Gay Marriage : Redefining Reality?

A proposal by the government to make gay marriage legal has roused strong opposition among some Christians.

This weekend the leader of the Catholic Church in Scotland, Cardinal Keith O’Brien, went so far as to accuse the government of proposing a “grotesque subversion of a universally accepted human right” which would “shame the UK in the eyes of the world”. He charged ministers with trying to “redefine reality”? But is that what the government is doing, or is the argument about no more than the meaning of a word?

Two years ago the Prime Minister told the Tory Party Conference that he backed gay marriage. He said: “I don’t support gay marriage in spite of being a Conservative. I support gay marriage because I am a Conservative.” His argument was that Conservatives believe in a society whose fundamental building block is the creation of stable families by people who, because they love each other, publicly form permanent commitments called ‘marriages’. If same-sex couples want similarly to make such public commitments they should be allowed and encouraged to do so not just for their own sakes but to promote social stability.

Back in 2005 the last Labour government passed legislation to allow same-sex couples to form civil partnerships. These, in essence, gave such couples the same legal rights as married couples. But despite this step forward in gay rights, some people regard the status of civil partnership as somehow second-class: even if the legal rights are the same as for heterosexual married couples, the argument goes, the implication is that a civil partnership isn’t quite on a par with marriage.

'Civil partnership' and 'civil marriage'

The different terminology was used largely so as not to antagonise religious opinion. Even though civil marriage, conducted in a registry office (or, increasingly these days, in registered hotels or stately homes) has long existed, many faith-believers (and not just Christians) regard marriage as a religious not a civil matter so it was thought judicious to have two different terms, marriage and civil partnerships.

This state of affairs, however, has been thought anomalous and not just by some same-sex couples. Some heterosexual couples have been campaigning to be allowed to form civil partnerships rather than civil marriages, precisely because they object to the religious overtones of the word ‘marriage’. What the government is proposing is a consultation on whether the law should recognise both gay marriages and civil partnerships for heterosexual couples. It insists that it is concerned only with what civil institutions should be allowed to do: religious institutions would remain free to make their own decisions about what sort of services they should conduct and for whom.

Michael Moore, the Scottish Secretary, said: “What we are saying is that where a couple love each other and they wish to commit to each other for their life they should be able to have a civil marriage irrespective of their sexual orientation.” In short, if people want to make the same commitment, they should be allowed to use the same word.

But for Cardinal O’Brien this is not simply a semantic matter. To him words represent reality and if you change the meaning of a word, you change reality. His charge against the government is that it is trying to “dismantle the universally understood meaning of marriage”. By doing so it is attempting to “redefine reality” and the consequences of that are, in his view, far-reaching. He believes that the currently understood meaning of marriage defines a right: the right of a man and woman to marry and have children. To change the meaning of the term is to jeopardise that right.

'Dismantling a fundamental human right'?

In his article in the Sunday Telegraph, Cardinal O'Brien used a controversial analogy to try to show what he means. He wrote: “Imagine for a moment that the government had decided to legalise slavery but assured us that ‘no one will be forced to keep a slave’. Would such worthless assurances calm our fury? Would they justify dismantling a fundamental human right?”

In the case of marriage he articulated what rights he thought would be at risk if the meaning of marriage were stretched to include the union of same-sex couples. He wrote: “Same-sex marriage would eliminate entirely in law the basic idea of a mother and father for every child. It would create a society which deliberately chooses to deprive a child of either a mother or a father.”

Some people may find it hard to follow the Cardinal’s logic. They will say they simply can’t see why allowing gay people to enter a commitment which the law called a marriage would deprive any child of a mother or father. Whether or not a child does have both, and how its parents are recognised in law, are matters determined by other factors entirely. Such critics would add that reality has been changing anyway (whether for good or bad). Far fewer children have a mother and father who are married and that may be regrettable but it has nothing to do with who is and isn’t allowed to use the word marriage to describe their relationship.

In other words, reality does not change when words change their meaning: reality changes anyway. The Cardinal’s supporters would counter that changes in the meaning of words change how we view the world and that this particular change of meaning risks propelling us down a dangerous slope.

Not all Christians share the Cardinal’s objections. Some argue that the reality that really matters is love. Such Christians support the idea that same-sex couples who love each other should be able to form civil marriages. Some go further and want their churches to allow religious marriages for such couples as was the case, they claim, in the early years of the church.

The Government's reaction

The objections to Cardinal O’Brien’s article, however, have not been confined to a philosophical spat about the relationship between words and reality. His claim that making such a change would “shame” the country in the eyes of the world has been dismissed as ludicrous when many countries have already made the same change. Most of all he has been accused, in his own choice of words and by seeming to equate the promotion of gay marriage to the legalisation of slavery, of being inflammatory and indulging in scare-mongering. Margot James, the first openly lesbian Conservative MP, said: “I think it is a completely unacceptable way for a prelate to talk.”

Some other Tory MPs, however, think that, whatever the rights and wrongs of the Cardinal’s point of view, it’s not for the government to be getting into all this. Peter Bone said it was “nuts”. He said: “You cannot redefine marriage on a whim.” He also claimed that the government had no mandate for proposing the change as it was in no party’s manifesto at the last election. It should, at the very least, wait until after the next election.

The government says it is merely consulting so presumably it is pleased that it has stirred a response. Whether or not the Cardinal’s views will prevail remains to be seen. Meanwhile, Ben Summerskill, the chief executive of the gay rights organisation, Stonewall, offered some wry advice. “If Roman Catholics don’t approve of same-sex marriage, they should make sure they don’t get married to someone of the same sex.”

What’s your view?

Do you support the proposal to make gay marriage legal?
Do you think the difference between marriage and civil partnerships is just a difference about the use of words or has does it have something substantial to it?
Do you share the Cardinal’s view that allowing gay marriage would “redefine reality” or not?
What do you make of the Cardinal’s claim that allowing same-sex marriage “would create a society which deliberately chooses to deprive a child of either a mother or a father”?
Was he justified or not in making the analogy with slavery?
Do you think fundamental rights are at issue here, not just for same-sex couples but also for married heterosexual couples and their children?
Should the government be taking this initiative now or should it wait until after the next election when it will have had the opportunity to seek a mandate from voters?

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