Same-Sex Mirage
American marriage apologist, Ryan Anderson, spoke in Melbourne this week about the disastrous consequences of redefining marriage. He is in a good position to advise us here in Australia, having seen the effects of legal same-sex ‘marriage’ both in Canada, and more recently in the US.
Ryan gave us four main points to familiarise ourselves with, in order to defend traditional marriage.
1. Optional parents. If marriage is redefined to include same-sex couples, there will be no institution able to safeguard the family as a place where children have the right to a mother and a father. The law will make one parent, either a mother or a father, optional. At this point, Ryan Anderson went on to cite the high levels of crime and poor social outcomes for children who have been raised without one of their natural parents.
2. The slippery slope. Already the US has seen moves to promote public acceptance of
- ‘throuples’ - threesome couples of various genders;
- ‘monogamish’ relationships - marriage-like relationships which allow each partner to have other sexual relationships,
- and the ‘wed-lease’ system, (to be contrasted with ‘wedlock’); wed-lease offers marriages entered into with a fixed term, with an option to renew. For those who like to upgrade to the newer model, I suppose.
3. Donor-conception increase. Although same-sex couples already have the legal right to access IVF services, enabling such couples to marry will only increase the number of donor-conceived children. These children have absolutely no say in their family arrangements, and there is no legal burden to ensure they know the identity of their missing parent. In some places, biological parents can be removed from the birth certificate, completely misrepresenting a child’s ancestry. This will institutionalise the phenomenon of missing parents.
4. Infringements on civil liberties. We have all heard about the bakers, florists, photographers and caterers who have already been penalised under anti-discrimination laws. Redefining marriage will not only affect the religious liberty of Christians, but also the freedom of non-Christians who dissent from the same-sex ‘marriage’ ideology.
Millie Fontana: This courageous young woman gave her personal testimony to the large audience in Melbourne. I urge you to read her testimony and that of others like her; those adults who were brought up in same-sex households.
Millie’s story was heartbreaking: she spoke of the deep yearning she had for her unknown father. Although she loved her two ‘mothers’, they could never replace her father.
Millie said the only time she could affirm her identity was when she could meet her father face-to-face. She noted that if same-sex marriage had been legalised, she would’t have been able to receive counselling for the condition of fatherlessness - it would have been illegal for the counsellor to acknowledge it as the cause of the many psychological problems she was experiencing.
Millie, an atheist, also thanked the audience, saying she had only found support among Christians. The LGBT+ community have ostracised her and the other children who dare to speak out against same-sex ‘marriage.’
(This is the link to a youtube video of the first time Millie spoke out. It contains infrequent coarse language, and at this point in her journey, she believed that same-sex parenting had a potential possibility of succeeding.)
The Mirage: This is the mirage to which our morally-thirsty country is being dragged.
Towards fatherless and motherless families, towards an ever-increasing array of pansexual perversity, toward a generation of shattered children and toward a society where hostility to dissenters, particularly Christian ones, is enshrined in law.
*Ryan Anderson is a Ph.D. who researches and writes about marriage and religious liberty at the Heritage Foundation. He is also the founder and editor of online journal Public Discourse.
*Thanks to my friend MR who coined the phrase ‘same-sex mirage.’
