This was the letter to the local newspaper which I wrote recently on the subject of redefining marriage in reply to a series of anti-Christian letters in general, but one in particular which was particularly loopy!  I will willingly admit that I borrowed heavily on the resources available at Catholics For The Common Good (http://ccgaction.org/swc/realityofmarriage) who were able so eloquently and succinctly to put into words what I was trying to get clear in my head! Anyway, more on the subject on the next episode….

(To put the letter into context, the correspondent began from the supposition that marriage was a public declaration of commitment to each other and that denial of marriage to same-sex couples would be the same as denying marriage to coloured people. He cited as an example that the Christmas tree was a pagan symbol adopted for Christmas, but that just as we do not allow pagans to define what a Christmas tree is, so should Christians not be allowed to define what marriage is (go figure!). He then painted people opposed to the redefinition of marriage as religious bigots or homophobes and guilty of discrimination. He finished with the claim that opposing the redefinition of marriage was gross discrimination and should be consigned to the dustbin of history! It was impossible to reply to all his meandering inaccuracies, so I had to keep the reply very focussed. I did the best I could!).

‘Mr XXX’s assertion that opposition to redefining marriage to include gay relationships is discriminatory would be valid if marriage was just a public declaration of commitment between two people, but it’s not, and he starts from a false assumption leading to false comparisons. Throughout history, the reality is that ‘marriage unites a man and a woman with each other and any children born from their union’. This second definition reflects the reality that it takes one man and one woman to form a complete human unit for the continuation of society. It is written into our very nature as human beings and male and female compliment and facilitate each other in this reality.

Although Christians do indeed have a sacramental view of marriage, the motivation for opposing redefining marriage to accommodate same-sex couples is not intended to deprive them of benefits or diminish them in any way, it is to protect and promote the reality of marriage as the foundation of the family, the first and original cell of society. Our headlong rush into redefining something so fundamental, with so little complexity of thought, with the proponents selling such a diminished view of what marriage is and ignoring the critical element of procreation and children will have far-reaching and possibly disastrous consequences in the future. Alas, this is unlikely to carry much weight in this “You have, we want and if you oppose us you are discriminating homophobes or religious bigots” climate.‘