Pope Benedict last week told a group of visiting Bishops how they should fight off plans for gay marriage. “The Church’s conscientious effort to resist this pressure [for marriage equality] calls for a reasoned defence of marriage as a natural institution,” which is “rooted in the complementarity of the sexes and oriented to procreation,” he said. “Sexual differences cannot be dismissed as irrelevant to the definition of marriage,” the Pope said.
The Archbishops of Westminster and Southwark follow this Vatican script in the pastoral letter read from English and Welsh church pulpits this weekend.
“Safeguarding the good of the entire human community”
What was missing from our Bishops’ pastoral letter is any explanation of how keeping marriage for heterosexuals only is “safeguarding the good of the entire human community and the rights of parents and children alike”, which the Pope claims is why the Church needs to block gay marriage equality.
So let’s see whether there IS any evidence of actual harm caused by gay marriage equality.
Gay people will get married. That's all that will happen. Move along now.
Where’s the evidence of harm from gay marriage?
A California federal court recently had to consider evidence of the harm gay marriage is supposed to cause in California, before the Judge made his decision. The judge ruled that the gay marriage ban inserted into California’s Constitution violates lesbian and gay citizens’ US Constitutional rights, by treating them as second class citizens for no good reason. There was no real evidence that marriage equality does cause harm.
The Pope claims that restricting marriage to heterosexuals only is required to ‘safeguard the good of the entire human community’. If there really is harm being done you would think he, the Vatican and Bishops would be quick to point everyone to actual evidence. It should be easy for the Pope to find lots of evidence by now, because gay marriage has been legal for about ten years, is now celebrated in seven European countries, in three other countries on other continents, and in six US States. Additionally the UK has had civil partnerships for the last six years.
The Pope and Bishops should also be able to get lots of help from other Christian churches and other faiths, especially in the USA, where anti-gay marriage and conservative Christian groups are very well funded and highly active. In the USA dire warnings of harm are very common, with extremely well-funded election campaigns to put gay marriage bans into the laws and constitutions of many States.
But whether it’s the Pope, Bishops or others making a big fuss about the harm that would be caused by gay marriage, none of them tell us exactly what that harm would be. Or if they do give examples, these are of no real substance. For example the website catholic.com has a big page devoted to answering lots of questions about gay marriage.
The only harm is that allowing any gay marriages would push up the divorce rate of heterosexuals. Keeping gay people unmarried is what keeps all the heterosexual married couples together.
The ‘harm’ is a vague fear monster that is regularly dragged out to scare people and maintain inequality. No-one has produced any academically reliable and testable evidence to prove any harm.
California trial of the Constitutional ban on gay marriage
We saw this lack of evidence of any harm ruthlessly exposed in this recent California court case.
The legal team against gay marriage had almost limitless funding from the gay marriage ban’s backers, Christian churches and other conservative organisations. They could afford to call all the expert witnesses they wanted and use the best legal counsel money could buy. They pulled out all the stops to keep the gay marriage ban.
The case was dramatised, using the court transcripts and interviews, in a play called ’8′ [named after Proposition 8, the California-wide ballot which added the anti-gay marriage ban to California's constitution]. A YouTube video of this is on the American Foundation for Equal Rights website (the website says it will be removed on Saturday 11 March at midnight on the west coast, but it was still up when this was posted). The dramatisation had an all star cast, with Brad Pitt, George Clooney, Martin Sheen and Jane Lynch.
Most of the statements of evidence by various witnesses were simply a lot of outraged but vague waffle. It may be impressive sounding rhetoric but it is threadbare on facts and testable evidence.
No significant evidence for any harm was produced by any of the witnesses who agreed to testify under oath.
Most of the witnesses only made sworn statements but then, during the trial, refused to testify and be cross-examined under oath. Refusing to testify and be cross examined demonstrates that those witnesses realised their evidence would not survive critical examination. And the evidence of the main ‘expert’ who did testify under oath, was later rejected by the judge as ‘unreliable’.
Expert’s evidence: ooops! it supports gay marriage
Under firm cross examination the principal expert witness who testified on oath against gay marriage, David Blankenhorn, waffled, struggled but eventually conceded:
“I believe that adopting same sex marriage would be likely to improve the well-being of gay and lesbian households and their children.” “The studies show that [the lesbian and gay] adoptive parents …, because of the rigorous screening process they undertake, … outstrip biological parents in terms of providing care for their children.”
Then from David Blankenhorn’s own book, the ‘The Future of Marriage’ these two sentences helped finally sink the case for keeping the ban on gay marriage.
“I believe that today the principle of equal human dignity must apply to gay and lesbian persons. In that sense, in so far as we are a nation founded on this principle [of equal rights], we would be more American on the day that we permit same sex marriage, than on the day before.”
So Blankenhorn noted that marriage would benefit same-sex couples and their children, would reduce discrimination against gays and lesbians and would be “a victory for the worthy ideas of tolerance and inclusion.”
Despite the multitude of benefits identified by Blankenhorn that would flow to the state, to gays and lesbians and to American ideals were California to recognize same-sex marriage, Blankenhorn nonetheless testified that the state should not recognize same-sex marriage.
Blankenhorn reasoned that the benefits of same-sex marriage are not valuable enough because same-sex marriage could ‘conceivably weaken marriage as an institution’.
He did not produce any evidence to back up either his claim that the benefits of same sex marriage were not valuable enough, nor could he produce evidence for his claim that same sex marriage might weaken marriage as an institution.
The Judge later ruled that he was not qualified as an expert witness to give these opinions and that his testimony was “unreliable and entitled to essentially no weight.”
Pope’s Proof?
Can the Pope do a better job than the California experts and prove his claim that banning gay marriage is essential to ‘safeguarding the good of the entire human community and the rights of parents and children alike’? It seems really unlikely the Pope will ever succeed if the best experts and lawyers money can buy lost the case in California.
The Pope’s and Bishops’ words are just empty high-flown blather without substance or evidence behind them.
The Catholic Bishops problem facing those supporting equal marriage rights
The problem facing Catholics and others supporting civil gay marriage is that the Pope and Bishops will carry on making these statements, we can ask all we like for their evidence, but no one can force them to prove their claims before an independent court or tribunal. Nor can they be forced to submit their claims and evidence for publication in an independent academic journal, where it could be reviewed and checked by independent academic experts.
They continue to act as their own judge and jury: all power with no responsibility or accountability to lesbian and gay Catholics.
However it is just a temporary storm along the path of reform. We know from experience that after civil partnerships became law the British Bishops stopped making a fuss. And once equal marriage rights become law all the noise and fury will also pass.
However the Bishops and Pope will have lost a bit more credibility and moral authority as people notice society continues to function very much as before. A few more Catholics will pack up and leave in exasperation.
More information
Pope’s words to US Bishops on gay marriage, permissiveness, pre-marital sex and similar problems in the Catholic Herald
Pastoral letter to English and Welsh Catholics against gay marriage equality
American Foundation for Equal Rights website for viewing the YouTube video of the dramatised reading of “8″
Court transcripts – see day 11
Catholic Answers deals with gay marriage. In Part III it discusses the ‘threats to [heterosexual] marriage’. Allowing gay marriage ‘weakens the meaning of marriage, which would cause more divorces.’ Apparently the number of divorces will explode because heterosexuals need gays to stay unmarried because unmarried gay people are part of the glue that holds heterosexual relationships together. I’m not making this up, they are very serious and earnest at catholic.com. And that’s the only threat to heterosexual marriage they identify.
The US Family Research Council has a leaflet listing the top ten harms from gay marriage (.pdf file). They are 100% serious but truly scrape the barrel with their 10 spurious harms.
Chris Morley
Chris was raised Catholic, attended a junior seminary for five years, survived and emerged gay. He has 30 years experience in community social care, supporting vulnerable and excluded people both at the Citizens Advice Bureau and in leading HIV charities.
