Gay Marriage

Cardinal Keith O'Brien's article in today's Daily Telegraph is another sad example of how some senior members of the UK's religious establishment wish to prevent LGBT people from gaining the same rights as our heterosexual counterparts.  Whether one holds religious views or not, it is impossible to deny that religious leaders hold positions of intellectual authority for some in contemporary society. As such, I believe that they have a responsibility to ensure that any publicly expressed views are not damaging to any particular person or group.  In continuing to deny that LGBT people deserve the right to get married, some religious leaders are effectively legitimising homophobia, by telling their adherents that it is acceptable to discriminate against LGBT people.  By saying that civil partnerships are enough for us and by denying us the right to full civil marriage, O'Brien is saying that LGBT people deserve to be treated as second class citizens.

When civil partnerships were first introduced in 2004, these were a tentative step in the right direction but the legislation did not go far enough.  There is a division of church and state in the United Kingdom so all weddings must have a civil ceremony included (whether or not a religious ceremony is also conducted).  Whether people want LGBT people to be able to have religious marriage ceremonies or not (which is a separate but related argument), it is hard to understand why the previous Labour government baulked at introducing full civil marriage for LGBT people and instead permitted the introduction of a watered down "civil partnership" instead.  If they intended to give us civil partnership rights, why not call it civil marriage?  Because the religious lobby in the UK believe (unjustly) that they possess the monopoly on marriage.  The fact that a religious ceremony is not a requirement for marriage shows this to be untrue.  Civil partnerships ARE civil marriages in all but name, but the name is the most important part of all.  By not allowing us to get married, we have been told that we deserve equality but not the same equality as straight people.  You can get civil partnered, but you can't get married, say the religious establishment.  This is discrimination of the worst kind.  LGBT people should be allowed the full rights to marry one another and heterosexuals should be allowed to civil partner one another if they so wish.

Cardinal O'Brien's other arguments show that he doesn't even believe that we deserve civil partnership.  His statement that civil partnerships are "harmful to the physical, mental and spiritual wellbeing of those involved" is patronising and deeply offensive.  Has he asked any of those people in civil partnerships whether they feel harmed as a result of being able to publicly register their relationship and love for one another, as well as being able to gain all the legal, tax and pensions rights that straight couples had always held and which had been denied to us for so long?  He is also eager to maintain the promotion of institutionalised homophobia in schools.  School is a terrible time for many young LGBT or questioning people, with many suffering terrible bullying and some even committing suicide as a result of this.  Despite this, O'Brien shows a singular lack of Christian compassion by stressing his opposition to teaching children that homosexuality is, shock horror, normal (I realise that no-one is truly "normal", I use it here to define homosexuality as not being deviant).

His question "what will happen to the teacher who wants to tell pupils that marriage can only mean - and has only ever meant - the union of a man and woman?" further exposes his deeply homophobic rhetoric.  For starters, the concept of marriage does not inherently imply that it has to be between a man and a woman.  There are other forms of marriage practised in societies around the globe, so that argument falls down immediately.  Secondly, and more importantly, no teacher should be expressing prejudiced personal views on these matters to their impressionable young charges; they should be challenging all forms of bigotry and prejudice and allowing their pupils to learn in an environment of mutual respect for all, regardless of race, gender, sexuality, religion or other difference.  Any teacher who is teaching their pupils that marriage is, and can only be, between a man and a woman is perpetuating homophobic stereotypes and has no place in a classroom.

O'Brien subsequently hypocritically invokes the UN Convention on Human Rights to defend his homophobia, stating that it defines marriage as being between a man and a woman and that denying this would be "a grotesque subversion of a universally accepted human right".  The fact that this definition is not "universally accepted" does not appear to matter to him.  Not only does he refuse to acknowledge the possibility that this document should be changed to reflect a more modern reality, he also effectively defends the rights of heterosexual couples to marry at the expense of denying the same right to LGBT people.  In my view, when one group invokes human rights to deny another group the same rights, their hypocrisy has cost them the argument.  The idea that "marriage has always existed in order to bring men and women together so that the children born of those unions will have a mother and a father" is also out of step with current social trends. More and more families are having children out of wedlock.  These children still have a mother and a father - does O'Brien believe that their familial relationship is worth less because they're not married?  What about married couples without children - is their marriage worthless as a consequence of being without issue?  Who says we need a mother and a father anyway?  Families come in all shapes and sizes - single-parent, two fathers, two mothers and more, as well as the standard nuclear family which O'Brien believes to be the norm.  I do not believe that these familial relationships are worth any less because the parents involved are not one man and one woman who are married, and it is downright offensive to them to suggest otherwise.  O'Brien's belief that "the stability and well-being which this [marriage] provides... cannot be provided by a same-sex couple" is also wrong.  Ask Dan Gillespie-Sells (from the band The Feeling) whether he had a happy childhood with his two mothers, ask Charlie Condou and his male partner whether they are bringing up their children in a loving, stable environment, ask the same of Elton John and David Furnish and their son Zachary and I am sure they will all tell you that the idea that LGBT couples cannot bring up children is as ridiculous as it is offensive.

O'Brien continues in his homophobic vein throughout the article, criticising primary schools for having "homosexual fairy stories" (offensive pun intended?) "such as King & King" in their libraries. Giving children access to such sensitively written stories (I love King and King!) which portray loving homosexual relationships shows them at an early age that being gay is normal, and hopefully this will lead to them growing into respectful and loving human beings, who won't differentiate between anyone on the basis of any label.

Cardinal O'Brien has clearly set out his belief that being gay is not normal, that LGBT people do not deserve the same rights as straight people, that children must have a mother and a father if they are to have any hope of growing up happy and that teaching children to show love and respect towards LGBT people is wrong and must be stopped.  By stating at the end of his article that the British government is attempting to "demolish a universally recognised human right" in introducing gay marriage, and that their "intolerance will shame the United Kingdom in the eyes of the world", O'Brien has fundamentally misinterpreted the direction in which that world is headed.  American Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's speech at the United Nations Human Rights Council in December 2011, when she stated that "Gay rights are human rights", which was applauded, would suggest that there is scope for the UN to change its definition of marriage as stated in Article 16 of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights.  Gay marriages are now performed in 10 countries and are legal in parts of others and this number is growing all the time.  Cardinal O'Brien must realise that the world is changing and that it is now time for him and other senior religious leaders to change with it, or risk losing an entire generation of younger adherents who will no longer see religion as being socially and culturally relevant.