Simon Mann reviews the essential arguments against same-sex marriage (not perfect, in AMF's view, but very worthwhile) elegantly enough to beguile even The Age into publishing a piece that is not just more of the "adult-centred" gay-marriage party-line.
ShareTHEY say they are not against homosexuals. Nor are they bigots, or religious zealots or people hankering after a bygone era. What they are against is same-sex marriage.
In an often vitriolic debate now intensifying in Australia, some say their point of view has been ridiculed or simply disregarded.
They know, too, that they are pushing against a tide that supporters assume will have an inevitable end - an amendment to the Commonwealth Marriage Act, which now defines marriage as ''the union of a man and a woman to the exclusion of all others''.
Their arguments are varied, but if there is a theme, it turns on ''rights'' as much as it does for those advocating same-sex marriage. The ''rights'' they champion are not those of gay and lesbian couples to equality before the law, but the rights of children - specifically, a child's ''inalienable right to have both a father and a mother'', as the Australian Christian Lobby's Jim Wallace puts it, paraphrasing the United Nations.
What's at stake, they say, is ''a cultural institution built around a central biological core, the inherently pro-creative relationship of a man and a woman'', as the Canadian-Australian ethicist Margaret Somerville has said...
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