Gay Marriage and the Church

Last week on my show, I had a caller talking about how the sleazy Liberals got the same sex bill through the House of Commons. He went on to say that we got our laws from a Judeo-Christian background from which, I inferred, meant that we should not have laws that violate any Judeo-Christian precepts.

First let me say that if the Tories were not present to oppose a bill that's their fault.

Now let's deal with the argument. I find it interesting that the term "Judeo" is often used since I've never heard any Jews maintain that because the Old Testament's comments on male-to-male sodomy are part of their Talmud, that gays were bad people.

'Ridiculous' rules

But to the main question -- Canada has never had an official religion, though much earlier legislation on such things as stopping anything looking like happiness on Sunday, including drinking, certainly existed. Many of those laws were struck down by the courts as the country gradually grew up and admitted that if people wished to obey the Sabbath, refrain from drinking, or avoid ball games on Sunday that was their right. What was not their right was to stop others from doing as they pleased.

Laws about sexual practices were indeed based upon religious beliefs until the sixties, when in Winnipeg, a teenage couple stood at the verge of being convicted of oral sex -- an unnatural sex practice -- and then sent to jail. The judge, the saints of all faiths be praised, said that to jail people for an act of mutual love, and a common type of sexual practice, was ridiculous.

Homosexuals were subject to jail back then. In my school days, four young boys, who were boarders, were found masturbating and were instantly expelled. The other younger boys, including me, were all were given a stern lecture on self-abuse, the term of the day -- though I can't remember if weakening eyes and hairy hands were mentioned, I do recall being told that it was "un-manly."

'Damned fools'

Let's pause here to observe that if any church holds homosexuality, masturbation, oral sex and the like to be immoral, with such activity barring membership, that's their right. I personally think they're damned fools who should have a lot of better things to worry about, but I grant their right to make such morality rules as they wish.

One BC university, Trinity Western, requires that all students swear off intercourse and the like while they're students. I support their right to do so and supported them monetarily when an allied case involving TWU and the College of Teachers went to the Supreme Court of Canada. I still think the rules are idiotic and I can tell the Dean that many graduates tell me that the "no intercourse" rule is honored much more in the breach than in the observance.

Marriage, it's claimed, is a religious prerogative but history doesn't back that claim. In fact, in the Bible, there is very little said about marriage, other than the social event surrounding it. Early Christian bishops saw the sanctity of marriage and the endless procreation of children as means by which the flock could be held together and increased. By the nineteenth century, governments in the Western world took a share of the action, marrying ordinary citizens in a civil service and doing something that the churches avoided: handing out divorces.

How about adultery?

The bottom line is that the government has the right to pass whatever legislation it wishes, subject only to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms

Let me now ask this question of those who would impose their code on all of us: what is that you object to?

No one is asking you or anyone else to approve of homosexuals and their sexual practices. I haven't heard a peep from your lot against rights being given to common law marriage partners who claim all the rights of married folks. Unlike homosexuals, common law partner break an actual commandment: "Thou shalt not commit adultery." Why aren't you being consistent and demanding a return to laws against adultery, gross indecency and the like so that young lives could forever be ruined by going to jail for enjoying a bit of oral sex?

Religious rules, civil rules

The final word is that there is no obligation whatever on any government to pay any attention to the Bible, the Talmud or any other religious book. Even if they did have that right, whose interpretation of which Bible would count? Some religious rules, such as laws against murder and stealing are incorporated in civil law, but that's at the choice of secular authority and those rules there because common sense tells one they must be.

I don't ask my caller and those like him to like gay marriages or gay sexual practices -- or gays themselves. In a free society, you don't have to like anything. I merely make the point that we are a secular nation which permits religions to set moral practices for themselves but not for others.

Rafe Mair, a regular columnist for The Tyee, can be heard every weekday morning from 8:30-10:30 on 600AM, His website is www.rafeonline.com