Marriage debate divides churches

Proposed amendments to the Marriage Act have split Australian church leaders.

With three private members bills seeking to reform the Act still being considered in parliament, the Catholic Church last month circulated 80, 000 letters urging Catholics to express their opposition to the bills.

Reverend Bill Crews of the Uniting Church expressed his personal view when he said that amending the Marriage Act would just be part of “the inevitable move away from discrimination in our world”.

“I feel very sad when people get picked on because of their sex or their sexuality. We’re holistic people, not just one part.”

With a Galaxy survey conducted last year indicating that 53 per cent of Australian Christians support marriage equality, Crews said: “I think churches have to realise that we don’t live in Christendom anymore. We basically live in a good, tolerant, ethical, multicultural, multi-religious, secular society and churches are just part of that.

“You’ll find a lot of ministers that agree with me, but they just shut up because they’re frightened of the bullies in the church.”

But for Milton Caine of the Christian Democratic Party, the question of changing the definition of marriage is all about social modification to accommodate a minority group.

According to Caine, ministers have no right to perform services against the teachings of their religion, and in fact would be breaching their office of ministry by doing so.

“There are some ministers who may have a more lax position or lower standards than should be applied,” he  said.

Caine called for the Christian Church to stand firm because “if too much is taken away then where will the bulldozers stop?”

Reverend Fred Nile agrees: in his opinion not only is homosexuality condemned by all major religions, but changing the Marriage Act would go against Australia’s heritage of “traditional marriage between a man and a woman”.

On the subject of marriage equality, Bishop Robert Forsyth of the Anglican Church said: “I think that the question of changing the definition of marriage is a social issue, rather than a political or religious one.”

Senthorun Raj, senior policy advisor for the NSW Gay and Lesbian Rights Lobby, defines marriage as a civil institution governed by secular laws to which all couples are entitled access regardless of their sex, sexual orientation or gender identity.

While ministers of religion currently are not required to perform marriages that do not accord with their faith, Raj believes that “civil celebrants with no religious affiliation should not be entitled to unique exemptions”.