Maud Up the Street sent me this ROFL from The Daily Examiner’s letters to the editor printed on 22nd November, in which the institution of monogamous state-sanctioned marriage suddenly becomes something of an immutable law of nature. Wonder what the writer would call the practices of polygamy and ritual marriage to a god?
Time to face facts
WITH the ALP Federal Conference due in December, where the definition of marriage is to be considered, it is time to face facts.
Let us consider two trades people - one a plumber, one an electrician. Both are qualified, but their purpose and functions are different. Therefore, a plumber will never call himself an electrician. The end results of the work of these two people are totally foreign to each other. The argument in favour of equal pay for women correctly states when a woman is performing the same functions in her employment as a man she is entitled to the same - that is equal salary status.
Times change, as do dress fashions, entertainment, working conditions and so on, but nature itself keeps some things unchangeable. From time immemorial marriage has been the exclusive union of a man and a woman and for simple basic reasons.
(a) The bodies of the female and the male complement each other, and thus the "fruit" of this complementary is the new life of offspring. That is the nature and function of marriage.
(b) This union between a man and a woman and which is the object of a solemn public vow to live together, for better or for worse, is known as marriage.
(c) So granted, that is what the word marriage means. It is not possible that it means something else because a "friendship" same-sex union is an agreed arrangement between two males or between two females (eg to sleep together, to live together, to share assets and benefits etc). An "arrangement" is all it can be in comparison to the man and woman marital bond. The "comparison" reveals the difference that while marriage and same-sex unions are both ways individuals may choose to live, their natures and outcomes are worlds apart, as are the plumbers and the electricians.
There is no valid objection to same-sex unions being given a title specific to that type of union, but to call it a marriage would contradict the very notion of a word expressing the precise intention of what it means.
That is elementary intelligence. There are none so blind as those who will not see.
By absolute contrast, marriage is that union whereby a man and a woman bind themselves together in a solemn public vow, and is directed to bringing forth a new generation of children.
It is this "end" that differentiates the marital bond from all others. For this reason the term "marriage equality" advocated by the gay community and the Greens, is a contradiction of our human faculty to think, to reason and to recognise the truth of fact.
PETER J YOUNG
Greta
