I wanted to write a quick comment piece on this article by Cardinal Keith O’Brien of the Catholic Church because I argue that he has misconstrued Article 16 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
In his article Cardinal O’Brien states:
In Article 16 of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, marriage is defined as a relationship between men and women. But when our politicians suggest jettisoning the established understanding of marriage and subverting its meaning they aren’t derided.
Instead, their attempt to redefine reality is given a polite hearing, their madness is indulged. Their proposal represents a grotesque subversion of a universally accepted human right.
Now let’s turn to what Article 16 says:
Article 16.
- (1) Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family. They are entitled to equal rights as to marriage, during marriage and at its dissolution.
- (2) Marriage shall be entered into only with the free and full consent of the intending spouses.
- (3) The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.
Number 1 seems to me to make no demand upon men to marry only women, or vice versa. The word “and” is defined as follows:
and
[and; unstressed uhnd, uhn, or, especially after a homorganic consonant, n]
1. Together with or along with; in addition to; as well as. Used to connect words, phrases, or clauses that have the same grammatical function in a construction.2. Added to; plus: Two and two makes four.3. Used to indicate result: Give the boy a chance, and he might surprise you.4. Informal To. Used between finite verbs, such as go, come, try, write, or see: try and find it; come and see.
So, plenty of uses but the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, by my understanding, was to never gives rights to groups or pairs. The clue is in the title really. It is the protection of rights for the individual.
On this basis one can only arrive at a valid argument that “men and women” simply means men can marry and women can marry. Or, to be more precise, an individual has the right to enter into marriage. The Declaration makes no stipulation on this being with the opposite member of sex. One could make an argument that it does but this will not carry any weight when it is arrived at by a religious institution. Cardinal O’Brien’s logic is:
As an institution, marriage long predates the existence of any state or government. It was not created by governments and should not be changed by them.
Marriage would also certainly predate organised religion too? I am not aware of any society which did not practice some form of ritual for binding two persons together. Who is to say that societies which have gone before did not recognise same sex “marriage” or partnerships? Perhaps they did. Who can really say that marriage, in the religious sense, is the only form permissible?
O’Brien goes further:
Same-sex marriage would eliminate entirely in law the basic idea of a mother and a father for every child
No, this is not true at all. The basic law behind a mother and a father for every child is not one found in nature. Many animals abandon their young and we are, in reality, part of the animal kingdom. O’Brien can argue that we are “special” and “divinely created” by his god but he would also accept that there is no objective evidence for this. The basic law for a child being created is simply the reproductive act which governs their creation. We can argue that a child needs both a mother and a father growing up but with how messed up this world is often perceived to be with frightening individuals and wars between societies one could also argue that the traditional family unit has ultimately failed its offspring.
What we do know is that the Catholic Church is hardly the best institution to consult when it comes to the moral questions of our time. I might also add that O’Brien’s position in using the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is hypocritical considering the Catholic Church’s abject failures to protect or consider the human rights of abuse victims.
Not that this is an argument for ignoring their view on the family unit or indeed same sex marriage, but one should always bear in mind that morality is not the preserve of the religious and, in this case, it is clutching at thin straws.
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If you want evidence of same-sex marriage, go looking at old North American tribes, particularly with regards to “two-spirits” or those who roughly correspond to our understanding of transgender individuals. I can’t recall where I read it, but I do remember a description of a marriage ceremony between two individuals, one male, one assumed male at birth but who had adopted the female gender at some point.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-Spirit
I don’t see why he’s getting so upset. How does it harm him (or even affect him at all) if two people of the same gender get married??
The cardinal is also quoted as saying that same-sex marriage deprives children of having a mother and father. This is nonsense. Every child who is born has a biological mother and father – otherwise they wouldn’t exist (egg, sperm, uterus etc needed to develop a human baby, fine). But plenty of babies are born into this world whose biological mother and father are, for whatever reason, unable or unwilling to provide the love and support needed to bring them up. So if a same-sex couple decides to bring that child up, there is absolutely no reason to assume that they will not be able to provide a stable and loving family unit, there is no reason to assume the child would be ‘deprived’ of anything. In fact, to assume that same-sex marriage deprives a child of anything they need is simply a statement born from bigotry and homophobia, and how dare he think those are good reasons to try and force other people to live by rules he makes up.
I found some really good quotes once about the early Christian Church’s views on marriage. Best I can find quickly today are on this horribly formatted page…
http://www.the-goldenrule.name/Marriage–EARLY_CHURCH_against_marriage.htm
Tertullian: “Marriage was a moral crime, more dreadful than any punishment or any death.”
Origen: “Matrimony is impure and unholy, a means of sexual passion.”
St. Augustine: “Marriage is a sin.”
I would interpret the meaning or Article 16 as that a man can marry a woman and that it wouldn’t take into account same-sex partnerships.
However, that is what the author intended. Certainly the wording allows for same-sex marriages although it could be argued that it was only as the result of a loophole. Certainly the Bishops argument is flawed on this ground.
Is the HRA available in multiple languages? It may be that the French version could be interpreted differently although I don’t think that would have any impact on UK law.
“I would interpret the meaning or Article 16 as that a man can marry a woman and that it wouldn’t take into account same-sex partnerships.”
I would suggest, then, that you have read it wrong. Why only a “man can marry a woman”? Why not “a woman can marry a man”? You’re reading into the UDHR through the prism in a sexist way (deliberate or not).
It’s worth reading again:
“16 (1) Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family.”
The UDHR also states at the very start:
“1 All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.”
If homosexuals are born free and equal, which of course they are, then they attain all of the rights therein. This includes the freedoms of Article 16 without equivocation.
You also seem to be confused between the UDHR and the HRA and it’s worth you investigating yourself the difference between the two. In any event it would make no difference if the UDHR or HRA were in a different language.
I must say that I am slightly offended that you accuse me of being sexist since I didn’t write that a woman can marry a man as well as a man can marry a woman. The UDHR doesn’t and I doubt that you would say that it is a sexist piece of legislation. I didn’t feel it was necessary to write it both ways round and hoped that anyone reading it could read between the lines.
By the same logic I can accuse you of discriminating against inter-gender people since you fail to mention them in your article. This is of course ridiculous. You aren’t discriminating against them and neither was what I wrote sexist.
Perhaps that line would be better explained that I believe this part of the UDHR was written with solely the intentions of referring to “traditional” marriage between an Man and Woman or Woman and Man. The fact that it allows for “non-traditional” marriage is coincidental especially since it was initially created in 1948 at a time when homosexuality was still illegal in lots of places including the UK. Since (for now) we do not allow the same rights to marry to homosexuals then it is clear that the start of the UDHR is not fairly applied.
Yes, I confused the two different pieces of legislation.
If the aim of my original point was to suggest that you have a slight difficulty with your comprehension of the written word then your reply shored up that opinion because I did not accuse you of ‘being’ sexist; I merely suggested that you were looking at it in a sexist way. This is not the same thing.
I did also make the qualification that perhaps it was not deliberate pointing, again, to me not accusing you of ‘being’ a sexist person. I just felt that the comment you made was sexist in tone. But I take your point about “reading between the lines”.
And no, would not suggest that the UDHR is sexist and the wording of Article 16 would not lead a reasonable reader towards that conclusion either. I think I made this more than clear in my article that the phrase “men and women… have a right to marry” is a statement based on individual rights and not a diktat.
Thanks for reading and commenting on the article.
I would hesitate to guess that Article 16 is intentionally open to allow for interpretation that includes same sex relationships. It is hard to believe that the authors would have been unaware of a lack of precision in the wording. If the religious want to complain about imprecise language, they need only look in the bible for copious examples.
My guess would be that the authors of the UDHR probably did not at that time consciously contemplate same-sex marriage, but nothing really turns on that. Lets assume that the intention was to guarantee a right of marriage between a man and a woman, and that the very notion of same sex marriages did not arise at all and was neither deliberately included nor deliberately excluded – just for the sake of argument lets assume that to be the case because it is then easier to highlight O’Brien’s logical fallacy. It seems to me that granting additional rights to those mentioned in the Universal Declaration does not remove or detract from those rights. If gay couples are allowed to marry in church, straight couples wil still be allowed to do so – the state will not be interfering with the right of a man and woman to marry each other if they want to. No-one is proposing to ban, curtail or interfere in any way with the right of a man and woman to get married, so the Article 16 argument is completely irrelevant.
I agree. I’m confident though that the authors were prescribing rights to individuals and, in that context, anything is permissible i.e. the right of the individual to marry another individual.
And you’re entirely correct; the Article 16 argument is pretty weak from the off. Another sky hook has been torn down.