Opinion & Commentary
Beware pink totalitarianism
Though a traditionalist at heart, on the question of gay marriage I am appropriately agnostic. As a social conservative, I Iament the fact that Lionel Murphy’s Family Law Act of 1975 has led to epidemic levels of ‘no fault’ divorce over the past 36 years.
But as a conservative, I accept that times have changed and so have community values concerning marriage and the family. The social stigma that used to attach to the breaking of marriage vows has been lost forever. As a liberal, I know there is no way of going back to the traditional meaning and enforcement of marriage without somehow orchestrating a reactionary program of social re-engineering. The wonder is that same-sex couples want in on what, in many cases, has become an empty ritual, full of sound and fury and signifying little more than a temporary agreement to cohabit.
I therefore do not accept conservative arguments often advanced in favour of gay marriage. Rather than helping keep gay couples in committed long-term relationships, marriage will be just as meaningless for as many gays as it is for many straights. But for the same reason, I therefore reject the conservative argument against gay marriage. It is hard to see how this degraded institution will be further undermined if same-sex couples are legally allowed to say ‘I do’ too.
We do know, though, that people who get married and stay married do better on a range of health and welfare measures than those who don’t. That gay people should have the opportunity to enjoy the same blessings and should be encouraged to wed is a persuasive utilitarian argument, given the potential personal benefits and social dividends.
I am also singularly disinterested in whom consenting adults prefer to sleep with.
So all things considered, I’m not about to mount the barricades for or against same-sex unions. However, with the broader culture war in mind, I think we should be concerned about the protection of the rights of those who strongly dissent on this issue.
The rainbow revolution is slowly spreading throughout the Western world and there seems to be little that can be done to stop it.
New York is the sixth and latest US state to let gay couples get married. The week before last, a Democrat-sponsored marriage equality law passed the Republican controlled State Senate on the votes of four renegade Republican Senators.
This will give further heart to Australian supporters of gay marriage in the Greens, the ALP and the wet end of the Liberal party. With opinion polls here, as in the US, consistently registering majority support, particularly among younger people, gay activists have good reason to believe that marriage equality will ultimately triumph in the federal parliament as well.
If this is so, then marriage traditionalists face being squeezed into a smaller and smaller corner. Their views, and the religious values these views usually are based on, are likely to be seen as recalcitrant, at best, and illegitimate, at worst.
Hence I have nagging doubts. I fear that in the push to achieve equality we are in danger of repeating the ancient error and trampling on the rights of a minority.
We are told that gay marriage is all about plurality. The state should not discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation and gays and straights should all be treated equally under the marriage act.
The idea that ‘difference must be respected’ is the catch-cry of the modern day social engineers who love to tell people what they should think and how they should act. Our ‘Human Rights’ bureaucracies, the media and legal professions, and the schools and universities are chock-full of these kinds of people. However, the commitment to plurality does not extend to tolerating dissent from what they believe the politically correct consensus should be.
When gay couples were first allowed to adopt children in the UK it was heralded as great leap forward toward a more tolerant society. But this extension of equal rights has also curtailed the rights and freedoms of other less fashionable groups. The former Labour government’s 2007 Equality Act banned adoption agencies from discriminating against gay parents. Catholic agencies have been forced to either close or cut their ties with the church.
A repeat of these events over gay marriage is hardly inconceivable. The straws are already in the wind.
The Republican senators in New York voted to legalise gay marriage only after securing amendments which exempted Catholic and other churches from having to perform same-sex marriage ceremonies.
It is ominous that this concession had to be wrung from ardent supporters of the original bill, which featured no religious protections. At face value this suggests that many on the Left are looking to extend the long march through the last bastions of un-PC thinking. Pink totalitarians appear eager to use gay marriage to turn the rest of the Christian religions into what the Uniting Church has largely become: bad sociology with its collar on backwards.
Even a gay marriage act that includes religious exemptions may be considered a mere tactical defeat and just a temporary base camp from which to launch renewed assaults on the summit of universal compliance with marriage equality.
Note that Green MPs around the country are campaigning hard to remove the faith-based exemptions in anti-discrimination laws which allow religious schools and charitable organisations to discriminate against job applicants on the grounds of sexuality. Note as well that the Liberal Democrat equalities minister in the UK has announced her intention to remove the current ban on conducting secular civil partnership ceremonies in places of worship.
The limit, if any, of the gay marriage agenda is a question only its advocates can answer. Do they respect the freedom of others to worship and serve God within their own communions as the tenets of the faith dictate? If Catholic and other denominational exceptionalism cannot be tolerated, then maybe gay marriage isn’t the great pluralist crusade it’s made out to be.
Jeremy Sammut is a research fellow at The Centre for Independent Studies, which is relaunching its Religion and the Free Society program with the annual Acton Lecture, by Zimbabwean MP David Coltart ,at NSW Parliament House in Sydney on 26 July.
