NOT too far into the future you will go into a hotel bar for a drink or for some lunch and you will be confronted by the sight of two men kissing as their friends and loved ones clap, cheer and take pictures. You will have walked into the ‘afters’ of a gay wedding.
Those of you, who are shocked or disgusted by this prospect, had better get ready, because it is going to happen.
Our government has made it clear that it will soon publish a bill to allow gay couples to form civil partnerships.
This will mean that gay couples will be able to enjoy most of the financial privileges of marriage, while making sure that gay partnerships are seen as less important than married couples in the eyes of the State.
What this means in the short term is that gay citizens are to be discriminated against a little less than they are at present. In the long term it will mean that wedding cakes with two plastic men atop will be seen in a hotel near you.
Between now and then, however, things are going to get very very ugly. People will be knocking on your doors, sending you flyers or asking you to sign petitions. So we may as well get our opinions on the matter sorted as quickly as possible so we can comfortably switch channels when this issue hits boiling point.
We won’t bother with the term ‘civil partnership’ as it is just a cowardly way for the government to try and please both traditionalists and civil rights activists, while putting off the more important issue of marriage rights for the gay community.
Once we have civil partnerships on the statute books, the countdown will have begun for gay marriage.
So concentrate your minds on gay marriage and forget about the other thing because not only will you be hearing a lot about gay marriage, you will be asked to vote in a referendum to either allow it or continue to ban it.
And if there is one thing we have learned about referenda in this country — both sides will lie. So if we can’t trust the politicians to tell us the truth, who do we look to for guidance in what will be one of the most groundbreaking pieces of social legislation since the ban on homosexuality was lifted in 1993?
Depending on one’s belief system we either look to science or to religion to answer those questions we don’t want to answer for ourselves.
Traditionally, we have looked to the Catholic Church to do our thinking for us. It, at least, has been consistent in its views about homosexuality.
It is wrong or, to quote Pope Benedict XVI, it is ‘intrinsically disordered’. In our more liberal world, of course, Church leaders no longer advocate death or imprisonment for those who are actively gay, but they still do not agree with the idea of equality.
They also are of the opinion that our society is based on marriage and that marriage has to be between a man and a woman as they are the only option in the creation and rearing of children.
There are some obvious weaknesses to this argument.
The Catholic Church once believed in slavery.
The Catholic Church once encouraged the castration of little boys so that they would be better additions to church choirs.
The Catholic Church felt it necessary to burn people alive if they disagreed with Church doctrine.
The Catholic Church believed a lot of things which it now no longer believes. It is not as consistent as its leaders would have us believe. More importantly, however, the founder of this Church, Jesus, never once said anything for or against homosexuality.
Without a direct quote from Jesus we are left to guess at the will of God on this matter. To the Church’s credit, however, it does not merely rely on Pope Benedict. It concentrates on the more important issue of children.
The Church contends that marriage is primarily about the creation and rearing of children.
Gay couples have no natural recourse to the creation o f children and would deny adopted children the full experience of parenting as they would lack either a father or a mother.
Unfortunately, they are making this argument in a country where already one third of all children are being raised in family units that lack either a father or a mother.
This argument is further weakened by research which has been unable to find any differences in the quality of parenting between same sex couples and male female couples. So in the absence of blind faith we are left with science. Science now tells us that homosexuality is not unnatural.
More and more instances of same sex relationships within the animal kingdom are being discovered. Brain differences between straight and gay people have been discovered which means that the innate nature of homosexuality is closer to being understood.
As already mentioned, we have no reason to believe that children reared by same sex parents are any less healthy than those with traditional parents. Even the rate of homosexuality in children from same sex relationships is exactly the same as in the wider community.
Of course, one can also be guilty of blind faith in science. Respected scientists once claimed they could ‘cure’ homosexuality by electro-shock therapy. Scientists also gave thalidomide to pregnant women, believing it a safe method of relieving morning sickness.
Approximately 10,000 babies were born with deformities before this drug was taken off the market. So we really shouldn’t allow scientists to do our thinking for us either. Without religion, science or politicians to make the decision for us we are left with only one option. This is the option we should have chosen first anyway.
We must rely on our own sense of right and wrong. Almost 10 per cent of the population is gay.
Despite this huge number, we live in a country where it is still not safe, physically or professionally, to be openly gay. While anti-discrimination laws do exist, they do not protect gay people from verbal abuse or assaults. But it is not this tiny minority of active gay haters who are the problem.
The biggest problem for the gay community is the ‘icky’ factor.
Until we are mature enough to walk in on the those gay men getting married and feel nothing more than mild annoyance at the noise, then we will continue to condemn one in 10 of our sons and daughters to a life of fear, isolation and second-class citizenship.
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