MEDIA RELEASE
For release: Wednesday 23rd February 2011
Government should reject Australian Human Rights Commission’s suggestion to repeal Marriage Act
The Australian Christian Lobby is calling for Government to rule out repealing the Marriage Act after the President of the Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) confirmed the commission supported homosexual marriage.
Managing Director Jim Wallace said The Hon. Catherine Branson QC comments in Senate Estimates yesterday about supporting homosexual marriage in ‘broad terms’ as a way to remove discrimination, was not addressing the real issue behind the push for homosexual marriage, and perpetuated the myth there was discrimination against homosexual couples.
Ms Branson also reportedly flagged that the Marriage Act could be repealed.
“We do not see denying homosexuals’ marriage as an issue of discrimination. Discrimination was removed in 2008 when the Government gave homosexual couples the same entitlements as opposite-sex de facto couples,” he said.
“The reform amended 84 Commonwealth Laws in a wide range of areas including social security, medicare and educational assistance, providing equality under Commonwealth law.
“Nobody, including rights fundamentalists in the AHRC, can possibly present this as discrimination after these changes,” said Mr Wallace.
“Instead the Human Rights Commission should be seeking to protect the right of people of faith and others to see this time honoured institution, sacred to many, and deeply valued by many more across centuries and all cultures, protected from this ambit claim by activists
“It is important to the great majority of faiths and cultures that marriage remains between a man and a woman. We call for the Government, particularly when it has so recently reaffirmed diversity in its multi-cultural policy, to rule out repealing the Marriage Act,” he said.
Ends
Mr Wallace’s comments are valid. Marriage isn’t a ‘right’ – and hence not allowing certain relationships to be married isn’t an issue of inequality & discrimination.
It needs to be enthusiastically explained that marriage isn’t a personal right. No one has a right to be married. Hence no one can claim they are being discriminated against; or that this is inequality if they are ineligible.
Another useful point for proponents of changing the Marriage Act – are they going to let brothers marry sisters, or sons marry mothers, or fathers marry daughters? So there are other unions than homosexual ones which are classified as ineligible. This isn’t discrimination.
Homosexuals should recognise marriage isn’t for everyone.
Good article Katherine. Great comments Phil.
peter
The article and comments above prompted me to include below, an article by American author Chuck Colson which appeared in Breakpoint on the web this week.
“Scalia was Right
Incest and Lawrence v. Texas
Chuck Colson
In its 2003 Lawrence decision, the Supreme Court overturned Texas’s ban on sodomy. Critics, I among them, warned that this precedent would open the floodgates to gay marriage, polygamy, incest, and a whole host of horribles. Justice Antonin Scalia issued a blistering dissent, charging that Lawrence “effectively decrees the end of all morals legislation.”
Defenders of the opinion scoffed at the warning and accused critics of hysteria and homophobia. Then Senator Rick Santorum, a critic of the ruling, was subjected to continuing and merciless vilification.
Well, sadly, eight years later, all I can say is “we told you so.”
The occasion for revisiting Lawrence is the revolting case of Columbia University Professor David Epstein. Epstein is charged with third-degree incest for having a sexual relationship with his daughter. What made this case stand out, apart from Epstein’s Ivy League credentials, was that his daughter was 24-yers-old and, by all accounts, a consensual partner to this repugnant union.
This fact prompted William Saletan of Slate to ask a question many people desperately wanted to avoid: “If homosexuality is okay, why is incest wrong?” Saletan isn’t trying to justify incest-he’s merely trying to get people to articulate a reason why, in light of Lawrence and similar arguments, society should distinguish between the two.
What Justice Kennedy wrote about the relationship in Lawrence – it involved “two adults who, with full and mutual consent, engaged in sexual practices common to a homosexual lifestyle” – would be just as true here if you substituted “incestuous” for “homosexual.”
Epstein’s lawyer, Matthew Galluzzo, said an much in a television interview: “It’s OK for homosexuals to do whatever they want in their own home . . . How is this so different? We have to figure out why some behavior is tolerated and some is not.”
While defenders of Lawrence purport to be appalled by such arguments, this is exactly what Justice Scalia predicted in his dissent. According to Justice Kennedy in Lawrence, the fact that the majority “has traditionally viewed a particular practice as immoral” isn’t sufficient justification for outlawing the practice. This kind of disapproval doesn’t justify an “intrusion into the personal and private life of the individual.”
Of course, it logically follows that this reasoning could just as well be applied to “bigamy” or “adult incest” or “polygamy” or “polyamory.” If all that matters is age and “mutual consent” the Lawrence decision is limited only by the perversity of the human imagination.
Unfortunately, under Lawrence, what ethicist Leon Kass calls the “wisdom of repugnance” is an insufficient basis to outlaw something.
If Epstein raises the Lawrence decision in pre-trial motions or on appeal, judges will be caught in a dilemma: apply Lawrence and sanction perversity or tie themselves into knots trying to distinguish what, under Lawrence, is indistinguishable.
It’s a dilemma of the Supreme Court’s making: It usurped the prerogative of the people and their elected representatives and created a hole so big that any kind of perversity could drive through.”
So in the words of Phil Guerin above ‘ – are they going to let brothers marry sisters, or sons marry mothers, or fathers marry daughters? So there are other unions than homosexual ones which are classified as ineligible. This isn’t discrimination.
Homosexuals should recognise marriage isn’t for everyone.’
Homosexuals don’t really want to marry, all they want to do is mock marriage between a women and a man and denigrade the institution of marriage. The legislators, politicians and human rights commissioners and other peoples who are backing the push for homosexuals to legally marry think they are wise and knowledgeable but are plainly ignorant to the fact that the homosexual lobby is fighting for the right to legally marry simply to gloat in victory over what is morally right.
An article I read recently,(An Australian Family Association publication) showed that in Massachusetts in the United States, which legalised marriage for homosexuals, is now showing a decline in the number of homosexuals getting married. They had won there right to marry but now they are losing interest in getting married. What does that tell you about what the homosexual lobby really want in this debate.
The same will happen here in Australia.
‘The Manhatten Declaration’ available to read on the web, is fully supportive of all the Christian values that ACL stands for.
The Christian community needs to speak out with a strong voice on the issues of sanctity of life, traditional marriage, and religious liberty.
‘The goal of those who released the Manhattan Declaration is to build a movement of Catholic, Evangelical, and Eastern Orthodox Christians who will stand together alongside other men and women of goodwill to advance the sanctity of life, rebuild and revitalize the marriage culture, and protect religious liberty. We therefore ask you to send an email to your family and friends and ask them to visit http://www.manhattandeclaration.org to read the declaration and, if they agree, to sign it and share it to others.’
Re: The Manhatten Declaration. The following disturbing news regarding the Declaration Of Marriage America, was today written up on OnePlace.com. Breakpoint on the web.
‘No Defense
Obama and DOMA – Chuck Colson
The ground shook this week when Attorney General Holder announced the decision of the administration not to defend the Defense of Marriage Act in court. This was the law of the land, passed by both houses of Congress and signed by President Clinton. But The New York Times hailed this decision in a front-page story and in a lead editorial.
Justifying this extraordinary action, Holder says that in the congressional debate in the 90s there were “numerous expressions reflecting moral disapproval of gays and lesbians and their intimate family relationships.” He went on to describe this as “animus” (defined by Webster as vehement enmity, hatred, ill will)-and that that violates the Equal Protection Clause.
But wait a minute. “Animus” to defend a moral position based on 2,000 years of classical and Christian teaching rooted in scripture? Or for Muslims to declare their opposition?
Holder has embraced the position of Federal Judge Vaughn Walker in California that opposing so-called gay marriage can be “harmful to gays and lesbians.” But that’s like claiming that opposition to polygamy is harmful to polygamists or that laws defining marriage as the union of two people harm those who prefer to live in what are called sexual “triads” or “quadrads.” Our historic marriage laws harm nobody-they serve husbands, wives, children, and the common good of society.
Not to be able to speak to these issues in great debates isn’t tolerance. It’s thought control and censorship. And if the expression of our deepest convictions is treated as animus, our religious liberty is in great peril. We cannot fail to speak the truth even if it is labeled hate speech.
This is exactly why we wrote the Manhattan Declaration, pledging that we would under no circumstances render to Caesar what belongs to God.’
‘Our message must be firmly and lovingly presented. All humans, gay and straight, are made in the image of God and thus deserving of full dignity and respect. We denounce gay bashing. But we also denounce the suppression of free, civil discourse in critical moral debates.’
The big push by the greens and their deal with the Labor Party to have same-sex marriage debate reintroduced as soon as parliament begins in February shows where their main agenda lies differing with the major thoughts of our population focused on the economy, environment, recent floods and many more critical situations Bible believing Christians know that marriage between a man and a woman is one of our most important cultural institutions, and the Bible states that the act of Sodomy is abhorrent before God and mankind but the battle over marriage isn’t simply “same-sex marriage”. The push to redefine marriage is really about a variety of sexual expressions. Once a definition of marriage is gone all relational barriers are vulnerable including polygamy, paedophilia and bestiality. Marriages produce children while same-sex relationships cannot. Sexual relationship between a man and a woman has much greater responsibilities, which is why we recognise those relationships differently. To alter our current laws would weaken or undermine marriage which is the foundation of our society with family life offering the best environment in which to bring up children.