Gay "Marriage" in The News Again.

So the big push is on. I bet all those who voted Green are surprised that their big ticket items have turned out to be not the environment but social engineering-- euthanasia and so-called gay marriage. Of course, since the Labor Party is running scared of the Greens, they are doing their best to kowtow to every little policy idea they come up with. They do this while looking over their shoulder to make sure they aren't alienating too many of their working class lifelong supporters who tend to be rather more conservative than the inner city professionals they want to win back from the Reds Greens.

We live in a culture that basically has shifted over the last fifty years from essentially Christian in world-view to something more neo-pagan and unprincipled.

By neo-pagan I mean that our culture has a plethora of mini-gods which one is free to worship or not. Some of those gods are individuals and individual "rights". Other gods might include the spirits of the land, the trees, Gaia the mythical world-spirit and so on. People blather on about spirituality usually meaning some kind of vague belief about gods, angels or positive thinking.

By unprincipled I don't mean lacking in morality but rather that there is no external principles that people base their decisions on. We live in an age where decisions are made on the basis of what feels right or on the strange fantasy world of celebrities rather than on any underlying fundamental beliefs about the world, the nation and the reason for our being.

"Rights" are exalted above responsibilities, short term pleasure at the expense of long-term rewards.

This is the context of the debate on gay "marriage". It seems to me inevitable that if it doesn't get through this year then it will in the next few years.

Why is it inevitable?

Because people don't know what marriage is any more. The link between sex, child-rearing and maintaining commitment to a small group of people for life has all but disappeared from our common life.

There was a time when growing up was straight forward. You grew up in your parents' home, learning to be an adult. The parents usually stayed together, barring tragedy so that children understood what stability meant. At some stage, which over the centuries has varied, the children were considered mature enough to start their own family. They would be married, experience sex and eventually babies would be conceived and the cycle would go on.

The basis of marriage then were life-long commitment in a sexual relationship providing the basis for healthy child raising.

This started to unravel with the rise of individualism in the 1960s and the contraceptive pill. The "feel good" culture meant that sex could be divorced from the consequences of child birth. What was then called "free sex" became a possibility. People were free to have as much or as little sex with as many or as few people as they wanted.

The sexual revolution also brought a change in the way people viewed relationships. "Living in sin" became normalised as "de facto" relationships. In the 1970s and 1980s people began to question the idea of making a life-long commitment. That seemed to be a heavy burden to carry. So it became more popular to live together to test the relationship and then get married if it lasted.

"No fault" divorces also made it easier to dissolve marriages which meant that marriage was also seen as less permanent.

From the norm that I grew up with, a new norm has arisen in which the relevance of marriage is seen more as a seal on a long-standing relationship rather than as a rite of passage in which a relationship hits a new level of commitment. Relationships are now more fluid than they were.

So why not gay "marriage"?

From a social point of view, it seems silly to exclude any relationship from being sanctioned by the state. If you give certain rights to one type of relationship, why exclude any? Once gay "marriage" is approved, I believe it will be only a matter of time before people start pushing for other kinds of relationships. Why not multiple partners? Indeed, the growing Muslim community would give some politically correct covering for that notion. Why not any combination of animate and inanimate objects you might like to name?

From a Christian point of view, things are very different. We have to consider the issues of purpose and origins. We cannot just look at things from a purely self-centred perspective.

The Bible is very clear that marriage, in God's eyes, is one man and one woman committed for life. "I hate divorce" God says through one of the prophets. This is not to say that God writes people off for getting divorced, but rather it is the sin and selfishness that leads to us dumping people as if they were disposable that he hates.

Christians need to separate what our culture says is good from what God says is good.

If our legal system decides that two people of the same sex can have their relationship called a marriage and given the same status as traditional marriage then that's the way it is. That does not mean that that relationship enjoys the blessing of God. Nor does it mean that churches should have to recognise them in the same way.

We need to understand also that our culture, having turned its back on God, is now engaged in a death spiral. We will need to confront the death that our culture is embracing with the life and the light of God. All Christians will need to develop a world-view that is truly Biblical in order to discern what is right from what is wrong.

We live in challenging times.