Why The Church's Arguments About Marriage Equality Are Bogus

I read a comment on the wall of a friend on Facebook. My friend expressed support for the "Yes" vote on the coming plebiscite on marriage equality in Australia. This gentleman opposed it, and in support of his position, made a number of arguments. I'm grateful to him for marking his position so explicitly, since I could then address each of his points and show that they were essentially baseless.

I've quoted each of his statements below and added my response under it.

1. "Unfortunately a lot of people think changing the law that has been around for more than 100 years is justified."

Laws are not sacrosanct merely because they've been around a long time. There was a time when inter-marriage between whites and non-whites was illegal. As society progresses, backward laws have to be removed from the law books.

2. "We will see more [homosexuality] on the streets."

Yes, so? How is that a problem? Homosexuals are among us already. They form 7%-10% of the population. You want to keep them invisible and ashamed of who they are. Too bad the world is progressing and leaving your kind behind. Yes, you will see more homosexuality on the streets, in the sense that you will see same-sex couples holding hands or kissing in public. I think it would be good for your kind to get used to it.

3. "Churches will be sued for not allowing gay marriage" Right now, churches are exempt from the laws that force the rest of society to behave with decency. That will change. Churches will pay taxes like every other organisation, and they will stop demonising and discriminating against a group of people because an outdated book written centuries ago by semi-educated, bigoted men says so. It will be a welcome development when the church is finally civilised.

4. "The bible could be burned as its against homosexuality as is God as mentioned throughout the Bible."

The bible can be burned even today. It's perfectly legal. Any book that preaches discrimination against human beings for their sexuality deserves to be.

5. "People against lgbtq+ will be persecuted"

As they should be. If you discriminate against people of another race today, you can be prosecuted. Same principle.

6. "There is a hidden agenda here have a look at what the green party are proposing once the law gets passed. There will be no freedom of [speech] they will get rid of the title father and mother as its discrimination against the lgbtq+ people"

Nonsense. Nobody will take away anyone's freedom of speech. More people will start to use neutral terms like "caregiver", that's all. It's just like you can continue to use gender-specific terms in your speech today, such as "he", but more people have started to use gender-neutral terms like "they".

7. "Our kids will be taught they can wear a dress if they want [to]. Toilets will be unisex boys who wear a dress can go into a girls toilet area at school ....it will just open a can of worms"

That's what gender identity means, and you'll just have to get used to it. Yes, changing attitudes is uncomfortable and feels like opening a can of worms, but that's how society progresses. I'm sure it felt like opening a can of worms to your grandparents' or great-grandparents' generation when the laws against racial inter-marriage were repealed.

8. "People will then have rights to marry [their] sex doll or dogs etc."

Nonsense. There is no slippery slope. The principle applies to adults and informed consent, and does not apply where those conditions do not exist. Yes, this will open the door to the legal recognition of polyamorous relationships, but that will be the extent of it. Paedophilia will not become legal (children cannot consent), people cannot marry their pets (animals cannot consent), people cannot marry sex dolls (dolls are inanimate and cannot consent), people cannot marry robots (well, maybe they can, when artificial intelligence progresses to the point when a robot's consent is legally recognised).

9. "There are 85+ types of lgbtq [categories] and soon there will be more."

Why is this a problem for you?

Remember:

If you are straight, no one is forcing you to marry someone of the same sex.

If you are cisgendered, no one is forcing you to wear clothes associated with the other gender or to use toilets associated with the other gender.

Your children will not "turn gay" or "turn transgender" if exposed to the idea that LGBTQ+ people are normal. If they are straight to begin with, they will remain straight. If they are cisgendered to begin with, they will remain cisgendered. But this is the important part. If they are gay or transgender to begin with, they will gain the courage to accept this and society will accept them too. It will be a far more humane society than what we have today, where gay people have to hide their sexual orientation, and transgender people have to hide their gender identity, because of the unnecessary shame, guilt and menace that society forces upon them.

Your opposition comes from unfamiliarity, and the solution is simply to get used to the change that is underway. Your religion is not based on the word of a "god". Your "holy" book was written by human beings with their own prejudices and biases.

Sexual orientation and gender identity are not choices. People are born that way. (Even if it *were* a choice, it should not be a crime to choose.)

Crimes only occur when consent is violated. I suggest you look within the churches you care so much about, and set your house in order. A lot of sexual abuse has taken place within churches, and the facts have been coming out for a few years now. The full extent of the damage is yet to be recognised, but the churches will pay the price. There's no doubt about that.

Churches and churchgoers must stop imposing their mediaeval and harmful ideas on the rest of society. This ends here.

Another Step Closer To Orwell's World

George Orwell made famous his parody of a totalitarian state with this slogan:

"War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength."

I had a good chuckle over it when I read it years ago, thinking it to be ridiculous and over-the-top. I thought Orwell was merely exaggerating to make a point.

Unfortunately, it was no exaggeration. Thanks to the War on Terror, we now have an Orwellian slogan for our own age: "Violation of Privacy is Security". It's amazing how many people have bought into this lie.

Here comes another one. The state of New South Wales in Australia has an anti-discrimination law that makes it unlawful for education authorities to refuse admission to, or expel, a student for being gay, lesbian or transgender. Significantly, private schools and colleges are explicitly exempt from this law. Now, there are private schools and private schools, but the ones that are most relevant when talking about discrimination against LGBT people are religious schools, because no other schools have an ideological opposition to differentness in sexual orientation.

Here's what is breathtaking about this drama. When the exemption loophole is sought to be eliminated, Christian schools have opposed it on the grounds that their freedom of religion is being violated!

Most private schools have a religious ethos, they stand for something, and if these exemptions were removed that would break down the ability of these schools to maintain whatever their particular ethos is. - Laurie Scandrett, chief executive of the Sydney Anglican Schools Corporation

In other words, "our religion is bigoted and demonises fellow human beings, but if you try to get us to be civilised, that is a violation of our freedom to discriminate against people and harass them".

The words in which this argument is couched sound reasonable. Quoting from the article, "Ian Baker, acting executive director of the NSW Catholic Education Commission, said the fact that so few, if any, cases of students being expelled were widely known was testament to the fact schools tended to treat such students with sensitivity." But the counter-arguments are telling: "Justin Koonin, from the Gay and Lesbian Rights Lobby, said he questioned why schools wanted the laws if they did not use them. ''It's not just that the student can be expelled, they can be discriminated against within the school environment, and the school doesn't have to do anything about it.'' "

This chutzpah on the part of organised religion astonishes me. Can't they hear their own hypocrisy and bigotry coming through in what they're saying?

I'm not terribly worried, though, because these people are on the losing side of history. The churches will lose the argument, because society is already beginning to accept LGBT people as equal human beings, disregarding the teachings of organised religion on what constitutes acceptable sexual behaviour. 

In the meantime, George Orwell might be interested to know that we now have a second slogan for our time: "Discrimination is Freedom of Religion".

Old Products, New Marketing

Being a nerd, I'm always amused by church signs that reference technology to evangelise religion.








Now the church has competition in this space, as this sign from Gurgaon near New Delhi demonstrates.


[I'm not an expert on Yoga, so I won't attempt to explain what Pranayama is. I'll leave it to Wikipedia to define Pranayama (and if someone doesn't agree with the definition, they can always edit the entry ;-).]