Marriage

SSM will threaten religious liberty in Australia: Archbishop Fisher

AD2000 Report

Contents - Nov 2015 Synod: Synod reaffirms Church teaching on sexuality, marriage and the family - AD2000 Report Synod: Pope Francis confirms Synod guided by the Holy Spirit Anglican Ordinariate: Radical ecumenism – the Ordinariate’s new Catholic Missal - Fr Ramsay Williams Marriage: SSM will threaten religious liberty in Australia: Archbishop Fisher - AD2000 Report Marriage: Sydney Anglicans reaffirm church teaching on marriage - AD2000 Report Miracle: St Charbel cures Muslim toddler in Lebanon - From ASIANEWS Abortion grief: Life written In tears – the impact of abortion - Anne Lastman Salvation: "All Israel will be saved": Romans 11:26 - Andrew Sholl Unity and Beauty: The genius of Vladimir Soloviev - Fr Lawrence Cross Letters: Religious freedom? - Arnold Jago Books: BEYOND LITERAL BELIEF, by David Tacey - Brian Coman (reviewer) Reflection: We are all called to be saints - Archbishop Julian Porteous

Archbishop Anthony Fisher OP has warned that the adoption of same-sex marriage in Australia will radically undermine religious liberty, by restricting the freedom of belief and practice by Christians who uphold traditional marriage.

The archbishop was giving the Acton Lecture on Religion and Freedom at the Centre for Independent Studies in Sydney last month.

He projected a bleak future for believers if the legislation is carried, imagining what life in Australia would be like in just ten years time. Here are extracts of his address.

The year is 2025 – nine years after a plebiscite narrowly approved same-sex “marriage” and Parliament amended the Marriage Act and many other laws to remove all references to “a man and a woman”, “husband and wife” and “mother and father”.

After an initial flurry of rather colourful same-sex “weddings”, numbers have now plateaued to only a few hundred each year.

Sociologists debate the long-term effects on public understandings of marriage and family.

Certainly there have been political ramifications: no major party allows dissenters on this issue; this caused some significant haemorrhaging from Parliament before the 2019 election; even for most “independents” going against “the tide of history” on this matter is regarded as disadvantageous.

While provisions in the Marriage (Marriage Equality Amendment) Act exempting Registered Ministers of Religion and Registered Places of Worship from taking part in “gay weddings” have continued to stand in law, the High Court has ruled that section 116 of the Constitution does not protect faith-based schools from having to teach a “gay friendly” state-imposed curriculum; continuing to teach that marriage is an opposite-sex union was held by a majority of the Justices to be motivated by outmoded and bigoted attitudes and to be harmful to children.

Already one Catholic bishop has been briefly gaoled for refusing to apply the state-approved “LGBTIQQ Safety Protocols and Awareness Program” to the schools in his diocese; and parents at Jewish and Muslim schools have been advised that they may not withdraw their children from such programs.

Many clergy and teachers in faith-based schools have been cowed with threats of prosecution for “hate speech” if they teach that divine law limits marriage to people of opposite sex.

There are also actions pending against Evangelical Christian and Maronite Catholic business owners for failing to provide photography, stretch limousine and hospitality services for “gay weddings”.

Greens and others have used this issue to chip away at the remaining “exemptions” and “benefits” enjoyed by churches and faith-based schools, hospitals and welfare agencies.

Government schools in most states no longer allow Scripture classes and church-based adoption services were forced to close.

Religious organisations are now required to extend spousal benefits to same-sex “married” employees, have lost their charitable status, and now pay the same taxes and rates levied on any other business.

By 2025 public speeches and debates on same-sex “marriage” and like issues are rare as few organisations and venues are willing to risk the vilification that follows upon hosting them.

The idea that marriage is a natural institution that precedes states and religions, that it is founded on sexual complementarity and oriented to family formation, is now regarded as unspeakable in the public square - though from time to time the usual suspects still raise it in their “extreme right-wing” think-tanks, newspaper columns or pulpits.

Will all this come to pass in the decade ahead and, if so, what does it say about the quality of our democracy right now and about our nation’s particular take on secularity and religious freedom? Many years ago, when I was still a young priest and academic, the commentator BA Santamaria asked me how it was that I was so optimistic about our culture.

I responded that it was probably partly temperamental, partly my reading of the trends, and partly a matter of theological hope.

He responded that he was not as naturally sunny in temper as I was, that he read the trends in our civilisation more pessimistically, and that Christian faith only promises things will turn out for the best “in the end”: in the meantime things could get very bleak indeed!

Eight centuries ago rights talk was less fashionable than it is today: yet already people were aware of duties owed and grievances sustained.

The first right recognised in the Magna Carta was religious liberty; the ecclesia Anglicana was to be free to order her affairs and enjoy her liberties “unimpaired”.

We are heirs to the idea that religion, in the very broad sense of speculation about the higher order of things, or the ultimate ground of reality, and consequent honour of that or worship of those beyond the here and now, is a universal good.

People should in general be free to seek and believe what they will religiously, and given latitude to worship and live according to their conscientious beliefs.

This is not a case of making exceptions for benighted eccentrics, but a recognition of something essential to human flourishing and enriching for the community. So the right to the free exercise of religion is recognized in multiple international treaties.

I will not rehearse my case for marriage as traditionally understood and for retaining that understanding of marriage in our laws which I have offered on many occasions.

Tonight I would like to reflect instead upon the conduct of the public “debate” on this issue so far and what this reveals about the state of our democracy.

When people like me and some of you enter the fray on marriage we now expect to be tagged “ultra-conservative”, “tedious imbecile”, “delusional nutter”, “evangelical clap-trapper” and even “nauseating piece of filth” not just in the anti-social media but even in the mainstream.

What is new is that such ad hominem hails not just from fevered activists and net trolls but from respected journalists and public figures.

The ABC’s Q&A programme intrudes the same-sex issue, whatever the published topic of the evening every time; but even when a whole episode is devoted to debating the question it is very clear that only one view will gain serious attention.

A number of commentators have noted the biased reporting on the same-sex marriage issue in many media outlets and the refusal of some to allow even paid advertisements for the other side.

When the ABC’s Media Watch said it was time to give both sides a hearing, it was roundly scolded on the basis that hate has no rights and that it is “false balance” to give the pro-traditional-marriage side any attention at all.

Closed-mindedness is, of course, no monopoly of people engaging on same-sex “marriage”. But I think the refusal to listen is presently mostly on one side.

Those in favour of the traditional understanding of marriage know their opponents’ slogans and arguments well: “tolerance and diversity”, “love is love”, “no to hate”, hence “marriage equality”.

But advocates of “gay marriage” seem to think no reasonable person could think other than as they do; that not only are they right on this issue, but that their opponents are irrational and operating out of blind traditionalism or, more likely, hatred.

This is surely one of the strangest aspects of the “debate” so far: that the understanding of marriage found in pretty well every serious civilisation, legal system, religion and philosophy till recently – that marriage brings together a man and a woman as husband and wife to be father and mother to any children that follow from their marital union – is now incomprehensible, even unspeakable, for many of our intelligentsia, journalists, politicians and business leaders.

As Brendan O’Neill observed, “a chokingly conformist climate” now prevails on this and many other issues in Australia, so that those who dare to disagree will be demonised, harassed and marginalised rather than refuted.

That the Catholic Archbishop in Tasmania has been taken to that state’s anti-discrimination commission for distributing a joint bishops’ pastoral letter on marriage is a sign of how far things have gone and are likely to go in the near future if not resisted.

Religious liberty at risk

Same-sex “marriage” proponent, Senator Penny Wong, has insisted that there is nothing to fear from “marriage equality”, that religious liberty will be unaffected, and that those who support traditional understandings of marriage are “stubbornly clinging to discriminatory laws” and only offer arguments that are “increasingly irrational”.

Such claims of bigotry and irrationality are strange given that Senator Wong herself opposed the redefinition until fairly recently.

In any case, international experience of redefining marriage belies Senator Wong’s optimism about religious liberty.

In the joint pastoral letter of Australia’s bishops many examples were given of individuals and groups who have suffered financial, social or legal sanction for holding to traditional marriage in places that have legislated for same-sex marriage or civil unions.

Since that pastoral was published there have been more cases.

Ministers of religion and places of worship may receive niggardly “exemptions” in such regimes, but ordinary believers and their businesses are given no leeway and even religious institutions such as schools, hospitals and welfare agencies expected to tow the PC line.

Some Australian civil liberties commentators fear that were same-sex “marriage” legalised here the power of the state would be similarly mobilised against dissenters.

In the Tasmanian case the complainant seeks not only to have the Archbishop sanctioned but also to have all Church schools forced to promote LGBTI “awareness”, tolerance and behaviour.

In early 2013, lesbian couple Rachel Cryer and Laurel Bowman asked the Oregon bakery Sweet Cakes to bake a same-sex wedding cake for them.

Although bakery owners Melissa and Aaron Klein had always served all comers, they believed that baking a distinctively same-sex wedding cake would be facilitating a same-sex “wedding” and explained that this would violate their religious beliefs that marriage is the union of a man and a woman.

Cryer and Bowman filed a complaint that they had suffered discrimination based on sexual orientation and the government agency upheld that complaint.

Meanwhile the baker couple faced vilification, boycotts of their business, violent protests and even death threats, and were forced to close their shop and work from home.

They were then fined $135,000 and encouraged by the Tribunal to receive behaviour modification therapy so they could be rehabilitated.

Even if it would not have been unethical for such bakers to assist a same-sex “wedding” in so remote a way, democracy degenerates into despotism when it licences such vilification of people’s conscientious beliefs.

Preserving religious liberty

Tom Holland opens his book about the world around the year 1,000 AD with the fateful meeting between Pope Gregory VII and the Emperor Henry IV.

In an age of caliphs and Viking raiders, knights and bishops jockeying for power, feudal vendettas and the rest, Western Europe emerged as a distinctive culture and expansionist power.

At the heart of this, Holland argues, were the disappointment of millennial hopes and the settling of a new relationship between ecclesial and civil authority that gave Christendom its particular energy and focus.

There are many views of the proper relationship between Church (various faiths and their agencies) and State (civil government and its departments). Secularism, laïcité or “the separation of Church and State” has many forms.

What was essentially a millennial Christian contribution to our civilisation – reflected also in the great charter – has mutated in various ways and places.

In Western Europe today, as in the communist East of old, the tendency is to say that between Church and State ne’er the twain shall meet.

Governments and courts increasingly exclude faith-based organisations from decision-making and service delivery.

Dogmatic secularists ban Christmas decorations from public places, church bells from towers, crucifixes from schools or nurses’ necks, and any residual religious values in law and policy.

Some want believers to renounce their most deeply held beliefs or stay silent about them in the public square.

Religion is thought to be so inherently backward, even dangerous, that the tag “believer”, let alone “ultra-Catholic”, disqualifies one from civil leadership.

If there are countries in which state or culture-imposed atheism is dominant, there are others in which religious leaders dictate terms to government and society, including to those who do not share their faith.

In the nightmare of the Arab Spring turned Jihadi Winter extremists seek to impose the only “pure” version of the only approved faith even on their co-religionists. While on Tom Holland’s view it was Christendom that first distinguished the spheres of God and Caesar, pope and emperor, to the great advantage of the development of the West, we know it suited many Christian leaders through the centuries to blur those lines; the same is so for some believers today.

And there are still conceptions of Church and State that recognise no such line even to be blurred.

In theocracies, as in secular tyrannies, either religion is in charge of everything or secular politics is, but no compromise between the two is possible.

As if supportive of this no compromise view the US seems to have the two extremes at once, with lots of public religious rhetoric, as if being religious is expected, and various bans on public religion, as if irreligion was compulsory.

Bakers are fined and marriage registrars gaoled for refusing to go along with same-sex marriage as if this were a dogma of the state religion.

Richard John Bauhaus famously thought an “iron curtain” or “wall of separation” had been erected between Church and State in America, so that that nation’s foundational ideals and people’s deepest convictions are now regularly ruled “out of bounds”; this leaves the public square so “naked” that Americans are unable to engage in the properly political task of determining how to live together.

Here in Australia we distinguish between the spheres of activity proper to Church and State, each with its proper inspiration and responsibilities, instrumentalities and methods.

Church and State in this country mostly leave each other alone. So far no bakers have been required to put two brides atop their cakes.

Where the spheres of Church and State overlap, Australians have been inclined to a healthy, pragmatic cooperation for the public benefit rather than iron curtains or trench warfare.

So we’ve had fruitful collaborations in law and policy, in provision of education, health and aged care, and various welfare services, in special religious education in government schools, chaplaincies to state institutions, state funerals etc.

The biggest religious gathering, youth gathering, gathering of any sort in the history of our country — World Youth Day 2008 — was an example of this.

Every sector of our community co-operated in the planning and delivery: not Catholics or Christians only, or the private non-profit sectors only, but practically everyone.

That said something powerful which our visitors commented upon: that Church and State, people of various religions and none, can “live and let live”, give each other “a fair go”, honour diversity, seek common ground, and work together.

But wherever religious liberty is at risk such coexistence and collaboration are also threatened.

Where to draw the line?

A member of the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission recently said that, sympathetic as she is to religious freedom, there’s a “zero-sum” game with respect to religious freedom and LGBT rights; instead of attempting to balance such competing liberties, society must opt for LGBT rights over religion every time.

Several Justices in Obergefell acknowledged that would be the inevitable effect of the decision to legalise same-sex “marriage”.

Yet true democracy is a political order that acknowledges deeply held moral and religious convictions are important, permits differences in these matters and, as far as reasonable, allows expression of those differences in action or inaction on conscientious grounds.

The democratic state concedes that people must obey both God and Caesar.

That is why the various human rights instruments and their underpinning political philosophies acknowledge the right to hold different religious or moral convictions as a non-derogable right, and also rights to express those convictions in public and not be compelled to act against them, to be protected in this by the state and not denied it by powerful ideological, financial or majority-political interests.

Not that claims of conscience will always be trumps: as the centrality of the human person and the common good grounds respect for conscience, it also requires that practices like child sacrifice be forbidden.

Beyond such extremes, considerable latitude is possible. But in post-modernity, having principles, internally consistent and embraced with passion over a long period, is not only less common but can seem unimaginative, even fanatical.

The desire to “get along” may mean we give each other space to “do our own thing”; but we are left suspicious of what the other person’s “thing” might be and sceptical that there is any truth in matters of life and love.

As conscience reduces to personal tastes, respect for its claims is harder to sustain.

Thus while totalitarian secularists will concede some pleas of conscience to oddballs, they aim to rid law and policy of any whiff of incense and are inclined to view conscience claims as marginal, even anti-social. Beyond a narrow field for worship, they would similarly reduce the scope of religious liberty.

Conclusion

The year is 2025 – nine years after the plebiscite to redefine marriage was defeated, partly because most Australians still treasured marriage as traditionally understood, partly because they thought government had no business regulating other friendships, partly because they were convinced a mature democracy does not rush into such important decisions and partly because they feared “marriage equality” would make Australians less equal in matters of faith and conscience.

Rather than taking the divisive turn proposed back in 2015, other signs of respect for people with same-sex attraction have been embraced by most Australians.

Terms like “man and wife” and “mother and father” survive in law and practice, and new measures help support marriages and marriage-based families.

A robust but courteous debate continues, but most agree the decade-long exercise of patience and respect in pursuit of a moral consensus in this area has demonstrated democratic maturity and strengthened, not diminished, common life.

In this 2025 faiths still play a major role in our community as providers of much human and supernatural support, of formation in crucial moral and political values, and as providers of charitable services in education, health and aged care, welfare and the like.

Believers feel supported rather than threatened by the state in holding their high ideals and there is healthy dialogue between people of different faiths and between believers and “nones”.

Australians are proud of their historic “compact” between Church and State, freedom of conscience and the rule of law – all the more so in a world where many countries take a less tolerant direction and whole populations have suffered persecution, exile or death as a result.

Most agree we should resist totalising ideologies that would seriously upset that historical balance. Most want our bakers to be left to bake good cakes, unencumbered by such dogmatism.

My more sanguine 2025 required people back in 2015 to embrace the mission of not only rebuilding the nation’s physical infrastructure but also renewing its spiritual capital so that it might be visionary, principled and practical, with a right reverence for God and people - to use Pope Francis II’s inherited tests of democratic health.

Having and following principles, internally consistent and embraced with passion but also publicly contestable, is not only regarded as epistemically and psychologically defensible but also as socially and politically essential.

Forming people in such ideals and giving them confidence in their application was something to which the Church devoted much energy in the intervening decade.

Teachers, scholars, lawmakers, commentators and other thoughtful individuals have made important contributions to renewal of our democracy.

“Liberty,” as Lord Acton observed, “is not the power of doing what we like, but the right to do what we ought.”

In the 2010s and 2020s we realised that only by renewing our social-spiritual capital could we ask what that ought is that we should do with our liberty and then be able to do it.

Reprinted from AD2000 Vol 28 No 10 (November 2015), p. 4