‘Sad bigot’ to savvy evangelist: there’s a frame for that

10 Jun 2013

By The Record

CatholicVoices co-founder, journalist and commentator Austen Ivereigh speaking on May 23 at The Great Grace in Sydney. PHOTO: Courtesy of the Archdiocese of Sydney

Imagine that Mary favours same-sex marriage because she believes it’s a way of reducing discrimination, and because she recognises the modern reality of love between gay people which is able to be expressed.

Mary knows gay couples, she sees that they love each other, she knows they care about each other, in many cases they have stable relationships, sometimes they have children and she thinks it’s only right, in a pluralist society based on principals of equality that they should be allowed to marry.

Now Mary was brought up a Catholic and she understands the Catholic Church has strong views that marriage is between a man and a woman.

But she doesn’t think the Church has the right to impose that view on the law of the land or on others and she thinks the Church’s attitude to homosexuality is, to say the least, a bit old-fashioned.

Now, I’m sure that sounds familiar, I’m sure you meet people like this everyday.

Imagine she falls into conversation with Tom, a practising Catholic who tells her that the Church believes marriage is between a man and a woman – frame reinforced, Mary switches off.

That homosexuality is sinful – frame reinforced, Mary switches off.

That the love of a man is special or different from that between two gay people – frame reinforced, and so on.

Mary soon tires of Tom whom she dismisses as a sad bigot (laughs), but then along comes Jenny, another practising Catholic.

Now she tells Mary first of all that same-sex marriage is an attempt to reform civil marriage and therefore the Church’s own theology of marriage is irrelevant – mmm, reframe.

Marriage isn’t defined by either the Church or State, she says – mmm, reframe.

Mary’s listening at this point. Jenny explains the Church doesn’t seek to impose its moral beliefs through the law, which is why, for example, bishops in most Western countries have backed the decriminalisation of homosexual acts – mmm, reframe, Mary didn’t know that.

Jenny adds that the Church recognises that love appears in many forms, in many different relationships, and while those relationships differ, the Church believes that where love is, God is – mmm, another reframe, and Jenny takes the opportunity to invite Mary to her Taize night to sing Ubi Caritas Deus Tibi Est (laughs).

By this time, Mary is engaged, she’s very interested to know why exactly then the Church does oppose same-sex marriage. So, Jenny lays it out:

The State doesn’t involve itself in our love life, she says, but it makes an exception for marriage because marriage fosters the best possible environment for a child, namely, to be brought up by its natural parents.

Because the results of such an upbringing are enormously beneficial to society, and indeed to the child of course, the State wishes to promote and foster marriage, that’s the basis for the whole legal support of marriage, she says.

But same-sex unions or indeed any other non-conjugal relationships, offer no wider social benefit and therefore have no need to be supported by the State, says Jenny.

And then she goes on to say that, in fact, same-sex marriage reduces marriage to a mere domestic partnership between any two individuals, which makes marriage less coherent, less attractive, and less easy to live by, and therefore, she says, over time, it’s very likely that marriage will be reduced in importance, that means fewer children will be brought up by married couples.

And so she says the issue really is not about gay rights at all, it’s about what is in the best interests of children, and we have a conversation then that takes place on that basis.

Now Jenny might have used different arguments after the reframe, but the point is, and the difference between her and Tom is that she has taken the time to consider the frames and the reframes, she’s read the relevant Church documents, she knows the Church statements, she’s looked at what Mary believes, spots in it where the good is, affirms it, and then introduces the bigger picture – interests of children – which the ethic of autonomy’s fixation on the individual, has missed out.