Christian groups to fight same-sex marriage

Monday 06 November 2017

A pro-Christian legal advice centre based in London is supporting Jersey Christian groups to fight proposals to introduce same-sex marriage in the island.

In a memo seen by Express, The Christian Legal Centre provides advice on opposing same-sex marriage laws and suggests potential 'conscience clauses' that would allow Christians to opt out of the new legislation on religious grounds.

It's believed the document is intended to support local efforts to get the new laws amended, delayed or scrapped altogether before they are agreed by the States.

The memo says: “Marriage has for time immemorial, brought a woman and man together in an exclusive relationship, which was meant to be permanent, and with the purpose of rearing children. Because of the family centred nature of marriage, government has a compelling interest to ensure a healthy marriage culture. By redefining marriage to be merely a contract based primarily on love, and divorcing it from its biological, social and anthropological purposes, the result is not only a breakdown of the marriage culture but numerous other serious threats to our freedoms.”

Pictured: An extract of the memo.

The memo goes on to paint a picture of Christians being under attack for objecting to same sex marriage: “Those who support traditional marriage have become marginalised with a consequent erosion to freedom of expression and religious liberty. Campaigners for marriage redefinition and homosexual agenda advocates have, with much success, confused the language around the marriage debate and labelled anyone who does not fully adhere to their worldview as ‘homophobic’. As with racism, there has been a cultural push to deem people who do not support the homosexual agenda or marriage redefinition as being unworthy of respect of enjoyment of the same freedoms as other members of society."

The memo finishes by saying: “How we define marriage matters. Redefining marriage in a manner which deprioritises children, and which equalises all sexual relationships, will have immense social and economic consequences. As the United Kingdom has evidenced, once sexual orientation is made sacrosanct and marriage redefined, the consequent is a rapid and aggressive erosion of Christian freedoms."

States Member for St Helier Deputy Sam Mezec issued a statement on his Facebook page after learning about the document.

He wrote: "These people do not represent the vast majority of religious people I know, who are completely committed to equality for gay people, and whose faith inspires them to work to help vulnerable people both in Jersey and abroad, and doesn’t inspire them to go out of their way to argue for institutional discrimination against others.

"I’m confident that the States will get round to introducing same-sex marriage sooner rather than later, and those who struggle to contain their indignation at the idea of decent and hard working gay couples getting to be happy like the rest of us will just have to get over it!"

Islanders were originally promised that same-sex marriage would be possible in Jersey by the end of the year, but it emerged that this would not be the case during Pride, which ironically had been themed to celebrate the introduction of same-sex marriage across the Channel Islands.

Pictured: The Scrutiny Panel in charge of reviewing same-sex marriage proposals expressed concern last week over the substantial amount of typos and errors in the draft legislation.

Draft proposals have now been published by the Chief Minister, but amendments have already been put forward to correct a substantial number of errors and typos in the wording.

The new marriage law is schedule to be debated in the States later this month, but Scrutiny have been highly critical of the law, and have said they will be reviewing it.