By Lisa Severine Nolland
As Christians we believe there is a clear and positive biblical line on marriage and family, one which is good for all people, not just people of faith, and which we join with other Christian groups in affirming. However, there are various other aspects to the issues surrounding gay marriage (GM) of which many appear ignorant. GM is a part of a much larger, and indeed we would say insidious, social engineering project aimed at deconstructing marriage and the family, stripping heterosexuality of its ‘privileged’ social, legal and cultural position (under the damning accusation of ‘heterosexism’) and allowing various forms of sexuality and family to enter mainstream UK life. If this seems impossible, could any of us have imagined that the cause of GM would be embraced by a Tory Government even a decade ago?
Gay Marriage: Hidden implications and impact
FAMILY GM revolutionizes the concept of family for all of us, not just would-be-married gays and lesbians, through how it culturally redefines what is understood by marriage and parenthood. GM privileges adult needs and desires. GM also leads to the intentional, socially-sanctioned deprivation of children of either their biological fathers or mothers and new cultural norms which deny the claims of biology for all children. This will lead to further family fragmentation and the damaging of children. -1 (see below for further comment)
FREEDOM OF CONSCIENCE GM will ensure further loss of religious liberty and freedom of conscience as people of all faiths (and none) increasingly self-censor and/or collude to avoid breaking the law. As a cultural institution embedded in the local community, the church will eventually be forced to perform GM. -2
SEXUAL MINORITIES Once GM is accepted, it will be much harder to refuse the rights of other sexual minorities in the West who are presently making the same public demands as the LGBT and on the identical basis (’This is my “orientation” and identity, it is innate and unchangeable, I am not hurting anyone, I have been discriminated against’, kids with this form of “not yet out” sexuality are presently being bullied and damaged’ etc.) And of course, how will we be able to forbid polygamy (a heterosexual minority lifestyle), which has been a historical reality for centuries and is still present, though under the radar? -3
‘PROGRESSIVE’ MARRIAGE GM advocates demand the rights and status of GM, but do not insist upon sexual exclusivity within marriage (with the exception of Jeffrey John, whose views have long since been eclipsed). What is worse, GM leaders publicly boast that its ‘open’, ‘progressive’ marital model (sexual non-monogamy) is a significant improvement on that of Traditional Marriage. -4
1 THE FAMILY GM focuses on adults. Though all marriages do not produce children,all children have mothers and fathers. GM apologists claim that children do not need both — two of one or the other works just as well. However, IVF children created for LG couples are genetic half-orphans; they are automatically, intentionally deprived of one of two of their biological parents and all that is embodied in and represented by that parent in terms of nurture, modelling and relationship, heritage and ancestry, kinship etc
Regardless of ‘progressive’ thought, children still need and want the two people who created them and do best in this environment. Thousands of studies have shown that the complementary investment of mothers and fathers in a low-conflict marriage ensures maximum outcomes for children.
Moreover, heterosexuals who wish to ‘find themselves’ by abandoning their families will be given added incentive, because that is what matters most, not commitment to biological offspring who can (it will be claimed) flourish in various settings.
Even as no-fault divorce was sold to an ignorant public decades ago — a good idea in general, with minimal overall impact and a negligible downside — so too with GM. However, we now realise no-fault divorce has been a disaster for the family, especially children. So too will be the fall-out from GM. Sociologist David Blankenhorn’s The Future of Marriage, 2009, 127-138, gives sobering research from countries with GM.
Elizabeth Marquardt, Norvell Glenn and Karen Clark, “My Daddy’s Name is Donor: A Pathbreaking Study of Young Adults Conceived through Sperm Donation.” NY: Institute for American Values, 2010
2 FREEDOM OF CONSCIENCE As this new sexual orthodoxy becomes embedded in law and culture, children lose but also we as a society lose as everyone is forced to maintain these views or keep quiet, and thus collude with the new orthodoxy. Society becomes increasingly totalitarian.
There are many examples of brave but ignored souls who dare to dissent in the public realm and are subsequently hung out to dry, individuals like Gary McFarlane, Dr Sheila Matthews and the Bulls. Unless things change, the church, as a cultural institution embedded in the local community, will eventually be forced to perform GM. Tory MP Mike Weatherley draws clear parallels between gay adoption and gay marriage below; and Cameron’s recent remarks indicate he would agree. As Sir Adrian Fulford, gay High Court Judge, stated in the past, as various LGBT legal advances are made, ‘the more certain we can be that Pink Law will not be an anomaly but rather the shape of things to come’; http://www.pinknews.co.uk/news/articles/2005-9698.html
3 ALTERNATIVE SEXUALITIES The opening of a Pandora’s Box of alternative sexualities will make for a sexual free-for-all and mean human sexual relationships have almost no constraints or ideal patterns to follow (consent becomes the only significant qualifier). Any normative idea of family begins to collapse. Ironically, LGBT leaders deny the claims of these other sexual minorities because the cost for them is too high. So, on the basis of ‘non-discrimination’ the public must embrace the LGBT ‘cause’ while failing to realise that official LGBT groups discriminate too. This is hugely important: Either the LGBT has to admit where this sexual liberation movement is heading (the kiss of death—the public is not ready for total sexual meltdown) OR admit they too discriminate, and thus invalidate their criticisms of people like me.
Four recent sexual minorities to ‘come out’ are the polys, the zoos, kink and MAP :
Polys or polyamorists ‘came out’ in the UK on 30th August, 2011 on ITV’s ‘This Morning’. Polyamory means ‘plural loves’ and involves conjugal groups of 3 or more who are often bisexual, meaning they have lovers of both sexes simultaneously. Polys are presently waiting for the verdict on their case for recognition and respect in a BC, Canada, court.
Zoos engage in loving, consenting, psychosexual relationships with animals, and are now ‘coming out’, according to the 5th October 2011’s Telegraph article, ‘The dark side of sexual freedom: American “zoophiles” take on the language of equality’. A prominent zoo spokesperson is Cody Beck, for whom being a zoo is ‘like being gay in the 1950s. You feel like you have to hide, that if you say it out loud, people will look at you like a freak.’
Kink (Bondage, Discipline, Submission, Domination, Sadism and Masochism) made its official debut last summer (2010) in the prestigious Therapy Today of the BACP (the largest and broadest psychotherapeutic body in the UK). For what Kink looks like see Terrence Higgins Trust’s http://www.hardcell.org.uk/playroom.htm [warning: very graphic]
MAPs’ are Minority-Attracted People (AKA pedophiles or pedosexuals) whose lobbies now are publicly working to revise the APA’s classification of pedophilia in the global Bible of psychiatry, the DSM V. B4U-ACT, a group of pro-pedophile activists, academics and mental health professionals, sponsored a 17th August 2011 seminar which included panellists from Harvard, Johns Hopkins, the Universities of Texas, Louisville and Illinois and the London School of Economics. http://www.b4uact.org/index.htm
Global GM guru, Andrew Sullivan, in his classic, Virtually Normal, 1995, 202-203, argues that ‘open’ gay relationships, with their ‘necessary honesty’, ‘flexibility’ and ‘equality’ could positively influence straight marrieds. See also Sullivan’s 'Two Generations', 31 May 2006, The Daily Dish, which argues that sexual monogamy is too demanding for straight or gay men and that ‘mild hypocrisy’ performed an essential marital role. According to 2011 research on 11,000 (a very large sample) gay men’s sexual histories (from CDC data), in any given year most partnered gay men admit they have casual sex with two (or so) casual partners.
http://www.mygenes.co.nz/MainPartners.htm
More radical is the ‘All Friendships are Potentially Sexual’ paradigm in Changing Attitude’s Sexual Ethics (2004), in which marriage is seen as a subset of ‘Friendship’. Changing Attitude (CA logo left) is the UK’s premier Anglican LGBT advocacy organization.
‘All friendships probably use erotic energy. Whether or not they include sexual expression is a matter for the discretion of those concerned, based on the complex of considerations we outlined below – particularly balancing the destructiveness of sexual jealousy against the enriching potential of variety.’ (12-13)
‘Thus while it is clear to us as LGBTs when we survey the gay scene, and indeed much of contemporary social life, that casual sex can often be addictive and destructive, we think it is important to remain open to the possibility that brief and loving sexual engagement between mature adults in special circumstances can be occasions of grace … The exploration of our sexual selves can be something which benefits from involvement with more than one person.’ (11)
http://www.changingattitude.org.uk/publications/PDF/booklets/Sexual-Ethics.pdf
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