G'day Fred,
I suppose congratulations are in order for your triumph over the dark forces of homosexual love with the
defeat of a bill to legalise same-sex marriage in NSW Parliament this week.
You characterised it as "a great victory for marriage", like marriage was at a bar somewhere on Macquarie Street ordering manly schooners of Victoria Bitter (shandies for the ladies) after the 21-19 vote in the upper house.
Then again, you do believe a man was born to a virgin mother, with no biological father, and rose from the dead under strict supervision from his real dad who lives in the sky so, if you wanna anthropomorphise "marriage", I guess you'll have your way.
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Regarding the above wisecrack, I hate to bring religion into this but, hell, your opposition to same-sex marriage is based largely on your faith, isn't it?
As part of your campaign to oppose the bill you wrote to supporters: "Christian friends, we must pray and seek Almighty God's victory over this Bill which has originated in the depths of hell, as it is an attack on Almighty God's Creative Purposes for the human race, that marriage can only be recognised as between a male and a female, a man and a woman, not between two men or two women."
I thought someone had made up that quote to paint you as a fanatic but nope, here it is on
your Christian Democratic Party website. (By the way, I dig how you capitalised "creative purposes", Fred. Nothin' like an upper case letter to put the fear of God into twinkies.)
Anyway, you being an evangelical Christian (the
charter of your party lists your very first aim as "to advance the glory of God through the institution of Parliament"), I'm guessing the big game here for you is more untouched Christian bottoms on church pews, nodding along, believing what you want 'em to believe.
Having been brought up a Christian, I thought I'd let you know it's the words and actions of people like yourself that first made me question what faith I possessed, then drove me away from Christianity, when I realised the whole "love and tolerance" thing only applied to a very small proportion of humans - those who think exactly like you.
Ignoring the ludicrousness of an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-loving God even caring what two people do when in bed together (or how I address Him in prayer or whether I can bash out a column on a Sunday), it frustrates me that people like yourself are happy to cherry-pick which parts of the Bible you take literally and which you do not.
I'm guessing when your kids were naughty, Fred, you didn't - as directed by the Bible - beat them with a rod (Proverbs 13:24, 20:30, and 23:13-14) or when they gave you some backchat about doing their homework, you didn't kill them (Exodus 21:15, Leviticus 20:9, Deuteronomy 21:18-21, Mark 7:9-13, and Matthew 15:4-7).
I'm also guessing you don't literally believe, as the Bible states, we should put people to death for being magicians, saying God doesn't exist, adultery, homosexuality, working on the Sabbath and worshipping graven images.
Why? Because I think, deep in your heart, you know the Bible is not the literal word of God but a series of texts compiled over many centuries by a huge, disparate group of clever men.
And I'd suggest you also recognise even the Bible has to move with the times and, what may have been laudable 2000 years ago - like selling your daughter into sexual slavery (Exodus 21:7-11) - is not so cool in Australia in 2013.
So let's be clear: this has nothing to do with the word of God and the Bible - it's merely how you're interpreting it, and your interpretation on this issue, I suspect, is based on one thing alone.
You want to deny homosexuals the honour and recognition modern society accords two people who publicly choose to say they love each other above any and all.
You can capitalise "Almighty God's Creative Purposes" but we both know procreation is not a prerequisite for marriage.
If it was, we wouldn't let infertile couples marry, or women who've gone through menopause (possibly like your 55-year-old bride-to-be
Silvana Nero), or really old people like your 78-year-old self, or folks who plain just don't want to have children.
As former Chief Justice Margaret Marshall of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court wrote in her landmark 2003 decision
Goodridge v. Department of Public Health, marriage's primary purpose is not in procreation, but in an "exclusive, loving commitment between two partners".
You do not want to honour or recognise this as possible between two men or two women and, in doing so, you're actively trying to cap, limit and legislate the amount of love in this world.
That doesn't sound very Christian to me.
The only consolation I have as I write this piece (as a straight man, never-married, who has procreated) is an image I see of you, Fred - frail, confused, standing on a beach, trying to hold back the ocean with a broom.
