ADVOCATES for same-sex marriage have openly stated their ultimate agenda is to “rid society of the institution of marriage altogether”, a Brisbane-based Catholic bioethicist has warned.
Queensland Bioethics Centre director Ray Campbell said “gay literature” frequently expressed this view and many of these advocates “understood the implications of same-sex marriage better than many in our community, including some politicians”.
Mr Campbell said such legislation, if passed, would discriminate against the millions of Australians who have entered into marriage “on a massive scale”.
He also questioned whether Catholic priests could continue as State celebrants and if they would be protected from discrimination charges if they refused to conduct same-sex marriages.
“Most advocates for same-sex marriage talk of it as extending marriage to same sex couples,” Mr Campbell said.
“This is simplistic.
“What is being asked for is for the State to change its definition, and hence its understanding, of what marriage is.
“In other words, the advocates of same-sex marriage want to create a new public institution and they want to call this new institution ‘marriage’.”
Mr Campbell’s comments come as prominent Australians, most recently Federal Government Finance Minister Penny Wong, have spoken out in support of the legalisation of same sex marriage.
Earlier this year, an attempt by the Greens to legalise same-sex marriage was voted down in the Senate. In recent weeks, national union leaders have clashed on the subject.
ALP national executive member and national secretary of the Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees’ Association Joe De Bruyn has called the Government’s decision to support a Green motion on gay marriage as “electoral suicide”.
“The Greens motion calls on MPs to gauge their constituents’ views “on ways to achieve equal treatment for same-sex couples, including marriage”.
However, Australian Worker’s Union head Paul Howes was reported as saying he thought it was “inevitable that this change will happen in our society, as it is happening around the rest of the world”.
Mr Campbell said such a change would have far greater implications than many realised.
“The former public institution of marriage, as a permanent and faithful commitment of a man and a woman to each other, open to the begetting of children, which has been supported by the State for centuries, will no longer exist,” he said.
“The public institution which millions of Australians have entered into with the support of the State, will no longer exist.
“This institution will be replaced by something else with the same name, but different to what all these couples entered into when they got married.
“It appears to me that such a move would be discriminatory against married couples on a massive scale.”
Mr Campbell said from the Church’s perspective a number of other issues would arise.
“If marriage was redefined to include same-sex marriage, would clergy, who in Australia act as State celebrants of marriage when they are conducting marriages within their own church, be protected from discrimination charges for refusing to conduct same-sex marriages within their own churches?
“Perhaps even more importantly, if the State’s understanding of marriage changes such that it is no longer compatible with what marriage truly is, could Catholic priests continue to act as State celebrants in celebrating marriage within our own Church.
“Would this be a form of cooperation with an immoral law?
“Perhaps we would have to revert to the situation which exists in other countries where a couple would have to go through the process of satisfying the civil law before a civil celebrant, and then come to the Church to be married in the Church?”
