Doug PollardA matter of definition
Cake Topper from Magic Mud
They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. After arguing for years that to allow same-sex couples to marry would ‘redefine’ the institution, the God Squad are now ‘redefining’ marriage to suit themselves.
I can’t say I appreciate the compliment, but having comprehensively and decisively lost the argument against equal marriage on grounds of equality – for who could deny that our love and commitment is as powerful and valuable as anyone else’s – the holy warriors are getting desperate.
They are now claiming that equality isn’t the issue. It’s children.
It goes like this. Marriage, according to their new definition, is the union of a fertile man and a fertile woman capable of the generation of children, and the subsequent nurture of same. And ONLY that. So same-sex couples can’t marry. QED.
Writing in The Age, Catholic ethicist (surely a contradiction in terms) Nicholas Tonti-Filippini says non-biological parents ‘will not provide the biological link and security of identity that marriage naturally demands and confirms.’
This new definition reduces marriage to nothing more than a breeding permit, and in the process devalues many successful marriages.
It insults the couple who decide that in an overpopulated world they will forgo their own reproductive rights and raise children whose biological family can or will not.
It insults the couple who use reproductive technology to bring a child into the world, at an even greater emotional and financial cost than that borne by accidental ‘biological’ parents.
It tramples on all childless marriages – for if the sole point of marriage is ‘the generation and nurture of children through the complementary bodily union of a man and a woman’ (that’s pompous celibate priest-speak for Daddy and Mummy shagging without protection), then these marriages are no marriages at all.
And that goes double for same-sex marriages. Unfortunately, this flies in the face of established scientific fact.
Two people are better than one at most things, including child-rearing, notwithstanding the amazing job done by the majority of single parents. A load shared, especially by a loving couple, is a load halved.
Children benefit from the consistency and continuity provided by a couple who have publicly committed themselves to each other and their children, aka married couples.
Neither their gender nor their breeding status are especially relevant.
Study after study shows children raised by same-sex couples have the same developmental outcomes as other children. They do not suffer from being raised by biologically unrelated parents.
Far from ‘devaluing’ marriage, same-sex marriage promotes the value of marriage for all. Wherever access to marriage is equalised, the rate of heterosexual marriage rises, especially among the young.
Not all of these marriages will be the kind of licensed breeding unions to which this ‘Christian’ redefinition seeks to reduce them. Every marriage has its own reasons, and its own value.
My aunt and uncle were my second parents. More understanding than my father, who expressed contempt for a son who preferred books to football, and my mother, who believed a wife should subjugate herself to her husband.
“Well, you see, your uncle and I, we’re not keen on that sort of thing,” said my aunt, explaining the twin beds.
“I don’t want you to think we didn’t love each other. He was fun. We were the best of pals. We did love each other. Just – not like that.”
They nurtured me when my parents rejected me – and smoothed the path to eventual family reconciliation. Was their marriage any less worthy of respect, celebration and honour than that of my biological parents? Tonti-Fillipini and his fellow-travellers seem to think so.
In their blindness and bigotry they would throw marriages like that of my aunt and uncle on a pyre of religious correctness. Anything to avoid celebrating and nurturing the love of two people of the same sex. And they call it ‘ethics’.
