Garth George: Nonsense comes to the fore in debate over civil unions

COMMENT

If the prolonged and heated public debate on the Civil Union Bill has achieved anything, it is to bring the whole question of homosexuality back out into the open where it belongs.

And if the Civil Union Bill gets past its first reading in Parliament today, as it probably will given the nature of this Parliament, it's a question that is not going to go away - at least not until the ultimate fate of the bill is decided.

That's a bit strange really. Figures published in this newspaper on Tuesday informed us that there are 1,608,201 (one must be a trio) New Zealanders who are married or living in de facto, presumably heterosexual, relationships and there are 10,134 people living in same-sex relationships.

Which means that the Government is going to all the expense in money and time, and generating a huge amount of aggro, to push through the Civil Union Bill on behalf of what seems to be an infinitesimal 0.63 per cent of the partnered population.

But the minuteness of the pro lobby doesn't make them any less vocal. The outpourings of heterophobia in the past week have been something to behold. As have some of the utterly ridiculous pronouncements of the anti-bill brigade.

This is an argument that can have no resolution. On the one side we have a group of men and women who are utterly persuaded that homosexuality is a natural, normal and legitimate state of being; and on the other a group of people who believe absolutely that homosexuality as unnatural, abnormal and immoral.

And, I suspect, there is a third group, probably bigger than both the others, who simply don't give a stuff. I'm rapidly coming to the conclusion that I'll join them.

Because I'm already sick of the nonsense being spouted by both sides - the mindless heterophobia of the homosexual lobby and their hangers on; and the witless nonsense spouted by many who oppose the Civil Union Bill.

I think the bill is a good idea - but not because it represents highfalutin things like human rights, justice, equality and that much-misused word tolerance. It is none of those things. All it is about is choice.

Heterosexuals choose to marry - they don't have any right to marry. In fact, there are a number of proscriptions about who can marry and who can't.

Under the proposed legislation homosexual couples who choose to live together in long-term relationships will be given certain legal rights that heterosexuals take for granted. And why shouldn't they have the security of such legalities as, for instance, next-of-kin status and inheritance rights?

Those who bleat that the legitimisation of same-sex relationships devalues marriage are talking nonsense. Homosexuals, for all their proselytising and self-promotion, will always be in a tiny minority. And the vast majority of men and women will continue to fall in lust or in love and form heterosexual partnerships of one sort of another.

And those who are brought up in the sort of secure, loving, nurturing traditional family of mum, dad and the kids will grow up and themselves marry and perpetuate the human race which, in spite of arguments to the contrary, is the main reason most people get married in the first place.

Those who argue that men and women who cannot have children shouldn't be allowed to marry if homosexuals aren't are talking such puerile nonsense that they hardly deserve a rebuttal.

Men and women were created for one another, specially made to fit together, and they'll continue to be attracted to one another, and to fit together, whether children result or not, many of them blissfully unaware that they are unable to have children until long after the nuptials.

Another lot who needn't be taken seriously are the ignorant and arrogant who blithely try to tell us that traditional morality as defined by the Bible and other books has been proved to be wrong because society has undergone a process of modernisation.

Or that Christianity is a choice and sexuality is not. Yet we all know that for every piece of research which indicates that homosexuality is genetic, there is another piece of research that concludes it is learned behaviour.

Like so much "research" these days, the result depends on who commissioned it.

Among the nonsense perpetrated by the anti brigade, notably Peter Dunne and Gerry Brownlee, is that Tim Barnett should give up the chairmanship of the select committee which will hear submission on the bill because he is homosexual. Who is going to replace him. A hermaphrodite?

And that seriously strange fellow David Benson-Pope does the cause no favours by trying to sideline Barnett and Te Atatu MP Chris Carter from the debate on the bill. Why shouldn't Barnett and Carter take leading roles? After all, this is a piece of legislation in which they passionately believe and they cannot be blamed for doing their best to get it passed.

But of the thousands of words I've read on this subject over the past week, the biggest nonsense arrived yesterday. So hilarious was this patronising piffle that it made me laugh out loud - even before I'd had my breakfast coffee and first cigarette of the day.

It said: "If the Civil Union Bill is passed, it will show that New Zealanders feel comfortable enough in their own relationship to recognise and protect the relationship of others."

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