The marriage debate has been very emotive and vitriolic. Why has it been this way? And will the results of the postal vote announced this week lead to an enduring resolution over the question of marriage?
Some persons in same sex relationships have felt unfairly under the microscope and so reacted strongly to the public survey. They argued that the debate is a matter of equality, acceptance and legal justice. There are others who have argued that marriage is in crisis. Those for traditional marriage have claimed that marriage is a social institution for a man and woman that protects the rights of children and provides the best environment for their rearing.
Arguments are made that to be recognised or not as a specific type of sexual being (with certain rights) is what fundamentally matters to who I am as a person. People on both sides of the debate have made this error. This is a dangerous position that subjects human dignity and identity to a false absolute.
We may invest a lot of our lives and energy in our sexual relationships, but they are not the full sum of who we are. Our deepest identity is that we are human beings with inherent dignity (for Christians, this inherent dignity is founded in our being made in the image and likeness of God). Marriage expresses how we express that dignity in an intimate, bodily commitment.
We should always treat each other according to our inherent dignity. This principle is crucial to a peaceful and civil public life. Yet in this debate it has been challenged, particularly when certain groups on both sides believe they have the moral high-ground in such a way that their position overrides other people's dignity and rights.
Another aspect that has caused the debate to become so heated is the crisis around social institutions such as marriage. The traditional stability of many social institutions has been undermined over the last 50 years, with conventional distinctions and definitions breaking down. Human cultures need clear definitions and differences to survive.
To cope with this crisis, people on both sides have turned the other into rivals, with each side scapegoating the other for the crisis in marriage. Some have projected all the problems of marriage onto same-sex couples, while others have blamed the No side for barring access to marriage to same-sex couples and constructing false differences. For these reasons, much of the debate has been at cross-purposes, underscored by various unspoken assumptions.
"This is not to deny the value in same sex relationships, but to recognise potential distinctiveness. Recognising this distinctiveness could lead to healthier relationships."
To have avoided polarisation and an impasse, we needed to have recognised these underlying arguments, so that we could have coped with the questions over marriage posed by such a public debate: What does marriage mean? Is it exclusively about romantic love? Is it about committed families? It is about the rights of children to their biological parents?
To do justice to these questions involves considering the nature of intimate relationships as well as the rights of loving couples and rights of children. For some, these do not conflict, while for others, there are inconsistencies.
On the ABC Religion and Ethics site, John Ozolins provided an extensive critique of the 'romantic' definition of marriage that is solely based on loving feelings or commitment. He pointed out that marriage has been intrinsically connected with procreation and the rearing of children across time and cultures. On the other side, it has been argued that children benefit from stable family relationships regardless of the configuration of their parental relationships.
There are various social studies, many presenting evidence that children parented by same-sex couples do no worse than children of opposite sex couples, while some show some negative results. These studies are limited by their small samples and length of time. In terms of longitudinal studies (that have not yet been able to include same sex families), children with a married father and mother do the best on a range of measures (in comparison to children in other kinds of parenting situations, such as families with step-parents, single parents and de facto relationships).
In addition to these studies, there is the more fundamental question about the rights of the child 'to know and be cared for by his or her parents', which concerns the interpretation of article 7 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
There is also the testimony of some children of same sex couples about a gap in their lives because of the absence of one of their biological parents. This can be the case even though the child feels loved by his or her same-sex parents. Moreover, there is increasing evidence of the distinctiveness of men and women in their parental roles, especially of the biological mother.
This is not to deny the value in same sex relationships, but to recognise potential distinctiveness. Recognising this distinctiveness could lead to healthier relationships. It could also help to balance the rights of children. In this sense, an institution which unites a man and woman with each other and with the children born of their union may still express something fundamental about marriage in which the state has a public interest.
If it does, then arguments that differentiate civil law and what is called 'natural marriage' (in philosophical and theological discourse) are problematic. Civil law should conform to the meaning of marriage ('natural marriage'), not only to the rights of one set of parties.
Many would reject that there are still questions to be addressed around marriage. They may be right. However, if they are not, then it could be that misconceived notions of identity have been driving public debate, rather than rational consideration of what is best for children and their parents. If that is so, the questions over marriage and family will not easily go away and may need to be revisited in the future, especially as further research is done on the experiences of children.
Joel Hodge is a lecturer in theology at the Australian Catholic University..