Moves to legalise same-sex marriage raise freedom concerns
PROTECTION for religious freedom and freedom of conscience looms as a growing concern for Catholics as political pressure builds for legislative approval of same-sex marriage.
Federal Opposition Leader Bill Shorten promised at the Australian Labor Party’s national conference last weekend that if he were to become Prime Minister his government, within 100 days of taking office, would move to make same-sex marriage legal.
The Labor conference voted to allow its MPs a conscience vote if and when same-sex marriage legislation came before Parliament during the remainder of the current parliamentary term and/or during the following term.
It would then become mandatory for all ALP parliamentarians to vote in support of same-sex marriage.
Barrister Sophie York, who lectures in Public International Law and Jurisprudence at the University of Notre Dame in Sydney, is among Catholics concerned about how possible legislation approving same-sex marriage could impinge on religious freedom and freedom of conscience.
“Generally in this case sexual freedom is being regarded as trumping freedom of religion and freedom of speech and that’s a problem,” Ms York said.
She said suggestions that under same-sex marriage law exemptions would apply to allow clergy and military chaplains to operate in accordance with Church teaching were no consolation.
Ms York said such exemptions failed to deal with other instances where freedom of religion and conscience may not be respected such as in the case of civil celebrants or businesses or individuals who held a particular belief.
“In our culture and history and in international treaties which we are signatories to we uphold freedom of religion,” she said.
“It’s a paramount right.
“This (movement to legalise same-sex marriage in this way) says sexual freedom is a higher right.”
Ms York said any legislation aiming to protect freedom of religion would have to be couched in a way that recognised it as a paramount right.
She said it would be useful for a plebiscite or referendum to be called to allow Australians to have a say on such an important issue.
The Australian Catholic Bishops Conference, in its recent pastoral letter “Don’t Mess With Marriage”, raised similar concerns.
“People who adhere to the perennial and natural definition of marriage will be characterised as old-fashioned, even bigots, who must answer to social disapproval and the law,” the bishops said.
“Even if certain exemptions were allowed at first for ministers of religion and places of worship, freedom of conscience, belief and worship will be curtailed in important ways.”
The bishops cited several examples from overseas where this had occurred.
These included an instance in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, United States, where Christian ministers were ordered to perform same-sex weddings or face 180 days’ imprisonment for each day the ceremony was not performed and fines of $1000 per day; and another where some British MPs had threatened to remove the marriage celebrant licences from clergy who failed to conduct “same-sex marriages”.
“Clergy in Holland, France, Spain, the US and Australia have been threatened with prosecution for ‘hate speech’ for upholding their faith tradition’s position on marriage,” the bishops said in the letter.
