The wrong argument, made in the wrong way

Aside from the obvious, there are two things I'm depressed by about the Church's formal statement against gay marriage:

• Firstly, I think I agree with Giles Fraser (only the second time this has happened) - and never usually a good thing)
• Secondly, whoever wrote the statement simply cannot write. It's just terribly argued, terribly written and poorly constructed

And of course it's wrong. 

Now, I'm frustrated by the language and the structure, because it makes it even harder to figure out what it is they're even trying to say. It's slippery and evasive, hyperbolic, inconsistent, inaccurate and pettily legalistic.  The summary first page will be meaningless to people who come looking for why the church thinks this. The rest is mostly worse. I think if you're going to say why you object to these things, you have to be clear and focused. This is neither

But I'm angry about the argument. If they get past the meandering summary, a reader would read a second page with a definition of marriage that we'd be hard-pressed to see why it is so exclusive. The argument pretends to antiquity, but then defends this with a definition that dates back only to 2000. This immediately tells us two things - that the church does change its definitions, and that these words could quite obviously and easily accommodate same-sex unions. Marriage isn't a Christian invention, but it's one we embrace. Look at that definition: love, mutual comfort, bodily union and the foundation of family life. We've already embraced a modern conception of marriage.


We shouldn't embrace conceptions of it unquestioningly - we opposed the straightforward divorces of the Roman world. By all means, fight the fight against calling polygamy marriage, against the irresponsibility of impermanence of some unions, and against the lack of seriousness in some parents. Marriage is valuable, but it's wide, and to defend it on semantics and poor history is to cheapen its value, and weaken an argument worth having.

Marilynne Robinson, interviewed in the Spectator a few weeks ago, had a nice turn of phrase, commenting on the 'tendency of religion to discredit itself by finding small opportunities to be mean when there are large opportunities to be generous.' The Church of England, on the ground so often an antidote to this accusation, now looks like a textbook example. It should look askance at its leaders who submitted this, perhaps not to anathematise (except for the quality of the writing), but to ask why on earth we ended up here.

Bibliography, May 2012

Read (3)
BOTM: A. Banerjee and E. Duflo, Poor Economics


D.L. Sayers, Strong Poison
P.G. Wodehouse, Heavy Weather


You'll forgive the lack of reading - I'm amazed I managed three, though they were back loaded. I won't spend much time on them either. Everyone should read Poor Economics though. It's a great book on the choices and the options for intervention about poverty. Of course, I suspect there are a several books like it, so any one of them will do too. But it was fascinating and important. I learnt a lot, and - more importantly - thought about things a bit differently.