Same-sex marriage is not about equality, ACL’s Jim Wallace tells Senate committee
Jim Wallace.(Photo: Australian
Christian Lobby.)
Jim Wallace, the Australian Christian Lobby’s managing director, gave evidence at hearings into the Marriage Equality Amendment Bill 2010 in Melbourne today.
In a media release today, the ACL said it believes the Marriage Act is a “social contract designed for the common good for the reinforcement of the emotional and physical complementarities of a man and a woman for the good of children”.
Mr Wallace told the Senate Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs that same-sex and heterosexual relationships are different from each other and can’t be considered equal under Marriage Act.
“Homosexuality and heterosexuality are not the same, they are different. This is a biological truth. It is simply incongruous that homosexuality and heterosexuality be treated as equal, because they are so clearly different,” he said.
“This must cause us to ask what is then meant by ‘marriage equality’ – it begs the question, equal in what?”
Mr Wallace said that if this debate was really about making sure people were treated equally, then that had been achieved when the government changed 84 laws in 2008 to remove discrimination against homosexual couples to receive entitlements.
“There is no discrimination against homosexual people in entitlement,” Mr Wallace said.
Mr Wallace told the hearing that it is superficial to limit the discussion of the Marriage Act to ideas of love.
“If marriage is only about love, then who is government to determine who or indeed what people love?”
Mr Wallace said the ACL had no confidence in protections of religious freedom when many organisations that support same-sex marriage are also calling for faith-based organisations to have its religious protections removed in anti-discrimination legislation.
“The Committee must acknowledge the lack of integrity in promises to protect freedom of religion here, while the same activists are all the time demanding that protections for the church and people of faith be removed in the concurrent review of anti-discrimination legislation,” he said.
A copy of the ACL’s submission to the Senate is available here.
