Here are a set of 14 short videos from the UK-based Coalition for Marriage explaining how legalising “gay” marriage will impact schools, free speech, traditional marriage, and various other aspects of society.
Poll: “Does equality require same-sex marriage?” – NZ Herald’s loaded ‘question’
Today the NZ Herald is running a ‘poll’ on the ‘same-sex marriage’ bill based on the loaded question: “Does equality require same-sex marriage?”
See: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10877696
The background article presents the case for the bill (“Yes”) put by Sam Clements, followed by the case against (“No”) by Professor of Law from Otago University, Rex Ahdar.
Sam Clements begins his case (quoted in italics) by stating:
It is logically flawed, and a nonsensical argument to suggest the redefinition of marriage by the state is in effect an attempt “‘to abolish it”. How absolutist and sweeping a statement.
Response from SPCS
Mr Clements has failed to distinguish between the effect of an action by a person or agent and their intention. They are two quite distinct matters. Likewise he fails to appreciate that the effect (consequence) of any action may be intended or unintended. His simplistic comments overlooks these matters. Clement’s accusatory sweeping and simplistic statement is itself logically flawed.
Traditional (conjugal) marriage is universally recognised as an honourable institution and highly beneficial to society. If its universally accepted meaning as involving one man and one woman is degraded, altered, negated, or compromised by tampering with its definition, for whatever reason, this will undoubtedly have a negative social/societal impact, in particular in relation to the welfare of children.
It is not logically flawed to claim that the effect of legalising same-sex ‘marriage’ (SSM) could or will lead to the ‘abolition’ of the true meaning of the term “marriage”. It is quite another matter to assert that the state is deliberately attempting to do this. Many of those opposed to the bill do see it as an attack on religious freedom and the institution of marriage, given that it renders the concept “marriage” meaningless. Why? Because expanding it to include SSM degrades it as SSM is an oxymoron.
Many homosexual activists pushing for the bill have publicly stated that civil unions are “meaningless” even though they campaigned so passionately for them in 2002 to 2004. What utter hypocrisy! Just nine years ago homoxsexuals were dancing in the streets applauding the passage of the Civil Union Bill into law, now they say it is largely irrelevant after having got on their knees before the select committee to plead with them to accept their claim that civil unions are so meaningfull to their communities.
Sam Clements continues:
This bill seeks to grant same-sex couples the ability to marry, and in so doing bring formal societal recognition to their committed and loving relationships, which are no different to those of heterosexual couples.
Comment from SPCS
The so-called “equity” argument he uses is deficient. Of course all persons have the human right to love (within lawful bounds) whom they will. A woman school teacher can fall in love with her 14 year-old female student and the feeling may be mutual, but that does not entitle her to lawfully have sexual relations with her student, let alone ‘marry’ her. Loving relationships expressed intimately within the marriage bond are fundamentally different to ‘loving’ (commercial) relationships expressed between a man a prostitute even if she happens to have a deep affection and love for him.
Conjugal traditional marriage is not equal to same-sex marriage. The first involves the complementarity of the two sexes – physically, emotionally, psychologically and spiritually which SSM does not. It also has a biological orientation towards procreation which SSM does not. No amount of sexual activity between members of a same-sex couple will ever result in a child. Those in traditional who chose to adopt a child, often when they cannot have their own, can offer that child a mother’s and father’s love. A homosexual couple cannot.
Sam Clements continues:
Some appear fixated with the idea that “sexual union” is only truly possible from a marital perspective when it is between a man and a woman.
In essence, placing the ability to procreate as emblematic proof of this. This is one of the sadder and more naive statements often raised by opponents of the bill.
Response from SPCS
Clements: In a condescending tone Clements describes the bill’s opponents as sad cases who are naive.
For from it. Opponents of the bill actually understand the true nature of traditional marriage and why it must be differentiated from SSM (as noted above), while bill supporters ignore them.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10877696
Sam Clements holds graduate degrees in arts and commerce from the University of Auckland. He is a lifetime inducted member of international honour society Beta Gamma Sigma. samclements9@gmail.com
To view a decisive rebuttal of Clement’s position read Rex Ahdar’s view below Clement’s.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10877696
Same-sex ‘marriage’ v. real marriage: Consummation, intimacy and covenant relationship
The gay lobby and their useful id##ts in the government and media have brilliantly manipulated the limited public debate about same-sex marriage by capturing the word ‘equality’. But by framing it as an equalities and human rights issue they have messed with our language and wilfully disregarded the underlying realities.
The problem is that biology, nature or God (which I prefer, of course) has ensured that a same-sex couple can never undertake the act of marriage no matter how much they love each other or how long they live together. Two men (or two women) are physically unable to be naturally intimate and consummate their union through an activity that unites them and has the potential to reproduce and provide the next generation.
This is the essence of marriage and, further, in its purest ideal it is the private act that follows the public exchange of vows and signing of public documents; it is the intimate deed of physical and spiritual union that on the marriage night completes the coming together of two individuals and engages them in the mystical mathematics of procreation: 1+1 = 1 = 3+. It is consummation which transforms the marriage ceremony from a contract to a covenant.
I’m aware of course that the ideal is more honoured in the breach than the observance as today few couples refrain from sexual relations until the wedding night and many choose to co-habit rather than marry. But, for instance, financial honesty is another ideal that is vital to society’s wellbeing and is enshrined in the nation’s law. The fact that it is breached by everyone from corporate fat-cat tax fiddlers to single mums who falsely claim benefits and students who bunk the bus doesn’t deny the importance of the ideal. We have not (yet) attempted to redefine honesty and make it more inclusive …..
I am also aware that by choice or disability some married couples do not procreate. But this too doesn’t change the marriage ideal or its social value.
Of course two men or two women can have a legally-defined relationship which may or may not be called a civil partnership. A lesbian couple or two spinster sisters may love each other and live together all their adult lives; certainly where necessary the state ought to provide for them by statute. (The state currently and unfairly provides for the first but not the second) But they can no more be married than they can defy gravity.
Consummation is so central to marriage that it too is enshrined in the nation’s law which decrees that marriage is voidable if it is not consummated.
See: http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1973/18#section-12
This is the crux of the matter: the hard reality is that consummation physically cannot take place except between heterosexuals so the government has been forced to fudge and create a fundamental inequality in its ‘equal marriage’. Through the legislation and unlike heterosexual couples, same-sex couples will be exempted from any need to consummate their ‘marriage’.
So what’s in the word? They are married but not married. They are one but not one. They are the same but not the same. They are equivalent but certainly not equal.
It is Through The Looking-Glass stuff and a socially destructive confusion of the meaning of marriage by the government: “When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in a rather scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less”.
In the next post we will look at other inequalities and the discrimination against minorities that will be created if the Bill becomes law. Meanwhile I’m praying that politically the Dumpty in Downing Street has a great fall over his Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill.
Source: For complete article see:
Unequal Marriage – 1. Posted 22/03/2013 by Alan Angle
http://www.alansangle.com/?cat=135
For details on Alan Angle see: http://www.alansangle.com/?page_id=2
Family First NZ’s “21 Reasons Why Marriage Matters” mailout brochure ruled within advertsing laws
The Chairman of the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) in a ruling dated 12 April 2013, stated that it had “No Grounds to Proceed” over a formal complaint lodged by “A. Charman” on 25 March 2013 about Family First’s “21 Great Reasons to Keep Marriage as is” brochure (Complaint No 13107).
To view and download the outstanding 24-page colour full brochure, highly recommended by SPCS and supplied to all MPs, go to:
http://www.nzmarriage.org.nz/21-Reasons-Why-Marriage-Matters.pdf
The complainant claimed that the brochure’s “extraordinarily offensive” on the grounds that it allegedly equates same-sex marriage with paedophilia and incest; denigrates children of same-sex couples and advocates for the need for children to have “a mother and a father” which was hurtful to children of single-parent and same-sex families.
The complainant also said the brochure was “inflammatory, largely incorrect and was filled with biases”.
[SPCS has assessed these complaints and determined that they are spurious and absurd and would not be supported by any reasonable-minded New Zealander]
However the ASA says the brochure is an advocacy advertisement of a religious nature which presents a point of view from a particular organisation which, in this case, advocates against the Marriage (Definition of Marriage) Amendment Bill that’s currently before Parliament.
Its Chairman “acknowledged the sincere concerns” of the person who complained, but says the law allows for robust expression of belief or opinion in ads, irrespective of the message.
Please download and distribute this valuable resource: http://www.nzmarriage.org.nz/21-Reasons-Why-Marriage-Matters.pdf
Religious freedom & ‘gay marriage’ cannot coexist- by attorney Matt Barber
Therefore pride is their necklace; they clothe themselves with violence. – Psalm 73:6
“Gay pride” necessitates anti-Christian hate. It must. “Gay marriage” and other “sexual orientation”-based laws do violence to freedom and truth. They are the hammer with which the postmodern left intends to bludgeon bloody religious liberty and the Judeo-Christian sexual ethic.
According to the unequivocal moral precepts of the Judeo-Christian tradition – explicit throughout both the Old and New Testaments – homosexual behavior is sin. Sin is evil. Homosexual behavior is the central, defining characteristic of so-called “gay marriage.” Therefore, “gay marriage” is evil. Christians are obligated to avoid sin – to “do no evil.”
I know; it’s not popular to speak such simple truths in today’s politically correct world. But I’m not out to win a popularity contest.
Most homosexuals know intuitively, I think, that their lifestyle is unnatural and immoral and that the oxymoronic notion of “same-sex marriage” is a silly farce. Thus, they must force others to affirm both their self-destructive lifestyle and their mock “marriages” under penalty of law. They must physically compel everyone to engage their “emperor’s new clothes” delusion, so they can feel better about bad behavior.
Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2013/04/religious-freedom-gay-marriage-cannot-coexist/#AyFzLwKZEllmz8gF.99
Matt Barber is an attorney concentrating on constitutional law. He serves as vice president of Liberty Counsel Action – http//libertycounselaction.org