Henrietta Dubb's Diary
The fudging of war and marriage
I wake up and lie awake with thoughts that sometimes deeply
trouble me.
Consider the way legal terms are now used in everyday argument
about the state of the life, universe and everything. Take the "war on
terrorism" and "gay marriage" as convenient examples.
In the former case we daily weather a barrage that demands that
there has to be a "war" on "terrorism" by "us"
western nations because we are being targeted by Islamicist terrorists. The
argument goes like this:
They declared war on us so we declare war back on them.
This is highly problematic. Is it not the kind of initial
decisive step that would be needed to establish political life on a permanent
war footing?
Some suggest that the Bush / Blair / Howard "war on
terrorism"
terminology is the most significant OBL victory since 9/11. Such critics have a
strong point and it is not just rhetorical. (Look what happened to the
"conventional" "pre-emptive war" fought by the USA, UK and
Australia in Iraq. It's primary justification was, is now and will be that it
was a necessary part of the "war on terrorism"!)
In the latter case reactions against "gay marriage"
are very critical of any fudgy use of legal terms like "marriage" to
"nuptialise" let alone legalise
homosexual unions as conventional marriages before the law.
But it would seem to me that there is as much legal and logical
fudginess in gay marriage as there is in declaring a war on terrorism.
We now enter a situation of public debate in which there will
ongoing argument over which legal terms are legitimately fudgy and which legal
terms are illegitimate because they are fudgy or
fudgifying.
How will public debate survive? All topics of discussion have
now been put on notice. This has the feel of a complex issue that will take
more than one generation to resolve. But as Christians we need to discover ways
of developing a biblically-directed language that supports public justice as
the God-given calling of Governments and citizens. It is our privilege that our
words can serve the purposes of the Almighty in our political life.
Henrietta Dubb, Christian citizen of the 21st century.
July 2004
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