Fairbrother Russell: Civil Union Bill — In Committee Procedure 
Fairbrother Russell: Civil Union Bill — In Committee Procedure 
[Volume:622;Page:17536] 
RUSSELL FAIRBROTHER (Labour—Napier) 
: 
 I want to speak in this debate in support of the Civil Union Bill and as I do so I want to approach what I consider to be the most intelligent and powerful opposition to the bill and that is that which comes from the Catholic Church. On Sunday the Church sent a message to a number of its parishes indicating that parishioners should look at the voting patterns of MPs. That suggested some form of electoral threat or electoral suicide and I feared that might have been in the place of logic. 
However I looked further at what the bishops said and they criticised a bill that allows same-sex couples to form relationships with the same legal standing as marriage. I have heard during the debate in the House a lot of reference to marriage but no one really defines what it is. It certainly is a union that is confirmed in law—the Marriage Act—and as we have heard it is not meddled with. In the dictionary “marriage” is defined as a formal agreement between a man and a woman to live together according to the customs of their religion or society. Well the customs of marriage in the Roman Catholic Church include an additional requirement—that is an undertaking that one will have children. One assumes that if people do not complete that undertaking they cannot get married in the Catholic Church. So that is an additional aspect of marriage in the Catholic Church. 
But I am interested in the reports of the Catholic bishops’ letter and the preaching on Sunday because as members will have heard 4 years ago the bishops took a stand on same-sex relationships and in so doing they appeared to answer the cry we hear from Marc Alexander and others saying: “Where is the need?” and “Why do we need this legislation?”. In May 2000 the bishops in their national newspaper the  
National Catholic Reporter 
 opened the report by stating: “New Zealand Catholic Bishops support legal registration of same-sex unions though not as a stepping stone to legal marriage.” That position contrasts with recent statements made by Pope John Paul II condemning civic unions. 
That statement and the following article seem to have set the Catholic Church in a bit of a tizz and in August of the same year Bishop Cullinane speaking for New Zealand Catholic Bishops put out a 4-page explanation of the bishops’ position. It makes very difficult reading but it is probably summarised best in the final paragraph: “Our position comes down to this. We support legislation that protects the actual rights of people in homosexual relationships. We do not support legislation that makes the homosexual relationship the basis of their rights. In this respect their relationship is different from marriage.” I do not know what that means unless it means that if the legal relationship is based on their sexual activity—and their sexual activity is homosexual—then the bishops do not condone that. If that is what they are saying that is a fairly candid position. Most people would see it as homophobic but if it is a faith-based objection to homosexual activity I can accept that. 
But a civil union is not determined by the sexual activity of the partners. A civil union is available to two people who want to express publicly their commitment to one another in a long-term relationship. Whether or not they engage in sex at all is a private matter not a matter for anybody else at all. Whether they be heterosexual or homosexual does not imply sexual activity. A civil union is a case of two people wanting to share the benefits as defined in the dictionary of a union according to the customs of their religion or society. If one has a religion that is opposed on a faith basis to homosexuality then one would preclude homosexuals from marriage under the Marriage Act but one would not preclude them from a civil union which this bill provides. 
So I think the Catholic Church has been a little inconsistent in its public utterances on this matter but perhaps that is the way it has been reported and perhaps the real objection is to the condition of homosexuality it being a basic sin that the Church can never bring itself to endorse and embrace. If that is the Church’s position let us accept that but that does not imply that it speaks against civil unions. In fact implicit in the Church’s view is that it endorses civil unions but not if that is seen to be condoning homosexuality. So we have a slight difference and that is on this question of the sexual activity of the partners. 
The other aspect that the Church is seen to oppose is the vows that are taken in a civil union although the word “vow” is not really used; it is a promise that is provided for in the second part of this bill. It is a promise between two people made formally which then has legal standing—as opposed to Mr Ardern’s interpretation of it—that is unchallengeable. They are in a civil union and are therefore linked as partners in that union. That then is the short key to identifying the lack of discrimination that follows in all other legislation. We cannot have the Relationships (Statutory References) Bill without the Civil Union Bill.