Church canvasses MPS on gay Bill
BEFORE MPs voted on Tuesday in favour of same-sex marriage the Church of England issued a briefing paper that was sent to all members of the House of Commons.
The paper said that the Church did not doubt the Government’s intentions in seeking to protect faith organisations from discrimination challenges but warned that “if the Bill proceeds into law it is essential that the various ‘locks’ in the Bill are preserved as drafted.”
Recognising that there is growing acceptance of same-sex relations in the wider society and that there is a diversity of views within the Church of England about such relations, the paper argues that Civil Partnerships have proved an important way to address inequalities and already confer the same rights as marriage.
“To apply uniformity of treatment to objectively different sorts of relationships - as illustrated by the remaining unanswered questions about consummation and adultery – is an unwise way of promoting LGBT equality.”
The paper insists that even if not every marriage results in the birth of children ‘marriage as an institution is nevertheless directed towards procreation’.
It also claims that the Church of England is given no special protection above other religious organisations. Because Canon Law is part of the law of the land and Church of England clergy are under an obligation to marr y any qualifying couple living in the parish, special provisions are required if the Church of England is to enjoy the same freedom as other Churches.
The paper warns that the Bill as drafted may not offer adequate protection of the religious freedom of Christians who hold that marriage can only be between a man and woman. It also argues that it is far from certain that the ‘quadruple locks’ will protect the Church of England and those denominations and faiths that do not wish to offer same-sex marriages from legal challenge in the domestic and European courts but concedes that it is unlikely that the Church of England will be compelled to conduct same-sex marriages against its will.
Individual clergy cannot be left to make their own decisions, the paper argues, because the Church’s doctrine that marriage is between one man and one woman is enshrined in Canon Law. This was not the situation in the case of divorce and remarriage.
The think tank ResPublica also issued a report on marriage just before MPs voted. The report, written by Roger Scruton and Philip Blond, accused the Government of changing the view of marriage from ‘conjugal marriage’, which forms a bond connecting individuals who marr y to the children they hope to create and the society they wish to shape, to a ‘part- nership model’. The authors claim this is in line with trends that have changed marriage from a rite of passage into a higher life into ‘a bureaucratic stamp with which to endorse temporary choices’.
Attacking the withdrawal of society’s recognition of traditional marriage, the report says: “Just as people are less disposed to assume the burdens of high office when society withholds the dignities and privileges which those offices have previously signified, so too they are less disposed to enter real marriages, when society acknowledges no distinction between marriages that deserve the name, and relationships that merely borrow the title.
“Gay people want marriage,” the report argues, “because they want quite rightly a variant of the social endorsement that it signifies; but by admitting gay marriage we deprive marriage of its social meaning. It ceases to be what it has been hitherto, namely a union of the sexes and a blessing conferred by the living on the unborn.”
In its recommendations the report calls on the State to leave marriage as it is but it urges the Churches to take note of the desire for permanent, loving homosexual relationships to be recognised by society and to consider offering ‘civil unions’ in which samesex couples are able to celebrate their new status.