Ken

Thanks for your thoughtful and interesting article. My I offer a couple of counterviews. Due to the word limit they will be pithy; sorry if they come across as blunt.

First, "bigotted" just means, having irrational opinions about a group of people. As you say, there are no sound reasons - or, at least, no-one has yet adduced any that is not an ex-post justification of an a-priori view - to oppose non-heterosexual marriage.

Therefore "bigotted" is actually an apposite adjective in the context.

I can't help feeling that discussions about LGBTI issues are affected by internalised homophobia, even on the part of some LGBTI people. What I mean is: we; you and I, people of good faith and good will, as well as some LGBTI people, are not angry enough. Would we be calling for pleasant discussion, eschewing strong language, with cups of tea with our little fingers pointed out, if we were talking about rights of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander people to marry on the basis that marriage in our society is something that belongs to white tradition?

Just yesterday I was reading an article on a Christian LGBTI site in which a Pastor wrote an open letter to the CEO of Chic-Fil-A, expressig a need to deal with that organisation in Christian love and acceptance, and offering to sit down and have a chat about his gay friends. "Huh", I remarked to some friends, "what if it were about a racist Christian organisation, say a KKK church. Would he be writing so gently and with such an absence of criticism in that circumstance?" And today I saw an article about a Pastor in the US who refused to marry a black couple. Is my point becoming clear?

It seems to me that is the effect of our "cultural meanings" in this context; to blind us, even if only partially, to the dictates of justice.

btw the Marriage Act is not a suitable topic for a referendum or even a plebescite. What is needed is politician backbone.

"Christian, Jewish, atheist, Muslim, Mormon, Scientologist, etc. -- are free to engage in public life on the basis of their faith, with freedom of conscience."

The trouble with legitimising faith-based 'engagement' in public life is that faith-based beliefs have no grounding in fact. Their truth cannot be demonstrated, and the opinions and behaviours which are supposed to follow from them can be shown to be nothing but the results of wishful thinking. What your 'philosopher' is describing here is a playground full of children, all playing their own games of pretend without reference to the people and things around them.

If religious believers could demonstrate the validity of their faiths then they wouldn't be religious. As it is, their claims simply amount to this; "I will believe what I want to, no matter how silly and destructive and hateful it is, and if you try and argue with me that's RUDE!"

I know a man who is demonised and portrayed as a small minded bigot. Thankfully he looks very much like being our next PM to the despair of many OLO contributors. He has kept his marriage vowels and been a good father (horrors!). Thankfully the 'gay' lobby has overplayed its hand especially when the Greens demanded that Pollies check out the views of the electorate. When they heard what they did not want they returned to their demonisation of anyone with any sense of decency in wanting children to not be robbed of a mother and father.

...A declaration of “Finality” as a reason for gay marriage, is the most ridiculous argument I have ever heard! Apart from that, the author hits on a few valid and calming points for and against the argument for gay marriage in this article; he actually had me “engaged” until the end!

...I should have known not to let down the guard against the homosexual con-job well underway, co-hosted by the ABC and the Greens; not without a little help from their friends in Labor!

"My chief concern is that when anyone expresses a contrary view, whether it is on religious, or like our PM - sociocultural grounds - they are abused and labelled as homophobic and intolerant."

Labelling anyone who expresses a contrary view as homophobic or intolerant, is the approach that gay activists have been using successfully for many years.

The author bursts into an open door:

<<I believe there is no reasonable legal or ethical basis for a secular pluralistic state like Australia to oppose gay marriage>>

Australia DOES NOT oppose gay marriage. In fact, gay marriage already occurs in Australia as we speak and carries no criminal offense.

All the storm-in-a-tea-cup is about the state of Australia refusing to provide a particular service to particular people - a service it should not have provided in the first place to anyone had there been a true separation of state and church.

Marriage, being a religious sacrament, should remain a matter for churches and the like. The state must stay out and stop conducting mock-sacraments, nor should it register the private religious affairs of its citizens.