getting on the marriage carriage

Marriage in Australia is currently a hot topic of debate. With same-sex marriage very much on the agenda, there is a huge amount of discussion around the problem of who should be allowed to marry.

At least for now I am not interested in debating the ins and outs or same-sex marriage in this arena (I need to do more preparation for the proverbial crucifixion that may ensue as I inevitably offend someone…), though I am interesting in asking a related question – What is marriage in Australia?

This won’t be very long by the way, I’m not trying to make a watertight case, I just want to write some thoughts down.

Debates about things like same-sex marriage tend to, at least from the perspective of the majority of religious people, define marriage by way of its cultural significance. Arguments are thus made that insist on marriages centring on things like procreative romantic relationships, on positive parental environments and on stable relationships.

Often such arguments have a foundation in the biblical interpretations of different religious parties, and it is here that the problems begin to amass. Perhaps the most obvious is the indiscriminate mashing of cultural, biblical and civil preferences. For example,  the Bible’s view of marriage is based on ancient practice whereby sexual intercourse was generally the consummating event (as opposed to a ceremony), polygamy was often accepted, and child betrothal was normal. How then can we simply “do what the Bible says”? This would both lack cultural relevance and civil appropriateness.

The result is that people choose what they like from the Bible in regards to their philosophy on marriage. This can hardly be called “biblical.”

In any case, most marriages in Australia today are celebrated without reference to the Bible, with 65% of all ceremonies now occurring outside of a church. Marriage is a civil reality in Australia, not a religious one. It is done in reference to the 1961 Marriage Act, not the Bible. This act does not define marriage by procreational potential (otherwise infertile couples would be excluded), on positive parental environments (otherwise many heterosexual unions would be void), though stable relationships are necessitated by the definition of marriage offered (“voluntarily entered into for life”).

The point is that we need to be consistent in the way we argue about marriage. We cannot preference certain cultural expressions, mash them with unthoughtfully and selectively constructed biblical arguments and try to legalise it. Marriage in Australia is ultimately a civil institution, and there is no reason to exclude people from it for religious reasons. When you take away the civil rights of a people group you open the door for legislative discrimination, the very same thing Christians fight against in regards to themselves!

(In other words, you can’t ethically withhold marriage from minorities legislatively without withholding tax exemption from churches [also a minority].)

In the end, if marriage is a civil institution it functions in civil terms to legally recognise committed relationships for the purposes of rights and privileges associated with such relationships. By denying such a status to committed human relationships we deny certain rights to said people, and ultimately this is detrimental for them (and their children). Moreover it reflects a lack of confidence in the functional effectiveness of marriage and reduces it to cultural irrelevance (as more couples not bother with it because they are excluded).

It is after such civil considerations that cultural ones can come into play. This is, however, a topic for a different blog post.