The …[groups] opposing the change have been, in the main, religious. Behind the Coalition for Marriage, which is running a petition, are evangelical Christian organisations. The Catholic Church – where last weekend a judicious bishops’ letter opposing the change was read to more than a million congregants in 2,500 parishes across England and Wales – is the principal institutional campaigner, with the Archbishop of Canterbury also opposing the move.
They have laid out their reasons carefully and moderately, noting that marriage is a conjugal relationship of a man and a woman apt for the begetting of children who are raised by their natural parents; that this arrangement is both unique and uniquely beneficial to society and to children; and that there is something inappropriate about the state even claiming to have the power by law to redefine it.
They have been careful to point out how little this is about “gay” or anyone else’s rights (we would need to have the same debate if the call were for polygamy, or for siblings to marry) but about the meaning of marriage, and whether it should be preserved or altered.
I suppose commenters on websites, being self-selected and therefore unrepresentative, should not be relied on to demonstrate one way or the other about the state of any question being put forward for discussion. However, websites dedicated to a particular approach to a given topic would ordinarily be though to attract some amount of sympathy with the approach being advocated. That tends to be the case on this site, where the majority of respondents tend to share Canon Harmon’s basic outlook.
So it was with considerable surprise and disappointment that I read through the responses to this very thoughtful article and noted not the slightest bit of sympathy with the views therein expressed – views that are both quite unremarkable and irenic through and through. The radical re-definition of marriage currently being contemplated is damaging in ways that are quite obvious: destroy the fundamental defining characteristic of any institution and you thereby render it meaningless. This is no doubt a welcome development to the Nihilist, but anyone else has good reason to disagree. And of course, as noted in the article, one needn’t be adherent of any particular religious tradition to come to this rather obvious conclusion. The Church seems, sadly, to be the only one making it at the moment. Yet the commenters on this article at the host website are consistently and in equal parts hostile, unimaginative, defensive, ignorant and seemingly thoroughly uninterested in addressing the argument being made and would prefer to attack straw men. Sad. The situation in Britain and Australia would seem to be dire indeed if a group offering a reasoned argument can gain no thoughtful replies on its own website.
Daniel Muth, I have noticed a pattern over the past few months of pro-homosexual posters basically seeking out all websites promoting the family or marriage and stridently trying to scream everyone down who speaks for either. This article’s comments are relatively mild and reasoned compared to the, yes, I will call them trolls, the multitude of trolls at sites like Christian Post who go after every Christian poster on that site. You would think that homosexuals and atheists would have enough class to stay on their own sites, but the strategy now is obviously to shout down and call “haters” anyone who stands up for Christan values.
The mere idea that you disapprove of homosexual sex and question that there is such a thing as sexual orientation will get you shouted down as a bigot and guilty of hate think. Indeed mere disapproval is offensive and beyond the pale. They seem to take the position that there can be no opposition to their agenda.