

4.49    The third assumption, that fulfilling relationships are impossible without legal recognition, is baffling (but not rare) to find in this context. Even granting the second point, legal recognition has nothing to do with whether homosexual acts should be banned or anyone should be prevented from living with anyone else. This debate is not about private behaviour. Instead, public recognition of certain relationships and the social effects of such recognition are at stake. Some have described the push for same sex marriage as an effort to legalise or even to decriminalise such unions. But one can only decriminalise or legalise what has been banned, and these unions are not banned[1]. Rather, same sex unions are simply not recognised as marriages.

4.50    The fourth assumption, that homosexual orientation is such that any State which does not actively accommodate it equally in every sense necessarily harms or disregards a class of human beings, draws an arbitrary distinction between homosexual and other sexual desires that the State may not sanction. It often leads people to suppose that traditional morality unfairly singles out people who experience same sex attractions. It does not. Traditional morality sees in every person, a person of dignity whose welfare makes demands on every other being that can hear and answer them. In some it sees desires, for a range of reasons not limited to same sex orientation that cannot be integrated within the comprehensive union of marriage.

• Isn’t homosexual orientation only natural?

4.51    This is probably the weakest argument because it is irrelevant to the issue. We are not arguing about whether homosexual sexual activity should be permitted or not. The law does not prohibit same sex relationships. The issue is whether there is any need for the law to be involved at all in private relationships that do not beget children.

4.7  What about children in same sex households?

4.52    Revising marriage to include same sex relationships would not advantage children in same sex households in any substantive way because the law already protects the relationship between the child and the substitute parents, and from that relationship they draw the same entitlements as other families.

4.53    There are many variations of households that nurture children, including those that can only have occurred through the use of technology. In all circumstances in which children are nurtured the State has a parens patriae interest in the welfare of children. The State therefore has an interest in relationships that cause children to come to be. It has an interest also in reproductive technology to protect the rights of children to have an identity and to know, have access to and be nurtured by their mother and father as far as that is practicable. Marriage offers the best security for those rights and should therefore be protected and given its full meaning, including its capacity to procreate and to provide both mother and father to the child. For the sake of children, the State therefore has an interest in promoting marriage as a relationship between a man and a woman entered into for life and to the exclusion of all others, and for using that relationship as the paradigm when circumstances fail children.

4.54    Where children come to be outside that paradigm, it is important that the State acts to ensure that the child has an identity and that the information about the natural parents of the child is registered and available. At an appropriate time the State should ensure that the child is made aware of that information and has access to the natural parents, while the child’s relationship to substitute parents remains recognised and protected.

4.55    The notion of “substitute parent”[2]does not have a necessary basis in the relationship between parents, but in their relationship to the child and their consent and commitment to being a parent to the child. With the changes to adoption law to permit unmarried or single people to adopt, the relationships that may or may not exist between the child’s substitute parents have no essential link to the child in law. For that reason in law they are private because the State lacks a reason to legislate to promote relationships between same sex couples over any of the many other kinds of relationship between adults where children are to be found, other than marriage. The relationship, where it exists, between a child’s natural parent and a substitute parent, or between a child’s substitute parents, is essentially different from marriage as the type of relationship that may generate a child. The marriage relationship in the latter case is essential to the child’s identity because the couple’s relationship extends to include the child who is biologically, psychologically and spiritually an embodiment and symbol of their unity. In substitute parenthood there is no such connection between the child and any relationship between substitute parents. The relationship of a substitute parent is to the child and that is a relationship that needs to be protected for the sake of the child. The State therefore has an interest in registering and protecting it.

4.8  Why should religious people impose their views on everyone?

4.56    The Church, like any other group within a democratic society, has a right to express a view on matters of public policy. In relation to marriage the Church has a special interest in all vulnerable people and especially children. It is entirely the prerogative of Christians as citizens of the State to express their views in the public square with the intention of influencing public policy. It is readily acknowledged that a distinctively Christian view on public policy is just one of many, and in a democracy Christians have as much right as any other group to bring it forward.

5.      Conclusion

5.1      This paper responds to proposals to change the current definition of marriage to allow same sex couples to marry, and is addressed to Christian ministers of religion and others who are interested in theology. We have sought to achieve two aims. First, we believe that this issue is not just a religious issue, and that revising the law would affect people of all faiths and none. On that basis the paper explains why revising the law would so change the meaning of marriage that marriage would be about adults only and not about children.

5.2      Second, Christianity is a large part of our culture, and Christian witness to the Word of God is crucial for the well-being of our nation and for the common good of our citizens. For that reason, in section 2, we provide a clear expression of common Christian beliefs about marriage as a biological, psychological, cognitive and spiritual reality. Marriage has its origins in the beginning of humankind, where man and woman were created equally in the image and likeness of God and as a unique and complementary gift for each other.

5.3      Our goal was to address these matters as clearly as we could, and avoid making statements that might unnecessarily cause offence. We believe firmly that we ought to deal fairly with every member of the human family and their needs, including people of homosexual orientation. We want to avoid name-calling or resorting to speculation about motives or personal attitudes.

5.4      From a theological perspective, male and female sexuality is a divine gift designed by God to be a union of difference that assures a child of both a mother and a father. The divine plan located procreation within the exclusive and permanent relationship between a man and a woman in order to protect children. The loving union of spouses in one flesh is a witness to God’s love in their complete gift of self to each other and their openness to cooperating with him in procreation.

5.5      The revisionist argument has been presented as a matter of justice, of ending discrimination against people in same sex relationships. However, the issue is much more than that. Revising the marriage law would have grave implications for religious freedom, directing the way in which language may be used by imposing a new legal definition of what marriage means. This is not a matter that we can simply ignore while concentrating on our own efforts to evangelise.

5.6      We argue that marriage as it is now defined is not unjust. In the last few years Australian Parliaments have moved to legislate comprehensively to remove discrimination so that same sex couples have substantially the same entitlements to freedom and to services as any other. However, marriage is different from other relationships because it has the capacity to generate children. It is not just about adult romance but about securing children.

5.7      Marriage is inextricably linked to children, protecting their identity and providing for their nurture by both a mother and a father. The State would have no interest in the permanence and exclusivity of marriage apart from the fact that marriage may produce children.

5.8      Marriage protects the rights of children to an identity as citizens, and to knowledge of, access to and nurturing by a mother and a father. Through marriage, children are irrevocably related to both parents and receive their biological, intellectual and spiritual inheritance from that loving union. Revising marriage would cause harm because it would no longer be the paradigm for nurturing children, and the reality of parenthood would be fragmented into genetic, gestational and social parenting roles, with no one being the reality of what marriage provides – a mother and a father related to the child in every way.

5.9      In the absence of marriage, the law serves to protect children who are not the result of marital love by defining the relationship of a child to substitute parent(s) and also the child’s legal rights in relation to those others who contributed to the generation of the child. But marriage is the paradigm for procreating children because it links the child to both biological parents and at all levels.

5.10    If the legal definition of marriage is revised so that it is no longer about relationships that may produce children, then our schools will be obliged to teach the revisionist concept. It is one thing to say that the law has nothing to do with what two men or two women do in their private life, but it is quite another to change the law to promote those relationships in our schools. Why should a minority lifestyle so influence the curriculum? Why should teachers be prevented from teaching that marriage is primarily about children?

5.11    The function of retaining marriage is to positively honour those men and women who are united in lifelong, complementary, faithful and procreative relationships by calling them “married”. In that way the law protects and upholds an ideal for the generation and nurturing of children. Marriage is not just about adults, it is about being open to the possibility of becoming a parent to a child who is then an embodiment of their love for each other, a living sign and symbol of their love for each other.

5.12    The case to retain the current definition of marriage as between a man and a woman is thoroughly defensible, and one that Christians should strongly support in public debate.

This paper was prepared by Rev. Rod Benson, Baptist Union of Australia; Dr Denise Cooper-Clarke,ETHOS Evangelical Alliance Centre for Christianity and Society; Rev. Dr Andrew Cameron, Social Issues Executive, Anglican Diocese of Sydney; Dr John McClean, Presbyterian Theological Centre, Sydney;Mr Chris Meney,Life, Marriage and Family Centre,Catholic Archdiocese of Sydney; Rev.David Palmer Presbyterian Church of Victoria; A/Prof Nicholas Tonti-Filippini KCSG, John Paul II Institute for Marriage and Family;  and Brig. (retd) Jim Wallace AM, Australian Christian Lobby. The authors express their gratitude to Sherif Gergis, Robert P. George & Ryan T. Andersonfor substantial use of their article, “What is Marriage?” Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy 34.1 (2010), pp 245-287.

24 May 2011