Written by: ChristianView Network
Article source: www.facebook.com
At a recent consultation by Home Affairs it was claimed that Christians must put aside their beliefs to support radical proposals to change the law on marriage. Must we? Radical Gender Ideology activists argue that all including Christians and the democratic majority must accept their agenda because the Constitution requires “Equality”. So Christians and everyone else must put aside their “religious beliefs” and accept “The Constitution”, thus supporting for example: legal same-sex marriage, feminism, polygamy for all, polyandry (women have many husbands), abortion on demand, and all marriage officers including religious ones being forced to perform so called ‘same-sex marriages’ for whoever demands them… all the name of “Equality”. Is this correct?
How Do We Interpret The Bill Of Rights?
- We balance all the rights in the Constitution, not just consider those favourites by radical gender ideology. So for example ‘freedom of conscience’ would prohibit coercing anyone to perform so called ‘same-sex marriage’.
- All legal interpretation must consider ‘reasonableness’. How would a ‘reasonable person’ interpret the meaning of the law? Part of this is considering how such words have been traditionally interpreted. Reasonableness includes the consideration of the impacts.
- What was the intent of the meaning of the law at the time it was passed by Constitutional Assembly. Now we may apply the principles in that original meaning to new issues that may arise that the framers did not consider. For example the protection against detention without trial was extended from criminal detention to mental illness detention but the intent of the law was to protect a person against arbitrary and unwarranted detention.
- One must consider the role of the judiciary within the overall constitutional framework of the state balanced with the role of the executive and legislature. Within this framework the judiciary are the least accountable to the public and thus need to have the least power – being confined to the interpretation of detail of laws, compliance with the constitution as originally intended.
(For more detail, see “Reading law by Antonin Scalia”)
Now if one ignores the above interpretative methods, then you can motivate anything you like from the Bill of Rights. For example, you could argue that children should be allowed to marry – because otherwise there is discrimination based on age. Now of course there is such discrimination and it is reasonable because the social impact of allowing this is harmful. Likewise close relatives cannot marry because this would creates social conflicts and genetic problems. Equality in the Constitution does not mean ‘sameness’. It does not destroy all distinctions in society. For example, women cannot become Catholic priests, children cannot buy alcohol, a Gentile cannot become a rabbi, a Sotho doesn’t have an equal right to the Zulu throne. The constitutional right to ‘equality’ can’t be used to change that. In the same way so called same sex marriage, women marrying multiple men are going to create social problems and were not the intent of the Constitutional Assembly.
Answering Attempts To De-Legitimise Christian Voices
Secondly, the claim by gender radicals that any opposing voices are illegitimate if the person has a religious viewpoint is false:
- As citizens Christians, Moslems, Jews have every right to express their viewpoint through the democratic process just as atheists and secularists do. In South Africa, 7/10 identify as Christian and 97/100 believe in God, the remaining 3/100 being agnostics and atheists. 9/10 believe sex between two people of the same sex is wrong and only about 1/100 believe in so-called ‘same-sex marriage’. How has South Africa allowed such extremist minority to dominate?
- The Constitution does not as some claim make South Africa a secular state. Now President Cyril Ramaphosa, then chief negotiator of the African National Congress at CODESA in the run up to the 1994 elections answering claims of the African Christian Democratic Party explicitly and publicly denied any intent to make South Africa a “godless state”. To the contrary the Preamble of the Constitution asks God to bless South Africa and officers are to swear an oath to uphold the Constitution – all oaths acknowledging the existence of God.
- While the Constitution gives equality to all as individuals under the law regardless of religion or belief, all law is determined by some belief and these beliefs cannot all have an equal right to determine the law. Otherwise one would have anarchy with everyone following a different law, in which case there would not be equality under the law and the law would have no way to resolve conflicts between people of different belief. Thus the law has to give preference to some beliefs over others. Those preferences are determined by the intended meaning of the Constitution and within that by the legislature.
- What ‘radical gender ideology’ has done is to create their own religion which they now demand that everyone else must accept as the correct interpretation of the Bill of Rights – that must trump all other beliefs. Their beliefs are a cohesive system and they are based on nothing other than what their activist elite say they are. They do this by claiming that their religious views are not ‘religious’ and thus must not compete in the marketplace of ideas, but now stand above all others as ‘the Constitution’. This notion must be rejected.
- Christian and many other traditional religious beliefs favouring faithful monogamous heterosexual marriage between one biological man and one biological woman just happen to coincide with conservative family traditions which have worked successfully for thousands of years and continue to out perform every other alternative experiment or variant of family. The sociological outcomes have been measured and children do much better in this model – happier, healthier, financially better off, better educated, free from gangs and crime. The onus is on those who wish to experiment with the family to prove their alternatives don’t cause harm – and they have failed to do that.
- Christian heterosexual marriage just happens to coincide with science, which shows the human body male and female is designed to reproduce, while same-sex marriages do not. Those who abuse the parts of their bodies intended to clear waste for same gender sex are at higher risk of physical damage, disease and emotional frustration.
- Monogamous marriage is not just a Christian tradition, but was for example the law of the Roman Empire. The modern state of India having had polygamy and other variants for thousands of years changed its law to require monogamous marriage only, despite the fact that Christianity is a tiny minority in that country.
- Christians thus who speak up in defence of monogamous heterosexual marriage as state policy are defending what is in everyone social interest – not just their personal religious interests.
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Date published: 26/11/2021
Feature image: Image for illustrative purposes only. unsplash.com
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