DEFENDING THE TRADITION
Michael Coren
Sun Media
Saturday, January 22, 2005The debate over same-sex marriage is of fundamental importance but too often the media in Canada promote one side of the argument while simultaneously abusing the other. Put simply, advocates of gay marriage are depicted as intelligent and tolerant, opponents as fools and bigots.
The reality, of course, is rather different. Leaders of various faith communities are now speaking up with enormous courage and wit, but there are also overwhelming secular arguments.
One of the most sophisticated of the organizations making such arguments is Enshrine Marriage Canada (www.enshrinemarriage.ca - RJ) and in their latest statement, "A Declaration of Marriage", they have given perhaps the best summary I have yet read. (I posted this the other day - it is authored, I believe, by Dr. William D. Gairdner - RJ)
I make no apologies for printing it in full. (In the interests of full disclosure, you should know that my wife works for this organization, but did not write this piece.)
"All human beings are born of a mother and begotten by a father. This is a universal biological reality and the common experience of all people. The state supports the institution of marriage because it promotes and protects the father-mother-child relationship as the only natural means of creating and continuing human life and society.
"Marriage in Canada has always been defined as 'the union of one man and one woman,' the chief function of which is to promote the biological unity of sexual opposites as the basis for family formation. Governments may want to support other relationships, but these should not be called 'marriage,' or confused with it.
"Marriage is a child-centred, not an adult-centred, institution. No one has the right to redefine marriage so as intentionally to impose a fatherless or motherless home on a child as a matter of state policy.
"Marriage is a solid social structure resting on four conditions concerning number, gender, age, and incest. We are permitted to marry only one person at a time. They must be someone of the opposite sex. They must not be below a certain age. They must not be a close blood relative.
"Those who satisfy all these conditions -- each of which safeguards the well-being of children, the family, and society -- have a right to marry. The removal of any of them threatens the stability of the whole structure.
"All government policies are intentionally preferential. If we want welfare or veterans' benefits, or child support, or marital benefits, we have to qualify for them. Such policies are ordinary forms of distributive justice through which, for its own good, the state discriminates in favour of some people, and some relationships, and not others. So an absence of 'equality' is not a good argument against such policies.
"As same-sex partnerships already receive the same benefits as marriages, however, something else is at issue: An attempt to persuade the public that such partnerships are of the same value to society as marriages. But they can only be made so by denying the unique contribution of marriage as a biologically-unitive, child-centred institution.
"The fact that two people say they love each other does not, in itself, justify a right to the benefits conferred by the state on married couples. The only justification for a state interest in the privacy of love flows from the connection between the political fact that the state has a fundamental concern for its own survival and well-being, the biological fact that all human beings require someone of the opposite sex to create life, and the social fact that children have a natural claim to the love and support of their own mothers and fathers.
"Accordingly, the only kind of private love that is of justifiable public concern is the love that occurs between two people who qualify for marriage according to the four conditions mentioned above.
"Marriage is an institution that has arisen from long-held beliefs and customs of the people that are prior to all states and all courts, and are essential to the very fabric of society.
"Any attempt by unelected officials of the courts or by any other branch of government to claim ownership of marriage, to alter it without the support of a significant majority of the people, or to diminish the father-mother-child relation in favour of the state-citizen relationship, usurps the natural rights and freedoms of the people and constitutes a serious breach of the public trust."
www.Enshrinemarriage.ca is the organization's Web site. Do please take a look.
Michael Coren is a Toronto-based writer and broadcaster. He can be emailed at [email protected] and his web site is michaelcoren.com. Letters to the editor should be sent to: [email protected] Home Page
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