"Marriage... serves the predominant role of connecting children to their parents;

So where does this leave the children of unmarried couples? Are we now to revert to the language of illegitimacy for these children?

"After all, historically, marriage has always served the public purpose of attaching mothers and fathers to one another and to their children;"

Historically, one of the reasons for marriage was to ensure (hopefully) who fathers the children. However, there are many instances in which the presumed father is found not to be the biological father. Marriage does not guarantee parentage, it is only hoped that it will. The only guarantee of parentage is the love and fidelity of the partners, so love does indeed appear to be more important than anything else.

Heterosexual intercourse does not always consist of the man penetrating the woman's vagina with his penis. Without being too specific, there are many different ways in which heterosexual couples make love, some that are similar and even the same as the ways in which homosexual couples make love.

Sometimes some heterosexual couples make love in exactly the same ways homosexual couples make love, and there will be no baby as a consequence. In those instances, what is the difference between the lovemaking?

Once again. love wins the argument. Love tends to do this. Love does tend to disregard barriers and man made boundaries. It isn't that it "conquers." It just ends up mattering more than biological determinism.

>> Marriage is a public good. It serves the predominant role
>> of connecting children to their parents

The 2001 Census revealed that 20% of lesbian couples and 5% of male homosexual couples are raising children http://www.hreoc.gov.au/human_rights/samesex/report/Ch_5.html If, for argument's sake, we accept for a minute that the predominant role of marriage is "connecting children to their parents", then denying the public good of marriage to the children of lesbians and gays is cruel and arbitrary.

>> It is this equal right of all children, to the love of one’s
>> mother and father, which has been so consistently ignored in
>> the discourse about “all conquering love”.

The fact is that children don't have a right "to the love of one's mother and father," and no power can grant it. However children born in this country do have a right to be treated equally by the state and by their fellow-citizens.

If marriage is all about the children, then it should be about all the children, and not just the children of heterosexuals.

Excellent piece Amy. Gay marriage leftists always discriminate; they’re just asking us to discriminate against tradition, or what works for children. We are all just social experiments to many elitists, I guess.

"Marriage is a public good. It serves the predominant role of connecting children to their parents"
-Amy Vierboom

No, it doesn't. Possession of a marriage certificate will not automatically lead to increased amounts quality time 'twixt child and offspring; it will not lead to disinterested parents becoming more involved in their children's lives; it will not lead to improved communication and understanding 'twixt generations; it will, in short, do absolutely bugger all to connect children to their parents.

Consider this plausible example: on one hand, we have a pair of unemployed hippies living in sin, with a small child. On the other, we have a pair of workaholic corporate executives, who are happily married with a small child. The hippies are poor, but time-rich: every day is a holiday when you're on the dole. They spend a great deal of time with their child, and have a very close bond. The executive couple are always at work, even when they're home. Child-rearing is outsourced to day-care and nannies, and consequently they have a poorer relationship with their child then the unwed couple. The unmarried couple are better connected to their child then the married ones. So maybe we should regard marriage as a public bad, and consider living in sin to be the public good.

Or perhaps the anti-SSM crowd could stop grasping at straws, and just admit that marriage is irrelevant to the relationship 'twixt parent and child.

The author made this blooper at the start of her essay which implies that she has made a thorough-going comprehensive study of this topic.

"for thousands of years laws recognizing marriage"

Some kind of evidence please?

Meanwhile this reference points out how the concept and form of "families" changed over the centuries.

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/encounter/stories/2010/3029756.htm

Plus the dreadfully dark truth about "happy" families.

http://www.psychohistory.com

"they’re just asking us to discriminate against tradition"
-History Buff

It used to be traditional to keep black people as slaves. Tradition alone is an appallingly stupid reason for doing anything.

"or what works for children"
-History Buff

Nobody is asking you to discriminate against 'what works for children', which in this context I take as a strange euphemism for heterosexual marriage (very strange, since Blind Freddy can see that heterosexual marriage often doesn't work for children). They're asking you to cease & desist from unfairly discriminating against gay marriage. This is an entirely different matter to discriminating against heterosexual marriage.

A lovely piece of classic Christian sophistry
brought to us from one of the leading lights of
"iWitness", a Catholic activist group that sprang
up in Sydney as a legacy of World Youth Day.
Funny that Ms Vierboom doesn't mention her role
as a Christian activist in the profile under her article.

When will homophobic Christians accept the fact
that they don't own the cultural institution of marriage?
Every society and culture on earth has a form of marriage,
and many of those arrangements don't involve the union
of a single man and woman to the exclusion of all others.

If Christians want to bless that minority of marriages
that take place in their churches, then they are quite
entitled to discriminate against whoever they like.
However, they have absolutely no right to demand that
the rest of us conform to their religious dictates,
even when they're dressed up in biological or sociological
sophistry.

Marriage is a socio-cultural institution,
and as our society and culture change,
then it is only to be expected that our
institutions will change with them. That's
why most people no longer marry in churches,
and also why the legalisation of same sex marriage
is inevitable.

“The author made this blooper at the start of her essay which implies that she has made a thorough-going comprehensive study of this topic.” The “for thousands of years laws recognizing marriage" is a statement of fact, not opinion.

So Amy didn’t make the blooper – I studied history, and the best you can do is add one discredited ABC link. Nice try. We see religious laws, in writing; many were also passed down through word of mouth, proving evidence that marriage is a time-honored tradition. Pick up a New Testament, to begin with, and then get back to me.

"proving evidence that marriage is a time-honored tradition."
-History Buff

"It used to be traditional to keep black people as slaves. Tradition alone is an appallingly stupid reason for doing anything."
-Me

“It used to be traditional to keep black people as slaves. Tradition alone is an appallingly stupid reason for doing anything.”

Riz – comparing slaves to the white-majority gay activist set is a joke. Not to mention weird. In any case, born-again Christians ended slavery not pagans! You really are all over the place.

If you read Amy’s piece she isn’t relying on tradition alone, but given that free marriages have lasted for thousands of years there must be a positive message in there. No wonder many black people stopped gay marriage in California. They’re tired of people like you piggybacking on their Abolitionist and Civil Rights movement.

Calm down and read Amy’s article again slowly. Open your leftwing mind.

History Buff, the point is that while you are committed to a Christian perspective, very many of us are not.

Therefore your Christian guidelines to marriage and life in general are of no consequence to those outside of your religion.

Yet you Christians insist on attempting to force the rest of the world community to conform to your beliefs. we do indeed see your religious laws everywhere, we just don't care to live our non Christian lives by them.

Choice, History Buff. Choice, and respect for choices other than yours. If Christians in general ever get their heads around the notion of respect for other human beings who don't want to live under their rules, they'll find they have a much wider appeal.

Briar: Right. I’m not committed to your leftwing secular fundamentalist stated-based religion. Or the pagan-inspired global warming faith. Christians founded Australia. Your team had Red Russia and botched it up.

"Riz – comparing slaves to the white-majority gay activist set is a joke."
-History Buff

Yes it is, which is precisely why I never sought to draw that comparison (although I think you actually know that and are merely playing dumb). Are you having fun attacking your straw-man?

I simply pointed out that tradition alone is a poor justification for anything, be it slavery, marriage as the sole preserve of heterosexuals, religious circumcision (male and female), hereditary monarchies, etc. I just used slavery as the example 'coz I think we can all agree that slavery is a very bad thing - and that arguing 'but that's what people used to do' is not only a piss-weak justification for a bad idea, it's also manifestly stupid. If something is a bad idea, it's a bad idea regardless of how long it has been popular; if something is a good idea, it's a good idea even if it's novel. Next time I'll use the hereditary monarchy example. Will that keep you happy?

"In any case, born-again Christians ended slavery not pagans!"
-History Buff

On the other hand, there were an awful lot of Christians who wanted to keep slavery. And the folk who made vast fortunes from the slave-trade were mostly Christian, not pagan!

"If you read Amy’s piece she isn’t relying on tradition alone"
-History Buff

No, but you are (hint: this is an excellent opportunity to refute me by advancing an argument against SSM which does not appeal to tradition or history. Oh, or Christianity).

"Open your leftwing mind."
-History Buff

A bigot telling me to open my mind? That's rich. Anyway, you'd do well to remember this sage bit wisdom: if you open your mind too much, your brain will fall out.

So - "she is a Christian" doesn't actually engage with any sort of argument talisman, especially seeing as she doesn't mention God, or bible or anything Christian at all.

The idea that religious people aren't allowed to hold a perspective on anything non-religious is a little... intolerant?

Anyway, even Bob Brown has said he wouldn't get married... if you're going to argue with the article - at least explain what good reason the government has for recognising commitments. THen please explain why this shouldn't extend to any friendship??

Christians founded this country?

You mean all those people the British Christians put in jail for stealing bread and then shipped out in appalling conditions to the colonies? Little kids among them?

Or all those Christians they sent with them, who treated them so badly when they got here?

And all those Christians who murdered indigenous Australians?
Before they stole their children, that is.

And what about those Spanish Christians who insisted on torturing non Christians on the rack?

Or the ones who insisted on drowning women they decided were witches?

And all those Christians who slaughtered indigenous peoples in America, and South America? The Conquistadors, no less.

And all the Christians who refused to shelter the Jews in the Second World War? One of the popes in particular as I recall, who wasn't averse to appropriating Jewish possessions when offered them by the Nazis, while the owners died in concentration camps.

And all those Mormon Christians who practice polygamy? A topic Christians keep bringing up in this forum with great distaste, but yes, Christians do it. Your very own people.

And the Christians who kept slaves they'd forcibly removed from Africa?

Oh dear, History Buff.

Please feel free to balance this very incomplete list of historical Christian atrocities with something a little more positive.

"She worked as a legal researcher in privacy and e-commerce before taking up her current job doing research into marriage and family in Australia."

Perhaps who pays the author to do research into marriage and family in Australia is of such little interest and relevance as to not need declaring before the author writes on this topic. Then again, perhaps it is. Any comment Amy?

briar Rose yeah we see evidence of christian domination everywhere in our laws.

Murder laws etc. Should we abandon them too or are you just being selective?

It is a well known fact that marriage existed long before Christianity,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marriage

So what gives the Christian Lobby the right to dictate to all others in this secular, multicultural country of ours, who should and shouldn't marry?

History Buff would have us believe that slavery was abolished by born again Christians. Where is your proof on this?
I assume you mean Abraham Lincoln and his government abolishing slavery in America?
Well, apparently, his views on religion were ambiguous at best:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Lincoln_and_religion

Christians did not 'found' Australia either. Aboriginal people were occupying this land long before Christianity was dreamed up.

<<this is an excellent opportunity to refute me by advancing
an argument against SSM which does not appeal to:

tradition
or
history.
Oh,
or
Christianity>>

You forgot:

reason
or
logic
or
decency
or
concern for children

[Deleted for grossness.]

Sane, thoughtful and charitable essay thank you Ms Vierboom.

In the comments there is still the confusion about the purpose of marriage. That hearts sometimes fail to pump blood because of defect or intervention doesn't mean hearts no longer have a function. In the same way marriages may be sterile by nature or by intention, yet marriage retains its purpose.

Exceptions don't make good laws remember. It is impracticable to expect the law to extract guarantees that a couple will reproduce or level of fertility. The law sanely assumes in the ordinary course of things couples want to have children. For this reason a union that is manifestly sterile 'by nature' is correctly distinguished in law from naturally fertile ones - the State simply does not have the same interest in both. One perpetuates the nation through time and provides the best conditions for the development of children, the other cannot.

The author rightly reminds us that marriage is pre-political and the state has no authority to abolish a natural institution without abolishing itself and its own claims to being a natural institution.

Asking all the apparatus of the state to be applied to the abolition of marriage by redefinition isn't the conquest of love in my opinion but its antithesis, ideological vandalism and hatred. It's the desire to impose a name on something without any thought for what is being defaced.

The other comments muddle the difference between natural law and Christian revelation and to this confusion are added the silliest of popular prejudices against Christianity as well as the cruder historical distortions. These are not worth answering in here. It takes a particularly ugly kind of bigotry to maintain them in an age of the internet search.

Again, thank you for an elegant and finely argued essay Ms. Vierboom.

Discussion involving the eccentric demands of the homosexual lobby has become a circular argument in these pages; but the outcome will ultimately be ruled over by political expedience of the renowned masters of spin and compromise inside the great halls of parliament in Canberra.

We witness the maturing of the Green cancer and its con-job on the electorate. Masked by a worrying legitimacy of climate change and the global warming debate, ride the homosexual lobby on the "Green Nag". “You can’t have one without the other” (as the song goes)! A situation very sick, dangerous and dishonest.

When will homophobic Christians accept the fact that they don't own the cultural institution of marriage?

If Christians want to bless that minority of marriages that take place in their churches, then they are quite entitled to discriminate against whoever they like. However, they have absolutely no right to demand that the rest of us conform to their religious dictates,even when they're dressed up in biological or sociological sophistry.

Both these comments are wrong.

Firstly, christians do not claim to own marriage; that's simply your opinion. Second, those opposed to the notion of homosexual or lesbian marriage are not necessarily hompohobic- that's villification and libel.

No-one is demanding that others follow what we think is marriage; we are allowed to express our opinion, as you are.

Marriage in ALL societies has been heterosexual, and anything has been considered deviant, whether or not there has been any punishment or opprobium for such behaviour.

Make reasoned rsponses, not rants. The fact that the writer of this article has an affiliation with a Catholic organization does not affect the contents of the article. What affiliations do you have that you are not disclosing?

"I assume you mean Abraham Lincoln and his government abolishing slavery in America?"
-suzeonline

I assumed he meant the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833. Which was an act of the British Parliament - and I can assure you that they weren't all born-again Christians. As I understand, some of the more notable supporters of the act were prominent Quakers and Baptists - maybe this is what History Buff was trying to get at?

"yeah we see evidence of christian domination everywhere in our laws.

Murder laws etc. Should we abandon them too or are you just being selective?"
-keith

So it's OK to kill people if you're an atheist? Really? I can't believe I missed that memo. I don't suppose anybody knows Kyle Sandilands' home address?

"You forgot:

reason
or
logic
or
decency
or
concern for children"
-Proxy

...
....
.....
Oh, sorry, I was waiting for argument. Anytime you'd care to share would be nice. Although you'd be better served by just appealing to logic and reason; you have quaint (at best) notions of decency, and your faux concern for children is an emotive platitude you drag out every time your reason falls short (which is most of the time).

It's interesting to note that the author's bio footnote says, "she does research into marriage and family in Australia," but does not say for whom and under what circumstances. However, a quick Google search shows that the author does "research" for and is funded by the Catholic church. Oddly enough she does not mention this in her essay or her bio.

While she may like to give the impression that she is an an academic, independent and objective researcher, in reality she produces and distributes propaganda on behalf of the Vatican.

If the claimed levels of promiscuity of gays can be believed and such self-reporting must have some basis in fact, it is difficult to see what relevance registering marriages has to any but a tiny percentage of gays (which in turn is a tiny percentage of the general population), apart from the symbolism of legitimising gay sexuality.

"Levels of Promiscuity

Prior to the AIDS epidemic, a 1978 study found that 75 percent of white, gay males claimed to have had more than 100 lifetime male sex partners: 15 percent claimed 100-249 sex partners; 17 percent claimed 250-499; 15 percent claimed 500- 999; and 28 percent claimed more than 1,000 lifetime male sex partners. Levels of promiscuity subsequently declined, but some observers are concerned that promiscuity is again approaching the levels of the 1970s. The medical consequence of this promiscuity is that gays have a greatly increased likelihood of contracting HIV/AIDS, syphilis and other STDs.

Similar extremes of promiscuity have not been documented among lesbians. However, an Australian study found that 93 percent of lesbians reported having had sex with men, and lesbians were 4.5 times more likely than heterosexual women to have had more than 50 lifetime male sex partners. Any degree of sexual promiscuity carries the risk of contracting STDs."
The Health Risks of Gay Sex
JOHN R. DIGGS, JR., M.D.
http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/homosexuality/ho0075.html

Admittedly the report was quoted by a Catholic site as shown, but the sources seem reliable and the numbers are alarming to say the least.

I am stunned at the lengths and depths some poster will stoop in order to justify an attempt to undermine the whole foundation of society, and destroy marriage.

"Sheep"= the word 'equality'
"Wolf"= the destructive socialist/Fabian amorality underneath.

The Author:

Inherent in the meaning of marriage is, yes, love, but love with particular characteristics; it is the unity of the species, the coming together of the two halves of humanity, man and woman.

Absoulutely..YES a thousand times.

BRIAR ROSE:
So where does this leave the children of unmarried couples? Are we now to revert to the language of illegitimacy for these children?

COMMEN:T No briar.. I happen to HAVE such a child (my granddaughter)
We (the Christian community) approach such a situation with compassion and love, realizing that we are all frail and it could be any one of us our our daughters.(or sons as fathers)

WOULFE: If marriage is all about the children, then it should be about all the children, and not just the children of heterosexuals.

COMMENT: No woulfe, marriage is NOT 'all about the children' it is about a fundamental building block of society and includes children as the natural and neccessary consequence. You are avoiding the correct definitiion of marriage and normality. (Heterosexual)

RIZ: Possession of a marriage certificate will not automatically lead to increased amounts quality time 'twixt child and offspring; it will not lead to disinterested parents becoming more involved in their children's lives;

COMMENT: Remarkable grasp of the obvious. But what that has to do with justifying abnormal and socially destructive marriage patterns, I cannot see.

RIZ (again) It used to be traditional to keep black people as slaves. Tradition alone is an appallingly stupid reason for doing anything.

COMMENT Arabs kept WHITE people as slaves too on the Barbary coast. But alluding to such "traditions" in Riz' argument only raises the question about morality, and homosexual "marriage" is, immoral.

Suzeonline: Your understanding of history, and links to Wikipedia by guys in pajamas is hysterical. Even Professor Camille Paglia, the famous bisexual academic, and atheist, acknowledges that the Abolition movement was dominated by Christians, and everyone knows that the Christian concept of marriage which works, is very different than pagan ceremonies, defined as marriage by know-little left-wingers. Still, I understand that your side is determined to raise a fatherless generation, a new stolen generation.

<<'Discriminating' use to be a term of approval - not all discrimination is bad.>>

Furthermore, homosexual activist judges apparently discriminate against mothers who choose not to raise their children as lesbians.
With dire consequences for their children.
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504083_162-6037741-504083.html

Apparently giving away the biological children of heterosexual mothers to lesbians is a good form of discrimination according to radical homosexual activist judges.
Do unwitting supporters of same-sex “marriage” comprehend the can of worms that they are helping to open?