Hugh Wetmore (former leader of EFSA) on homosexual marriage

GAY RIGHTS AND SAME-SEX ‘MARRIAGE’

South Africa’s Constitutional Court has declared the Marriage Act’s heterosexual marriage as discriminatory against the rights of homosexuals because it denies Marriage status to same-sex couples. This is a demonstrably faulty judgement, and must be strenuously opposed in order to preserve Marriage. Gay activists demand the right to same-sex ‘marriage’. This demand must be resisted, in order to preserve Marriage.

An International Human Right

Marriage itself is a Human Right that is definitively heterosexual. This human right is distorted if it is applied to people of the same sex. The United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights protects and affirms the right to heterosexual marriage. It does not imagine same-sex marriage. Article 16 "Men and women ... have the right to marry and found a family ... The family is the natural and fundamental unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the state." Note that this is the only clause that departs from the standard introductory phrase "Everyone ....". It specifically speaks of "men and women." Same-sex ‘marriage’ is not a human right ~ it is a denial of the human right to marriage. It makes marriage something it is not.

Some people are not Marryable

Homosexuals already have the right to marry. There is nothing to stop them marrying a person of the opposite sex. Their problem is they want to marry someone of the same sex, someone who is, by definition, not marryable.

The current Marriage Acts also discriminates against some heterosexuals, but no-one complains about these restrictions. It denies marriage to someone who is not marryable: someone who is already married to someone else, someone who is a close relative, someone who is still a child, someone who refuses the marriage proposal. People cannot just marry anyone they want to marry. There are criteria ... and one of these is the spouse must be of the opposite sex.

Lesbians and homosexuals insist that they are discriminated against because of gender. But if this is discrimination, it is fair discrimination, provided for in the Constitution 36 (2). Gender ‘discrimination’ is already regarded as fair in certain instances: Men and women do not compete against each other in many sports, do not share the same public toilets, are not assigned to the same hospital wards.

Why not Legalise Paedophile Marriage?

If our laws legitimise same-sex ‘marriage’ because homosexuals want the right to marry each other, they lead us onto slippery slope that, using identical arguments, could legitimise paedophiles marrying girl- or boy-children. This is not far-fetched: Emperor Nero married a young boy, and the Netherlands has recently registered a political party with an overt paedophile and child-porn platform. After all, paedophilia, bestiality and necrophilia are simply other "sexual orientations" which could arguably be protected by the Constitution.

Apartheid-style Discrimination

Gays accuse those who insist that marriage is heterosexual of 'perpetuating apartheid-style discrimination'. This argument places one’s sexual orientation on the same level as race ~ something one is born into and cannot change. It is not so. No credible, reproducible research has proved that there is a gay gene. And supposing there were such a gay gene, the principle of natural selection would have eliminated homosexuality from the human race by now, as only the fittest ~ those able to increase through procreation ~ would have survived. Homosexuality is a behavioural, not congenital, orientation. There are homosexuals who have learned to harmonise their orientation with their physiological gender, and have happily married heterosexually. This gives hope to others, and make the notion of same-sex ‘marriage’ irrelevant and unnecessary. The 'Apartheid' analogy is a false analogy, with no relevance to gay rights.

Actually Apartheid also discriminated against heterosexual marriage: whites were not allowed to marry people of the opposite gender if they were of another race. Group areas legislation and pass laws kept black husbands and wives apart, destroying not only marriages but integrated family life. We want to reverse such discrimination and build strong marriages and strong mother-father-child families. These are the Rights we must protect.

Furthermore, Apartheid was an attempt at social engineering that was morally wrong. To legalise same-sex marriage is a similar attempt at social engineering that is morally wrong. Its outcomes for the family, and for future generations, are as yet untested. What is tried and tested by reputable research is that children thrive best in a father-mother family. We should do all we can to promote marriage in this context. It is dangerous to risk experimentation on vulnerable children by legalising a same-sex ‘parented’ ‘family’.

To legalise same-sex marriage actually takes away the rights of heterosexual married couples. They will feel that their marriages are meaningless ~ in the same way that extending to soccer players the right to pick up the ball and plant it over a goal-line would make both games meaningless.

Children's Rights


Our Constitution 28 (2) prioritises Children’s Rights ~ "A child’s best interest are of paramount importance in every matter concerning the child". Stanton and Maier’s survey of research published in "Marriage on Trial" (IVF 2004) adduces more than ample evidence to prove that the best interests of children are served through the nurture of heterosexual parents, not ‘parents’ of the same sex.

In France the President of the National Assembly charged a Commission to research the possibility of legalising same-sex marriage and adoptions. The resultant Parliamentary Report on the Family and the Rights of Children, released January 27, 2006 did acknowledge that the French family has altered significantly, becoming "more diverse and less institutionalized", but recommended nonetheless that in the best interests of children homosexual ‘‘marriage’’ should remain prohibited. The decisive factor to the report's conclusions, after an investigation of more than a year, was the commission’s decision to act "to affirm and protect children’s rights and the primacy of those rights over adults ‘aspirations’." A majority affirmed the "fundamental principles of the law of filiation, which are based on the tripartite unit of ‘a father, a mother, a child’, citing the principle of caution. For that reason, that majority also, logically, chose to deny access to marriage to same-sex couples."

Protect Marriage and Family Rights

The State must keep Marriage what it has always been ~ the union of a man and a woman. In so doing we will not be discriminating against homosexuals (for unlike race, some homosexuals have changed their orientation), we will avoid the slippery slope to worse laws, we will preserve the best Children’s Rights, and we will not further weaken marriage and family life. In the words of the United Nations Bill of Rights, to which South Africa is a signatory: "Men and women ... have the right to marry and found a family ... The family is the natural and fundamental unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the state."