Now there’s an intriguing title for a blog post – well I have to do something to stand out now Mr S and Malcolm are here 🙂
I have next to me a postcard brought back for me on Sunday by my co-author. It is from the Catholic Church and is going to go to my MP, and it urges him to vote against the Same Sex Couples Bill, which comes to the House of Commons next week. It has already been called an ‘anti-gay’ postcard by some, although there is nothing in it to warrant that. I am so fed up with this issue, and so fed up in particular with it being used to somehow define Christian belief, that I had more than half decided to say nothing more about it here – not least as my views are, even for me, wishy-washy. But as I am going to sign it and send it to my MP tomorrow, then I ought to have the guts to come down off the fence on which I tend to sit – if only so that, to paraphrase Mr Sales, the iron does not enter into my soul.
I am wary of this topic because I loathe the idea that anyone is defining my Faith by what it is against, and then pretending that it ‘hates’ a certain sort of person. It hates no one – we are all children of God. If it hated ‘sinners’, it would ‘hate’ us all. I’m not saying (because it would be wrong and ridiculous) that there are not Christians who do hate gay people – but they don’t do it as Christians and it is not a Christian response; those gay activists who pretend it is are, I hope, not speaking for anyone save themselves. There is, here, a deliberate attempt to inflame tempers – and it is a rotten way to present any topic.
Marriage is something we all thought we knew the definition of: one man, one woman (for life, or, increasingly and sadly, till either of us finds someone else) – a union blessed by God, modelled on the relationship between Him and His Church; also the essential unit for bringing children up. There is a wider, societal dimension to marriage – which is why many societies have given tax breaks to those who marry. In this country no party said it would change that if elected. Now a Coalition Government is going to do just that.
It is for these reasons that the Catholic Church wishes us to send cards to our MPs – and because I agree, I will do so.
It isn’t, for me a burning issue. My country already allows gay couples the rights of those married in the form of civil partnership. I am told gay marriage has no effect on heterosexual marriage, then I am told that we may have to abandon the idea of divorce on grounds of adultery because lawyers cannot decide what would constitute that for gay couples; no effect – not really.
I know my MP, and I know he won’t vote as I want. But he’s a good man and does a good job, so I daresay I’ll vote for him all the same. But I do wish this topic buried seven fathoms deep – it isn’t what Christianity is about. Sinners who wish to sin will, like the poor, be with us always – it is a feature of modern society that we can erect that habit into a point of principle.
All Along the Watchtower 
On this issue I have come to agree with our libertarians, marriage is none of the state’s business. Allow civil unions (of more or less anything human) under the partnership laws for tax purposes and leave it to the churches for the subject of marriage. The monogamous marriage is a Christian construct, late in the first millennium if I recall correctly, let it remain there for those of us who hold it sacred.
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Yes, this is a hard one unless one takes a hard line on either side – and I think part of the difficulty stems from just that.
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It’s a very hard one, and tends to lead to tempers flaring as well.
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In the wise words of Howar Stearn…” let homosexuals get married. They have a right to be miserable too”
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Now there’s a thought 🙂 x
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Christian marriage is a sacrament between God and the two people; a man and woman, who marrying each other. End of story.
Holy Matrimony is one of the seven sacraments of the Church and cannot be changed.
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Yes, I agree Malcolm. I really think was a most unwise move by the Government.
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My view is that the Government ought not to vote to “allow” same-sex couples to be married. Rather the Government ought to legislate to remove itself from the field of defining what constitutes marriage altogether.
Marriage is, in a Christian context, a form of the setting apart of a particular relationship between two people, for life – that they may be joined as one, so to speak. They marry themselves in front of their friends and family in an open ceremony, and, with hope, that community helps to sustain the couple through their lives and to sustain their marriage.
That doesn’t require any Government interference whatsoever.
Government can get out of the way, and get out of peoples lives, once again.
So churches can then define whether they believe marriage is reserved for different-sexes alone, or otherwise.
Of course, this creates difficulties if also the people, through the election of a Government, want to ‘support’ marriages (and families of those married), because they wouldn’t ‘control’ the regulation of who could be married. I don’t think that this issue is insuperable though, there could be some regulatory oversight to make it work.
Once again, the solution is less government – get the Government out of the way.
Of course, I am one of those who would like the C of E to vote in Synod to allow same-sex marriages – and in view of the nature of the C of E and it’s establishment, I can see that the Government may wish to legislate for the C of E. However, the Government has no business legislating for RCs or Quakers or anyone else.
At the end of the day, the way forward is to remove Government from the picture, but in practice there would be little changes, other than Government defining the meaning of the word ‘marriage’. It’s not the British way to have government bodies telling us what certain words mean in our language – that’s something the French do. Let’s not go down that road, but take the common sense route. Come on Cameron!
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I would agree. This seems very un-English – and entirely unnecessary.
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