Why an Australian Marriage Forum?

 

Putting the child-centred view of marriage

As the debate continues on the meaning of marriage in Australia, the task of this forum is to engage the public in a more mature debate than the gay lobby's adult-centred narcissism of "feeling the love".  This forum will think from the child’s perspective as well. We must  consider the primal harm we would do to children if we validate a model of marriage & family where a child is compelled to live without a mother or without a father.

Didn't we just apologise for violating the bond between mother and child, with our national apology for forced adoptions? Didn't we apologise for violating the bond between children and their aboriginal parents? Here at AMF we think saying sorry means not doing it again.

Same-sex marriage will do it again. It is just another way of violating the bond between mother and child; between father and child. And we must not do that again!

A debate on "equal love" misses the point if it does not also consider the "equal love" a child needs and deserves from both a mother and a father. If  the institution of same-sex marriage forces a child to miss out on a mother, or a father - and it does - then that is not "equality" for the child who misses out. To normalise 'marriage' without a woman is to normalise 'families' without a mother - and that is the central offense of same-sex marriage.

This forum lays out the question before the Australian public: in the words of Professor Margaret Somerville AO, gay marriage "forces us to choose between giving priority to children's rights or to homosexual adults' claims".

We must make our choice. We stand with the child.

We affirm that our fellow Australians who live in same-sex relationships deserve all neighbourly respect - but that they do not have the right to redefine marriage for all of us. Gay adults do not have the right to deprive a child - whether adopted or created by surrogacy - of their birth-right to both a mother and a father, just to meet their own emotional needs.

A more mature debate requires an understanding of what marriage is - why it exists as an institution at all, and what exactly is the 'public good' achieved by preserving marriage as defined in Australian law:

“The union of one man and one woman, to the exclusion of all others, voluntarily entered into for life”.

This forum will re-explore the objective and time-honoured understanding of marriage, a universal structure built on the foundation of nature. It will examine he anthropological view of marriage as a social institution designed to reinforce the biological 'given' - helping bind a man to his mate for the sake of society, and above all for the sake of any child they might create. As the great 20th century anthropologist, Claude Levi-Strauss, summed up: marriage is "a social institution with a biological foundation".

This forum will note that the natural union of man and woman existed long before "society" and its laws, and will ask the question: by what authority does any political party presume to repeal and redefine this central structure of human nature, this great institution which has underpinned the wellbeing of society - and especially of children - since the dawn of time?

Further, this forum will consider the downstream implications of legalising homosexual marriage. For example, we learn from overseas jurisdictions like Massachusetts in the US that the normalising of homosexual marriage is inevitably used to normalise homosexual behaviour in school education. And we observe the inevitable expansion of alternatives to natural marriage, such as polyamory, which are now being defended in academic and activist circles as a logical progression from legalising same-sex marriage. And we also observe the inevitable stifling of free speech and religious conscience in overseas jurisdictions which have normalised same-sex marriage (and therefore homosexual behaviour) with the force of law.

Legislation to support same-sex marriage will have enormous consequences for our children and our culture, and we at AMF want an open and honest debate on this – free of the intimidation that so many defenders of man-woman marriage have been subjected to in recent years.

So, let the debate be thoughtful, civil, and ‘for the public good’ of this great community of ours. And not just for our generation, but for our children's children.

Thank you for sharing some of your time, and your thoughts, with us.

The AMF Team.

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