Zoomtard

Just to annoy my avid regular readers who wonder why a blog that used to be about musing on Bible passages and reviewing movies has now become a place to re-hash an evangelical imitation of JPII’s “Theology of the Body”, I thought I’d share a little opinion on the whole issue of marriage versus gay civil unions. Krusty brand imitation gruel is a better replica of gruel than my theology of sex is to the great work by the old Pope but I have read two fine articles over the weekend to throw together in conversation.

First off, there is a rousing, light little piece from (family friend) Fiona McCann in the Irish Times. She writes about how she will soon be married and considers whether or not there is a sense in which she is betraying her gay friends by signing up to the secular institution of marriage that is not open to 3-10% of the population.

She writes,

I know that now everyone’s supposed to be pacified by the Civil Partnership Bill… [but] … We’ve still got a State-recognised institution that doesn’t allow one-tenth of the adult population in, for reasons that are wholly, inarguably discriminatory, unfair and utterly embarrassing.

She ends, sounding like a secular preacher declaring the good news of tolerance:

But I’m still getting married, signing up to a secular institution has been much distorted by centuries of misogyny, and a social and religious landscape that bears little resemblance to what I believe. So we, the Beyoncé and me, are claiming it back for our time, in our way. There’s just no reason that gay people shouldn’t have that option as well. Now that would be a helluva party.

And one can’t help but think that she has hit the nail on the head. I am a Christian. I am convinced that God inaugurated marriage as a covenant between a man and a woman so that they may forsake each other. I think marriage goes a whole lot deeper than McCann when she wittily puts it, “For the first time in my life – and no offence to all my charming blood relatives – I’m getting to choose my family”. But if you don’t believe Jesus is the Son of God, it is hard to conceive how you can even countenance entering into the particular type of arrangement me and wife-unit declared live with raised fists in a glorious act of world-upturning revolution one mild September evening (almost five years ago!).

So McCann makes me think that this gay civil union think should just get scrapped and we’ll have civil marriage as an institution the majority of people will take on.

But then again, Mark Vernon in the Guardian argues that gay civil union and marriage should be different because gay relationships are different from straight relationships. For Vernon, civil union as a marriage-like but not marriage relationship should be welcomed because:

the broader nature of the institutions that support such commitments gain from plurality. It provides space for the couples concerned to grow in their commitment in different ways.

Vernon recognises that marriage is an institution that rests on top of a long tradition. Before it was Christendom, it was Christian and before it was Christian it was Jewish and in all cases have left their baggage around the institution. If as a civic society we have this great opportunity to “reconceive institutionalised relationships” then gay people shouldn’t be burdened by the weight of culture invested in marriage. A new institution for a new phenomenon! Or as Chris Rock would say, “Let’s support gay marriage. It’s intolerant that straight people have to suffer the pain alone!”

Vernon is I think, speaking in a way I wish I could speak when he writes:

To put all this another way, the language of equality is overdone when it demands absolute and unequivocal sameness for all people. We are not the same, though in the limited sphere of the law, people should be treated as the same.

Ultimately, as rousing as McCann’s piece is, it is not intolerant or unequal or discriminatory for a society to not extend marriage rights to homosexuals. Because that is what it would be: the extension of rights to homosexuals. As it stands, marriage is open to everyone whether they are gay or straight. But marriage by definition is between a man and a woman. The conversation in the public sphere has scanned over this cultural heritage. The rights of marriage are open to all people but marriage is not of interest to some; those who are attracted to and committed to partners of the same gender.

To extend marriage to mean same sex unions is a viable option, as McCann would be well able to show. But it would no longer be marriage. Which kind of defeats the purpose in the first place. Against this, Vernon shows us how gay civil union allows us to acknowledge the legitimacy and importance of committed relationships outside the straight spectrum without forcing the tried, tested and very labyrinthine nature of marriage upon them.

Equality does not mean uniformity. The end of oppression doesn’t mean the oppressed have to look like the oppressors. It’s an almost theological idea, which we could probably point out if we had been bothered to do some good theology these last few decades…

Your Correspondent, Got debts that no honest man can pay