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TONY JONES: President Bush's statements have
naturally echoed here in Australia, where, late last year, the Prime
Minister argued passionately against legalising gay
marriage.
"You're talking here about the survival of the species,"
Mr Howard told an interviewer in Darwin.
But at least one very
senior churchman is offering up a third way -- not gay marriage as such,
but recognition of lifelong friendships between two homosexuals which
would give them the same legal status as a heterosexual married
couple.
I spoke to Archbishop Peter Carnley in Perth a short time
ago.
TONY JONES: Archbishop Carnley, President Bush says he's been
driven to act by activist courts to prevent the meaning of marriage being
changed forever.
Do you have any sympathy for his
action?
ARCHBISHOP PETER CARNLEY, PRIMATE OF THE ANGLICAN CHURCH OF
AUSTRALIA: I think I understand where he's coming from.
I think
he's wanting to defend the concept of marriage as a union between a man
and a woman from attack.
Whether he's quite right in his analysis
of that I very much doubt because I think you have to remember that
homosexual people only make up less than 10 per cent of the community and
I think the other 90 per cent is able to sustain the institution of
marriage if it wanted to.
I think the interesting thing about the
present is that marriage between heterosexual peoples is a bit shaky these
days.
I think there's so much divorce and fracture of relationships
and de facto relationships and a disinclination to commit at all so I
think that's probably more serious than what is happening amongst gay
people.
TONY JONES: Do you think it would change the equation at
all if gay couples did not use the term 'marriage', did not appropriate
that term?
ARCHBISHOP PETER CARNLEY: I personally do think
that.
I think it would help their cause, their own cause, in
fact.
I've always argued that marriage is properly used of male and
female relationships and we should in fact term same sex relationships,
friendships in the first instance, rather than marriage.
I don't
know of too many gay people who think of themselves, if they are in a
long-term committed relationship, who want to see themselves as husbands
and wives, for example.
I think it's a much more equal relationship
of friends.
TONY JONES: Tell me, George Bush was obviously
horrified by this, but what did you think when you saw the thousands of
gay couples lining up to have their unions made legal outside San
Francisco or lining up at San Francisco City Hall to have that
done?
ARCHBISHOP PETER CARNLEY: Well, I was rather uncomfortable
with it myself a bit.
I thought it was all a bit frivolous and you
had to ask yourself whether these relationships were really serious
long-term committed relationships or if this was just a bit of a
stunt.
And I think real, solid relationships probably are formed in
private and quietly rather than that very public festive kind of
atmosphere.
TONY JONES: But you're not opposed to gay unions being
made legal.
ARCHBISHOP PETER CARNLEY: Well, it depends on the
reason.
I think I understand it if same sex partnerships want to be
legalised in some way -- for holding property together, for example, to
secure inheritance, superannuation payments and, very importantly, to
claim the responsibilities or the rights of next of kin if one of them
happens to die.
I think I can understand all that.
So to
register a relationship for those purposes I think is understandable and I
don't think you have to use the term 'marriage' of it.
TONY JONES:
The President and here the PM have got themselves deeply involved in this
issue.
Do you think it would be divisive in Australia if it became
an election issue here as it's clearly going to be in the
US?
ARCHBISHOP PETER CARNLEY: Oh, I think it would be divisive
because I think people take strong views on either side on this
issue.
Some people are very threatened by gay people claiming to be
entering into a relationship which is more or less a marriage.
I
think people would divide over it.
It would be a divisive
issue.
I have no doubt about that.
TONY JONES: Since our
laws are essentially based on a system of morality, would you be at all
concerned that changing the laws to create legal gay unions would somehow
give moral righteousness to those unions?
ARCHBISHOP PETER CARNLEY:
Yes.
That would be the next step, I think.
That's a question
that is very greatly debated at the moment, particularly in the Christian
churches themselves.
There is a very open debate about how we
should deal pastorally with gay and lesbian people at the moment.
I
think we have to acknowledge that and I think we have to acknowledge that
even Christian people read the biblical texts relating to homosexual
relationships in different ways so there's certainly a debate going on
about that, but I think that's quite a different debate from the debate
about legalising relationships so that one person can be recognised as the
next of kin of another, for example.
I don't think that's a
difficult moral question at all.
TONY JONES: I know that a few
years ago you recommended that your church consider blessing monogamous
committed gay relationships.
Do you still believe
that?
ARCHBISHOP PETER CARNLEY: I think I was talking in terms of
the blessing of a friendship.
If you think of same sex
relationships in the terms of the category of friendship, I think that
takes a lot of heat out of it because I think there's nothing wrong with
blessing friendships.
I think that's perfectly all
right.
But that avoids, of course, or doesn't address the moral
question of what is to happen in terms of behaviour within those
relationships.
I think that's another question.
TONY JONES:
But it is effectively a way of blessing a gay marriage without calling it
marriage, a sort of splitting hairs, isn't it?
ARCHBISHOP PETER
CARNLEY: Well, no, I don't think it is splitting hairs because I think it
is possible for people to be friends, even to live together in the same
house, for example.
We used to think when I grew up of same sex
relationships as relationships between people we called bachelors, and we
didn't even think of what might happen in bedrooms.
And I think
what happens in bedrooms is very much more an individual decision that
couples must make according to their own conscience, and I think the
churches can give them advice on that.
Unfortunately, the churches'
advice at the moment is probably pretty various -- different advice -- and
that's because we've not reached the point of a mature mind on
it.
We're still debating the issues.
TONY JONES: A mature
mind.
I mean, you have suggested to your own church that it needs
to come to terms with the reality of gay relationships.
What do you
mean essentially by that?
ARCHBISHOP PETER CARNLEY: Well, they
exist.
Gay relationships certainly exist.
And whilst some
heterosexual people might say that those relationships are unnatural, if
you talk to the gay people themselves, they'll say what is unnatural for
them would be a heterosexual relationship, so you can't appeal to a kind
of natural law to solve this problem.
I think it's a much more
complex problem and I think the churches have got to look again at the
biblical material, they've got to look at the natural law argument and
just think through the whole issue, and I think you have to do that
realising that there certainly are in the world real people who are in
real same sex relationships.
You cannot avoid it.
TONY
JONES: You mentioned, looking again at the biblical material, and to some
degree you have been doing that in one of your recent papers, which has
been put forward for discussion, let's put it that way, you seem to
suggest that there are parts of the Scriptures which appear to accept same
sex relationships.
ARCHBISHOP PETER CARNLEY: Oh, well, yes, the
story of David and Jonathan, for example, a very intense friendship of two
males.
I think that's a very clear story in the Scriptures, and the
story of Ruth and Naomi too, two women with a very intense and loyal
friendship.
I think they are clear stories that can be brought to
bear on this particular issue.
TONY JONES: In the case of David and
Jonathan, it's in the Book of Samuel, I think, it talks about a
relationship that is wonderful, even greater, than that of a woman -- a
love even greater than that of a woman.
Are they, do you believe,
are the Scriptures there talking about a homosexual
relationship?
ARCHBISHOP PETER CARNLEY: No, I don't think they
are.
I think they're talking about a relationship between two men
of a very deep and loyal kind.
I think they're not talking about a
homosexual relationship as we would think of one today because the concept
of a homosexual person, an exclusively oriented homosexual person, is a
19th century concept.
It was a discovery of the 19th
century.
So that certainly wasn't in the minds of the biblical
writers.
I think when the biblical writers wrote, they thought that
all human beings were heterosexual and what we could call today homosexual
behaviour was therefore a deviant behaviour, but we might not think of
that in that way today.
TONY JONES: There are not hints, do you
believe, in that section of the Scriptures that their relationship may
have been sexual?
ARCHBISHOP PETER CARNLEY: I don't think there are
too many hints.
Some writers try and read that into it, but I think
it is a neutral text on that one myself.
TONY JONES: And you also
raise, somewhat ambiguously, if I may say so, the question of Jesus and
his relationships with men.
And in particular you refer to the
disciple, the male disciple in this case, whom Jesus
loved.
ARCHBISHOP PETER CARNLEY: Yeah.
A good example of a
same sex relationship, of what I would call friendship, a deep loyalty and
love.
It is nothing to do with sexuality at this point.
TONY
JONES: But when the issue of sexuality is raised alongside these examples,
what is the point you are seeking to make because those who oppose your
way of looking at it would simply say if there's no sex involved, it isn't
a homosexual relationship, no comparison?
ARCHBISHOP PETER CARNLEY:
Well, I think the first category to clarify is whether you are going to
speak of same sex relationships as marriage or basically friendship, and I
think they are two different things.
Marriage is a relationship
between a man and a woman, a husband and wife, basically for the purpose
of mutual support but also for bringing children into the world and to
create an intergenerational family.
And I think basically a
homosexual relationship is a relationship of a different kind and that's
why I don't want to use the category of marriage in relation to
it.
I think it's fundamentally a friendship.
Now just what
behaviours can go on in that relationship is what we have to sort
out.
TONY JONES: In recognising, though, as you call it, the
reality of those relationships, do you believe the Church should
ultimately accept gay sex as being a legitimate part of that
relationship?
ARCHBISHOP PETER CARNLEY: Well, it's hard to
know.
I think if you did a count of Christians in churches these
days, you'd get a mixed message, but there are certainly a lot of people I
know in Christian congregations who are not too fazed by the presence of
gay couples in the congregations.
Just what those gay couples do at
home and in their bedroom is just not a question that people
raise.
They accept them simply as human beings and relate to them
as human beings and support them as human beings and I think that's
probably a good thing.
TONY JONES: Can I ask what do you think
about that?
Do you believe what they do in the privacy of their own
homes -- that is, gay sex -- is immoral?
ARCHBISHOP PETER CARNLEY:
I think it's basically a question for them to decide.
I think it's
a personal question, an individual question, and they have to decide that
in accordance with their own conscience.
And I think the Church is
in the position where it must clarify its teachings so that it can point
them in one direction or another.
And it just is a fact in the
Christian churches at the moment that there is great diversity on that
matter.
So my role in the Anglican Church, for example, is to try
and lead our congregations through a study process to come to terms with
the complexities of the issue and to study the texts and the various
arguments that are put together for and against homosexual behaviour and
just commend it to homosexual people as the best advice we can give them
for the moment.
But I think in the course of time that will
clarify.
TONY JONES: Archbishop, one final question -- it comes out
of what you just said.
Do you regard sexual morality as being
subjective?
ARCHBISHOP PETER CARNLEY: No, no, I don't.
I
think it has to be argued publicly.
I think it's possible to say,
for example, that it is objectively quite clear that promiscuity is a bad
thing.
I think we can say that and we can say it for good
reason.
We can say it is a health hazard, for example, and so I
would say very clearly and objectively that promiscuity is a bad thing and
that faithfulness in relationships is a very good thing.
I think
that's objectively supportable too.
I think the problem is when you
start to talk about same sex relationships, long-term committed
relationships, you have got something which can qualify to be called
faithful.
And if the Bible is in support of faithful relationships,
that particular argument would lead you to support faithful same sex
relationships so that's the kind of debate we're in.
TONY JONES:
Archbishop Carnley, I'm afraid we are out of time.
We could
probably talk about this for a great deal longer but we thank you very
much for taking the time to join us tonight.
ARCHBISHOP PETER
CARNLEY: It's a pleasure, and the churches will talk about it for a great
deal longer, I can assure
you. |
