 Welcome distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Penelope Matthew, and I'm the Frylick Foundation Professor here at the Australian National University. And I'm delighted to welcome you to the annual Hurlton-Bowlman Frylick lecture against picketry and intolerance. Before we commence, I want to acknowledge that we meet on Narawell land. I acknowledge the first Australians as the traditional Australians of this continent, whose cultures are among the oldest living cultures in human history. I pay respect to the elders of the community and acknowledge their descendants who are present tonight. I would also like to acknowledge that we have Bowlman Frylick here with us tonight, and I want to especially welcome her. The Frylick Foundation is very proud to be hosting this lecture on the topic of gay marriage to be delivered by Professor Raymond Gator, the eminent writer and philosopher. He's been doing the media rounds today, so you may have a foretaste of what he's going to say, but I'm sure we're all looking forward to hearing the full lecture tonight. Before I introduce Professor Gator, though, I'm delighted to introduce the former Chief Minister of the ACT, John Stanhope, to give some introductory remarks on the topic. John is currently a professorial fellow in the Australian New Zealand School of Government based in the University of Canberra. While in office as our Chief Minister, he served the ACT community with great distinction and took many initiatives in the area of human rights. His government, of course, introduced the ACT's Human Rights Act in 2004. John took on the Howard government on many human rights issues, including the Anti-Terrorism Bill of 2005, which he famously posted on his website so that the community could debate its contents, and he various breaches of human rights involved in that legislation. Most relevantly to our topic tonight, it was under John Stanhope's leadership that the ACT passed the Civil Unions Act in 2006, sparking another stash with the federal government. So please join me in welcoming Professor John Stanhope. Thank you. Good evening, and I thank Bernata and the Public Foundation for the invitation to speak this evening about the political and history here in the ACT of the recognition of same-sex relationships. It's the record that I'm sure some of you will be familiar with, and I might just say it's the record of which I'm proud. My party, the Australian Labor Party, has now been a government in the ACT for just over 10 years. When we came to government in 2001, I announced that we would progressively review every piece of ACT legislation and all ACT government practices and remove or terminate or discriminate against gay, lesbian and transgender in-sex members of the ACT community. We completed the majority of that task in our first term of government, and all we amended over 70 pieces of legislation that contained provisions which on their face discriminated against gays and lesbians. The majority of discriminatory provisions might be described as petty, they were certainly matureness, and it might be fair to suggest that some were the result of unpicking or careless drafting. Some were, of course, quite deliberately discriminatory. But the suite of reforms or amendments, the most controversial during that process was to be removed with the bar on same-sex couples with darkened children. We nevertheless persevered. It was quite a rigorous community and a standard debate, and we did remove that particular prohibition. It was, incidentally, during the debate on the issue of same-sex adoption that I received my first ever death threat. It's repeatedly more fire during community debates on issues around removal of discrimination against gays and lesbians. In the campaign for 2004, which I was very clear, that if we were elected, the Labour Party would finalise our commitment to remove all lesbian discrimination against gays and lesbians by legislating more forward same-sex relationships full function of quality with those interstitial couples. We had, in the months before the 2004 election, passed the Human Rights Act, in which we had adopted a Bill of Rights for the OECD term. We won the 2004 election. Indeed, Malone did win. It remains the only one of the seven elections held since OECD's silk government, which produced a majority government. I've been asked for Malone Day of Mandate for going to marriage and Malone Day of Mandate for Bill of Rights. If it would indulge me, I thought I might read excerpts from the second reading speech I'd delivered when it was produced in the Civil Union's bill on 28 March 2006. It preferred, as the President mentioned, that it could be sung by surprise to realise that we were legislating on this issue six years ago. But the second reading speech does provide a summary of the process followed, issues in the debate, and my government speaking an attitude of letting go of some of the consequences of the flow and perhaps a couple of reflections. What I said, nearly six years ago, was this, and these aren't just a few excerpts, complete to prevent the Civil Union's bill 2006. This is a very significant piece of legislation, and I may just step forward, requiring for going lesbian, bisexual, transgender, the assessed members of the ACT community. It's clear from both the submissions received by the government in response to this discussion paper and the letters received since I announced it in December 2005 that the government will be moving into this legislation, but a great many people are keen to take the opportunity to have their relationship formally recognised. The passage of this legislation will bring the ACT along with a growing number that jurisdictions worldwide. The Civil Union's bill is a reflection of the government's commitment to the principle that all people are entitled to respect, dignity and the right to participate in society and to receive the protection of the law regardless of their sexual orientation and gender identity. But right to equal protection of the law is also stated in Section 8 of the Human Rights Act 2004 with the Hibbson Discrimination in Law or in practice in any field regulated by public authorities. There is increasing recognition in the rights of tourist groups that the right to equal protection of the law includes positive obligations to ensure equal treatment. Thus, same-sex relationships must be treated equally unless there is an objectively justifiable reason to do otherwise. The ACT can find no such objectively justifiable reason to treat same-sex relationships other than equally. I ask anyone who may have concerns with this bill to ask themselves this question what objectively justifiable reason is there to treat same-sex relationships indifferently from loving, committed, inter-special relationships. I conclude having gone into some detail around particular provisions of the bill by saying whilst I am satisfied the ACT is doing all it can with broad equal protection under the law to all people regardless of their sex or sexual orientation I must be recognised that with our changes in the federal jurisdiction this equal treatment will be given to the ACT too. My challenge for federal government is to end its discriminatory treatment of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and intersex Australians and for many federal laws so that relationships with same-sex couples are treated in the same way as relationships with opposite-sex couples. The equality conferred by this bill is not only functional and practical but is symbolic. The civil union puts not simply the evidence of a loving, lifelong commitment between two people to the proof of paper as proof it will create a relationship being recognised as a distinction some may find subtle but for the many same-sex couples who will use this law I suspect is anything but subtle it is critical to prevent the civil union bill to be extended. The bill was debated in detail on 11 May 2006 it was rigorously opposed by the Liberal Party it was supported by the Greens the bill had unanimous support from the Labor Corpus a conscience vote was not a slaughter nor was it granted by the Corpus. The arguments against the bill were focused primarily on claims that the formal recognition of same-sex relationships political and diminished the status of marriage and centrality of the family particularly attention was paid during the debate to two particular provisions one that provided that people not normally lesbian in the AC2 could also lead a civil union that came to the AC2 for that purpose and a provision which essentially narrowed the marriage gap in relation to the age at which they personally achieved the lead up a civil union only with the consent of a parent or guardian or 17 the Liberal Party and members of the Liberal Party those that opposed focused particularly strongly on what they thought an unacceptable provision of the layout for people under the age of 18 to lead up either a civil union or they expressed no such concern of the heterosexual people under the age of 18, Maryam. But formally closed the debate on the bill with the following statement in a speech almost a decade ago the then Chief Justice of the Family Court in a speech almost a decade ago the then Chief Justice of the Family Court in Australia Alastair Nicholson said that nothing could be more central to a definition of humanity than respectfully importance that each of us places upon enduring relationships from today in the AC2 is my hope that respect will be extended to all couples entering into an enduring relationship without regard to this sexuality. From today I hope our definition of humanity may be enhanced in our regard for fundamental political relationships the relationships that like the heart of strong families may be strengthened. The step I hope we have the courage to take today will enhance the status of all of our enduring relationships and all of our families. The equality conferred by this legislation in the sense that it provides equality under the laws of the territory, but it is of course also highly symbolic. It does not merely provide evidence of an existing relationship as the registration scheme can, it creates that relationship. Deliverance may sound semantic to those who will never seek to formalise their relationships through a civil union but it is path and semantic for those who will seek this law out and enjoy the protections in office. It is real, it is profound and it goes to the heart of the important relationships some among us will ever have. It is easy for those of us personally unaffected by this law to either minimise its relevance or to overemphasise its effect. We've seen both approaches taken over the course of this debate. Some have argued that of course it goes in less than 3% RDA small portion of our community is a waste of time and effort to accommodate their rights and entitlements in this play. I wonder would those pretties there make the same argument in relation to other minorities stay indigenous people or perhaps those with disabilities? This community does not confer human rights and social entitlements and recognition on the basis of numerical superiority not under this government and not under any government that rejects discrimination and upholds equality. At the other end of the spectrum over the course of this debate we've seen the argument this law that affects the status of marriage between the man and the woman. How can it be so? How can it have any effect whatsoever on my marriage or the marriage of anyone in this chamber or the marriage of anyone in this community is marriage so fragile or an institution to suggest so is simply insulting. I celebrated my 34th wedding anniversary this week with my wife Romer. We married in 1972 we have four children and will shortly welcome our fourth grandchild my wife and my family are more important than anything in my life. Those of us who have enjoyed rich and enduring marriages might ask ourselves how recognising and respecting enduring relationships to others with regard to the sexuality diminishes our marriage or the institution of marriage. Those of us who enjoy rich and enduring marriages might ask ourselves how we would feel if we were to be suddenly and rudely informed that our love or the lesser love the support we've entered each other was the lesser support our right for respect and the quality under law were they lesser right purely and simply on the basis for their sexual preference. How would we feel to be told that our relationships were lesser relationships that our families are lesser families. Please concisely the message we as a community have been delivering the same sex couples and their families. Today I hope that this changes. Today we welcome the opportunity to recognise in others what we cherish in our own lives. This government has worked hard to eliminate from the laws of the territory discrimination against girls and lesbians. The law before the assembly today fulfills a pledge labor made before the last election to see a way to eliminate this final over boundary to equality. Our society is built on primary relationships. Relationships between community couples and relationships between parents and children. They are the basis of our households the foundation of our suburbs and the substance of our community. I believe that the law we debate today will make our community a stronger one a more thoughtful one a more respectful one and certainly a fairer one. I said earlier that it was easy for those of us personally unaffected by this law to either magnify or minimise its significance. In fact, none of us is personally untouched by this law because its actions are vicious at all. To that extent its actions will be felt personally and profoundly by each of us whatever status there are in relationships or whatever our sexual preferences. While we discriminate legally against the man or the woman beside us, we are all diminished. As the Nicholson was right nothing is more central to our cognition of humanity than the respect each of us places upon ensuring relationships. Today I hope that the ACT can put on record that its respect and recognition are not based on something so irrelevant to our essential humanity as sexual preference like the civil union's bill to be extended. The bill was passed it came to be kept on the 19th of May 2006 on the 30th of June 2006, 24 days later the Governor General acting on the advice of the Commonwealth Attorney General, Phil Ruddock acting on the instructions of the Prime Minister, John Howard and others. In the explanatory statement accompanying the instrument of disallowance disallowance signed by the Governor General of the Commonwealth the clear disallowance of the Commonwealth's explanatory statement The disallowance of the civil union's act 2006 supports the fundamental institution of marriage The Marriage Act makes it clear that marriage is the union of a man and a woman is the definition of marriage is certain of the Marriage Act by the Parliament in the Marriage Amendment Act 2004 The Unique States of Marriage is undermined by any measure of other relationships to the same similar level of public recognition and legal states The Civil Unies Act 2006 created a statutory scheme of the recognition of relationships which bore a large similarity to the Commonwealth's scheme of the regulation of the marriage This legislation appears to undermine marriage attempted to circulate the Marriage Act in 1961 and they have created ambiguity between civil unions and marriage That is the full explanation of the Commonwealth's decision to repeal this democratically and appropriately passed list of legislation The Federal Invention was of course, doesn't disappoint him he would both a blind assault on the democratic rights of the people of the AC2 but on our desire as a community to be fair, to be just and to be non-discretary of our citizens The ambivalence of my Federal Labor colleagues and the Labor Party generally brought salt into the wounds around this appointment We wound back the scheme and we legislated in terms of the Commonwealth most patronizingly as prepared to be said in terms that did not provide functional equality to same-sex couples After the defeat of the Howard Government and the election of the Labor Government to office we were refused drastically and confidently introduced amendments for civil unions act in the assembly was done with slightment amendments that would have restored the act to a solution of form You would understand my disappointment and that of my colleagues in the Government and the Rudd Government seemingly rejected our proposal to forward same-sex couples the same respect and recognition forward to opposite-sex couples I remain at this date but it mildly disappointed that not a single voice from within the Labor Party was raised in support of either our right to legislate as the voice will fit or in support of their marriage recent amendments to the Act of the Self-Government Act have been passed to prevent the recurrence of the Displacement Act between law but I keep a mysterious win The amendments were introduced as sponsored by Senator Bob Brown to conclude on a more positive note change is in the air once human politicians around the whole of Australia and the federal and state parliaments are coming out from the leaf that comes to slides but they are at last suddenly recognising and supporting this most fundamental human rights that goes to lesbians or perhaps to the fair that all both recognise the human rights of gays and lesbians that simply wailing for their constituents that they can vote that's now safe but to to public the truth gays and lesbians, thankfully, and with respect here we forget of course that our politicians should have made the debate Thank you Thank you so much John for joining us and reliving some of that history for us and I'm sure John will be available for a few questions at the end but now I'd like to introduce our main speaker we move from a practical and political to a very philosophical perspective Raymond Gater was born in Germany in 1946 migrating to Australia with his parents in 1950 He's a Proposal Real Fellow at the Melbourne Law School as well as the Faculty of Arts at the University of Melbourne and Emeritus Professor of Moral Philosophy in London He's also a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Humanities Gater's books which have been widely translated include, there are so many of them Good and Evil and Absolute Conception Romulus My Father which of course was nominated by the New Statesman as one of the best books in 1999 and made into a feature book A Common Humanity Thinking About Love and Truth and Justice by one of the best books of 2000 The Philosopher's Dog shortlisted for New South Wales Premier's Award in the Aged Book of the Year Reach of Trust, Truth, Morality and Politics after Romulus as editor and contributor Garza, Morality, Law and Politics Muslims and Multiculturalism and with Alex Miller and Alex Spockron seeming for his worth essays in honour of J.G. Rosenberg Because he believes that it's a generally a good thing for philosophers to address an educated and hard-thinking lay audience as well as his colleagues he's contributed extensively to public discussion about reconciliation, elective responsibility the role of moral considerations in politics the Holocaust, genocide, crimes against humanity, education and the plight of universities and all of this of course makes him a perfect speaker for the Prylik Foundation and we're delighted to welcome here him tonight to speak on the topic gay marriage as important as race. Please welcome Mane and Gaye Well is this a lapel microphone also working? I mean for the audience or just for the TV? Is this for the Okay, so I just stay here, okay If I move away from this and you can't hear me please just say, oh I can't hear you because otherwise I won't know Well thank you Professor Matthews and also to Renato Grossi for inviting me and to Mark Piers for doing such wonderful work with the publicity I'm really very honoured to have been invited to give this election I'm very honoured and pleased that Valmy Friday managed to be in the audience and I'm also honoured because of the distinguished people who preceded me There is a technological issue here I hate the expression same sex marriage because it sounds so bureaucratic and because people so often talk about gay marriage that's the expression I used although I'm not sure if I should consider gay and lesbian marriage but I hope I won't defend anybody if I speak simply of gay marriage meaning of course of gay lesbian marriage Well first I have to explain my title because I suspect many of you or some of you anyway will find it odd and some of you might find it even morally and intellectually irresponsible It haunts back to a conversation some years ago in London between two close friends one artist called simply Peter and the other is Nick Drake, Poe's a novelist, a screenwriter and a passionate gay Peter and I expressed that dinner conversation sympathy for Rowan Williams also a refined poet who had the misfortune to be appointed to ask Richard of Canterbury to split over the ordination of a handful of gay priests and the indignation of some ultra-conservatives in the church was further inflamed by the fact that the newly ordained bishop supported gay priests hence the sympathy Peter and I expressed for Williams was ironic predicament We agreed nonetheless and indeed we took it for granted that in order to avoid suspicion in the church Williams would at least play down the support of gay men Nick said I'm sorry, gay clergy Nick said a lot of word but I called his eyes and in their paint expression I read these questions Is it really so obvious that one shouldn't be prepared to split the church over this matter? Wouldn't it be different if racism were the issue? Nick's poems celebrating gay love have moved me deeply as had his understanding of heterosexual love in some of his most passionate and destructive forms understanding that he showed in his screenplay adapting my book from my father to the screen Responding to the pain in Nick's eyes I realised the shame how little I had understood In December there is to be a Labour Party caucus which will discuss whether Parliament should have a conscience vote or should recommend to Parliament about gay marriage Most commentators agree that were there to be such a conscience vote would almost certainly be defeated and probably some people both Labour and the opposition would vote against it because I think it's not something over which to split the party who's votes Christine Community who spoke eloquently and also as a Catholic in support of gay marriage recently on Q&A said later that she didn't think there was a core issue not wanting to define any important Labour Party agenda Yet if the votes were on whether there should be marriage between black and whites would anybody think that? Is it in Nick's question is our discussion implicit in our dinner time discussion that question was is it really so different? Well it's my impression that many people under 40 are incredulous that this would be an issue at all as incredulous as I think they are that anybody would think that they should over the legitimate reason for denying someone what they're most enjoyed by their fellow citizens unless they're astonishing political, cultural and ethical reversals in the next few years most countries in the west will I'm sure permit gay marriages we will then be as incredulous I believe as we as we now are about race that this could ever have been a serious matter for discussion older members of the audience will remember the insouciant racism which was the most part of our upbringing it's a small thing from one perspective but I remember with shame that I and all my friends and indeed my parents and their friends were entirely untroubled by the contemptor for black Africans in television comics and films this was when I was a kid and I could go on to get many more dramatic and serious examples but I'm sure you won't need them Julia Gilliard has often marked Tony Abbott for being on the right side of history on this matter she's going to join me in my book A Common Humanity and also in the afterward to the second edition of Good and Evil I've discussed an aspect of a kind of racism directed against people whose skin colors and features are different the qualification there is necessary because racism comes in different kinds antisemitism I think is different from the denigration of blacks and Asians and both have many dimensions psychological, social and political the same is true of opposition to gay marriage and later I'll comment on the differences my interest as you'll discover is philosophical I want to map a conceptual landscape in which I locate the different kinds of opposition to gay marriage and similarities and the differences between those forms of opposition to gay marriage and racism Racism over certain kinds global kinds as I said for its complex phenomenon but the kind usually connected with skin color almost always involves an incapacity on the part of racists to see that anything could go deep in the lives of their victims for racists of that kind it's really unintelligible the sexuality for example could mean to them what it does to us in a common humanity and also in that afterward that I mentioned I give an example of a woman whose son had been killed in an accident I called her M only a few days after his death she was watching television where she saw a documentary that showed Vietnamese mothers grieving over their children who had been killed in American bombing raids at first she leaned forward in her chair towards the television as though to express her sense that she and the Vietnamese shared a common affliction after a minute or two she sat back and said it's different for them they can just have more by themselves her words will not tell us what she meant to understand that we need to know some things that she did not mean she did not mean that she was physically incapable of having more children nor did she mean that because the Vietnamese had for many years such a trauma of war they had become brutalized losing the sense that they had and that we have of what it means to lose a child had she meant that she would have believed that when life returned to normal for the Vietnamese they might recover and understand of what it means to love and to lose a child fully in possession of that understanding they could not then just have more just as she thinks of herself that she cannot have more or she might have accepted that she shouldn't have generalized so hastily that only some of them had been brutalized to that degree but her remark intended to apply it to all Vietnamese is not what we normally think of as fallen generations are made the same point about James Isdal the protector of aborigines in western Australia in the 1930s responding to the question how did he feel taking mothers from their children Isdal answered the quote he would not hesitate for a minute to separate any half-carts from his aboriginal mother no matter how frantic her momentary grief might be at the time they soon forget their offspring he explained our children are irreplaceable theirs are not that's the implication of what him and Isdal said taking their remarks as expressions of a certain kind of racism we can see that the attitudes they've portrayed extend to virtually every aspect to the lines of the aborigines and the Vietnamese nothing him and Isdal thought goes deep with them not their lives or their griefs or their joys and in a perfectly natural sense of the expression they saw their victims as less than fully human they knew however that aborigines in Vietnamese form attachments on mortal vulnerable to misfortune that their rational had interests that indeed their persons tended to find them when they discussed with machines or dolphins or fetuses or persons they did not suffer from ignorance of the facts when they thought about they did not sorry they did not talk about ignorance of facts in relation to the victims of their denigration and when I speak of facts in my thinking of facts as a judge when I think of them when he says to a emotional witness although the grief of the women who had lost their children was visible and audible to them and Isdal neither saw in the women's faces or heard in their voices grief that could lacerate their soul and nothing for the rest of the days it was in the sense I suggested earlier literally unintelligible to them that sexuality death and the fact that any moment we might lose all the gifts sent to our lives could mean to them what it does to us these are not the facts I mentioned our mortality our vulnerabilities and misfortune and so on they are not just important facts about our nation our sense of the human condition is shaped by the forms historically been shaped by the forms of our critically reflected responses to them and by the sense of an ethical imperative about them under payment of superficiality and that imperative forms some people's sense that our humanity is not something given to us fixed but something we're called upon always to rise to that it is to adapt Greg Denning's words a verb not a noun but to see in a people or in a group just what Isdal could not see in the apparitions the condition of seeing that the humanity is defined just as ours is by the possibility of an ever deepening response to the meaning of those big facts that define the human condition it was unintelligible to them in the sense and this is what I mean by being unintelligible in the same way that it's unintelligible that a face that looked like the black and white minstrel character of an Afro-American face unintelligible that such a face could express all the emotions needed to play a thread not even in God not even God could see in the black and white minstrel shows face the expressive possibilities needed to play a thread well no doubt there are psychological reasons for their failure to see things right that my concern here is not to speculate about what they are it's to bring out in this case that in the case of Isdal and also of M the kind of human being that M thought she was had been formed within the conceptual space from which she excluded the Vietnamese it's a space in which she explored and may have think of herself as obliged to explore and the pain of superficiality what it really means to love to be courageous in the facing of fortune to face death with acidity and so on with an effort of imagination M might have acknowledged the protracted suffering could brutalize her to the point where she no longer saw her children or anybody else as irreplaceable or she might acknowledge that an accident could leave her feeble minded as it did her white neighbor who recently did have a second child after the first child died with the same spirit as one might give her part after a dog has done such acknowledgments are within the reach of her powers of imagination because they depend only on an imaginative sympathy with those who would have been like her had they not been struck by misfortune but in her eyes the Vietnamese are not as they are because they suffered misfortune she could no more imagine in different circumstances they could be like her then she could imagine herself to be the kind of person she sees as being appropriately caricatured by the black and white minister of faith though it may at first seem strange it's important to my point to see that M does not see the Vietnamese as shallow rather from her perspective they don't exist in the conceptual space in which attributions of death and shallowness even make sense and that space I'm going to call in the rest of this lecture a realm of meaning the philosopher Peter Winch once remarked treating a person justly involves treating with seriousness his or her own understanding of the situation and of what situation demands end of quote but to take seriously a person conception of his or her commitments and cares one must be able to find it intelligible that she should explore those commitments and cares with an increasingly deepened understanding it's to see her as a potential partner in that conversational space in which she is answerable to the demand or to the plea that she try to invest her thoughts in words with the authority of an individually achieved recidity that she speak with her own voice a voice that expresses that she has lived her own life and not anybody else's that kind of individuating responsiveness I think that she be essentially answerable to the possibility that she has asserted something only because she's sentimental or yielded to a tendency to bathos and so on that's fundamental I think to our sense of what it is for a human being to be able to rise to the potentialities of humanity and racist deny that capacity to the victims and that's why I sometimes called racism a meaning blindness it's not blind to this or that aspect of meaning in the lives of the victims of their immigration but to the very possibility that their lives could be lived in the realm of meaning people like Emma can change and when they do it's often as well known because they've lived with the people they denigrated perhaps because one of their children married one of them that well known fact should not have an attempt one to a natural but fallacious influence namely that the denigratory perceptions of racists the ones that express the thought that nothing can go deep with them are really the expressions of false and vertical generalizations to avoid that fallacious influence we need to attend to an important distinction it's the distinction between how racists like Isdell come to think of themselves as having been mistaken about what losing a child can mean to the victims of their integration on the one hand and how on the other hand they might come to acknowledge that they are mistaken in believing for example that blacks have significantly lower IQs than whites are lazy having in order that sexual appetites promiscuous have ridden in their blood to this an arbitrary number of stereotypes those stereotypes do have the conceptual form of empirical that is to say factual generalizations and even when they are in ways characteristic of racists psychologically so entrenched interested to be beyond rational consideration rational correction they are like beliefs that Germans are efficient the Italians are good lovers that it's hard to get a decent meal in London and so they are empirical generalizations but this is important coming through living with the people to see dignity in faces that are all alike to us to see the full range of human expressiveness in them to hear suffering that lacerates the soul in someone's cry or in their music or to hear depth the whole depth of language in sounds has nearly seen comically to us before all of that is different from coming to realize that they saw well on IQ tests or that the stereotypes which one to express to express one's hostility and had relied upon to defend that hostility were false generalizations we don't, I think, discover the full humanity of a racially denigrated people in books by social scientists not at any rate if those books merely contain knowledge of the kind that might be included in textbooks or encyclopedia if we discover it by reading then it will be in place in novels, poetry not in science but in art thus although the failure certainly the continuous failure to see the depth of the inner lives of a racially denigrated people has psychological and social causes those causes do not render people vulnerable to and sustain in them false empirical beliefs and bad arguments they render them, as I put it, meaning-blind that, I think is why when racists come to understand that they have been horribly mistaken they're incredulous that they could have thought otherwise the character of that incredulity how could I not have seen that is not adequately captured in the thought how could I have been so ignorant or irrational as to leave those stereotypes and to have offered such bad arguments to support them well, is hostility to same-sex marriage like racism of that kind blind to the possibility of depth in the inner lives of gays well, as you might have begun to suspect my answer is that sometimes it is and sometimes it isn't and to see why it will be helpful to distinguish from one another three kinds of opposition gay marriage but before I do that I want to say that I won't be considering gay marriage as based solely on scripture or revelation law must hope to enjoy the consent of those who are governed by it and in a secular society people who are not religious cannot, I think, consent to be governed by law based on solely on scripture and on revelation there are at least three kinds of opposition to gay marriage first there is homophobia of a kind that expresses itself in visceral disgust towards gay sex disgust and incredulity of the same kind as racial intermarriage promotes in racism in racism the disgust is not directed at the acts themselves or anal sex for example but at such acts between men or between women especially when they're the expression of erotic attraction rather than simply expression of need as it might be for example for men in prison like racists, though perhaps less explicitly homophobes of this kind denigrate the entire inner lives of gays and lesbians and like racists they appeal to what they take to be the relatively plain facts to justify their denigration usually alleged facts about what's natural and what's perverted anyone foolish enough to argue with racists and homophobes comes to realize soon enough that they jump from justification to justification betraying the fact that their feelings and attitudes have nothing much to do with the reasons that they offer in their support and my point here is not that emotion makes racists and homophobes resistant to reason it's really that reasons they cite are not the causes of their belief and their hostility but merely the rationalization it's important to realize however that though this kind of homophobia would as a matter of natural psychological fact incline those who are afflicted by it to oppose the decriminalization of gay sex it need not have done so consistently with liberal principles they could believe that it's not the safe business to interfere with what consenting adults do when nobody's harmed by what they do even if they find it disgusting but such a person could not believe that gays and lesbians should be permitted to marry whatever else the marriage is marriage is a celebration of a sexual union and nobody could approve the celebration and solemnization of something that they find disgusting this kind of homophobe might also because he or she is committed to principles of equality and to non-discrimination strongly support civil unions and the legal benefits that have proved them in many notions there is no inconsistency in thinking that people who have lived together should be able to pass on their property and so on even if one finds the fact that they live together sexually disgusting or finds them wicked and perverted many religious people believe gay sex to be intrinsically evil as they sometimes put it intrinsically dysfunctional and deeply contrary to nature could nonetheless and some too nonetheless also believe that gays should enjoy such legal entitlements again of course there are psychological obstacles to believe in believing both that gay sex is disgusting intrinsically evil and also believing that gay should enjoy the legal benefits of civil unions but that is a psychological non-conception a second kind of opposition is essentially sociopolitical some people oppose gay marriage only because of deleterious social consequences they believe would follow if the state undermined marriage as an institution between men and women they have a variety of reasons for this but they're all empirical reasons and as such do not express a view about the very nature of marriage such reasons are open to empirical assessment and provided that they don't disguise homophobic attitudes people who are persuaded by them will be on the whole genuinely open to discussion about what evidence exists for them they may think for example that other things being equal is better for children to be raised than only by people of the same sex and that is an empirical claim and must be assessed as that it's as irrational for gays to oppose it on our priority grounds as it is for those who support to do so well perhaps you on that by now have anticipated the third reason why people oppose gay marriage they believe that it's of the very nature of marriage that is between a man and a woman and my homophobes of the kind I described earlier their view of what makes gay and lesbian love unsuited to become married love does not affect their entire perception of gays and lesbians they believe nonetheless that gays and lesbians cannot have what they most deeply want not because the law will forbid it but because the law cannot make married love out of love that is intrinsically unsuited to it even if the law were misguidedly to permit same sex marriage this thought continues these would be marriages in inverted commas only the same cannot do what it is conceptually impossible to do and if it were to try to do so by permitting same sex marriage it would so confusion and degrade the concept of marriage if the concept is degraded this thought continues it will be virtually impossible even for heterosexual couples to probably understand what they do when they get married that is just a follow-up from the idea of a degraded concept this objection its importance is not essentially moral or perhaps more accurately one fails to see what is most interesting about it if one thinks that it is essentially moral in support of Rowan Williams as opposition to gay marriage expressed earlier this year to my greatest appointment I had to say Canada and Glen Webster a senior member of the General Sinor said and I quote its only possible for marriage to be between a man and a woman he went on to say I'm not saying that they can't be loving relationships between people of the same sex but that doesn't equate to marriage but of course loving relationships between men and women don't equate to marriage I have no matter how deeply committed to one another they may be but never mind that when Canada Webster said that marriage is only possible between a man and a woman he did not mean that it's morally or religiously sorry he did not mean only that it's morally or religiously under the question in the way that he might believe morally or religiously under the question a moral or religious prohibition on anal sex does not prevent acts of anal sex from actually being just that acts of anal sex it doesn't make them acts of anal sex in inverted comms only but the canon meant that nothing that gays do would count as marriage nothing that they could do could fall under serious concept of marriage how it seems irresistible to us given that he acknowledged that there could be as he put it I quote again loving relationships between people for the same sex the answer I think goes roughly like this he believes that gay couples love each other as persons on the same as persons and that perhaps their love of one another is in some way colored by the fact that they have sex but the love and the sex can't come together to deepen one another in the way required by marriage to put simply but I don't think the thought comes in much better versions the thought is that their relation is one of love plus sex sex is there as a kind of additional but not integral to the love to its nature as love its nature as love and its nature as sex are not interdependent with one another but marriage is essentially the celebration of a sexual union not only the union of friends and companions who also get one another sexual pleasure marriage this thought continues is the recognition of the way our sexual nature goes deep in our sense of what it means to be human deep in a way that couldn't be conveyed by thinking of sex that is only as an instrument of pleasure no matter how intense or unique the pleasure but what is here affirmed as conceptually impossible by the canon is exactly what gays affirm as possible and actual what they want I believe is the affirmation of the depth of their sexual being in the constitution of their sense of their humanity the denial of it they feel to be a diminuation of their humanity rather than merely if I might put it this way a denial of their civil rights or other obligations to them simply as persons or citizens to conceive the wrong done to gays when they're denied marriage simply as unjust discrimination is to conceive it in the wrong dimension on the wrong plane as appropriate it only touches the surface some years ago a prominent Australian became a tourist when he claimed that rape could not be the same kind of offence against prostitutes as it is against women who were not prostitutes he meant the prostitutes had so degraded their sexuality that nothing could count as a serious violation on it but the view that informs the kind of opposition to gay marriage that I'm elaborating is not simply that gay sex degrades sexuality rather is the view that gay sex takes sex out of the realm where the concept of degradation has any application and recall in this connection my claim that racists don't see the victims of their denigration as shallow but they see them as excluded from the realm here with concepts of death and shun as serious applications the prostitutes according to the man I've reported could give our prostitution and then rise to what he would take to be the ethical requirements that are inseparable from our sense that sex can be something precious and which therefore makes rape a crime different in kind and more terrible that even the brutal violation of autonomy was aggravated by severe physical injury the critics of gay marriage do not say first give up the bath house sex and rise to the dignity of your sexuality and then we'll talk about marriage gays they believe can't rise to the dignity of human sexuality without ceasing to be gays gays on this view offend against their humanity against the dignity of the human person as a Catholic often put it but not as the man in my example thought the prostitute does much more radically on this view gays offend against their sexuality by taking it out of the realm of men altogether and that does not of course mean that from his perspective they can't be wronged if they're raped but they're then seen to be wronged simply as persons assaulted and brutalized not as beings whose sexuality can't be precious in a way that makes rape one of the worst of crimes and why it's right to seize in certain contexts as a crime against humanity and that marks a very important difference between meaning blindness as occurs in the case of gay sexuality and as occurs in the case of racism in the case of Em and Isdell I said that when one sees that they find it unintelligible that blacks can be individuals unique and irreplaceable as we can be then we also see that they find it unintelligible that anything that we could do against them or they could do to one another could counter wrongs in the way that we can be wronged but only the most extreme of the visceral homophobes that I described earlier Karen Webster I said seemed to be saying that nothing that gays do would counter marriage nothing that states or churches could do could make a couple a gay couple, a married couple rather as people used to say that nothing could make an institution a university if it had no philosophy department or classics department or physics department though of course many institutions that didn't have them as many people thought a statement from Lamb of Paul said the church still believes on the basis of the Bible and tradition that marriage is between a man and a woman the reference to tradition is interesting because it opens us to the possibility that the conceptual features of marriage are historically contingent that up to a point even the conceptual limits are open to change and that it anyhow be obvious because even if it were true as people sometimes put it that marriage is and always has been between the man and woman there's no reason of itself on the basis of that claim to think it can't justify the change there is after all such a thing as a justified conceptual revision grant therefore for the sake of argument that marriage has no platonic form that gives it an immutable essence that there are no truths about it written in the heavens grant too for the sake of argument that each generation must find its own voice in which to make marriage authentic in their lives still are there not conceptual limits limits that can't be changed by parliament or by any committee or by any detailed views as to what can count seriously as marriage could anything count as marriage well there are such limits who for example would take as a marriage vow a vow would make a couple married if it went something like this I take you ex for a wedded partner for saking all others until someone too irresistible comes along and being apart from her becomes too painful to me or until things become time for other reasons that would be the character of a marriage vow life transformed and deepened by a vow appears to be the essence of marriage and fidelity to death appears to be the essence of the vow without it marriage would be nothing more than a purely contractual arrangement many people appear to think that that's what it is in fact but if gays and lesbians are seeking immediate contractual arrangement to govern their relationships and civil rights to go with it they don't have to seek getting married now my purpose in saying what I did is not to praise fidelity generally or traditional conception of marriage fidelity in particular it is to suggest that a long tradition has given to us a conception of fidelity whose value is not reducible to though it may be in some ways connected with its practical or prudential value in for example stabilizing relationships or being good for children anybody who knows even a little of the long tradition of reflection on what it means to become married knows that at its deepest it's not about the social purposes that marriage might serve or to put the point more strongly it's only because the meaning of marriage transcends whatever social purposes it might justify to serve that it has depth rather than mere complexity the purposes of things serve may be complex but reflection about them and about whether they serve on the meaning of its constitutive vows to deepen without limits in the course of a lifetime and one might say that's how it has to be to a depth of dimension one might say marriage is a verb there has of course been an alternative tradition that has debunked fidelity from the perspective of an ordained wordliness and there's been a tradition of celebration fidelity that is at least in tension with marriage and of course there's reduction as debunking of all of them nonetheless a long tradition of reflection has made it seem a conceptual truth about marriage that a deep conceptual love by the valid or safe all others until then rather like traditional reflection on the academic form of the light of the mind made it seem like a conceptual truth that nothing could probably be called a university if it doesn't nourish the philosophy or classes or visits the deep insult to gaze therefore that's expressed in the attitude I've been elaborating is not that they're psychological is not like the accusation that they're psychologically incapable of relative they are after all on this review capable of assessing in a way its practical, prudential value and connected with that of companionship in all day the deep insult to them is the assumption that because their renunciation and promiscuity is not lived in the realm of mean it can't be reflectively deepened can't be transformed in the way marriage is believed to transform sexual love in fidelity but since it appears that the vow of fidelity can't be dropped as the argument runs gay sexuality does not have the depth to be open to its transformative power and for that reason even if those gays who have no desire to marry and who may be opposed to marriage as a bourgeois patriarchal convention that actually stifles the potentialities for depth in gay sex even they have reason to campaign for gays to be prevented to marry and to do it for reasons and liberal arguments or conventional demands for equal rights well I come now to what might seem to be an obvious objection to much of what I've said marriage this objection says is essentially between a man and a woman because sexual love is between sexual love between them can be deepened in ways that it can't be in the case of gays and leviens by the connection with the possibility of bringing a new life into the world the idea here is not merely that sexuality between the man and woman enables a fertile couple the pleasure of having children nor even just the idea that it permits a woman the pleasure of carrying them rather is the idea that its connection with the wonder and miracle of life deepens heterosexual love through and through deepening the lovers understanding what it means to be a man and what it means to be a woman now there are of course nasty versions of this thought versions to speak of gay and lesbian lovers perverse degenerate intrinsically disordered and dysfunctional intrinsically evil and so on but a centuries of our art testify not every version of that thought must be developed in anything like those ways for the sake of the argument then rather than even then however two things seem to be obvious first this is not a dispute that the state can lie into and if that's so then no side to that dispute can inform law secondly even if it's true that love connected with the possibility of bringing children into the world has potentialities for death that other forms of sexual life don't have why should that be a reason for things that love between gays lacks the kind of death necessary for it to become married one why should that be a reason for doubting that gay and lesbian love can worthily rise be vitally responsive to a full and deep understanding of what it means to be married of what it means for love to be transformed by the marriage well for love worthy to become married love to put it very crudely the best is not the enemy of the good nor even the sublime but the wonderful well recall now my earlier remark that many young people are incredulous that whether gay should be permitted to marry should even be thought of as a seriously discussable matter they're incredulous about this in the way they would be that we all would be if banning interracial marriage were again to be on the agenda but is that a analogy with racial intermarriage unjust many religious people believe that the reasons for their belief about gay marriage are like their reasons for belief about abortion or euthanasia available to the exercise of reason probably in good faith independently of faith and scripture they have indeed put forward very sophisticated arguments and in this they differ I think from rations whose arguments were always obscure answers and that by pseudoscience and the ignorance of how sophisticated such arguments are could allow people to think that people who accept them or take them seriously must be irrational or lacking in intellectual acumen should we not therefore be open to those arguments and if we disagree with them simply accept that some people are opposed to gay marriage because they accept those arguments intelligently and in good faith is it not slander to suggest that what's at issue is something like racism well every form of argument must leave itself open to rejection on the grounds that its conclusions are absurd or repugnant that's not controversial I think when I think of some of the gay relationships I know some of them are usually united by civil servants but who would have become married if they'd be permitted when I recall some of the poetry that celebrates gay love I find the claim that it is intrinsically evil or intrinsically unsuited to celebration intrinsically unworthy of a marriage balance I find that repellent and when I reflect further on the fact as it seems to me to be a fact that for many people such arguments persuasive and are considered seriously only because they believe implicitly perhaps not even very consciously that gay sex can't have the depth that would make it worth the celebration in marriage that gay should once be married wants something that is of its very nature impossible then it seems to me as I'm trying to suggest those claims fail to find the reduction of that absurdity because the full humanity of gays is not fully visible to those who put them forward who take them seriously and that's why I said earlier that like the kind of racism that I elaborated this kind of opposition to gay marriage is not based on ignorance of what are ordinarily called facts nor is it an expression of irrationality it's not for refusal to rise to the claims of reasons it's a form of meaning blindness it is of course, nonetheless the expression of a kind of ignorance ignorance can be cured though not by philosophy or metaphysics or science but by art or by poetry novels, painting and film and by the kind of experience that I spoke of earlier in connection with racism when people come to see death in people or in lives because they live with them and they engage with imaginative sympathy in those lives then you will recall I drew attention to the important difference between coming to see dignity in faces that had previously looked alike to one or to see in a black body all that could invite a tender caress rather than merely excite lust to see that on the one hand and to learn on the other hand through experience and reading scientific literature that the factual stereotypes one could entertain were in fact false it's important now to remember especially now that as something that we're resistant to accepting and I remember it especially at an annual lecture on bigotry and intolerance and what's important to remember is this that it's not always a good thing to be open to persuasion it's not good to be open to persuasion or that one can read one's future in copy grants or that Elvis is alive and working for the CIA to have an open mind on those matters is proof that one's gullible which is no virtue it betrays the failure of judgement that fatally undermines the very capacity for radical critique that we hope will be achieved by the way of having an open mind some forms of open mindedness are acted caricatured in the joke that a person whose mind was so open that his brain fell through morally too there are things about which one should not have an open mind not so much because it would betray a serious failure of judgement not because it would betray an intellectual failure but because one should fear to be the kind of person who believes them and takes them into her life it's not a moral or intellectual virtue to have an open mind about ethnic cleansing a generous mind castrated in male pedagons or stoned in women's death for adultery to believe that a case might be made for such evils and that one should be open to people being persuaded by them or that the injustices committed by Israel against the powerful seniors prove that Hitler got at least one clean right it's not automatic to refuse to be open to persuasion about those matters nor is it just a sign of decency for moral seriousness it's a conceptual truth I think a truth we can discern merely by reflecting on the concept of moral value that a person must take seriously the moral values that he or she professes to refuse to be open to some moral views is intrinsic to the kind of seriousness that defines morality and distinguishes it from other kinds of value and for that reason one should distinguish what a person finds undiscussable and one should believe passionately perhaps even dogmatically in the latter case she may also not be open to persuasion but then it would be for reasons probably all bad that are extraneous to morality she may be brought to see that she should be open to arguments and that only psychological obstacles stand in the way of it someone who believes something to be undiscussable and someone who thinks that's discussable and do people respond opposing convictions the examples I gave are a hope of uncontroversion can one seriously rank alongside the arguments against gay marriage or would that be outrageous but it wouldn't be outrageous if it's true that when gays demand the right to marry they demand acknowledgement of their full humanity is that hyperbole? it's not recall my earlier claim that to acknowledge someone as a fairly human being is to see him or her as capable of rising fully in full responsiveness to the meaning of the defining facts of human condition and one of those defining facts is our sexuality and the way it goes deep with us so deep as to be fundamental to our sense of identity the incredulity of younger people as I characterise it for not an expression of intolerance all of a closed mind in a reprehensible sense and one can begin to see how far the analogy with racism can be pressed if one knows two things firstly demand the demand that the law should permit same sex marriage is not at all like the demand for equal access to goods and all the changes if it were then some generous version of civil union would be acceptable then again in this being told to demand the right to marry is not like demanding yet more of something that exists on the same continuum and so the right to inherit property it's in a different dimension it is to be sure a demand for justice but like the demand of the full humanity of indigenous people to be acknowledged in law so the demand to have the right to marry is not a demand for justice as fairness it's a demand for justice conceived as a quality of respect for the dignity of one's humanity it is I think absurd to think that the demand to be acknowledged as fully human is of the same kind as a demand for equal access to goods and opportunity opportunities anti-racism continues to be one of the great ruins of a closed war period going backwards unfortunately which things have been said and done in its name and though unjust accusations of racism actually contributed to racism it can hardly be doubted that the world is the best of plans for you the same is true of feminism and of gay liberation movements all have expressed a concern for equality that can't adequately be captured by talk of equal access to goods and opportunities treat me as a person see me fully as a human being as fully or equal without degradation or condescension these are not demands for things whose value lies in the degree to which they owe one to get other things they're calls to justice conceived as a quality of respect calls to become part of the constituency within which claims for equal access to goods and opportunities may then appropriately be pressed if I'm right, concern for a justice in the community should be in critical part a concern that its institutions enable us to see and to be responsive to when we see the full humanity in our fellow human beings amongst those institutions the ones that express the character of our responses to the defining fact of the human condition apparently there are institutions that have to do with both a vulnerability to the misfortune death and of course sexual violence absolute treat thank you Professor Gator for that incredibly rich and thoughtful lecture we have I think maybe 10 minutes for questions if you run a little late in starting and we have some roving mics so who would like to get us started I think there's a question for you can you just wait for the mic to reach you I really enjoy the talk thank you and I'm probably one of those incredulous young people who you were talking about but I'm interested in the reasons that you've given us tonight people often when they're arguing against gay marriage make sort of a slippery slope argument so they say oh the next thing is that people will be wearing animals or something like this and I think that maybe what you've been saying does suggest the idea that we should recognize incestuous marriages or political miscarriages and I think I'm curious what you think with us right and what you think about it well slippery slopes never occur in cultural backgrounds they occur in particular cultures and whether one's fearful slippery slope depends on one's assessment of the culture for example what I think what I think is right in what I think is right in what people might be getting at in the slippery slope argument is more or less what I said which is that I think there are certain conceptual features of marriage features such as if we got rid of them for whatever good reason we might have about the compassion of the political policy and so on we would exploit the concept of making it possible for anyone really to understand the analogy here is as I suggested very briefly with universities the concept of university there used to be a concept of university such that it seemed to be a kind of conceptual truth that the institution couldn't justify the economy of the university unless it had a possible department and that at a certain point disappeared in part but now I know university is about what it does under such a concept and it disappeared in part because for reasons to do this as I to oppose that sort of arrogant procedure of institutions called universities government gave the name to institutions that in no way could form a number of traditional concepts while that is under some degree to destroy the concept and now I've got people in institutions called universities can't find a way back to think about what they do under anything like the old concept now I think there are people who think the same thing would happen if we took out one of the core conceptual features of marriage which is between a man and a woman and physically because it was having children so the only thing one can do is ask why do you think it's a core conceptual feature and what I'd be trying to suggest is what's really going on it's not simply the arguments being put up and the arguments by some Catholics on this they can't be very sophisticated they really are and in that sense they're quite different from arguments used to support ratios on which all those radicals but what's going on there is as I've been trying to suggest that a failure is to see depth but possibility of depth and the only thing I think that one can do when that happens is to try to present people with things certain for a view that there and that's hardly equal solution with people that have to do with racism it's not arguments that put racism it's just I think it's a deep liberal illusion to think that philosophy or science could seriously undermine racism and because as I suggested in my talk the incapacity to see dignity in a face because one sees it like the lack of much administrative space is an incapacity of a radically different kind to face the evidence about our views at the time so I think the only thing one can do there is to hope that exactly what's happening to young people like us all but for all sorts of cultural reasons they see the depth of a good never question and it's part of it's part of the good and also through ours and I think this happens but the simply so argument in this traditional form presupposes as what's going on on the part of gays the leader of people who are into gay marriage is that there is the traditional fear for the simply so it's based on the assumption what's going on here is an argument in the traditional sense that's why I made the analogy first Dr. Gator many of us, some of us here come from a very strict Catholic of religious backgrounds you talk there by justice and not by justice why are the churches particularly the Catholic Church so hostile to gay marriages and not just Catholic but also many of the Protestant denominations why are they so out of touch with justice well as I try to suggest I think on one hand there are very complex arguments especially if the Catholic tradition was put forth by a small theologians and small philosophers and I think that partly prevents Catholics who are post I'm assuming when I talk about holocaust we're talking about liberals who would sincerely say that there should be civil unions there should be equal rights but not marriage and they're the ones who decided to be conversant with the iathans and mistake the fact that they find the iathans persuasive for what's really going on which is what I'm trying to suggest that there should be equal rights to the mean and therefore it's in that sense an abacus to the form of racism so if you ask why half of the churches in the past have themselves been so supportive of racism the answer is going to be you're like a racist they're able to see the death from the lives of the victims of this immigration because it's really interesting to see that that's why I made the point in relation to Karen Webster's remark he wasn't expressing in the first instance and most interestingly a moral and religious prohibition when he said it's impossible he meant it's impossible in roughly the way that people used to say it's impossible to have a university if you don't have a university it's that kind of point and there what he thinks it doesn't matter what you do you can't make something out of what's consistently impossible and he would think that in those countries in the world the gayes would be married after those laws unmarried only in those kinds in the same way as they'd say black slave owners who insisted that their slaves get married but who didn't think for a minute that breaking the slave could constitute a serious injustice to them in the way it would against the white men they thought that they'd vaccinated their course married and in those kinds because they couldn't rise to the dignity and depth of their sexuality otherwise they would see that breaking a slave could be as terrible as making the white men but they found that initially unintelligent even the ones who would find a crew but they would think it's cool or they'd like a good crew as a dog Thanks very much for your talk I was thinking about your talk in relation to in relation to the stand-up remarks before your talk and I'm wondering how if we if we accept your argument how we can explain the position of those in politics who we suspect might think that gay marriage is okay and we're personally untroubled by but we don't think it's worth losing any votes over it Now does that indicate either that they have no moral compass whatsoever other than the opinion poll or that they are suffering from the same the kind of meaning and violence that you were talking about I think they are suffering from some degree of meaning and violence and that's why I started after the talk discussing the thing on the part of myself that in that conversation that I reported in London Peter and I just took a look at it that as Chris and Camille put it in the case of Blair it's not a core issue and that's because failing to see that really is an issue of death meaning violence we fail to see the terrible insult that it really is the terrible front that it really is to say this is not a core issue and I saw that on that occasion because I caught the pain and anxiety that suddenly made me realize why do we assume this so it's really a case of people coming to see that it's probably seen the language of excuses because it's all talking about civil rights equality and that kind of language can't get to the death of hers that's both you can't capture that by saying I violated the rights why did I do your rights that may be the most important that the rights of people can't sense and of course it has its place in political discourse but usually to say that a person's rights is not to capture the nature of the wrong thought when someone's right you don't capture the wrong thought they're right to be fine thank you for your talk many people who aren't against interracial marriages but are against gay marriages they're often justified by saying hang on people didn't choose to be at a different race some people choose to be gay how would you incorporate such an argument to your framework well I'm saying yes but first of all I wouldn't engage in the arguments whether they choose to be gay or not to be gay so if you choose it if it's in fact it can be something fun and precious if I'm engaged sexually it can be what doesn't matter if you choose it what does degrade it though is to describe it as a lifestyle choice you can't capture anything deep like that but as for whether it's chosen or whether it's not balanced that's a kind of technical argument that seems to be quite irrelevant let's put it this way you can see to try too much if you start arguing whether it's a choice or whether it's not a choice can I just say one other thing about why a candidate I think it's partly because for some reason it has escaped them that they can hold onto the idea that sex when it's connected with the possibility of children has a death that it doesn't have and it's not they can hold onto that idea it seems to me and still acknowledge the gay relationships have a death that's fully worthy of the marriage vote and I think that's a distinction I'm not saying that it has that death I'm saying this has been a very central argument always and it has its problems because once you go from the example where a couple unintentionally trying to have a child all the way to infer time couples trying to keep the connection everybody knows it has its problems but supposing just for the sake of argument that you could keep the connection all the way through to infer time heterosexual couples or heterosexual couples who don't want to have children suppose for the sake of argument that the Catholic theologians are right, just suppose that why should that be at least to oppose gay marriage the best you can say is you can't have the kind of death that's possible here but why are they denying that it has a kind of death that would make a worthy recipient of the matter