I have little doubt that comments made yesterday by actor comedian
Jack Black will be awarded points by many Australians for being true and
timely. Speaking in an interview on 2DayFM, Black was promoting his new
television series, Brink, and during it he offered an opinion about the
Government’s decision to withhold a conscience vote on the issue of
marriage change.
My purpose here is neither to support or speak against the decision
made by the Coalition party room, and I’ll also leave aside Black’s
commentary about the nutty complexion of our Prime Minister. Rather,
Black has offered an argument for same-sex marriage which deserves some
attention.
In a sweep of rhetorical punches that lacked the poise of Kung Fu,
Black said, “The movement of the world is headed towards equality for
all people, all sexual preferences. Come on, we are all the same in the
end.”
And this, ”Who cared what got you sexually aroused.”
Is the world really heading towards equality for all sexual preferences? Should the community not care about what gets people sexually aroused?
Of course there is a sense in which sex is rightly private and
personal, but marriage is never merely these things. Marriage is also
the public demarcation of a relationship that is designed for mutual
love, commitment, and the building of a family. Also, society rightly
acknowledges that some expressions of arousal are inappropriate and even
unlawful. The point is, Jack Black hasn’t presented a case for same-sex
marriage, he has argued for the legitimacy of any sexual expression.
Black’s reasoning may work for a Hollywood script, but I doubt that
many people would want to see this rationale being lived out in real
life. And I’m sure that if he was pushed, he too would recognise that
without serious qualification his argument is deeply flawed.
But herein lies one crucial weakness with the case for marriage
change: equal love is not about equal love. By definition, marriage is
discriminatory; only a particular kind of relationship can be viewed as
marriage, and others are rightly excluded. Such discrimination doesn’t
necessarily view other types of relationships as wrong, but that they do
not meet the necessary requirements for marriage.
Blacks says, “We are all the same”. As a stand alone comment there
is much to like and affirm. I concur, we are all the same in that we all
share the same worth and dignity as people. Indeed, such an axiom has
its grounding in the Biblical notion of
imago dei. None of us
are greater or lesser than our neighbour. But marriage is not the same
as any and every other type of relationship. History, logic and biology
all point to marriage being a particular thing, one that can only exist
between a man and a woman. And until such time that advocates for
marriage change provide a properly cogent argument, it is prudent to
keep the Marriage Act as it stands.
image from the Telegraph UK (27 June 2008)
