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.