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The Brigadier shows he is a good General

3:17pm Sunday, 4th September 2011

Comment by John Sandeman

Brigadier Jim Wallace, Managing Director of the Australian Christian Lobby, looks like he is a winner in the battle over same sex marriage.

Australia’s great secular prophet of politics (and we mean it nicely) Paul Kelly, Editor-at-Large of The Australian says “same sex marriage…is unlikely to prevail in the current parliament”.

This is because Labor is likely to seek to avoid electoral fallout by having a conscience vote on the issue. In a move Kelly sees as crucial, Opposition Leader Tony Abbott views the issue as a policy matter and will not allow a conscience vote. Same sex marriage will not get through the Federal parliament while Tony Abbott is leader of the Liberal Party. And he could very well be the next Prime Minister.

This will mean that Wallace has been key to keeping same sex marriage out of Australia for at least a decade. His strategy of supporting the expansion of gay rights but stopping short of marriage has been successful. This has meant supporting gay couples to have access to the same services that are available to married couples, with their relationship recognised by the government. The ALP during the Rudd and Gillard government has essentially held the ACL line.

There are Christian groups to the right of ACL that regard this as “selling out the true Christian Biblical position” – as Melbourne’s catch the fire ministries puts it. This would include many who vote for the “christian” parties at election time.

“Sadly, ACL leader Jim Wallace promoted himself and the ACL as the ‘new’, moderate voice in Australian Christian political activism – ‘Not right wing or red-necked’ like some, thus an appealing position for the new feel-good evangelicals.”

There is also another group of evangelicals who support traditional marriage, but want to tell gays “we disagree with you, but we don’t want to use the law to make you adopt Christian morals”. The main difference this group has with ACL is over whether to fight to keep the word “marriage” for permanent, faithful heterosexual relationships. Our impression is that this group is growing, especially among the young.

Now to be fair there are another groups, further left like “Christians for marriage equality” who actively support gay marriage, because they see nothing wrong with gay relationships. Tellingly, their website contains no endorsements by denominational leaders.

The ACL marriage campaign has been endorsed by Christian leaders from Anglican to Apostolic, Presbyterian to Pentecostal, and Baptist to Brethren.

And it looks as though they have backed a winner.