Religion & Ethics: Content from Across the ABC




Date/Time 15 Mar 2014 4:13:41pm
Nice attempt to set the cat among the pigeons Russell, and nothing wrong with doing so either when the situation calls for it.

I more or less accept in principle that society has either to sanction all kinds of marriage or none, and that none may well have been the wiser course. But then there's also the legal side of it and the need to have regard for kinship between people.

A modern penchant for pre-nups notwithstanding, as a matter of legal convenience any marriage sanctioned by the state quite necessarily recognises kinship between couples in a way that is already civil. It really shouldn't have to be qualified as such for gays unless the intent is to deliberately emphasise difference rather than commonality between relationships. Here I simply see no need to emphasise the negative.

Whereas most of the argument against gay marriage defends a fairly narrow mostly Christian tradition the truth of what society already assents to is actually quite different. Far from being well defined marriage means a great many different things to different people and cultures most of which we are in fact already prepared to sanction.

To certain sensibilities the acceptance of an arranged marriage contrasted with the rejection of a bond of love between two men or two women seems just as perverse. So it is harder again to argue with social acceptance of the one but not the other if indeed state recognition is a matter of honouring values like fairness and equality for all of its citizens, as well as the legal recognition of their chosen kinship.

Russell goes on to talk about the oft argued hue and cry against some imagined slippery slope to polyandry. I see no primary moral objection to polygynous arrangements being legalised. Of course I too take the view that protections against coercive pressure should apply to any marital tradition. I'd also be cautious of deceptive practices such as bigamy for obvious reasons. However when it comes to recognising kinship through marriage multiple partners really do require something more than the simple reciprocal arrangement between two people does. Hence I'd agree that there's a quite basic difference in the kind of equity we're really looking to honour in marriages between any two people, and thus infer that fears of the slippery slope need not be taken seriously.

So while I ultimately agree that consent is more important as a governing factor in intimacy I'd also say that marriage honours more than just a set of values pertaining to the bedroom that we want to keep governments out of. There are social values we've already recognised for one group of people that we deny another without sufficient reason for that discrimination. We can do better than that.