A Plebiscite for Marriage Equality is Wrong

Australia has a new Prime Minister, the fifth in five years. He is a moderate of the Right; intelligent, successful, charming, articulate and a very smooth operator. Being a member of the Liberal National Coalition, he does not espouse the same values as I do. He is not of the Left. Don’t be fooled.

At the first hurdle, not 24 hours in the job, he fell. He declared that he would continue on the exact same policies on climate change and marriage equality as his predecessor. Tony Abbott saw that he was losing the battle on marriage equality, so he used the considerable power of his position, and stated to his party room that there would be a plebiscite on marriage equality. Despite one week earlier declaring that the decision belonged to the Parliament, he ‘moved the goal posts’ in a hastily called, and many of his colleagues thought ambushing joint party room meeting, and declared the decision would be delayed until six to twelve months after the next election. At the time, that meant another two years from August 2015. Now, Malcolm Turnbull has stated to the Parliament today that he will continue in this vein, despite his being supportive of marriage equality and having a huge LGBTI population in his own electorate of Wentworth. Pretty silly move, I would have thought.

So let me lay it out again. This plebiscite business. For Abbott, it was a ruse; nothing more. A strategy to forestall progress. For Turnbull, it is a placation of the conservatives in his party; the very ones he is supposed to be pulling into the twenty first century. I am not in favour of a plebiscite. And here’s why.

1. A plebiscite is only a snapshot poll of the electorate; nothing more. We already have polls on marriage equality and over the last years, they have only been going one way, no matter who the pollsters are. Support has been growing and growing, increasing year by year. It is absolutely clear. The trend is unmistakeable. We now have the ironic situation of the Coalition’s favoured pollster Crosbie Textor polling results with 72% of Australians in support and the LNP ignoring them. It is over two thirds of Australians. Name one other single issue where there is more than two thirds support. Business supports, the media supports, health associations support, sport supports, even many of the churches support and there are a majority of Christians who support. The simple unadorned fact is: we don’t need a plebiscite - we already know.
2. Plebiscites are hideously expensive. The Australian Electoral Commission has stated that a plebiscite not held concurrently with an election would cost $158 million. Imagine what we could do with $158 million. I would much rather see twenty million go to early psychosis research, thirty million to go to indigenous health, twenty million to go to MS and autoimmune disease research, twenty million to go to dementia research, twenty million to homelessness, ten million to go to drug education, ten million to go to educational services for the bush, ten million to funding shelters for domestic violence, ten million to go to anxiety and depression research, and eight million to go to obesity research, just as an example. But not to a plebiscite to tell us that over two thirds of Australians support marriage equality. We got that already.
3. We do not have a history in Australia of deciding issues by plebiscite. We have a Westminster system of responsible government and a perfectly good working parliament with members and senators we all elect to make these decisions and to show leadership. And the High Court has strongly stated that it is in the purview of the Parliament to decide on questions of marriage. We have not called a plebiscite to take Australia to war in Iraq and Afghanistan or to bomb Syria. But apparently we need one to tell us that it is okay for gay and lesbian people to marry our partners. 
4. Plebiscites are not binding. After all that effort and all that money, no-one would have to take any notice of it. The decision would still then have to go before the Parliament for a vote.
5. Most worrying, a plebiscite would let loose the crazies and the bigots and the fundamentalists who would have this question decided based on the book of Leviticus and their unstated aversion to gay and lesbian sexuality. It would be acrimonious and very very hurtful to LGBTI people. Do not think for a moment that our better angels will be released as we gently discuss marriage equality over hot cocoa. The opponents of marriage equality are cashed up and belligerent. They fill the Comments sections of articles on the topic with judgement and vitriol. They are already out there at every opportunity to stop marriage equality.
6. Marriage equality is the right thing to do regardless of the vote count in a plebiscite. Every Australian in the country could hypothetically vote against it and it still wouldn’t make that decision right. It is discrimination that stops gay people from marrying. Gay people are treated differently to other people in this respect and are not equal with our straight fellow citizens before the law. Get that: as things stand, we gay people are second-class citizens. We keep the social contract and pay our taxes but are treated unequally. This sticks in our craw and will never ever be okay, which means that this issue is here for keeps. It will never ever go away until gay and lesbian people are not discriminated against in marriage. And the converse is true for me too. If every Australian voted in favour of marriage equality, although I would be hugely chuffed, that decision would not make it right. It is right, because it is the right thing to do. Jettisoning discriminations against people in our type of Western society is the right thing to do. Treating people equally is the right thing to do. Treating people unequally is immoral.
7. The LNP would have the opportunity of framing the question. When you frame the question, you can skew it one way or the other, as did John Howard in the Republic referendum. You can say something like, “Do you agree or disagree with the notion that marriage has always been throughout history between one man and one woman and that Australia should retain this time honoured definition”? It’s not hard to do. And if there is a plebiscite, conservatives in the Government will try to do it.
8. Talking up a plebiscite as being democratic is disingenuous. It is merely a cover statement for a poorly hatched idea that was essentially borne of one of Tony Abbott’s ‘captains’ calls’. The party itself did not decide. Under new leadership with a supportive Prime Minister, one would have thought that he could have pushed for this as a first salvo into bringing his party, taken over by conservatives, back to the liberal centre of Robert Menzies and into the twenty first century. But at this first hurdle, he fell.
9. No amount of Shakespearianesque rhetoric will ever take away the fact that my relationship and that of every other gay and lesbian person in the country would, by means of a plebiscite, be offered up for evaluation and appraisal by bigots, homophobes, rednecks, religious fundamentalists and opponents of every kind, people who are implacably opposed to marriage equality. A plebiscite invites everyone to discuss the gay and lesbian community as though we are objects. A plebiscite objectifies us and opponents will not hesitate to declare that our relationships are inferior and not worthy of being admitted to the halls of the married. These people do not have the right to evaluate our relationships. If the situation were reversed, there would be marching in the streets.

So we are left with a society at large that is absolutely supportive of marriage equality, a parliament which probably already has a majority of supporters were LNP Members given a free vote. There is plenty of will in the community for change. It is only a small group of people stopping this for the whole country: conservative Liberals and Nationals in the main, many of whom themselves will have a sizable support for marriage equality in their electorates but are just refusing to budge or ignoring their constituencies. Full credit to Nationals Member for Gippsland Darren Chester who has changed his position to support for marriage equality and has overwhelming support from his electorate. He cannot be the only one. So you have to ask in the face of clear and patent broad community support, what are these LNPers actually doing apart from just being bloody-minded? Is this new shiny Prime Minister, the darling of the moderates of the Right, going to pull his party back to the centre? Or not?

With Tony Abbott gone, we have the paradoxical situation of having both a supportive Prime Minister and a supportive Leader of the Opposition and yet we still cannot get this reform through. It really is just unbelievable. Is it any wonder that people are turned off politics in this country?

I still see the choice now as being stark: a party, the ALP, who will take marriage equality as its platform to the next election and present a bill to the Parliament within one hundred days of winning the election, and a party, the LNP, many of whose Members will oppose this reform to the death and who will make the country go through a very divisive and destructive costly plebiscite six to twelve months after the next election.

Kim Davis and the Freedom of Religion

I haven’t said a single word about Kim Davis, the Kentucky county clerk who started out illegally refusing marriage licences to gay and lesbian couples and then expanded it to all couples; 'because if I have to let gay and lesbian couples marry, then I won't let anyone get married - so there!' As you know, Federal Court judge David Bunning sentenced her to gaol time for contempt. Now, we have a whole bunch of moral crusaders, Christian fundies, opining stridently that freedom of religion is at stake. I call BS on that and here’s why.

The U.S., like Australia, has a separation of church and state. The statutes on which this convention relies have been there from the beginning: in the U. S. in the 1st Amendment, and in Oz, in s116 of the Constitution. These effectively bar any religion at all from being the ‘established’ or official religion of the state. Everyone’s free to worship as they wish, but no official favourite faith for the nation. As well, this convention makes sure that to hold a Government job, in either country, you don’t have to pass a religious test. There is no religious pre-requisite you have to attain before you can hold down a Government job. The State remains neutral or secular. This is as it should be.

Kim Davis, I suspect, is a simple woman who has not long ago had a conversion experience in a pentecostal type denomination. She will not have done the reading that say, an average gay person of faith would have done around issues of spirituality and sexuality. She will have been taught that homosexuality is a sin, and more likely, an abomination. She will not know any of the science around human sexuality. She will have been indoctrinated into conventional religious homophobia and LGBTI bigotry that have plagued the Christian Church and harmed so many millions of people for millennia. But she is in a position of power. This is her moment in the sun; her fifteen minutes of fame.

But her statutory power over these matters was curtailed, as was the power of Federal Courts and State Courts and lower district courts, once the Supreme Court of the U.S. decided that marriage between two people of the same gender cannot be banned by any State in the Union and that to do so would breach the anti-discrimination aspects of the U.S. Constitution; effectively saying that there is a Constitutional right for two people of the same gender to marry. Once that became law, there were consequences for every Government department and employee in the land. Now, whether you like it or not; it is the law. Whether you hate homosexuality or not; it is the law. Whether you believe that God will punish all homosexual people or not; it is the law. Whether you read the Bible literally and interpret its clearly historically contextualised passages as being absolutely pertinent to today (except for the bits about menstruation, barbering, agrarian practices, polyester and stoning people to death), or not; it is the law. It is the official legal understanding of what the Constitution means.

Given the historic and utterly clear mandated legal status that there is no established religion in America (or Australia) and that Government employees must do their jobs without fear or favour to ALL citizens and bring no discriminatory practice to the workplace at all – no exception – then Kim Davis must either begin to issue marriage licences to gay and lesbian couples or, if she is unable to do so, resign her office. What she cannot do, any more than anyone else in the United States can do, is discriminate in the administration of her statutory duties on the basis of her own personal beliefs. She cannot have it both ways. No Government employee in the entire U.S. nation is permitted to do that. No-one!

As I read the commentary of what happened in Judge Bunning's Federal Court, it is plain to see that Kim Davis was given more latitude to change her behaviour than most. The conservative judge, whose own views on gay marriage are understood to be non-supportive, was very accommodating of her, but she refused to co-operate and just stood dogged. He offered not to gaol her for contempt if she would go back out there and do her job lawfully. She refused. He even tried to help her understand that she was not being asked to agree with gay marriage or to support it, but to merely sign the appropriate documents as county clerk to say that the paperwork had been attended to properly, carefully, responsibly and legally; all i's dotted, all t's crossed. She refused. He then had no choice to but to gaol her as he had already made orders that the county clerk’s office perform its statutory duties according to law. Now, she was continuing to defy his existing orders to his face. And she had even tried to go over his head and sought leave to appeal to the Supreme Court but the Justices of the Supreme Court wouldn’t touch it.

She now has no choice but to resign if she will not change her behaviour. Or, if she will not resign, be removed by whatever means is prescribed for such a removal.

Now as for this being a breach of freedom of religion; sorry, an emphatic no. Kim Davis is free to worship wherever she wants, to believe whatever she wants and to practise her faith in whatever way personally she sees fit. No-one is stopping her. And neither should they be able to. She has the same rights as all Americans in this regard. But like all other Americans, that right does not guarantee her immunity from the law should she discriminate in her statutory duties. Such discrimination is a crime. And defying Court orders is also a crime. No-one takes any joy in seeing a woman of her age being punished behind bars. From what I understand, Judge Bunning was none too thrilled at having to impose a custodial sentence on her. But don't forget: she didn't have to be there. She resolutely chose to continue to defy a Federal Court Judge. She is being characterised by the Christian Right figuratively as a martyr. But Kim Davis is clearly NOT a martyr.

Mike Thompson 2015 Detroit Free Press

The U.S. and Australia live by the rule of law. Each of us is a nation of laws. They are carefully calibrated. Our rights have limits and we all understand this. We have a right to a free press and free speech and free movement and a right to associate with various groups. But the press cannot knowingly write falsehoods about people and free speech is curtailed at the point of hate speech or the inciting of others to violence. Freedom of association is curtailed at the point of joining proscribed or criminal groups. Freedom of movement is curtailed at defence base and gaol perimeters, for example. Freedom of religion is also curtailed when your rights to worship impinge upon my rights as a citizen. All rights have delimitations. People’s mainstream or wacky idiosyncratic belief systems get trumped by our constitutions and conventions and our laws when it comes to established religion and no religious discrimination by the State. This situation in the U.S. is not remotely a freedom of religion issue. It is a rule of law issue. Imagine if strict orthodox Jews or strict Moslems in Government jobs decided by some stricture of their food or dress codes to no longer assist people who did not adhere to their belief. There would be an enormous hue and cry. So too for the likes of Kim Davis. The Bible belt is still bleating that America is no longer living that ‘ole time Gospel’ type Christianity; or they do when it suits them. They are just going to have evolve.

Kim Davis has in one sense, done America a favour. She has reminded the whole nation of the 1^st Amendment to their Constitution and how rights have culturally-imposed limits. She has reminded us all why the separation of church and state is so important.

PS. If you're interested, I did write another piece with a similar theme, called Of Church and State and Marriage Equality on this blog.

Of Church and State and Marriage Equality

The Australia of the last few years has seen religious fundamentalism attempt to show its might by pushing its way to the head of the pack in political and social issues. It’s not so much radical jihadism in Australia as it is rabid evangelical fundamentalism. We’ve seen this in issues such as religious education in schools, school chaplaincy programs, occasionally abortion, and perhaps no-where more prominently than in the debate over marriage equality for gay and lesbian people. We have even seen the unedifying spectacle of leaders of Government and Opposition making the three yearly pilgrimage to the Australian Christian Lobby’s conference and spruiking a sanitised message for them in the hope they will support them publicly and thus having to offer them a platform that they believe the ACL will support; as though the ACL is the repository of all things Christian and represent the faith across Australia – which they don’t!

Whatever happened to the idea of separation of church and state? Isn’t that supposed to be enshrined in Australian public life for the good of the nation? After all, haven’t we been able to avoid most of the ugly and dangerous religious squabbles of Europe and elsewhere precisely because of this separation?

Section 116 of the Australian Constitution specifically refers to religion and allows for four tenets:

“The Commonwealth shall not make any law for establishing any religion, or for imposing any religious observance, or for prohibiting the free exercise of any religion, and no religious test shall be required as a qualification for any office or public trust under the Commonwealth”.

It’s pretty great, isn’t it. It draws on, and outdoes I think, America’s First Amendment, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”. While America’s is specific in denying the right of a religion to be the ‘established’ or official religion of the land and denying the right of a government to stop people exercising their right to religious freedom, it stops there. Australia’s on the other hand goes a little further explicitly:

•       No established religion
•       No government can legislate to impose any religious observance
•       No government can legislate to prohibit the free exercise of religious observance
•       No religious test or benchmark for holding any public office.

It is therefore not uncommon to hear some say that because of these mighty four, that the separation of church and state is enshrined in our Constitution. In fact, such separation is not enshrined in the Constitution and the High Court has explicitly said so in the State Aid or Defence of Government Schools case in 1981.

Justice Sir Ronald Wilson said:

The fact is that s.116 is a denial of legislative power to the Commonwealth and no more … The provision therefore cannot answer the description of a law which guarantees within Australia the separation of church and state.

Justice Sir Ninian Stephen said s.116:

... cannot readily be viewed as a repository of some broad statement of principle concerning the separation of church and state, from which may be distilled the detailed consequences of such separation.

So, s116 is merely a “denial of legislative power”, and a welcome one, don’t get me wrong, but not a “broad statement of principle”, a fleshed out doctrine of separation of church and state. But there is a loose convention of behaviour that has been followed in Australia because of this Constitutional general attitude. And it is essential that we keep such a convention in mind when tackling social issues. I want the clergy out of people’s bedrooms and out of people’s hearts. I want adults to be free to make their own decisions about their own lives and not have to worry about breaking the law. I am not a libertarian, but in this, yes, I want small government and small church.

So why do I think s116 is a welcome statement of delimitation? Simply this. I believe that both the church and the legislature work best when they do not have jurisdiction over the other. Allow me to refine that. I like the fact that people can go to church or the mosque or the temple without fear or interference from the Government. I like the fact they can do that without having to look over their shoulder to see who’s following them. I like the fact that our successive Governments have the freedom to legislate for the common good and do not have to do so from any religious premise or any sacred text. Thus, though Fred Nile insists on calling Australia a Christian country, and does so only because of our historical connections, in fact and in law, we are not. And we shouldn’t be. We are not a Christian country in law. And we are not a Christian country in the lived experience of this multi-cultural, multi-faith secular land. There is no established religion in Australia. While Fred Nile might be an antidisestablishmentarian, I certainly am not (and I can’t tell you how long I’ve been waiting to use that word in a serious piece of prose)!

Australia has never wanted a theocracy, a country headed up by clerics and priests. In fact, ever since the days of Samuel Marsden ‘the flogging parson’ of early colonial NSW times, we have had a distinct mistrust of the clergy and the Church. We’ve seen theocracy at work in Iran and Saudi Arabia. Clerics running the show, telling everyone what is acceptable thought and behaviour and what is not and applying penalties and punishments for infringements. Of course, the dominant religion in such countries gets to wield the power. And such religious authority finds the personal lives of its citizenry by far and away the easiest thing to target: gender, sexuality, marriage, children, and relationships. Lots of rules around this stuff. And lots of punishments because of those rules.

So, for me, Government free to govern for the common good of the nation, with the Church (or mosque or temple) free to enrich the spiritual lives of people is the best way to go. That’s not to say that I think either are necessarily doing a great job. I don’t. Both government and church could really lift their game. However, there are two exceptions for me concerning this necessary separation; one where I think Government should step in to the religious life of a nation, and the other, where religion should step in and have a say about governance.

The first is in the matter of religious coercion. This can be either overt or covert. It can be socially approved and wrapped in sacralised language or it can be secretive and very nasty. I am thinking here of cults. I think there is a place for removing children from some of these groups, and maybe even some adults in certain cases. No ‘right’ of freedom of religious observance should protect adults indoctrinating kids into harmful belief and practice. Removals have been done, eg., in 1987, six children were removed from the cult The Family in Lake Eildon Victoria, and more recently in 2012, twelve children were removed from an incestuous religious cult in rural NSW. No religion, I don’t care what it is, should have the freedom to harm people or coerce people to remain observant for fear of leaving. If there is physical or psychological harm visited upon adherents, there is a place for Government and its law enforcement agencies. Such coercive behaviour is not even remotely authentic spirituality.

The second caveat I mentioned above is when Governments are out of step with ethical considerations, where people are glossed over or ignored and legislation with the bottom line becomes the dominating factor, eg., environmental concerns. Recently, we have seen religion speak truth to power: Pope Francis on the world stage calling for a halt to unfettered capitalism and industrialisation to the detriment of the planet in his call to world action on climate change, and more locally, we have seen here both Christian and Moslem clerics call for serious action on climate change to the present Federal Government in Australia. We have also heard the Churches speak up about indigenous rights and mental health programs for example. And so they should.

And so to the issue of the moment. Marriage equality in Australia is the big issue right now where the maintenance of separation of church and state is crucial. Perhaps no other factor has caused the LGBTI community so much distress and pain as the Christian Church. The Church in Australia is a diverse group. It is certainly not a homogeneous entity with one set of beliefs and praxis. Rather, it is a multitude of beliefs around the centrality of Christ as well as huge differences in style and structure of liturgy.

However, one section of this group is the loudest and the most strident, and for me as a result of what I see as arrogance, the most objectionable. In their everyday vernacular, they would call themselves ‘Bible-believing Christians’ but others would call them ‘evangelical* fundamentalists’, a group that represents for me now, all that is wrong with religion. With an emphasis on a sola scriptura model of Scripture that is virtually Bibliolatry and a model of interpretation that is essentially face-value, literalist, conservative, rejecting of scholarship that differs from their traditional view, with a focus on a few sacred cows, plus a willingness to use it as a weapon against dissenters, and all this favoured over any sense of human lived experience, this crowd in times past were the ‘holy rollers’, the ‘God-botherers’, the ‘Bible bashers’ and Australians have traditionally steered well clear of them.

There is absolutely no truth other than their truth about all matters and especially it would seem, about gay sexuality. They are not just oppositional to marriage equality but belligerently so. I have come to conclude after engaging them over the last few years on matters gay that they trichotomise the world, ie., they divide it into three groups: real Christians (them), false fake Christians (others who profess Christian spirituality but not according to their model) and the unsaved (ever other human being in the world that lives or who has ever lived or who will ever live who doesn’t have a particular kind of salvation experience). And there is no budging them from this. They will go down with the ship on this one. Jesus himself could appear before them and say, “hey guys, you haven’t quite got it right” and they wouldn’t listen. They are so rusted on to this model which has the Bible as their single and only argument that they appear to me to be totally lacking any insight as to how ridiculous, how absurd, how offensive, how rude, and how arrogant they usually sound.

So their view of gay marriage? Totally and completely against it and always will be. Hell will freeze over before they give a millimetre on this. They will never agree to marriage equality because they will never ever accept gay sexuality as being a valid life. Let me repeat what I have oft repeated elsewhere. For them, a gay sexuality is unequivocally and without the slightest shred of doubt: a sin, a rejection of God, a repudiation of all things Godly and holy, selfish, indulgent, against the order of nature and a punishment by God and deserving of eternal punishment, “for such as these will not inherit the Kingdom of God”, a choice and a reprehensible lifestyle. And because of this, they see our relationships as counterfeit, not real love, fake, based in lust or deviancy and therefore, totally inferior to straight relationhips. They will quote you chapter and verse to prove every word they say. They will also ignore every argument against this model because of their Bible and the way they see it. They will ignore all science, all psychology, all biology, all genetics, all anthropology, all sociology, all history, all scholarship. Its’ just the Bible, the Bible, the Bible, the Bible, the Bible, the Bible.

So when we talk about a plebiscite for all Australians to decide whether to continue discrimination or not over marriage equality, ie., to treat one group of Australians differently before the law compared to the rest of Australia, I don’t feel at all comfortable in knowing that evangelical fundamentalists get to have a say about the nature and quality of my relationship and those of every other gay person in the land. It’s like asking Kim Jong Un if he feels that South Koreans need a bit more support in their defence capabilities. Why would you ask a sworn enemy of LGBTI people to decide our fate? I think it is wrong. And unjust. And blurring the convention of separation of church and state.

The marriage equality debate in Australia is a fair debate and I don’t even mind having a robust argument with opponents. But let’s not do that on religious grounds. This is not a religious question, despite fundamentalists declaring that it is. Half of them believe it is a demonic force having its sway over the land and inviting the judgment of God. Seriously. I actually mean it. But no, we are not talking about religious ceremonies or religious observance being effected in any way. We are talking about gay people having the right to marry their partner in an authorised civil ceremony, as do 70% of heterosexual Australians right now, and having their duly solemnised relationship affirmed by society represented by their family and friends. That’s all. That’s it. It’s hardly the apocalypse.

The religionists can do what they like in their churches. But I do think that we will see the day when some churches, not all, will be happy to marry people in their beautiful buildings too in the future. Some will, some won’t. And some gay people would love that, and some gay people wouldn’t darken the doorway of a church after our treatment by traditional Christianity. And I wouldn’t blame them for a moment. But gays getting married in churches is not what is being proposed here.

I still think the Parliament is the place for this decision. A plebiscite will be an open invitation to the fundamentalists to pour all over this with their objections to gay people. It is just bigotry. And wow, have you noticed how much they don’t like being called bigots? They do not like being called out. But yes it is bigotry; nothing less. Religious bigotry. And it is homophobia too in many cases. As a society, we have realised that racism and sexism are to be deplored and we all as one work to ensure they do not occur. No religious person is tolerated offering religious rationales for racism or bigotry. That time is gone. It is totally unacceptable. I think it is high time we moved onto treating homophobia in the same manner. It is just not acceptable in the twenty first century with what we now know about human sexuality, and gay sexuality in particular, to tolerate homophobic ‘authoritative’ statements by anyone, be they pastor or priest.

The proposal for marriage equality in Australia is not a religious issue. It is a civil issue and a human rights issue, whose institution should be decided by the Parliament. We should adhere to the convention of the separation of church and state in this matter; a convention that has served us well, and not allow fundamentalist Christians to highjack the decision or to steer it in any meaningful way. Their myopic impoverished spirituality has its place in their churches and their study groups and in their own personal lives but has no place in deciding the outcome of how this nation decides to organise itself with regard to its gay and lesbian tax-paying citizens and how their relationships are to be recognised. I trust the good sense of the Australian people to continue to eschew such stupidity.

*I do not mean by this that all evangelicals are fundamentalists. Clearly, they are not. I know plenty of evangelical people with whom I may no longer hold the same model of scripture, but who I regard as kind and loving people and sophisticated thinkers. So this paper is not referring to such as them.

Some Levity

To lighten the tone after that, I include a Letter to The Editor of the Newcastle Herald by a former friend of mine who told me I was ‘a false teacher’ and that ‘better had there been a millstone tied around my neck and I be cast into the sea rather than I lead anyone astray’ which is precisely what he thought I was doing. Last week, Herald journalist Joanne McCarthy interviewed me about the local bishops’ response to marriage equality (surprisingly not bad for senior clerics) and he wrote the letter in response. It is the usual stuff, devoid of anything remotely sophisticated. I didn’t know that even ‘etc’ is sinful and wrong, but apparently it is. It also peddles out the fear mongering at the end (fundamentalists love ratcheting up the fear and retribution dial) with a vengeful angry God judging our nation ‘to its peril’ should we allow marriage equality. But it also had a hilarious response in the Comments section that I just could not ignore. Whoever you are Sarcastic Sam, thank you for your contribution.

JOANNE McCarthy declares she is annoyed that a marriage celebrant is required by our law to say, “marriage is the union of a man and a woman” (‘‘My wedding checklist’’ Herald 15/8). 

However, I believe God will be happy with these words, because this is how he designed marriage to be.   According to my beliefs, God invented sex.  He therefore has the right to write the rules under which we should enjoy it, and he has done. 

For one thing, he makes it abundantly clear in his book, the Bible, that he opposes homosexual acts.  

If our law allowed marriage of a man to a man, or a woman to a woman, it would be condoning homosexual acts and therefore be at conflict with God. 

Homosexual acts, along with adultery, gossip, greed, hate, lust, lying, pride, etc, are all wrong, primarily because God has decreed it to be so.  

I believe setting the rules is God’s exclusive right, not ours, and any nation that changes them does so at its peril.  

Sarcastic Sam 

Very well written Frank. This is easily the most lucid, compelling and sensible argument against same sex marriage I have read. There is simply no counter argument to the facts and sound logic you have presented. Let's see those crazy gay marriage advocates try and dismantle this substantial argument. I think it's game, set and match to you on this one. I can't think of any plausible debate against the opinion you have put forward. Well done.