28 September 2004
Attention: Ms Helena Strange
Justice & Electoral Committee Secretariat
Parliament House, Wellington
The Society wishes to make an oral submission
concerning these two Bills before the Committee
registering its strong opposition to the Civil Union
Bill and concerns relating to its companion bill. A
written submission will be forwarded shortly detailing
our concerns and covering some of the following points.
We will seek to highlight the special character of
marriage as understood from the Judaeo-Christian
world-view and explain how these bills serve to advance
an alternative world-view, that of secular humanism, one
that is totally opposed to the moral order than emanates
from the former and one that negates the very principles
that undergird a healthy and life-giving social order.
Establishing a legal recognition framework
("civil -unions") for same-sex partnerships
(couples) that confers the same legal rights to those
couples in such partnerships as those couples who are
currently married, is detrimental to the good of
society.
Adopting such a framework that entitles different sex
couples to choose between a "civil-union" as
defined in the bill and marriage, which itself IS a
civil union, creates a legal nonsense. This is
highlighted by the bill's proposal that heterosexual
couples who have entered the new "civil-union"
can sometime later convert such a category of
relationship into a marriage by merely filling out the
appropriate paperwork. This 'right' to convert is not
open to same-sex couples, proving the point that the new
legislation actually discriminates against same-sex
couples. The conversion 'right' to move from
"civil-union" to marriage and backwards could
become a repeated pattern in the lives of heterosexual
couples making a nonsense of the claimed special
recognition of traditional marriage under the bill.
The Civil Union Bill, if enacted into law sends out
all the wrong messages to young people in that it treats
in practical terms, marriage as being no different from
any other loose form of commitment such as the loosest
imaginable a de-facto partnership. It undermines the
concept of marriage and the traditional understanding of
life-long spousal commitment and fidelity. It gives
state sanctioning to same-sex partnerships when in fact
the state has no reason whatsoever to get involved in
such lifestyle choices.
The state involvement in heterosexual marriage
involving a public commitment, solemnisation and
registration is necessary because of the fact that
children can potentially be produced from heterosexual
partnerships. Same-sex couples cannot produce children
and so the concept of shared biological kinship does not
apply.
To obtain children same-sex couples must break the
very bonds of fidelity that are at the heart of
marriage. Same-sex couples can never offer to their own
children the nurturing love of a mother (wife) and
father (husband) united in love and role-models of the
very partnership that is the cornerstone of the survival
of society and the human race.
The Relationships (Statutory References) Bill seeks
to create 'a level playing field' for all relationships
(same-sex, de-facto and heterosexual). In doing so it
denies the fundamental difference in "kind"
and "nature" between these relationships. The
Bill if enacted into law is detrimental to the public
good.
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