The Case against Same-Sex Marriage
ABC Organized religion and Ethics has merely published a lecture by Anthony Fisher, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Sydney, offer what I recall is one of the best, curt arguments against recognising same-sex spousal relationship. Fisher has been an academic, having been awarded a DPhil from Oxford in bioethics, and he has published on bug of abortion, family and healthcare ethics.
The article is worth reading for at to the lowest degree two reasons. First, Fisher is not arguing confronting equal rights, and he recognises the force of arguments around justice and offers a sympathetic description of the case:
In reality, of course, nosotros all know and love someone with same-sex attraction. We recognize that people of the same sex can love each other, sometimes securely; that they express this in ways that seem similar to the ways married men and women express their love; and that some people desire to commit to this in a public ceremony. They are usually good-willed people, who feel they are missing out on something precious. Considering we want the best for them, we feel the tug of the view that everything that makes opposite-sex couples happy should be open to them too. We want no more of the discriminatory or fierce handling that such people often suffered in the past and sometimes yet endure.
Afterward all, God fabricated every person unique and irreplaceable, as His beloved images in this world, and if God loves people with same-sexual activity attraction, and then must the Church. TheCanon of the Cosmic Church and the recent bishops' pastoral letter,Don't Mess with Marriage, teach that every human beingness, regardless of race, religion, age, sexor sexual orientation, deserves our reverence; that all forms of unjust discrimination must be opposed; that everyone is entitled to justice and pity; and that the challenges of salubrious and chaste friendships are for every human existence, whatever their attractions. If Christians have not always talked that way or walked their talk, we should apologize and do amend in future.
Secondly, he addresses the outcome in the terms that are most oftentimes expressed in debate, under five headings: 'Information technology's all about justice'; 'Sexual differences do not affair'; 'It is all about dearest'; 'It is all about numbers'; 'It does not touch me'.
On the question of justice, Fisher wants to brand the case that 'not all differential treatment is necessarily unjust.' In the United kingdom, this relates to the fact that the recognition of gay wedlock conferred no rights in law that were not already granted by civil partnerships. It seems to me that information technology is possible (for example) to treat cats and dogs equally, without deciding that we should modify terminology and rename all cats as 'dogs' (as the recent O2 ad campaign would accept us do). Fisher comments:
So if our marriage laws recognize and support human being-and-woman relationshipsfor skillful reasons, the preservation of those laws will not necessarily exist unjust to other kinds of human relationship. Under whatsoever marriage law, some relationships will non exist recognized as "marriage" – siblings, mere cohabiters, "throuples" and then on – only unless we know what marriage is, we cannot judge whether this brake treats all citizens justly. To put information technology another manner: nosotros all support marriage equality – treating all real marriages equally – the question is:What is a real marriage?
On the question of sexual divergence, Fisher summarises traditional instruction from scripture, but significantly connects this with a wider theology of the trunk and, through that, what it means to exist human. Only Fisher goes on to notation how deep and wide has been this understanding—and therefore how recent and shallow is the thought that sex divergence does not matter.
Of course, this ancient wisdom that marriage is inherently reverse-sex is not peculiar to Catholics: Christians share it with Jews and Muslims; the three corking Abrahamic religions share it with the other world religions of the aboriginal world and since; the world religions share it with more local ones, for instance, Australian Aboriginal and Pacific Islander religions; and religious traditions share it with nearly secular philosophies, legal systems and cultures. Though customs around marriage vary between cultures and over time, there is remarkable consistency about these four dimensions of marriage:
- that it unites people ofopposite (but complementary) sexual practice;
- that this union is intended to befaithful ("to the exclusion of all others");
- that this union is potentiallyfruitful ("to accept and to hold" each other every bit "man and wife" exercise then open to children); and
- that this union isfinal ("till death do us role").
In near every instance, a fifth dimension has been that this spousal relationship is regarded assacred.
On the question of 'all you need is love', Fisher highlights the different relationships that might claim to be expressions of love, simply where information technology is clear that this is not plenty to consider such relationships 'marriage'. This includes fresh debates about polygamy.
In the United states of america, for instance, there is now a campaign for legalized polyamory. TheNational Geographic channel recently ran a sympathetic series on polygamy in America, Cambridge University Press in the United States published a bookIn Defence of Plural Marriageand just this week theNew York Times ran a sympathetic op-ed slice entitled, "Is Polygamy Side by side?"
It is of import to note which way causality works (or doesn't) in this ascertainment:
My indicate in raising these aberrations in gimmicky conjugality isnot to equate them with SSM – not at all. It is, rather, to signal out that what almost SSM advocates and most SSM opponents have in common is a view that these arenon marriages. "All y'all need is love" really isn't enough. And if we concur on that, and so we hold that we need some concept ofwhat marriage is, what its ends, limits and scope are.
On the question of numbers, Fisher engages the question of whether 'traditionalists' are 'on the wrong side of history.' He notes how slender supposedly landmark decisions take been:
Just how overwhelming was support for this measure out in Ireland? While information technology's true that 62% of those who voted, voted in favour, what is rarely mentioned is that but 60% of voters turned out for the poll: whatever those low polling numbers indicate, barely more than a 3rd – merely 36% – of eligible voters actually votedfor legalising SSM in that land.
It is not a picayune ironic that, if our Government's proposal for thresholds on strike ballots goes through, then it will now become harder for a workforce to proceed strike than it was for Republic of ireland to change the definition of marriage. Fisher highlights how significant asymmetric media coverage has been in propagating the 'wrong side of history' argument:
We might also inquire why the few countries favouring SSM, rather than the vast majority of nationsnot tilting in that management, get all the airtime. Senator Eric Abetz recently observed that the Austrian legislature's overwhelming vote against SSM (110 MPs to 26) went more or less unreported in Australia, while prominence was given to the "YES" vote on Pitcairn Isle – a country with a population of 48! Far from beingness some sort of outlier, Australia's current matrimony law reflects international law and the laws of the overwhelming majority of nations (172 of the Un' 193 members).
On the final question, of whether 'it affects me', Fisher touches on a wide range of issues. I was interested that, every bit a Catholic, he makes this explicit observation on the way:
Of course, some marriages are infertile; most marital acts are and so. Anybody has ever known this as well, simply the indicate was that for every matrimony that does bring a child into the globe, that child has a Mum and a Dad.
This connects with an of import observation he has made earlier (under 'Sexual Difference'):
Only if marriage is a natural institution that pre-exists Church and state, whyshould governments get involved at all? For one reason simply:because the "marital acts" that bring children into the world also seal and express the "marital unions" that provide for the long-term nurture of those children. Wedlock binds those whose love-making was life-making both to each other as husband and wife and to those children as female parent and father. The benefits to children of having the contributions of both a Mum and a Dad, committed to each other and to them over the long haul, are well-established in human feel and social science enquiry (for instance, hither, hither and here). In that sense, wedlock is the best Department of Population, Health, Education, Welfare and Crime Prevention we have ever come up with! Other friendships may do other good things and be worthy of support; but but marriage unites a man and a woman and directs their complementary sexual-reproductive natures to the having and rearing of children. And that is why, uniquely of all homo relationships, states have an interest in their success.
I don't suppose that this piece will really persuade many people, in the sense of changing the heed of someone already committed to supporting same-sexual activity union. But it does do two important things. Starting time, it offers back up to the thought that opposition to SSM tin be clear, compassionate and rationale, and that (at the very to the lowest degree) a well-idea-through case can be made. Secondly, information technology shows that it is perfectly possible to 'put one's head above the parapet' and make a public statement of this sort. As I have suggested before, it would exist great to run across more than bishops in the Church of England doing this.
1 of the comments offers this sobering perspective from another Catholic, M K Chesterton:
Suppose that a great commotion arises in the street about something, let united states of america say a lamp-mail service, which many influential persons desire to pull downward. A grey-clad monk, who is the spirit of the Eye Ages, is approached upon the affair, and begins to say, in the arid manner of the Schoolmen, "Let united states kickoff of all consider, my brethren, the value of Light. If Light be in itself expert–" At this point he is somewhat excusably knocked down. All the people make a rush for the lamp-postal service, the lamp-post is down in x minutes, and they go about congratulating each other on their unmediaeval practicality. But as things go on they do not work out so easily. Some people have pulled the lamp-postal service down because they wanted the electrical light; some because they wanted onetime iron; some because they wanted darkness, considering their deeds were evil. Some idea information technology not plenty of a lamp-post, some too much; some acted considering they wanted to smash municipal machinery; some because they wanted to smash something. And there is state of war in the nighttime, no man knowing whom he strikes. So, gradually and inevitably, to-twenty-four hour period, to-morrow, or the next day, at that place comes dorsum the conviction that the monk was right after all, and that all depends on what is the philosophy of Calorie-free. Only what we might have discussed under the gas-lamp, nosotros now must discuss in the night.
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