The British group “Catholic Voices” have now held their meeting to formulate a Catholic argument against the introduction here of full marriage equality - a “Catholic” meeting on gay marriage from which, bizarrely, gay Catholics were specifically excluded. A report on the meeting at their website described the argument they will be adopting - the so-called “common good” one, which proceeds from the biological fact that children are produced only by the interaction of one man and one woman, to the conclusion that marriage, likewise, can be only between one man and one woman.

This reasoning is seductive, and avoids the lunacy spouted by some Catholic bishops and other ardent opponents of legal recognition for queer families. The premise is indisputable, a simple matter of basic biology, and we all want the best for children. Protecting them is surely a matter of the common good, and an important Catholic value. However, the argument remains deeply flawed, substituting motherhood and apple-pie platitudes for sound reasoning. The “common good” they claim to be promoting is a selective one, which actively discriminates against some children.

David Quinn of the Iona Institute told the Catholic Voices Academy that the status of marriage ‘discriminates’ against every other type of human relationship, because only marriage is ranked as a social institution.

What justifies marking it off from other kinds of committed or sexual relationships is that only the relationship between a man and a woman is capable of giving a child both a mother and a father. The state, he said, was right to seek to protect and promote an institution which was uniquely beneficial to children and therefore society.

He said same-sex marriage introduces another kind of discrimination — privileging sexual relationships over other kinds of relationships - which cannot be justified.

-Catholic Voices

Catholic Voices spurious, selective “Common Good” argument.

This short statement contains three major whoppers:

1. “only marriage is ranked as a social institution”.

Huh? Sociologists, who developed the concept of a social institution, would disagree strongly. The institution of “family” (not marriage, and emphatically not restricted to the particular model of marriage that Quinn is thinking of) is only one of five primary social institutions. From Sociology 101:

Sociologists often reserve the term “institution” to describe normative systems that operate in five basic areas of life, which may be designated as the primary institutions. (1) In determining Kinship; (2) in providing for the legitimate use of power; (3) in regulating the distribution of goods and services; (4) in transmitting knowledge from one generation to the next; and (5) in regulating our relation to the supernatural. In shorthand form, or as concepts, these five basic institutions are called the family, government, economy, education and religion.

-Sociology Guide

There is a delicious irony, here. In speaking to a religious gathering about government plans to recognize gay marriage, Quinn is claiming that only marriage is a social institution - quite oblivious of the fact that both religion and government rank alongside family as primary social institutions.

2. “…. only the relationship between a man and a woman is capable of giving a child both a mother and a father. The state, he said, was right to seek to protect and promote an institution which was uniquely beneficial to children”.

It is not the marriage that produces the child, but a sexual act. This act may create a child, but that alone is not enough. The child must be cared for, nurtured, educated and raised to adulthood. That is the part that the state seeks to encourage and protect - and that love and nurturing is not an ability restricted to heterosexual couples. The simple existence of large numbers of children in need of fostering or adoptive parents amply demonstrates that there are very many men and women who by their biological actions have created children - but are quite obviously not capable of proper parenting. Conversely, the evidence from empirical research, and the testimony of professionals working in adoption agencies, and from the children of gay parents, is clear: as a group, gay parents are as capable as any others of being excellent parents. Individually, case by case and child by child, some are way better.

3. “…..He said same-sex marriage introduces another kind of discrimination — privileging sexual relationships over other kinds of relationships - which cannot be justified.”

Huh? again. By restricting his understanding of parenting to the biological act of procreation, Quinn has privileged heterosexual sexual relationships over all others. If only he had bothered to listen to other Catholic voices, those of gay Catholics themselves, he might have learned that real life gay and lesbian relationships are emphatically not simply sexual, but are relationships, in every sense of the word. They include emotional bonding and support, shared household management, conversation and recreation - and, often, care of children or ageing parents. The sexual component of a relationship is important for its unitive value (as it is in heterosexual partnerships), but is only one part - usually a declining one, with the passing of time.

The “Common Good” Requires Protection for ALL Families.

Legal marriage does not create marriage, it simply recognizes and protects them. A simple look around virtually any human community, there exist families of many varieties: only some take the idealized form of orthodox Catholic imagination, with one mother and one father, each in their first and only marriage, and children. Some families have just a single parent, some have unmarried parents, some parents are into second, third or fourth marriages - and some married couples are deliberately childless.

The state is willing to grant the name “marriage” to opposite -sex couples who have no intention of raising children, and to people who have demonstrated in previous relationships that they are incapable of sound parenting, or who have been married several times and created complex families in which no two siblings share the same biological parents, and where no child is living with both biological parents. Yet the Catholic Voices “common good” argument is not directed at removing recognition as marriage from these relationships, but only from those families where both parents are of the same biological sex, no matter how stable and loving they might be.

Conversely, families are created by same-sex couples without legal recognition. In some cases, they are raising the biological children of one or both partners from previous relationships, in others, they have taken on children whose (heterosexual) biological parents have failed them. What possible grounds can there be, for the state to refuse to protect the children of these families, on an equal basis to the children of other unorthodox families, as described above?

There was a time when the marriage relationship between two parents was so highly prized, that children of unmarried parents were stigmatized as bastards, a status that even carried distinct legal penalties. The children were punished, for the status of the parents. In time, the legal penalties fell away, to be replaced by mere social opprobrium - and latterly, that too has largely fallen away. All children deserve to be treated equally.

And yet, some disparities continue. Tax regimes and some other bureaucratic regulations continue to privilege formally married couples over others. Research shows that children of legally married parents benefit emotionally and socially, as well as financially. I simple terms, children benefit by being able to say, “my parents are married”. By arguing to refuse recognition as marriages from same-sex relationships, Catholic Voices is seeking to entrench discrimination against some children.

Discrimination against some children is not a Catholic value.

Related articles

• Gay Marriage: At London “Catholic Voices” Discussion, Gay Catholics NOT Welcome.
• Give Thanks for Archbishop Nichols’ Balanced, Sane Response to British Gay Marriage.
• Catholics and Gay Marriage: Hostile Rant Meets Strong Response.
• Growing Catholic Acceptance Of Gay Relationships, LGBT Equality
• Catholic Bishops, Gay Marriage: “the Outer Fringes of Crazy Town”
• Gay Marriage: Catholic Bishops Assault on Religious Freedom.

• Terry Weldon on Catholic Voices Group and “the” Catholic Position on Marriage Equality (bilgrimage.blogspot.com)
• In the “Marriage Amendment” Debate There is More Than One Catholic Perspective (thewildreed.blogspot.com)
• Local Catholics Premier Video Series on Faith, Family and Marriage (thewildreed.blogspot.com)