The
referendum on same-sex marriage to be held next year seems destined
to be acrimonious and highly contested.
Already
the 'Pantigate' episode has prompted threats of legal action,
compensation payments and claims of attempts to silence opinions on
both sides of the debate.
The
central issue in the affair revolves around the role being played by
homophobia in the debate.
Some have
claimed that opposition to same-sex marriage is by definition
homophobic, a view that has provoked much outrage in opponents of the
measure.
Rather
than making blanket statements which leave no room for further
debate, a more revealing approach would be to examine whether there
are any arguments against same-sex marriage that are not based on
homophobia.
Another
feature of the debate so far is the total absence of any reference to
religious doctrine by devout Catholics who oppose same-sex marriage.
Instead
their opposition is based on the “won't someone please think of the children” principle.
Apparently
marriage is all about the kids and as gay couples can't conceive
children together they have no right to get married.
Where this
convenient definition of marriage comes from is another question,
personally I would define marriage as a public declaration of love
and commitment between a couple. Whether that couple go on to have
children is beside the point.
Opponents
of same-sex marriage also claim that gay couples are not as good at
parenting as a male-female couples. Research showing otherwise is
duly dismissed.
One thing
we can be clear on however is that the Catholic Church, most
Christian denominations (and many other religions) are unambiguously
homophobic.
The
official line of the Catholic Church on the subject is: “Basing itself
on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave
depravity, tradition has always declared that 'homosexual acts are
intrinsically disordered.' ”
The 'Sacred Scripture' includes the Old Testament tale of Sodom and Gomorrah. This story begins with the visit of two magical
creatures known as 'angels' to a man called Lot in the city of Sodom.
The men of the city (all of them, apparently) took a shining to these
two visitors and declared that they wanted to have sex with them.
Being a righteous man Lot was absolutely horrified by this idea, so
he offered his two daughters to the mob so they could “do what you
like with them”, i.e. to gang rape them.
(This is
not the only questionable sexual episode involving Lot and his
daughters, for details on incest between them see Genesis19: 30-38).
Anyway,
the men of Sodom declined the offer, but the two angels were able to
stop them from entering the house by casting some sort of spell that
blinded them. They then advised Lot to leave the city with his family
and to never to look back. Then someone called 'The Lord' destroyed
the city and all its people with burning sulphur from the sky. Lot
escaped but his wife was not so fortunate, she looked back at the
city and was instantly turned into salt.
It seems
from the story that 'The Lord' is a remarkable individual. He can
conjure sulphur and turn the constituent parts of the human body into
sodium chloride. Plus he has a 'The' in his name.
This tale
forms the basis of the Catholic Church's opposition to homosexuality,
today, as well as the 'religious convictions' and 'genuinely held
beliefs' we have heard so much of. This includes the complaints that
people are being oppressed because they can't discriminate against
gay people due to these beliefs.
The Bible
condemns homosexuality, but if anyone actually read the book you
would quickly notice the large number of behaviours that are also
forbidden, including eating shellfish, wearing clothes made of two
fabrics, getting a tattoo or working on the Sabbath.
One rule
which may be relevant depending on how heated the referendum debate
gets is that under no circumstances can a woman grab the genitals of a man who is fighting her husband. If she does
her hand is to be chopped off.
The Bible
also contains a wide range of immoral behaviours that are condoned or
encouraged by God (which, by the way, includes Jesus), including
murder, genocide, rape and slavery.
Why
Christian churches cherry-pick the Bible's condemnation of homosexual
people and ignore numerous other condemnations in the Sacred
Scriptures, like the one about the testicle-grabbing wives, is a
question I would love to hear answered.
None of
this would matter but for the impact Christian teachings have had on
the laws of this country, including teachings based on an anti-gay fairytale written 2,500 years ago.
It also
leaves me wondering why supporters of the Catholic Church who are
against same-sex marriage do not cite their church's views on
homosexuality ('grave depravity', 'intrinsically disordered', etc)
when opposing the reform, instead of relying entirely on dubious
secular arguments.
One
possibility is that they don't share these views, i.e. their
opposition to same-sex marriage is totally unrelated to the religious
opposition to same-sex marriage their church has.
Hopefully we will have an answer to
this puzzle before the referendum takes place next year.
