The Injustice Of Marriage Equality

In the heated debate over Same Sex Marriage or Marriage Equality being allowed by law in Australia and the debate over whether there should be a parliamentary vote to enable it, a couple of cool voices were to be heard. Julie McCrossin who supports Marriage Equality is well known to Australians for her campaigns and work as a commentator. David Van Gend, a GP in Queensland and President of the Australian Marriage Forum, has published his own views opposing Same Sex Marriage in his Stealing From A Child and has travelled across Australia arguing his views. David Van Gend and Julie McCrossin addressed The Sydney Institute on Tuesday 22 November 2016.

THE INJUSTICE OF MARRIAGE EQUALITY

DAVID VAN GEND

After a Sydney printing company refused to print my book on the grounds of “the subject matter and content”,[i] and after a Sydney hotel cancelled the meeting where the book was to be launched after threats from LGBT activists,[ii] it is pleasant to find a “safe space” in Sydney for those unfashionable freedoms of association and speech. And because “free speech” really means “free argument” on matters of public importance, I thank Julie for being here to make the counter-argument.

A subversive idea

Lesbian social historian E.J. Graff tells us that “same-sex marriage is a breathtakingly subversive idea,” but we, the public, are assured that nothing will change.[iii] My book takes a hard look at the changes that will come with this subversive idea: how it changes the meaning of marriage and family for all of us; how it breaks a child’s primal bonds of kinship and identity; how it eats away at core liberties of speech, conscience and religion; how it usurps parental authority over their child’s moral education; how it serves that century-long ideological quest to deconstruct the natural family and subjugate it to the authority of the State.

Senator Penny Wong assures us that nothing will change with same-sex ‘marriage’: “the sun will still rise, and children will still eat more ice cream than is good for them.”[iv] That is not what her fellow lesbian activist Masha Gessen told the Sydney Writer’s Festival in 2012:

Fighting for gay marriage generally involves lying about what we are going to do with marriage when we get there. Because we lie that the institution of marriage is not going to change. And that is a lie.[v]

We have heard US gay activist Michelangelo Signorile urge his friends “to fight for same-sex marriage and its benefits and then, once granted, redefine the institution of marriage completely … [because] the most subversive action lesbians and gay men can undertake … is to transform the notion of “family” entirely.”[vi] We have read lawyer Paula Ettelbrick’s declaration that, “Being queer means pushing the parameters of sex, sexuality and family … and of radically reordering society’s view of reality.”[vii] And feminists like Ellen Willis write that, “conferring the legitimacy of marriage on homosexual relations will introduce an implicit revolt against the institution into its very heart…”[viii]

Lying about marriage, redefining it completely, introducing an implicit revolt… These are not the words of easy-going citizens who just want to fit in with the established norms of marriage and family. These are the words of culture warriors intent on taking the despised heteronormative institution and “radically reordering” it in their own image. Yes, the sun will still rise, but on an unrecognisable human scene.

So those of us who once thought that “marriage equality” was just about marriage now realise we were wrong. For the serious LGBTQ activists, it is about capturing the legal high ground from where the entire “rainbow agenda” can be implemented. This ranges from imposing radical “Safe Schools” gender theory on our kids to passing laws that let cross-dressing males use girls’ bathrooms; from bankrupting bakers who don’t want to write a gay “marriage” slogan on a cake to prosecuting pastors for teaching traditional values on marriage; from removing “mother and father” from birth certificates to changing “husband and wife” into “partner 1 & 2” – as we have seen overseas. The quest for “marriage equality” is about giving one group in society the legal clout to compel acquiescence in disputed moral and social questions.

The people’s vote

The people of Australia were meant to have a say on whether they wanted this genderless package deal that comes with genderless “marriage”. But the people’s vote, the plebiscite, was sunk in the Senate by Labor and the Greens – with opposition leader Bill Shorten placing opponents of same-sex “marriage” in his “basket of deplorables”, calling them “haters crawling out from under rocks”, and resorting to the emotional blackmail of suggesting that LGBT youth will suicide if we hold a people’s vote on marriage. That claim is as plausible as saying that aboriginal youth will suicide if we hold a people’s vote on constitutional recognition, but it has served Labor’s purposes. Now we move on to the longer campaign to keep the Coalition faithful to “a people’s vote or nothing” going into the next election.

For let’s be clear: marriage is the people’s institution, given by nature, not by the state, and no government has the authority to redefine an institution that predates all government. Men and women have vowed themselves to each other and raised their young long before there was any state, any religion, any law. The family is, as John Locke puts it, “The first society”, pulling rank on secondary institutions like the state. It is, as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights puts it, “the natural and fundamental group unit of society”.[ix] If we are foolish enough to think we can repeal the natural foundation of society and replace it with a genderless fiction, let that be on all of our heads.

But I am confident that my fellow deplorables will not side with the elites in denying the truth of marriage and family. Outside of the inner cities, Australians are more in touch with nature; in Toowoomba, we have discovered that only a male and female of the species can create offspring; that only a man and woman can give a child her mother and her father, her biological identity and ancestry. That is nature’s job description for marriage and family – and two men, or two women, need not apply.

An untrue proposition

So truth matters, and same-sex “marriage” is an untrue proposition. The great anthropologist, Claude Levi-Strauss, described marriage as “a social institution with a biological foundation”.[x] It is not a social invention to be cut to shape according to political fad; it is a social recognition of pre-existing natural reality: male, female, offspring. All of our marriage laws and customs exist to reinforce this biological foundation, helping to keep a feral-by-nature male with his mate for the sake of social stability and, above all, for the sake of any child they might create.

Not all marriages do create children – but typically they do, and an institution exists for the typical case. Married couples who cannot have children are still fully married because they fulfil the twin criteria of marriage: they bring together the two halves of nature, male and female, in a conjugal union, and they can give a child, albeit an adopted child, the mother and father relationship a child needs. Same-sex couples obviously do not bring together the two halves of nature in a conjugal union, and they cannot give a child, any child, the mother and father relationship a child needs. Same-sex relationships matter greatly to the individuals involved and demand neighbourly civility, but they are a different kind of thing to that great natural project of marriage and family – and they need to find a different word.

An unjust proposition

If same-sex “marriage” is an untrue proposition, it is also an unjust proposition.

We are guilty of stealing a child’s birthright when we institute motherless families and fatherless homes as an ideal in our law. This is the heart of opposition to same-sex “marriage”: that it means future children must be deprived of their mother or their father – not through tragic circumstance, but by an Act of Parliament. Why would we do that to a child?

Heather Barwick was raised by a loving lesbian couple but she wrote last year, “My father’s absence created a huge hole in me, and I ached every day for a dad. I loved my mom’s partner, but another mom could never have replaced the father I lost.”[xi]

Another sixteen year old girl puts it this way: “I want to hug my father more than anything and I want him to know I specifically exist, and I am real, and every human has a father and a mother and I deserve to know both.”[xii]

Let that be the epitaph on this heartbreaking experiment in genderless “marriage” and parenting. And if your heart is not easily broken, test your head against the brick wall of research (chapter 4 of my book) that shows how same-sex “marriage” will, on average, disadvantage children. As professors Sullins, Regnerus and Marks conclude:

Evidence from large, nationally-representative studies has demonstrated that children raised by same-sex parents, particularly those who identify as married, do not fare as well as those with opposite-sex parents, and many experience substantial harm.[xiii]

Given these findings, which of our politicians is so negligent, so indifferent to the best interests of the child, as to sign such an institution into law?

Well, probably the very same politicians who so negligently support the “Safe Schools” gender program – like Mr Shorten, who says he is “absolutely supportive”. By contrast, former Prime Minister John Howard said he would “throw it in the dustbin, lock, stock and barrel”.[xiv]

Right now, parents can object to LBGT programs like Safe Schools, but once LGBT “marriage” is the law of the land, parents will have no grounds to push back. Even though Safe Schools has taught your eleven-year-olds to “imagine you are sixteen” and going out with a person of the same sex that you are “really into”;[xv] it has directed students to a site advertising sadomasochistic bondage workshops for young people;[xvi] its associated resources instruct young people in the arts of “chest binding” and “penis tucking” to disguise their unwanted sexual characteristics;[xvii] it frowns on the terms “boy” or “girl” as being heteronormative and binary – it says you should not ask a new mother if her baby is a boy or a girl;[xviii] instead, gender is taught to children as “fluid”.[xix]

This, too, is “stealing from a child” – when we steal their childhood through the imposition of indecent and disturbing adult ideas.

We also steal from a child when we strip away their entire moral community. If it takes a village to raise a child, then in order to raise tomorrow’s child according to the values of the LGBT revolution, it will be necessary to purge the village of reactionary moral leaders. That means faithful pastors, priests and rabbis. As former Prime Minister John Howard said in 2011:

Changing the definition of marriage, which has lasted for time immemorial, is not an exercise in human rights and equality; it is an exercise in de-authorising the Judaeo-Christian influence in our society, and any who pretend otherwise are deluding themselves.[xx]

A judge of the US Supreme Court, Justice Alito, echoed that warning last year about the effect of same-sex “marriage” on old values and beliefs. He said:

I assume that those who cling to old beliefs will be able to whisper their thoughts in the recesses of their homes, but if they repeat those views in public, they will risk being labelled as bigots and treated as such by governments…[xxi]

Any law normalising homosexual marriage will be a truncheon in the fist of the thought police, enforcing approved attitudes on marriage and sexuality via their “human rights” commissions. And we are told that nothing will change.

In conclusion, the one per cent of couples in Australia who are same-sex already have 100 per cent the same legal status and benefits as any other couple. They are free to live as they choose, but they are not free to choose a motherless or fatherless existence for future children; they are not free to impose radical LGBT sex-education on all of our children; they are not free to silence conscientious objectors with the big stick of anti-discrimination law.

For the sake of future children and present freedoms, we must keep marriage true to nature – as a man-woman thing.

ENDNOTES

[i] “Printer refuses to print Dr David van Gend’s new book”, Out in Perth, September 27, 2016, http://www.outinperth.com/printer-refuses-print-david-van-gends-new-book/

[ii] Crowe D., “Same-sex marriage event off: threats to hotel staff”, The Australian, September 17, 2016, http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/samesex-marriage-event-off-threats-to-hotel-staff/news-story/d45bd0f9e9a774fc3e3d0741f176da13

[iii] Graff E.J., Same-sex marriage is a radical feminist idea, The American Prospect, June 28, 2012, http://prospect.org/article/same-sex-marriage-radical-feminist-idea

[iv] “Gay marriage debate: Penny Wong vs Cory Bernardi,” YouTube video, Debate at the National Press Club in Canberra on July 29, 2015, posted by “porjo38,” July 29, 2015, https://youtu.be/Vyqz5tuPhIw

[v] Gessen M., interview by Annette Shun Wah, Radio National, June 11, 2012, Sydney Writer’s Festival 2012, at 6.20min, http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/lifematters/why-get-married/4058506

[vi] Signorile M., “Bridal wave”, Out, December 1993, 161.

[vii] Ettelbrick P., “Since when is marriage a path to liberation?” Out/Look, Fall, 1989, 8.

[viii] Willis E. et al, “Can marriage be saved?” The Nation, June 17, 2004, https://www.thenation.com/article/can-marriage-be-saved-0/

[ix] Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 16

[x] Levi-Strauss C., “Introduction,” in Andre Burguiere et al. (eds.), 1 A History of the Family: Distant Worlds, Ancient Worlds 5 (1996)

[xi] Barwick H., “Dear gay community, your kids are hurting,” The Federalist, March 17, 2015, accessed July 1, 2016, http://thefederalist.com/2015/03/17/dear-gay-community-your-kids-are-hurting/

[xii] “I need to know my father,” Anonymous Us, April 12, 2016, accessed July 1, 2016, https://anonymousus.org/need-know-father/

[xiii] American College of Pediatricians et al, Amici Curiae brief, Supreme Court of the USA, April 2015, http://www.supremecourt.gov/ObergefellHodges/AmicusBriefs/14-556_American_College_of_Pediatricians.pdf 45-46.

[xiv] The Hon. John Howard, interview with Paul Murray, Sky News June 2016.

[xv] All of Us, uncensored version (prior to May 2016) see https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B-BTrWV2QzdbcTJVdFc3cmtrQUk or https://www.dropbox.com/s/ojmjl4stxmnpx1g/Safe%20Schools%20-%20All%20of%20Us%20%28original%20version%29.pdf?dl=0

[xvi] For links preserved as of February 2016 see Australian Family Association, “Submission to Inquiry: Submission No.30,” dated February 16, 2016, NSW Parliamentary enquiry into Sexualisation of children and young people, https://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/committees/inquiries/Pages/inquiry-submission-details.aspx?pk=%2053009

[xvii] Fink M. et al., eds., OMG I’m Trans (MINUS18, 2015), 6, accessed June 19, 2016, https://minus18.org.au/omgit/omgit-web.pdf 30.

[xviii] Fink M., All of Us (Safe Schools Coalition Australia, 2016), 30, accessed July 29, 2016, http://www.safeschoolshub.edu.au/common/downloads/All-Of-US-Online-Version-May-2016-v3.pdf

[xix] References available in the present writer’s book, Stealing from a Child, chapter 5, “LGBT Sex-Education at your ‘Safe School’”. See George Christensen MP, Hansard 25th Feb 2016 http://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display.w3p;query=Id%3A%22chamber%2Fhansardr%2F115c3603-d1aa-4e7e-8ec1-5ec3e40edc8a%2F0156%22

[xx] “‘Values in Western Civilisation’ – the Hon. John Howard,” Campion College graduation address, December 2011, http://www.campion.edu.au/values-in-western-civilisation-the-hon-john-howard/

[xxi] Supreme Court of the USA, Obergefell v Hodges, March 2015 at http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/14pdf/14-556_3204.pdf