G'day Louis and the List
Sorry, didn't mean to ignore your post. I got halfway through writing this but I don't think I ever sent anything.
At 11:30 AM 20/12/03 +1100, Louis van Laar wrote:
Hello Andrew and List,
I appreciate this discussion. Andrew, do you think your argumentation is workable only because one of the assumptions of 'marriage' is that it is exclusively a union of male and female; as I reflected on your comments, it seems you have merely taken all the issues up to another level, but not really resolved them... what happens to your thinking if the Government included same sex couples within the definition of marriage?
Louis van Laar, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Minister, Footscray Central Parish of the
Uniting Church in Australia
Very good point.
At this point, in the light of the UCA's woolly thinking on marriage, I think we'd then have no choice but to regard faithfully married GLBTs as perfectly well qualified for ministry. What is more, I suspect it's just a matter of time before this happens, if not in NSW then in some other state or territory. I could be wrong here. We'll certainly have same-sex couples turning up from overseas, travelling on a family passport that says they are married. What happens if such people are naturalised before such marriages are legal locally will be an interesting question for the Registry Office, I don't think the question has arisen yet but it may.
I've described what I think is wrong with the UCA concept of marriage previously, and I should balance it by saying I think the UCA already does better overall than most other churches in this area. Personally, I'd like to fix our view of marriage so that the expectation that a legal marriage would automatically be recognised as a marriage by the UCA didn't arise. Unless we do this I think our hand is weak.
I guess in theory we could still turn around and say we regarded same-sex marriages as invalid, even if legally recognised and celebrated in a church whose baptisms and other marriages we recognise. I'd be interested in what rationale we could offer for this. In practice I don't think we would even try. Again I could be wrong.
Food for thought indeed.
YiCaa
email: andrewa @ alder . ws
http://www.zeta.org.au/~andrewa
Phone 9441 4476
Mobile 04 2525 4476
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