Report into marriage

Last Monday, the House of Representative's standing committee on social policy and legal affairs issued its advisory report into the Green's proposes Marriage Equality Amendment Bill 2012 (don't you just love how even the titles given to legislation tells you how you are meant to think).

The Report's forward is worth reading, if only to gain an understanding of how assumption-ridden the 'debate' on same sex marriage has become, even at a parliamentary level.  

The parliamentary committee's chair is Graham Perrett MP. Graham is one of those mischievous types who proudly announces to all and sundry that he is Catholic, but also that he is pro gay marriage.  The news media laps this up like a dachshund yogurt.

Sloganism

As though the 'I'm Catholic' act was not enough for Mr Perrett, he (or perhaps some clever PR person) has also come up with a slogan which has gained extensive media coverage.  The foward says, with a sense of smugness: 

“It is important to remember that God did not write the Marriage Act”

I take it that the supposed effect of this slogan is for the reader to think "Yeah, you know what, that's exactly what is wrong with those Christian people - they don't get that the Marriage Act was not written by God". 

Mr Perrett must be given credit for being savvy enough to detect that so long as you come up with a good slogan, its superficial attractiveness, but substantive hollowness, will simply be ignored.  

Definition of marriage

The report does not appear to contain any proper debate about what marriage is.  Instead, it proceeds on the basis that marriage is the same as love, albeit love expresses through a public ceremony.  In this respect, the forward to the report states:  

“We also know what marriage signifies. Marriage is about the love and commitment that two people have for each other. The sexual orientation of the parties to the marriage is not the issue; it is what they pledge to each other in the marriage itself”

I find this assumption, that marriage is no more than love, both socially concerning and in as being a false premises adopted to enable a conclusion that marriage should be available to any people who express love.

While love is very important (or perhaps very useful) in a marriage, the reduction of marriage to no more than love is problematic for the institution's stability. What if love ends? What if love for another arises? 

What about the children?

The report is quite silent on the effect of same sex marriage on children. In parts, and ostrich like, it explains that questions like same sex adoption etc are matters for Australian States, not the Commonwealth. 

The avoidance of a mature discussion of effects on children is made all the easier by reducing the definition of marriage to nothing more than publicly expressed, and state-sanctioned, love. This avoids a discussion of the function of marriage as a means to raise a stable society through raising children in the best possible environment. 

I do not see how the discussion of children cannot be perhaps the primary focus when the legislated change to marriage laws will mean, for same sex couples with children, that those children, and seemingly necessarily, will not be being raised by their birth parents.  It baffles me to understand how this can be essentially ignored.

As I have said elsewhere on this blog, if you are minded to gain an appreciation of how important a link to biological parents is, have a look at current adoption laws and policies. In the sphere of adoption, nothing seems more important than for adoptive parents to appreciate that it is an unfortunate circumstance that has delivered them their adopted child, and that the connection between that child and its birth parents must be maintained as far as is possible at all cost.  It seems that this mandate falls away when discussion turns to gay people. It is a clash of ideology: children's interests and rights carry the day in the world of adoption, but the gay couple's rights carry the day in the gay rights universe. Crazy.

Social engineering

One final point to note is the committee's express hope that the changes to the law will achieve, all things being equal, a degree of social engineering.  The report says:

"It is now time to enact this legislation and raise future generations of children who won't believe that once upon a time same-sex couples in Australia could not marry."

It is concerning to think that the Parliament of Australia is now proposing to introduce laws to make your children think differently for the way you may want them to think.  I never asked Mr Perrett and his mates to raise my children.