Hey hey, I know it wasn’t New York
Where I lost my mind
Hey hey, I know i must have left it
It was back home all the time
And where were you while we lay
So drunk that we died
Hey hey, I know, but who could blame us
Under pressure
And I know
I should have stayed in bed

That said, I probably come down more in the Andrew G camp in relation to this.

Didn’t realise you hadn’t heard these people in action in this way before. Don’t know if I’ve bitched to you personally about it… but this is why the ACL get absolutely no support from me… in fact personally I think they have their hand in their pants.

I had the opportunity just before the last election to hear Jim Wallace speak, and he constantly used metaphor about Gays being “the enemy” in some kind of mortal battle. Because he’s apparently some big important political figure, the church I was attending couldnt do enough to bend over for him. Do we want these people to be the face of christianity? Are any of us angry enough to start a different christian lobby group?

I rather enjoyed pointing out to him that while rhetoric about defeating an ‘enemy’ in battle might work for the baby boomer generation, if the ACL wanted to actually gain the support of my generation they were going to need to be a little more creative. I then questioned what the ACL was doin to show christ’s love to the homosexual community. He responded like a politician who knows he’s been outmanouvered. He started talking before he knew what he was going to say… he flushed… he looked embarassed… admitted they were doing very little and that it needed to change… and then tried to argue that any money given to support gay aids victims etc was getting used as ammunition in the war against family values.

The guy isn’t stupid… he’s very smart, but he’s fighting for the fear and prejudice of the conservative bible belt baby boomers. His intellegence and advocacy would have been better used educating the same people about how UNCHRISTIAN their prejudice really is.

Unfortunately the major churches continue to bend over and take it from organisations like the ACL because they are so giggly and excited about having a face in politics… and they think these people are God’s annointed ones sent to deliver them. In our lust for power we have forgotten to reflect critically on our morals and on our stance, and the Australian church as it is voiced and seen in our community is now a Pariah and a mindless neo-conservative mass putting its weight behind something which is so insignificant to the key values of Christianity… it has some significants, but it’s minescule compared to the massive, and frequently ignored issues that plague this country of Aboriginal rights and welfare, and the increasingly intellectual and business orientated economy that favours the elite, and makes it increasingly difficult for those in the poverty trap to break free.

Its another giant exercise in missing the point.

As for your post Geoff -

I think de facto relationships have some form of legal status because I don’t think there is a heck of a lot that the law can do to stop them. So it becomes a question of management rather than endorsement, given that those family structures are going to exist regardless of how the church feels about them. Of course, you could say the same thing about homosexual couples. The only difference being, that because it’s biologically impossible for both people to be the parents of the same child, the only avenue through which they could be recognised as such, is the legal one. I think this is what threatens Christian leaders the most. I don’t envisage them spending anywhere near as much energy debating whether or not same-sex couples should be treated the same as married couples for tax purposes, or where next-of-kin medical decisions are concerned. Those things don’t appreciably alter the structure of Australian families or the upbringing of Australian children.

I see what you’re saying Geoff, in terms of the apparent futility in trying to legally enforce “Christian behaviours” on a society. I agree with you up to that point. There is no sense in trying to legislate against things that people are going to do, if your expectation is that the letter of the law will actually change anything. At the same time, if we are going to generalise the legal definitions around issues like marriage and leave it up to the punters to determine the moral expression, then I think we do need to carefully consider whether we are also handing over legal permission for something that people otherwise wouldn’t have had the ability to do. Those are the issues that deserve scrutiny.

The other observation I have is that it is nigh on impossible for a politician to say sorry for something, or to say “I was wrong”, or to say “we could have done much better”. Maybe that’s because the system is too adversarial.

Now as for the point of Geoff’s post. I am not surprised that some of the leaders applauded. Many have the sense that they are the guardians of social moral values. They struggle with the impact that a very very small minority of people have in terms social acceptance and impact on moral values. What I find intriguing is that homosexual people should be looking to embrace a custom (marriage) that is grounded in a Judeo-Christian ethic when they in general pursue their intimate relationships outside of that ethic.

I think the desire not to give legal rights to gay couples is position of defence against moral slippage. Will it work? Perhaps, perhaps not. Once something is made legal the line between whether it is moral or not becomes much more fuzzy. As Christians we will hopefully focus first and foremost on the good the God calls us to rather than a set of rules. It is good and physically natural for us humans to have male-female intimate relationships.

I believe Christian ethicists would argue that Christian moral values contribute to a good social fabric. To allow legality for homosexual relationships it could be argued is damaging for society since it legitimizes sub-optimal relationships. By the same token de-facto relationships are sub-optimal too.

I will end by saying that our perpetual challenge is to love and care for people whatever their sin is. All sin separates us from the good that God calls us to and gave his son to restore us to.