The ACL’s Jim Wallace was on Sunrise this morning.
Here’s what he says.
He breaks Godwin’s law about 1:51 in. Woohoo.
“The issue is that marriage is about children”
It’s so shrill and angry.
Here’s what Queensland Director Wendy Francis said afterwards.
Which is, quite frankly, illogical given that her national director just spent 8 minutes on national television where the rights of children were his only argument. And it has been their consistently reported position on the issue since day dot.
That’s their problem with the gay marriage debate. Here’s mine.
It’s not about Jesus.
This is especially the problem because in just about everybody’s eyes – as demonstrated in the video above – the gay marriage debate is conservative Christians vs everybody else (though Kochie acknowledges that Muslims and Jews don’t like gay marriage either). And the representatives of conservative Christianity in Australia, the ACL, don’t want to talk about Jesus. On national television. They want to talk about motherhood and fatherhood. Two good things. But secondary.
The gay marriage debate is primarily about identity. Nobody is questioning why sexuality should be the locus of human identity. If the premise is true – and it’s not – then the case for gay marriage being a human right is a lay down misere.
Talking about our human identity coming several steps in the process before sexual attraction (or orientation) and sexual identity (gay/lesbian/straight/bi/a) means we can coherently talk about our real identity being found in being created in God’s image, for a purpose, and being able to find a true expression of humanity in Jesus.
Knowing Jesus is the basis of a person discovering, and living out, the purpose they were created for. People are free to reject that, and should be free to choose their own identity outside of social pressure, and even the biological/environmental factors that shape sexual orientation. This argument is harder to win, but it’s ultimately more convincing and more faithful than throwing one’s hands in the air and screaming “won’t somebody think of the children”…
I’d like my children to grow up in a world where their identity isn’t chosen for them based on who they’re attracted to – which isn’t a choice they’ll necessarily get to make anyway – I want them to be free to choose to identify and find their value in serving the Lord Jesus. This is my problem with the ACL, and the gay marriage debate.
From a policy point of view, I think I’ve said this before, but Michael Bird said it heaps better, why don’t we lobby for the state to get out of defining marriage altogether. Let people call their registered relationships whatever they want.