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Yes to Female-Male Marriage

What's good? Male-Female Marriage!

'Why gay marriage is not good for Australia' was the title of an address the Revd Rod James delivered three times during the last weekend in November 2011. People gathered to hear Rod's address at the Queensland Synod Office Chapel, Mooloolaba Uniting Church on the Sunshine Coast and Elanora Uniting Church on the Gold Coast.
Queenslander's interest in the topic was immediate because of the state parliament bill to allow same-sex couples access to civil unions. Rod's address articulated the forebodings many people hold about these legislative changes and especially if children eventually miss being nurtured by a father and a mother. This is why our guest speaker stressed the importance of a mother and father's for raising a child. A grim report of a lesbian couple from California illustrated his concern. They delayed, with hormone blockers, the onset of puberty so that their 11 year son could buy time should he wish to change his gender.
Our Moderator, Revd Kaye Ronalds, was in attendance at the Brisbane meeting and we welcomed her reminder of the 8th National Assembly affirming that ‘Marriage for Christians is the freely given consent and commitment in public and before God of a man and woman to live together for life...' Unfortunately, the application of the National Assembly's affirmation is under challenge. A UCA Minister in South Australia has co-founded a group " Christians for Gay Marriage" and its UCA members are keenly promoting same-sex marriage. Uniting Network has published and road tested a ‘Sacred Union Ceremony' which is an undisguised adaptation of the Uniting Church's marriage service and one of its boldest revisions is a declaration in the Name of the Trinity that homosexual unions are ‘sacred'. According to Rod James, this innovation is made intelligible by a National Assembly decision which cleared the way for presbyteries to offer ministry placements to practising homosexuals.
The evening in Brisbane was wrapped up by the Revd Ivan Kirk with a statement about what is good. He quoted the 1st article of the Creed and elaborated on its meaning with the biblical vision of what it is to be human according to the creation story in Genesis. God created the human as male and female and faithfulness to the credal confession requires the creature to live in fidelity as either a man or woman. The gravity of collapsing this distinction by way of homosexuality is underscored by Divine judgement, but to live in fidelity to our nature as a man or woman declares what God has already decreed to be good.

Download the full text of Rod's paper here

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