Everything is proceeding to plan. Another key Western institution has been wedged, divided and broken by the Long March through the Institutions. The particular salient institution, in this case, is the Anglican Church and the tactical issue is one of the big-winning weapons of the Long March left: same-sex marriage.
Anglican Church leaders have rejected a bid to restrict marriage to the union of a man and woman in a boilover at the General Synod.
But, I hear you cry, it was only ever about gay couples being able to marry! Well, if that’s the case, then why have so few of them done so?
There were just 2902 same-sex marriages in Australia in 2018-2020, which hardly seems the flood we were promised. Most same-sex couples have in fact opted not to take up the opportunity to marry. The majority who do are lesbians, bearing out the old joke that “gay men come for the sex, leave when it gets emotional; lesbians come with a U-Haul and leave, never”.
It must be acknowledged, though, that most heterosexual couples choose not to marry, either these days. As it happens, marriages plunged notably in the wake of same-sex marriage being legalised. But that was, of course, an acceleration of an existing trend. So, that gay marriage has killed off the idea of marriage, in general, isn’t obvious, but it is obvious that one of the central claims of gay marriage advocates — that it would boost marriage rates — was a lie.
But the really Big Lie of the gay marriage campaign was that it all would be “just about gays marrying, nothing else”. As we’ve learned from bitter experience, nothing could have been further from the truth. Same-sex marriage necessitated changing births, deaths and marriage laws in Australia — an opening into which transgender advocates immediately jammed the biggest wedges they could. Thanks to same-sex marriage, states like Tasmania now have a raft of transgender legislation that no one was warned about or that most people wanted.
Same-sex marriage also had clear implications for religious freedom in Australia. The churches are losing.
Church conservatives were crushed by the outcome, with Archbishop of Sydney Kanishka Raffel warning it raised doubt about the viability of the church’s national structure.
He warned that the issue had caused splits in the Church of England, Episcopal churches in the US and the New Zealand Anglican Church but stopped short of saying this would happen here.
“I can tell you I have had people approach me saying they would leave, but I have exhorted them not to,” Archbishop Raffel told the conference of bishops, priests and church elders.
Forgive me for wondering whether that might not have been the point, all along.
After all, Marxist theory explicitly endorses the necessity of destroying the “ideological state apparatus” that supposedly upholds capitalist society. “Queer Theory” goes one further and advocates destroying all vestiges of “bourgeois morality” and promoting “queer” relationships which, being intrinsically childless, will deprive the capitalists of their future generations of workers.
I wish I was making all that up.
What is particularly damning is that, once again, what the clear majority of ordinary churchgoers want is being ridden roughshod over by a tiny clique of woke leadership.
The vote went down to the wire on his motion to have the General Synod affirm the orthodox position that marriage was between a man and woman and condemn the blessing of same-sex unions legalised after the 2017 plebiscite on gay marriage.
The conservatives carried the numbers overall by 143 votes for the statement Archbishop Raffel put up to 98 against.
But it was lost on the requirement to also pass all three houses of delegates making up the Synod. While it sailed through the houses of clergy and laity, it failed narrowly in the 24-strong House of Bishops by 12 votes to 10.
Crucially, two members of the group compromising the metropolitan archbishops and diocesan bishops abstained.
The Australian
And so another venerable institution of Western civilisation destroys itself.
All is proceeding according to plan.