Life Ministries has consistently defended marriage and family over the past two decades. We believe that there is a rational basis for lawmakers to maintain special benefits in law for marriage that should be withheld from other forms of relationships, including same-sex relationships.

We believe this because marriage is beneficial to society, to married partners, and to children that are conceived and reared in this loving and enduring relationship. Governments across the world have recognized the social benefits of marriage for centuries, and this is the explanation for why they have discriminated in favour of marriage over other forms of “family”.

Is the preferential treatment of marriage fair? Yes. Governments often provide special benefits to certain groups. Take veterans, for example. Benefits are provided to veterans, and not to the general population, as a national expression of gratitude for their willingness to risk life and limb for their country. And this is rightly so. Would it be just to provide the same benefits to Boy Scouts because they also wear uniforms and have drills, if they demanded it? Plainly no.

Life Ministries is firmly opposed to granting marriage-like rights in law to homosexual couples, whether in the form of Civil Unions (such as the recently quashed ACT laws) or a Relationship Register (such as the laws that presently exist in Tasmania).We agree with Professor Gerry Bradley of Notre Dame University that“…persons of the same sex can never form a mated pair, be the originators of human reproduction, engage in sexual acts open to new life, have children who are, literally, the embodiment of their—the couple’s —two-in-one-flesh union.”

We also believe that parents provide the best foundation for the moral training of their children. Professor Bradley states, “The proper rearing of children concerns their moral education by experience and example. The enduring reproductive union of a man and a woman establishes a world of valuable relationships that same-sex households can only mimic. In the marital household we find a nexus of interwoven relationships—husband and wife, mother and father, father and daughter, mother and son, brother and sister, etc—and all the moral obligations and opportunities these relationships imply.”

Therefore, Life Ministries has consistently opposed, and continues to oppose giving same-sex couples similar benefits to married couples, for the former only imitates family, harms society and undermines morality, while the latter forms the foundation of a healthy, good and just society. Giving additional rights to same-sex couples will not appease them, it will only galvanize them in their demand for the real prize they are working toward—same-sex marriages.

God’s plan has always been that children should be conceived, loved and reared within the bounds of marriage. Any political organisation or government that attempts to pass laws to grant homosexual couples similar rights to married couples is betraying marriage and family and harming society.