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SOCIETY FOR PROMOTION OF COMMUNITY STANDARDS INC.

‘Same sex Marriage bill’ – now law: what it means for churches – Craig Vernall

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Senior Pastor, Craig Vernall, National Leader of the NZ Baptist Union, has notified all Baptist pastors registered as marriage celebrants (on the Baptist List) with the Registrar of Births, Deaths and Marriages, that they are expressly forbidden to perform civil unions and same sex marriages under Baptist Administration Manual policy (put in place by the Baptist Assembly Council). Nor can they or any other Baptist celebrant perform such ceremonies in a private capacity, because they are only authorised to their (statutory function) role as marriage celebrants, based on the Call they have to the local Baptist congregation, and having accepted that Call, they are duty-bound to uphold the policies etc. of the NZ Baptist Union (of NZ churches). Vernall has written (NZ Baptist magazine. May 2013, p. 20):

With the Marriage (Definition of Marriage) Amendment Bill passing into law in August this year it’s time for us to consider how our churches should respond to this new legislation.

During the months leading up to the Definition of Marriage Bill being passed, there have been a variety of opinions from both sides of the debate. A very small number of Baptist pastors have indicated to me that they would consider marrying a same sex couple, but admitted this didn’t necessarily reflect the opinions of their congregations.

I mention this because Baptist churches maintain a unique relationship with their pastors when it comes to the pastor’s right to conduct weddings. Baptists are firstly a movement of local churches. When a Baptist church calls a pastor, that pastor then has the ability to become a Registered Baptist pastor. Being registered then qualifies the pastor to become a celebrant on the Baptist list which is held by the Government appointed Registrar of Births, Deaths and Marriages.

So the ability for a Baptist Pastor to perform a wedding is linked directly to the Call given to him or her by their local Baptist church. This means the authority to perform a wedding belongs to the church, not the pastor. The pastor fulfils this function as a ministry of the church, but not by their own authority.

In recognition of this, the Assembly Council has made adjustments to the policy schedule in the Baptist Administration Manual because we believe this reflects the will of our Baptist churches and the Bible.

The Baptist Administration Manual includes policy covering Marriage and Civil Unions. This is found within ‘The Local Church” Appendix 2-M “Policy on Marriage and Civil Unions.”

This policy precludes Baptist pastors from conducting civil unions or the use of Baptist church buildings for such a ceremony. It was the Assembly Council’s decision, at their April 2013 meeting, to update this policy to include same sex marriage alongside civil unions as a ceremony we cannot condone. The Baptist Administration Manual will reflect this decision in due course.

A number of our pastors have asked questions about their protection under the law with respect to their wish not to perform same sex marriages. It is my understanding that church ministers are not legally required to perform a same sex marriage and that this decision will  be protected in law as the legislation is finalised in the coming months.

Neither will Baptist churches have to surrender their buildings for same sex ceremonies. Our buildings are operated under our own authority. If your church congregation is worried about this it would be advisable to adopt the Baptist Administration Manual policies on Marriage and Sexuality and Marriage and Civil Unions (“The Local Church”, Appendix 2M and Appendix 2F Addendum 2) into your church’s constitution. Contact the Baptist Resource Centre for more information.

It will take some time for the dust to settle on this new law. For most of us it will be church business as usual. I’m anticipating that the first point of conflict won’t be with the churches, but with the independent marriage celebrants or court employed marriage registrars who don’t want to perform a same sex marriage for conscience reasons. They are very vulnerable under the present law and will need our support if they wish to defend their personal convictions. The Resource Centre has already been approached by a couple of civil celebrants seeking to be placed on our Baptist celebrants’ list. Unfortunately we cannot do this because the list is specifically reserved for Registered or Accredited Baptist ministers.

A second area of continued debate was highlighted by Green MP Kevin Hague who was quoted in the NZ Herald as saying he, “has drafted a private members bill which would overhaul adoption laws and remove all restrictions to adoption by same sex couples.” (NZ Herald 20th April). The New Zealand public may have something to say about this as the change will deny the rights of a child, in law, to have both a mother and a father.

During the course of the debate, a number of our pastors made the suggestions that Baptists could simply opt out of the marriage celebrant system. That is, hand back our marriage celebrant’s licences to the state. This would leave the state to conduct the legal part of a marriage ceremony and the church would then conduct the wedding as a purely Christian covenant.

This is common practice throughout much of Europe and Central America. It provides a very attractive civil strategy for those of us who are deeply disappointed in our democracy. The Assembly Council discussed this option, but felt that by doing this we Baptists would simply remove ourselves from any future debate around the subject.

On ANZAC Day I joined thousands of other New Zealanders to commemorate and remember the price paid for our democratic freedoms. As I reflect upon what our democracy has given us over the past 150 years I would prefer to ask forgiveness from the men and women who laid down their lives for our democracy.

Is our society a better place since we passed laws such as lowering the drinking age to 18, legalised casinos, decriminalised prostitution and now allowed for same sex marriage? It’s difficult not to sound like some moralising old wowser, but when I saw the results of a text poll carried out by TV’s Campbell Live revealing that 78% of New Zealanders were against same sex marriage, I feel I’m not alone. I don’t think this latest change in the nature and status of marriage was God’s will for our country, and I’m quietly confident that many of those ANZACS who are fallen and now silent would agree with me.

Source

Marriage bill: what it means for churches

NZ Baptist Vol, 129 No.4. 1 May 2013, p. 20.

Craig Vernall is senior pastor at Bethlehem Baptist Church Bethlehem, Tauranga, New Zealand.

Note:

The Marriage (Definition of Marriage) Amendment Bill has been widely referred to in the media as the ‘Same sex marriage bill’.

 

Mike Butler: The gay-marriage self-parody

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The phrase “gay rights for nuclear-free whales” quite accurately parodies the shallow, trendy, bumper-sticker campaigns of the New Zealand left. Shallow trendiness dominated parliament this week as Labour MP Louisa Wall’s Marriage (Definition of Marriage Bill) Amendment Bill passed its third reading 77 votes to 44.

Customs Minister Maurice Williamson promised the sky would not cave in, which was obvious since figures from New Zealand’s 2006 census show that same-sex couples make up fewer than 1 percent of all couples in New Zealand. The numbers of homosexual men living together reached 0.3 percent in 2006, while the number of homosexual women cohabiting made up 0.4 percent of all couples living together.

A total of 3516 female couples and 2655 male couples lived together in 2006, compared with 867,696 couples of the opposite sex. In 2011, of all homosexual couples living together, 232 couples entered into a civil union, with 133 of them women.

To what extent did this shallow, trendy, bumper-sticker campaign clog up parliament? Some indication came from the time it took for MPs to reply to the email I sent to all on August 28 last year. Labour MP Lianne Dalziel replied in March this year while National MP Nicky Wagner replied on April 16.

For full report go to:

http://breakingviewsnz.blogspot.co.nz/2013/04/mike-butler-gay-marriage-self-parody.html?m=0

Understanding the definition of marriage – OSV Newsweekly

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Professor co-authors book on what the implications of redefining marriage could families and society.  By Brandon Vogt – OSV Newsweekly, (13 January 2013)

Robert P. George is a visiting professor at Harvard Law School and professor of jurisprudence at Princeton University. He is an expert on marital law and a strong advocate of traditional marriage. 

Along with Sherif Girgis, a Ph.D. candidate at Princeton University, and Ryan T. Anderson, a Heritage Foundation fellow, George is the co-author of a new book titled, “What Is Marriage? Man and Woman: A Defense” (Encounter Books, $15.99). It’s based on their renowned academic paper on the same topic that appeared in the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy.

George recently spoke with Our Sunday Visitor about the book, his work and the main arguments surrounding same-sex marriage.

Our Sunday Visitor: In the book, you say the entire marriage debate hinges on one question: What is marriage? Why is that question so important?

Robert P. George: Advocates of redefining marriage to include same-sex relationships appeal to the principle of equality. We cannot, however, understand what equality does and does not require without first determining what marriage is.

Marriage laws will always draw distinctions between the types of relationship that count as marital and the types that do not. Appeals against the distinctions they draw based on claims about equality will in every case depend for their validity on whether the distinctions are arbitrary. Whether the distinctions are, in truth, arbitrary or non-arbitrary will turn on a judgment of what marriage is.

So, the key question is: What is marriage? Yet this is the question that those seeking to redefine marriage seek desperately to avoid. They hold to the unquestioned assumption that marriage, properly understood, is simply an especially intense emotional bond, and that the marital relationship is merely a form of sexual-romantic companionship or domestic partnership. This assumption underwrites their claim that distinguishing “same-sex” from “opposite-sex” partnerships in defining marriage is arbitrary and therefore a form of invidious discrimination.

The assumption, however, turns out to lack credibility. It cannot be squared with the history of our law and practice of marriage, or with aspects of marriage that remain, to a considerable extent, uncontroversial.

For example, it cannot make sense of why marriage is necessarily a sexual partnership, as opposed to a partnership that could just as well be integrated around other (nonsexual) shared interests, activities or objectives (a love of tennis or literature, a shared commitment to a political or religious cause, or whatever).

Nor — quite crucially — can it make sense of why marriage is a union of two persons, and not three or more (triads, quadrads, etc.) in polyamorous sexual partnerships.

What can account for, explain and justify these features of marriage is the traditional understanding of marriage as a conjugal union. This type of union is a multilevel (bodily as well as emotional) sharing of life that is made possible by the sexual-reproductive complementarity of man and woman. It is oriented to, and would naturally be fulfilled by, the spouses’ conceiving and rearing children together.

OSV: Some people wonder why the government even concerns itself with marriage. Why does it regulate this type of relationship?

George: Marriage is critical to the success of any society because it is the way that mothers and fathers are united to each other in a relationship uniquely apt for the project of child rearing. Now, obviously, law and the state have a profound interest in successful child rearing. Every other social good depends on that.

So, although the state did not invent marriage — marriage, properly understood, is a pre-political institution — the state rightly and necessarily recognizes marriages, distinguishes marital from nonmarital forms of relationships, and supports, regulates and promotes marriage in the hope of sustaining a vibrant marriage culture.

This explains why, historically and across cultures, governments have formally recognized and regulated marriages, even though they have not done that for ordinary friendships, relationships among siblings or purely religious sacraments and ceremonies, such as baptisms and bar mitzvahs.

OSV: How would legally recognizing same-sex marriage weaken the marriage relationship?

George: Marriage properly understood is not exclusively about procreation and child rearing, though that is what grounds the state’s profound interest in marriage. But it is always linked, if indirectly, to those human goods and purposes. Marriage, as a conjugal union, is the kind of relationship that is oriented to, and would naturally be fulfilled by, the spouses’ having and rearing children together. Where a marriage is not blessed with children, it remains a marriage because being in a relationship of this nature is intrinsically good and fulfilling; it is not merely instrumentally valuable as a means to successful child rearing.

So, the law has always recognized consummated marriages as valid and perfected marriages, even where the spouses know that their sexual congress will not give them children. And the law has always treated all marriages, including the marriages of infertile spouses, as bound by the norms that shape and structure marriage as a conjugal union: sexual exclusivity and fidelity, and the pledge of permanence.

When the law abolishes the conjugal conception of marriage and replaces it with a counterfeit, the rational basis of these norms will be lost, and people’s belief in them and willingness to abide by them will erode as the norms make less and less sense to each generation. They will seem more and more like mere relics of a bygone age when marriage was understood differently.

Initially, of course, habitual ways of thinking and sentimental attachments will cause some people to continue to think of the norms as valid and binding, but that won’t last.

Is this conservative “scaremongering”? Hardly. Candid activists in the same-sex marriage movement say essentially the same thing. Writer Victoria Brownworth, for example, acknowledges that redefining marriage “will almost certainly weaken the institution of marriage.”

The difference between Brownworth and me is only this:  She thinks weakening marriage by redefining it would be a good thing, something that would liberate people and free them from constraints and “hang ups.”

I think it would be a catastrophe for children, for families, for communities and for the larger society, all of whom depend for their well-being on the health and vibrancy of the original and best “department of health, education and welfare,” the marriage-based family.

  • Read ‘Openers: Finding good answers in the same-sex marriage debate’ here.
  • Read  ‘Rebuttals to arguments for same-sex marriage’ here.

Brandon Vogt is a Catholic writer and speaker who blogs at BrandonVogt.com. He is also the author of “The Church and New Media: Blogging Converts, Online Activists, and Bishops Who Tweet” (OSV, $13.95), which you can find at www.churchandnewmedia.com. He writes from Casselberry, Fla.

Source: http://www.osv.com/tabid/7621/itemid/10340/Understanding-definition-of-marriage.aspx

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Make a “Marriage Pledge” to Uphold Marriage definition as one man-one woman – Family First NZ

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Family First NZ is calling on all New Zealanders who oppose the Marriage (Definition of Marriage) Amendment Bill that is scheduled to have its Third Reading in Parliament on Wednesday 17th April 2013, to go online (see link below) and make a “Marriage Pledge” that:

(1) they will not use their electorate vote to vote for an electorate MP who supports changing the definition of marriage, and

(2) they will not use their party vote to vote for a party whose leader supports changing the definition of marriage.

Family First states in an explanatory note assures those making the pledge:

“The politicians have ignored thousands of your submissions. They have ignored calls for a referendum on this massive cultural change – at the same time as demanding a referendum on state asset sales! They have demanded their right for a conscience vote, yet have voted to ignore the consciences of celebrants, registrars, churches hosting weddings, and others in the wedding industry etc. They are ramming this bill through without giving it the due consideration and debate it deserves.

“BUT THEY CAN’T IGNORE YOU AT THE BALLOT BOX! In fact, it’s the one time that they DO have to listen – so they will take notice of this”

WEBSITE ADDRESS TO SUBMIT YOUR PLEDGE:

See: http://www.mymarriagepledge.org.nz/

To download poster/advert on pledge go to:

http://www.protectmarriage.org.nz/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/My-Marriage-Pledge-Full-Page-Advert.pdf

‘Same-sex marriage’ bill and its negative impact on children under Adoption laws

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Media Release 26 March 2013

Petition to Attorney-General: Re ‘Same-sex marriage’ bill and its negative impact on Adoption Act 1955

The Society (SPCS) has sent a petition to the A-G, the Hon. Chris Finlayson, calling on him to fulfil his legal duty under s. 7 of the NZ Bill of Rights Act 1990 (BORA) to inform parliament that the Marriage (Definition of Marriage) Bill is in breach of BORA with respect to not only its “Consequential Amendments” relating to the Adoption Act 1955, and its removal of the terms “husband” and “wife” from at least 14 Acts of parliament – both replaced by a new definition of “spouse” (to include SSM couples); – but also in its amendment of the Marriage Act 1955 to allow same-sex couples to be granted marriage certificates.

SPCS contends that same-sex marriage (SSM) is an oxymoron and that the A-G must inform parliament that it is not authorised to enact meaningless legislation. The bill, if passed, would authorise the state for the first time to grant special “rights” to same-sex couples once they are labelled “spouses” under SSM, to both legally a adopt a child and become its adoptive parents; whether that child is unrelated biologically to both adults, or biologically related to just one of them. By law both homosexual’s names would have to be recorded on the Adoption Order. Of course heterosexual married couples under current law can adopt in parallel situations and this serves the public good and the child’s best interests – to have both a mother and father.

For the state to grant to two homosexuals in a SSM the right to adopt a boy or girl, and for both to be designated in law as his/her “parents” (to the exclusion of his/her birth mother), is not in the best interests of the child and is in breach of BOR. It denies the inherent right of the child to have (ideally) both a mother and a father.

A birth mother ‘Louisa’, for example, in such cases could be acting as a commercial surrogate for two married homosexual men, ‘Chis’ and ‘Peter’, neither of whom provide sperm material, and she may well be in a formal lesbian relationship (civil union or marriage) or an informal one (de facto). Sperm could be provided by another homosexual man ‘Tim’, known to ‘Chris’ and ‘Peter’ and ‘Louisa’ from among the wider so-called “Rainbow Community”.

For the purpose of the Birth Certificate Louisa’s name is required by law to be entered as the child’s mother and any female partner she has must be entered as the other “parent” too. At the point an Adoption Oder is granted to Chris and Peter, both these homosexual men would become the “adoptive parents”. Now the child has two ‘daddys” and two ‘mummys”, or looked at another way, a ‘male mummy’ and a ‘male daddy’ AND another ‘female daddy’ and a ‘female mummy’. This what the child will eventually have to come to terms with and communicate to her teachers, friends and peers.

Such complex absurdities that make a mockery of, and degrade the true concept of “mother” and “father”, are common-place in the homosexual community world-wide, where lesbians often refers publicly to their female marriage partner as their husband (and vice versa) and homosexual men refer to their married partners as their wife (and vice versa).

The universally understood concept of fatherhood and motherhood embodied in article 16 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and article 23(2) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICPR), both of which NZ is a signatory to, involves a child’s parents being a mother (male) and a father (male). Of course an adoptive mother and/or father is consistent with these conventions (whether biologically related or not); but not the concept of two same-sex ‘married’ persons both being parents of a child and living as “spouses” with the child.

The proposed amendments to the Marriage Act 1955 in Louisa Wall’s legally flawed bill, discriminate against heterosexual married persons on the basis of their marriage status, and/or on persons based on their religious belief e.g. that marriage is ordained by God as limited to a man and woman (see petition to A-G).

The Quilter v. Attorney-General ruling [1998] by the Court of Appeal, determined unequivocally that same-sex couples are not discriminated against in terms of marriage under the Marriage Act 1955.

Auckland Family Lawyer Norman Elliott has expressed serious misgivings (NZ Herald 11/03/13) over the bill with respect to its impact on the Adoption Act 1955, stating:

“As well as allowing adoption by married couples the present act allows an individual person to adopt a child, although there are restrictions on a male adopting a female child. There are children living in families where the parent figures are same-sex couples, one of whom is the legal adoptive parent.

“Because this situation is allowed under the law it might be suggested it is only a small step to allow both adults to become adoptive parents. A mother or a father bringing up a child on their own is common in our society. That is very different however from a child having two legal fathers or two legal mothers, the consequence of same-sex adoption…. It would be irresponsible of Parliament and an injustice to children to approve a change to long-established adoption law on the coat tails of a change to marriage law. Such a change should only come about after due parliamentary process and full public debate.”

Parliament must be informed by the A-G that the proposed bill championed by Louisa Wall breaches BORA in a number of areas and cannot proceed due to aspects of its meaningless content. Adopted children ideally deserve as of right – both a loving mother and a loving father.

Society for Promotion of Community Standards Inc. (Contact: spcs.org@gmail.com)