Thursday, December 02, 2004
Civil Unions
My Right has resolutely avoided posting on the much blogged Civil Unions Bill, having no strong views either way. But one passage from Upton on Line did seem to offer a compact analysis of one side of the argument - as well as highlighting the fact that this debate is not a new one.
Recently departed French philosopher Jacques Derrida put his case thus:
“If I was a legislator, I would quite simply propose the removal of the word and the concept of marriage from the civil code. ‘Marriage’, an incarnation of religious, sacred and heterosexual values with the accompanying vows of procreation and eternal fidelity, is a concession made by the secular state to the Christian church and in particular its monogamous form which derives neither from Jewish … nor Muslim [traditions]. In suppressing the word and the concept of marriage, this equivocation, this religious hypocrisy which has no place in a secular state, there would be in its place a civil union, something contractual, a sort of generalised civil marriage, improved, refined, flexible and able to be adjusted between partners of whatever sex or number.”You can't deny the lucidity of his argument - agree with him or not!
