The Bishops of Australia have sent a letter to all their parishes urging people to defend traditional marriage.

Bishop Julian Porteous, one of Sydney’s auxiliary bishops (who recently edited titles for CTS) expressed the view that people could misunderstand what the debate now happening on the other side of the world is really about:

“Marriage is more than having one’s love for another legally recognized.

It has been protected and supported by the law because governments have recognized its contribution to the good of society. The family based on strong, happy marriages plays a unique role in generating children and providing the best environment in which children can be nurtured and educated. It helps to ensure the future and well-being of society.”

You can read the text of the letter itself here.

The debate is understandably highly-charged across the world but that makes proper understanding of what is at stake all the more necessary, as Peter D Williams explains in the CTS booklet, Same-sex Marriage:

“Unfortunately, as so often with issues that are related to sexuality, this topic has become a deeply sensitive cultural and political issue, and one which many people approach with deeply and keenly-felt views, but seldom with great understanding. In particular, many of those in favour of same-sex marriage commonly default to denunciation of their opponents, reflexively referring to anyone who opposes the redefinition of marriage as ‘homophobe’ or ‘bigot’. Even when this is not openly stated, the implication is made that it is really prejudice that is at the heart of support for keeping marriage as it is currently defined.

At the expense of rational discussion, the use of such terms act as ‘thought-terminating clichés’ that smear their target as merely antediluvian and hateful, and thus chill debate by encouraging those who hear them to ignore those against whom such words are employed. (It is worth knowing the strict definitions of these terms, in order to correct their abuse, and a Glossary of Polemical Terminology may be found at the back of this booklet for that very purpose.)”

Same-sex Marriage – Can marriage be redefined? by Peter D. Williams is available now from CTS priced £1.95