My family and I all got a very nasty flu, so I haven't gotten around to reading unconditional parenting yet, fyi.
Today on Sunrise, Kochy and Melissa Doyle made a stand in support of gay marriage. For what it's worth, I support gay marriage. Defacto relationships are given legal status in this country, and I believe homosexual couples should be given the same. Furthermore marriage has been removed from Christianity, and I'm not sure that's a bad thing.
Here's my working definition of marriage:
A lifelong commitment to a single intimate relationship.
With divorce an option perhaps I should remove the word lifelong. And without some ethical framework against polygamy, I should probably remove the word single. This leaves:
A commitment to an intimate relationship.
It's not terribly meaningful, but I think this is what the general population mean when they use the word marriage. If that's the case, then why not admit gay marriage?
Christians are really hung up on this. We seem to want to make our own definitions. My definition of an appropriate intimate relationship under God is something like the first one I wrote down with the word heterosexual in it. However, when prodded, I have to admit that I think this includes the willingness to bring kids into the relationship, which some Christians don't agree with. And it is definitely lifelong in my book, which again many Christians don't adhere to. And there's a whole lot of stuff about laying down one's life as Christ did for the church, which I know a lot of Christians don't do (like me), and don't even try to do (unlike me).
I'm confident that many homosexual couples tick many more boxes than a lot of 'Christians'.
So my question is: in a secular society, on what basis do we fight against homosexual marriage? I can't think of a good one.
I received an email about this Sunrise stuff today, urging me to act. Something in the email which was repeated a few times, was that homosexual marriage robs children of the right to parents of both sexes.
Now this I can stand behind, I think. On the one hand my previous arguments still apply, that there would be much worse heterosexual parents out there than most homosexual ones. But somehow I think you can make arguments based on nature. Homosexual couples cannot have children. Nature doesn't allow it. From an evolutionary point of view, I'd imagine there is a substantial part of our biological, emotional, and psychological development which is sex-specific. So while couples who can't conceive or go to term, but have a baby by IVF or similar, have been 'disallowed' by nature, the nature of things isn't against them, which is what an argument from nature is about. I think this is a strong argument. I don't know about the research, all I know is that any research I've ever come across about these sorts of things, it invariably becomes apparent that the natural order is vastly ideal because our evolution has made it that way.
But is marriage necessarily linked to kids? It's not in my secular definition above...
Any thoughts?
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I consider myself an evangelical that borders on fundamentalism sometimes, and I still pretty much agree with you. I've had a blog post brewing for a while about this, but I think if I posted it, I would be called a liberal by some.
ReplyDeleteMy defense is at the end of 1 Cor 5 Paul tells the church not to judge the world and to cut themselves off to the world based on their sexual behavior. We do not live in the Christendom era, not everyone born in Australia is a Christian. I don't know how effective forcing morality on a country or pushing Christian standard on people is (I know lots of disgruntled people who went to Catholic school where morality was imposed on them). I think some political people forget this...
You removed 'lifelong' because, in practice, some marriages don't last that long. Perhaps you should also remove 'intimate' because in some marriages intimacy is no longer present.
ReplyDeleteSo your definition would then become 'a commitment to a relationship.' Marriage then becomes little more meaningful than friendship on a Facebook page.
If that's what the word 'marriage' finally ends up meaning then my wife and I will have to find a new word to define our relationship, and the commitments we made when we exchanged our wedding vows.
I agree, that the word ends up meaning very little. I hesitated to use intimate, I really just wanted to distinguish it from non-marriage-type relationships.
ReplyDeletePerhaps one should go for a more legal definition:
A relationship recognised by the state for which certain legal benefits become entitled.
In a way this is the crux of my concerns. As Andrew says, I can hardly force my ideas about morality on secular Australia. Moreover, I can't demand that the government withhold certain treatment of couples because I don't think they should be couples. The fact is that from a practical point of view, it looks like marriage.
In Australia this isn't such a big concern perhaps. In Germany I got tax breaks (and so was payed more on a monthly basis) than my unmarried colleagues, whether they were defacto or not. They didn't like this (not that they held it against me).
However, they refused to marry. I thought 'why not just marry, for the sake of the cash'... If I weren't a Christian I'd find someone who'd be willing and just do this. But they *all* had particular sentimental reasons why they didn't want to.
So it seems that people have a particular idea that marriage is striving for a certain kind of relationship, and a certain kind of life. In the absence of concrete input (Christian or otherwise), the concept may as well get stretched and bent to fit the ideals of the majority.
It's just a word.
Maybe Christians should find a new one...
I think the really difficult issue is how to deal with it within our families and friendships! I know of several christian families who are devastated and feel tremendous shame over having adult children that are practising homosexuals.Is that the appropriate response?
ReplyDeleteTony,
ReplyDeleteI should say I was encourage by this post, so I finally published my thoughts on my own blog: http://ravingsandranting.blogspot.com.au/2012/06/table-hospitality.html (sorry for the shameless plug).
So thanks. I'd like to hear your thoughts, but don't feel like you have to.