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SOCIETY FOR PROMOTION OF COMMUNITY STANDARDS INC.

Public Talk: Same Sex ‘Marriage’ and the Threat to Religious Freedom – the Canadian Experience

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Family Life International NZ, a registered charity that is pro-life, has organised and sponsored a Public Talk on 11th and 14th April entitled “Same Sex ‘Marriage’ and the Threat to Religious Freedom – the Canadian Experience“

Thursday 11th April 2013
St Anne’s Parish Hall • Emmett Street • Newtown • Wellington

Easy access and plenty of car parks.  A collection will be taken to defray expenses.

For more information please contact Clare 04 237 8343 or clare.fli@xtra.co.nz

or download flyer (available for distribution):

John-Henry Westen Public Talk in Wellington Flyer (504 KB)

http://www.fli.org.nz/_literature_127154/John-Henry_Westen_Public_Talk_in_Wellington_Flyer

John Henry Westen has written in a recent article entitled:

Do we love those inclined to homosexuality enough to stop same-sex ‘marriage’?

In this battle over same-sex ‘marriage’ it often sounds like those pushing the dismantling of traditional marriage have the upper hand in terms of love. ‘You are opposed to love!’; ‘How does the love between me and my partner affect you in your marriage?’; ‘Why can’t I be allowed to love whomever I choose?’

These are the tough arguments from ‘love’ facing those who are fighting to protect marriage from radical redefinition.

In truth, however, love is the principle reason to fight same-sex ‘marriage.’

You see, law is a teacher and enshrining same-sex ‘marriage’ in law would lead many people to believe that homosexual sexual relations are equal to those of heterosexual married couples.  The difficulty, of course, is that while sexual acts between heterosexual married couples can be totally healthy and positive, the same can never be said of sexual acts between persons of the same sex, whether they happen within a relationship given the name “marriage” or not.

For full article go to:

http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/do-we-love-those-inclined-to-homosexuality-enough-to-stop-same-sex-marriage

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Family Life International NZ, a registered charity, has organised and sponsored a Public Talk entitled “Same Sex ‘Marriage’ and the Threat to Religious Freedom – the Canadian Experience”

Sunday 14th April 2013
Liston Hall • 30-32 Hobson Street • Auckland City
Access is also available via St Patrick’s Square, Wyndham Street
Parking available at the Farmers Carpark for $2.00 (with validation)

As same-sex “marriage” legislation is before our Parliament, with a very real prospect that it will become law in the next few weeks, you are invited to attend this insightful public meeting on the impact same-sex “marriage” has on religious freedom.  A Prayer Vigil culminating in a Prayer Procession to St Patrick’s Cathedral for Holy Mass will also take place after John-Henry’s address.

For more information please contact Brendan brendanr.fli@xtra.co.nz or 09 629 4361

Finding true essence of marriage – Rex Ahdar, Law Professor, Otago University

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It is an empty argument to say that gay couples deserve equal legal recognition, Rex Ahdar says.

The catchcry of same-sex marriage proponents is “equality”: gay couples have a right to equal treatment and to deny them legal marriage is blatant discrimination.

Yet this claim deflects attention from the real issue: what is the true nature of marriage?

Two rival visions jostle for supremacy. The conjugal model says marriage is a lifelong union between a man and a woman. The partnership model says marriage is a contract between committed loving couples.

Conjugal marriage is a comprehensive union (mental and physical, emotional and sexual) of a man and a woman.

Marriage has a true essence, a fundamental core; it is a real phenomenon, not just a human invention or convention.

A crocodile is a crocodile, a tree is a tree, a river is a river. We did not invent crocodiles, we simply discovered them and named them. We can call a hippopotamus a crocodile if we want but that does not change its essential nature.

All it does is lead to confusion.

Marriage is a pre-political institution.

States recognise marriage; they do not invent it. States value the institution in which men and women commit indefinitely and exclusively to each other and to the children their sexual union commonly (but not invariably) produces.

Gay marriage proponents will argue that defines marriage so as to exclude gay couples, a neat trick that fools no- one.

Not so. Recall their key claim: gay couples deserve equal legal recognition.

That is an empty argument. To insist upon equality is to require that “like things be treated alike”.

So X and Y should be treated equally for X and Y are alike. But we need to know in what respects X is like Y and whether these characteristics are morally valid before we can be confident that they merit equal treatment.

We must have a standard for deciding which characteristics count and which don’t.

Is gay (partnership) marriage “like” conjugal marriage?

In some respects, yes: both may involve monogamous couples who have a deep commitment to each other.

Both can express this commitment in a sexual fashion and raise children (if any) in a caring way.

In other respects, however, the answer is no: lacking sexual complementarity, gay couples cannot achieve complete sexual bodily union.

And lacking reproductive capability they cannot be biological parents.

They can nurture children but they cannot provide the example that a father and a mother can, the intangible things that only a father and a mother can supply. They lack the inherent structure to rear well-rounded, psychologically secure children.

Who says these attributes – sexual complementarity, reproductive capacity – are “essential”?

Who says this is the standard?

We did. We decided that marriage involves the comprehensive sexual union of a man and a woman.

We decided that, ideally, children are best raised by their biological father and mother.

When I say “we”, I mean every culture, tribe and race since antiquity has recognised these as essential elements of this thing called marriage and accorded such unions special status.

Perhaps every society throughout the ages has got it wrong and we alone in the West have now stumbled upon the truth.

But I think not.

The wanton use of the slogan “equality” just skews the debate.

The tactic is to brazenly repeat that conjugal marriage and partnership marriage are equal – as if this were somehow self-evident – then require that those who deny this to show why “unequal” treatment is justified.

And who can be against “equality”?

Opponents must show why this enlightened proposal is wrong, rather than gay marriage proponents having to demonstrate why the partnership model deserves to replace the existing institution. And make no mistake.

To redefine marriage is to abolish it.

Partnership marriage does not keep the existing institution and simply allow more persons to join it. Instead it eviscerates it and substitutes a radical experimental concept.

Gay couples should not be permitted to marry because they lack the essential traits that constitute true (conjugal) marriage.

We may treat gay couples the same as heterosexual couples when it comes to property division, pensions, inheritance and so on, but not when it comes to marriage.

Here, the two are simply not alike.

In the end sit still, close your eyes and quietly ask yourself: can a man marry another man and a woman wed another woman?

What on earth have we come to?

Rex Ahdar is a law professor at Otago University.

Source: http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/comment/8521106/Finding-true-essence-of-marriage

Finding true essence of marriage: Opinion – Rex Ahdar

Published The Dominion Post. 8 April 2013, p. A9

Fairfax NZ News

Same-sex ‘marriage’ threatens civil liberty – Bruce Logan – Opinion – NZ Herald

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Same sex marriage is not an issue of equality nor the success of any couple’s marriage. It is not about the value or validity of homosexuality. The issue is about the link between the state and marriage in civil society. Who decides what marriage is and what it’s for?

Marriage is neither essentially religious nor a product of tradition. It is not the child of the state.

Neither is marriage what Lynne Featherstone the British Equalities Minister claims. “Marriage is a right of passage for couples who want to show they are in a committed relationship, for people who want to show they have found love and wish to remain together until death do them part.” Her historical vision is limited; her logic is deficient and her fusion of the Anglican Prayer Book with modern idiom disingenuous.

Marriage is the consequence of who we are. We do not make it; it makes us. Marriage would not exist if there were not two complementary sexes. And that’s why it does exist.

We are male and female. In the simple and hopeful business of being alive we have children in a union of consenting responsibility, love and thankfulness.

It is the fusing of two opposite halves of the human being through which new life may be created.

That some couples decide not to get married does not change the biology. That some cannot have children or decide not to is beside the point.

The so-called conservative case for same-sex marriage favoured by the British Prime Minister (and apparently by our own Prime Minister) tumbles out of a category error. “Marriage is a good thing. It stabilises the lives of those who participate; especially men. Therefore they should be able to marry each other if they are committed.”

But as soon as same-sex marriage is granted, marriage has been changed to something profoundly different; from an institution prior to the state to one determined by the state.

Of course the state has had regulations around marriage for a very long time. But with the advent of same-sex marriage we have given the state a role it never had.

If the state defines marriage the family is no longer an independent institution of civil society declaring daily to the state its limitations. While we are a long way from Stalinism in New Zealand this was the kind of power Stalin wanted.

If the state passes a law that changes the nature of marriage, and consequently family, then every citizen’s liberty is endangered. Why? That area of most intimate human life that was once outside the power of the state to control will be watered down. In becoming the author of marriage the state must eventually erode religious freedom and then freedom of speech.

The ‘new marriage’ will become an institution that the state must enforce. Any exemption given initially to the church will be temporary and dependent only on threatened moral sensitivities. It will not be enough for the church to be good or even right when all the social forces are moving against it.

Human rights were once seen as a cornerstone of liberty because they were the consequence of a free society aware of state limits. They protected the independent spheres of authority in civil society (marriage, family and religion and others).

If marriage becomes what the state determines citizens will no longer have any legal, or ultimately moral framework independent of the state to argue their case about family form. Families will become what the state decides. In France this is probably the pivotal constitutional issue around which the same sex marriage debate spins.

It is doubtful there is any society known to history or anthropology where social order has not been based on marriage between a man and a woman.

It has always been an historical and universal understanding of a binding contract to enhance social order and encourage responsible child care. Societies that fail to understand this devalue their children. We should know that. We have plenty of evidence.

We have never had such a plethora of data pointing out the fundamental economic, social and psychological benefits of vigorous and enduring married families. Marriage is pivotal to intergenerational order. Without it we have a shambles and increasing poverty.

* Bruce Logan is a former Auckland schoolteacher now living in France.

Source: Bruce Logan: Same-sex marriage threatens civil liberty

New Zealand Herald 29 August 2012

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10829995

Louisa Wall MP: Background to sponsor of ‘Same-Sex ‘Marriage’ Bill

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Labour List MP Louisa Wall, sponsor of the Marriage (Redefinition of Marriage) Bill which renders the concepts of “marriage”, “mother” “father”, “bride” and “bridegroom” meaningless by its proposed amendments to the Marriage Act 1955, has stated, dogmatically:

“I’ve never not been out. I think I realised I was gay in my late teens and from then on I’ve had female partners. For me, it’s always been a part of who I am, so I’ve never felt a need not to share that.” [Emphasis added].

The vast majority of New Zealanders will genuinely struggle to comprehend the meaning of her claims. Whilst apparently sincere, they appear imaginery and fictional. She is so very dogmatic! – “I’ve never not been out“. Presumably she actually believes she has been a lesbian from birth – i.e. ‘hard-wired’ genetically to be sexually attracted only to women. If so, she has never provided any evidence for this and such a claim is not supported in the scientific literature (i.e. empirical scientific proof of the existence of a so-called gay gene).

What then do her dogmatic claims actually mean, if anything? They appear to be meaningless and delusional. For a start she contradicts her claim about never not being “out” when she says she thinks she first came to the realisation of her ‘orientation’ in her “late teens” and only “from then on .. had female partners.” Perhaps she could tell the public how she knows as a fact that her lesbian ‘sexual orientation’ already existed from her infancy to “late teens”.

If a heterosexual male sportsman claimed in an interview with Woman’s Weekly that he had “never not been out as heterosexual”, would any of the thousands of discerning, rational-minded scholarly readers of the magazine have queried the meaning of such a claim and/or perhaps even raised queries about the validity or truthfulness of this claim? Of course they would, many of them no doubt! Some might have wondered if he had suffered a “brain fade” like John Key or David Shearer, not regarding an investment portfolio or a failure to disclose a pecuniary interest to parliament, but with regard to his sexual identity.

This example illustrates how homosexuals have captured the language by using words such as “out” and denoting a ‘meaning’ to it that serves the exclusive homosexual agenda, but makes no sense when used  by a heterosexual. A whole series of oxymorons arise when such words are used together with the word “heterosexual”: e.g. “gay-heterosexual” and “out-heterosexual”. The absurdity of the concept of “gay-marriage”/ “same-sex marriage” is plain to see for any rational person who has not been seduced/taken-in by the emotional appeal/deception of the pro-“same-sex marriage” homosexual activists.

But is it even possible for a heterosexual to “out” himself or herself? Clearly homosexuals do “it” on a regular basis, on national TV etc. to score international headlines. But the very idea of a Maori sports-star  MP “outing” himself/herself to colleagues in parliament in a Maiden Speech, as a heterosexual i.e. confessing one’s attraction to persons of the opposite sex, is preposterous! So why have MPs and the New Zealand public tolerated and applauded the ‘courage’ and “honesty’ of current Labour homosexual MPs such as Louisa Wall and Maryan Street, and Green MP Kevin Hague, for using the vehicle of the House of Representatives to “out” themselves to the New Zealand public? Why have these homosexuals felt it necessary to foist such ‘important’ information related to their intimate private affairs-‘sexual orientation’, onto the rest of us using the platform of parliament?

Clearly such well-orchestrated homosexual disclosures, are part of a deliberate political agenda – driven by highly questionable tactics and ethics – to use parliament to secure alleged “human rights” for a “gay” minority – a class defined only by its sexual activities involving same-sex attraction rather than opposite sex attraction. The “social change” these activists champion is  fixated in sex – on their so-called “human-rights” agenda that if accepted and enshrined into law, will normalise sodomy and other practices engaged in by homosexuals and ‘elevate’ (so they believe) them to a new status on a par with heterosexual marriage. It is all part of the plan to try and destigmatise homosexual sexual practices and gain acceptance for their lifestyle.

The homosexual crusade for “gay rights” including “same-sex marriage”, is based on a series of false premises such as the claim that “marriage equality is a human right”. Contrary to their delusional claims, heterosexual marriage is fundamentally different from homosexual ‘marriage’, as the former involves the union of opposite sexes, while the latter does not. Equality does NOT mean the same in the context of marriage, as they falsely claim.

All people of the same sex do not have equal rights to get married, as a number of categories (see Schedule 2 of the Act) among those of the same sex (e.g. men) are excluded. For example, under the Civil union law and under the proposed bill, a man A cannot marry his same-sex civil union partner’s father (father of B), subsequent to and in the event of A-B’s same-sex civil union (or ‘marriage’) being dissolved. The law forbids it. However, another man, unrelated to A and B can marry B’s father under the proposed bill.

Women’s Weekly reported:

“The 41-year-old’s passion for social change is what led her [Louisa Wall] into politics.

“Already in a civil union with partner Prue Tamatekapua , a lawyer specialising in Treaty of Waitangi issues, the couple ­first met through the Maori Women’s Welfare League in 2007.

“The new bill will mean that couples in a civil union can simply ­fill in a form to change their status to that of a married couple. But Louisa and Prue aren’t going down that route.

“Louisa and mother-of-two Prue had their ceremony at Te Mahurehure Marae in Point Chevalier, Auckland, where 200 guests helped celebrate their union in 2010.

“While comfortable with her own personal situation, Louisa believes it’s vitally important for individuals and couples to have options. “We made the decision to have a civil union, but for Charles Chauvel [a gay Labour MP] and his partner, that wasn’t good enough – they decided to go to Canada and get married.”

“… there is only one thing missing in Louisa’s life – a baby. While she would love to be a mother and has tried to conceive in the past, her efforts have been unsuccessful.”

Here we learn that Louisa and her partner Prue Tamatekapua have no intention of changing their civil union relationship to a marriage, even if Wall’s legally flawed bill becomes law. Instead of fighting for hers and Prue’s right’s, Louisa says she is fighting for the rights of other homosexuals to be able to get married. If so, Prue and Louise will never be “spouses” in law, if the bill becomes law, and will be unable to adopt children as a same-sex couple. With the biological clock ticking any woman (lesbian or heterosexual), truly wanting to have her own baby, will need the ‘services’ of at least one person from the opposite sex known as “male” to produce a child.

The term “same-sex marriage” is meaningless once the real unique distinction (relative to other types of relationships) of marriage, based on the exclusive one male-one-female nature of the relationship, is broken down by adding same-sex couples to the traditional marriage mix. For this reason there must remain a separate category-status distinction in law that recognises marriage as an exclusive relationship between two opposite sex partners.

Source of quotes:

Labour MP Louisa Wall: Fighting for our rights. By Vicky Tyler

Women’s Weekly. 28th March 2013

http://www.nzwomansweekly.co.nz/celebrity/labour-mp-louisa-wall-fighting-for-our-rights/

Same-sex ‘marriage’: What would the Greeks have thought of this oxymoron?

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It is ironic that the proponents of homosexuality [and the oxymoron “same-sex marriage”] so often point to ancient Greece as their paradigm because of its high state of culture and its partial acceptance of homosexuality or, more accurately, pederasty.

[Pederasty = sexual relations between a man and a boy (usually anal intercourse with the boy as a passive partner). Oxymoron = A figure of speech in which incongruous or seemingly contradictory terms appear side by side.]

Though some ancient Greeks did write paeans to homosexual love, it did not occur to any of them to propose homosexual relationships as the basis for marriage in their societies. The only homosexual relationship that was accepted was between an adult male and a male adolescent [pederasty]. This relationship was to be temporary, as the youth was expected to get married and start a family as soon as he reached maturity.

The idea that someone was a “homosexual” for life or had this feature as a permanent identity would have struck them as more than odd. In other words, “homosexuality”, for which a word in Greek did not exist at the time (or in any other language until the late 19th century), was purely transitory. It appears that many of these mentoring relationships in ancient Greece were chaste and that the ones that were not rarely involved sodomy. Homosexual relationships between mature male adults were not accepted. This is hardly the idealized homosexual paradise that contemporary “gay” advocates harken back to in an attempt to legitimize behavior that would have scandalized the Greeks.

What is especially ironic is that ancient Greece’s greatest contribution to Western civilization was philosophy, which discovered that the mind can know things, as distinct from just having opinions about them, that objective reality exists, and that there is some purpose implied in its construction.

The very idea of Nature and natural law arose as a product of this philosophy, whose first and perhaps greatest exponents, Socrates and Plato, were unambiguous in their condemnation of homosexual acts as unnatural. In the Laws, Plato’s last book, the Athenian speaker says that, “I think that the pleasure is to be deemed natural which arises out of the intercourse between men and women; but that the intercourse of men with men, or of women with women, is contrary to nature, and that the bold attempt was originally due to unbridled lust.” (Laws636C; see also Symposium of Xenophon, 8:34, Plato’s Symposium, 219B-D).

To read more go to:

What would the Greeks have thought of gay marriage?

http://www.mercatornet.com/articles/view/what_would_the_greeks_have_thought_of_gay_marriage