The debate for gay marriage is raging in Australia – and this week marks seven years since the Marriage Amendment Act 2004 was passed, defining marriage as between a man and a woman to the exclusion of all others. Equal marriage rallies were held around Australia over the weekend and today the National Marriage Day rally is being held at Parliament House.
But this political debate, more than others, has been turning nasty. I should state up front that I don’t have a clear opinion on this. I am a Christian, so culturally at least I would seem to fall into the ‘be-against-gay-marriage’ basket. For the record, I’m also not gay, even though people occasionally think I am (some feminine characteristics and all that). But over the last couple of years I have been trying to learn more about gay culture in realisation that I don’t fully understand it. For the most part, this journey of discovery fills me with compassion.
Historically, the way Christianity has treated homosexual people has been nothing short of abhorrent. For some reason, homosexuality got elevated above everything else we are traditionally against and it became more or less impossible to be part of a Christian organisation – or to feel welcome in a church – if you were gay. Hardly the example of Christ.
Thankfully we have come a long way. Many churches (including here in Australia) have taken the step of specifically opening their doors to gay people – in different ways. Some go as far as to completely affirm that homosexuality is sanctioned and ok by God, others don’t go that far but welcome gay people as human beings with areas they fall short in – i.e. just like the rest of us.
Whichever side of that coin we as Christians sit on (and here’s a post that outlines my thoughts on homosexuality as a sin), I think we can hopefully agree that at least welcoming gay people into a church – and giving them the opportunity to explore the claims of the Bible for themselves – is better than ostracising them and giving the impression that God doesn’t love or care.
So with my less-than-conclusive views aside, the reason for this post: things are getting nasty. Whether I agree or disagree in this debate, one thing I am certain of: a debate is happening and each participant in it has the right to be heard. There are good reasons why gay people would like to get married and there are good reasons why some would prefer they didn’t.
What’s too easy to do here is to call the latter view homophobic or discriminatory. And by doing that, a completely valid opinion is being completely shut down. And that’s exactly what’s happening.
I’ve been called homophobic for even just being friends with staff at the Australian Christian Lobby – which anyone who knows my desire to think about the traditional “other side” in this debate will know that me being homophobic couldn’t be further from the truth.
It’s not just me though. And referring to my Australian Christian Lobby friends, both Jim Wallace and Wendy Francis have been lampooned on social networks – and to some extent the mainstream media – for their views. They haven’t always been smart about timing or wording, but the sad thing is those leveling vitriol against them don’t even stop to think about the human on the other side. The human who is prone to mistakes just like the rest of us. And the human who is entitled to a view: whether we agree with it or not.
Wendy Francis has had fake Twitter accounts set up in her name (one recently not even stating it was a fake – i.e. attempting to pass off as the real thing) and Jim Wallace has “apparently” put out brochures entitled A list of things I will allow you to do (all fake, of course).
This sort of thing doesn’t belong in a civilised society: a democracy where majority opinion rules, but where each individual person has the right to attempt to influence that majority opinion without being cut-off, put-down, or otherwise persecuted for it.
For those who can’t understand why someone would not be for gay marriage, there are good reasons wrapped up in centuries of Christian thought about the most beneficial way to build and structure society around a family unit. While I generally subscribe to these broad views and will probably seek to start my own family around them when the time comes, what I’m considering is that our society has and is changing and that broad Christian ideal of family is probably no longer the way everyone would like to live. Whether it’s my role as a Christian citizen to force that on others or not is what I’m tossing up – and why I currently sit on the fence with gay marriage.
For the record, if I was a politician voting on a gay marriage bill today, I’d be abstaining.
So this is my charge to those engaged in this debate: people like me are watching and searching and trying to find answers. If you don’t let those who disagree with you speak (or threaten to make life hell for them if they do), how are we meant to weigh up both sides of an emotionally complex issue and come to a solid opinion?
Great post Tim. Great post.
Completely agree. It’s sobering to think of the spiritual snobbery involved in “you’re gay, I’m not, so you’re a worse sinner than me”. That’s rather scary actually, to think that Christians, the image-bearers of Christ, would dare to say that! But we do.
Looks like both sides need to calm down and play the ball; not the man. That’s what free speech is all about.
Don’t you think it’s a little absurd for the ACL et al, very powerful political lobbyists, to cry foul about being called names when for millennia the machinery of church and state have been put to use in the sometimes violent repression of homosexuality?
Thanks Josh.
Dave, take your point exactly, but most of us are trying to move on and say what happened in the past was wrong. What makes it ok for it to be thrown back and repeated?
The point is that there is no comparison between right wing politicos being satirized and criticized for their political views and the structural, systematic and even legislated marginalization of a minority group because of who they are.
Perhaps the problem lies in how these ‘right wing politicos’ are seen. If I was to come to the decision that I’m against gay marriage, does that make me fair game for public denigration? If so, on what grounds? I’m hardly a no-holds-barred conservative and I’m certainly trying to do my best to see both sides. And if I did come to that decision, I’d be doing so ‘because of who I am’ – i.e. because of my faith and my beliefs: decisions I’ve previously made which I want to be true to, and decisions made because of who I am, my path in life, etc. I don’t see the difference.
Firstly, you need to get rid of that obnoxious facebook/tweet/google like box that’s superimposed over the whole page. I can’t read what’s underneath it, and I can’t make it go away.
Second, saying that opposing marriage equality is discriminatory is not “shutting down debate”. It’s calling a spade a spade. If you do not support equality, if you say that the law should discriminate between a man and a woman in the Marriage Act (which is what the present version does – I’m allowed to marry my fiancee because I’m a man, but I’d be stopped if I were a woman), then you are supporting discrimination. The government is discriminating between people on the grounds of gender.
That’s what the word “discrimination” means.
And as for the anger – well, imagine you were told YOU were not permitted to marry the person you love because of your race, or your religion, or your gender. You’d be pretty pissed off too.
There’s no equivalence here. Nobody is calling for Christians to be denied their most basic human rights – but people like Jim Wallace ARE demanding the same in reverse against gay people.
That position is a hateful, cruel one. It does not deserve respect. Because it is founded on a fundamental lack of respect for other people.
Hi Jeremy,
Yes, in that sense, it is discriminatory- but “discriminatory” is usually used in a negative sense which people like the ACL would argue is incorrect.
So, not allowing black people on Alabaman busses is discriminatory (negative sense) but choosing one footballer to play in the team over antoher footballer who is dropped is also discriminatory. But we don’t jump up and down (unless we like that footballer!
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The difference is that one is a discrimination which is not acceptable, and the other is one that society does accept.
Tim’s point is that everybody should be allowed to argue what is and is not good for society. The logic that “I should not respect them because they do not respect me” is ultimately ugly because if someone like Jim Wallace/ACL applied that logic to your comment, they would say, “He doesn’t respect our views, so we won’t respect his”.
And suddenly nobody respects anybody’s ideas and we spend all our time shouting homophobe or sodomist at each other. I agree with Tim, we should respect each other enough to respond with logic, not disrespect, viterol or hate.
By right wing politicos, I mean people like Wallace or Francis. Anyone who chooses to enter the public sphere, especially in a professional capacity, had better be prepared to be criticised. Stridently. The thin skin of the ACL is quite remarkable, I think.
But on your point, no, I don’t think it’s civil for private citizens to slag each other off. At the same time, you don’t get to hold political opinions which marginalise vulnerable people and then escape being called out on it. People who oppose equal rights for gay people ARE homophobic. That people even consider “homophobe” to be a dirty word shows how far we’ve come. If people think homosexuality is a sin, or it’s weird, or it destroys family or whatever the latest excuse is — that’s fine, but they ought to have the guts to own that statement and the consequences. It’s very precious for people who enjoy all the privilege that comes with heterosexuality to act as if being called a bigot is some grand injustice. Political rhetoric exists against a backdrop of power relations. For centuries, homosexuals have been disempowered. It is disingenuous to say that as we experience the very first gasps of empowerment for non-heteronormativity, all of a sudden it’s a fair playing field and both sides are engaged in some sort of fairly-matched set-piece battle. Pistols at dawn, very civilised. It’s not like that at all. The culture war that is on at the moment is about overcoming societal disenfranchisement of a downtrodden minority. Those who seek to defend the status quo, therefore, cannot be victims when they are criticised for their stand, because they are still oppressors.
I certainly agree that going into the public sphere means your opinions are totally up for discussion. BUT not in the way that is often happening in this debate (both sides). Australian Marriage Equality says “just as we acknowledge that it is possible to oppose marriage equality without hating homosexuals, so we ask those who differ with us on this important issue to acknowledge that it is possible to support marriage equality without seeking to undermine marriage, family or religion.” (http://www.australianmarriageequality.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/AME-fact-religion.pdf). You would seem to disagree with the first part of that statement – saying that if someone disagrees with gay marriage, they automatically also hate (or are afraid of, depending on the meaning of homophobic) gay people. Is that correct?
Thanks Jeremy – I’ve fixed up the social sharing bar so it appears inline with the posts now. You must have a small screen
Jeremy and I had a good discussion over Twitter last night. Anyone interested can see it here:
http://twitter.com/#!/search/realtime/%40jeremysear%20OR%20%40tdmalone%20from%3Ajeremysear%20OR%20from%3Atdmalone