With due re­spect to the views of Ro­man Catholic Arch­bish­op Joseph Har­ris, An­gli­can Bish­op Claude Berkley and oth­ers who have been ar­tic­u­lat­ing against same-sex mar­riages, their con­cern is pre­ma­ture. They are mak­ing an is­sue of a mat­ter that has not ma­te­ri­alised in­to be­ing one which will con­front the so­ci­ety in the form of a draft pol­i­cy. It may not even be men­tioned in the doc­u­ment that is even­tu­al­ly brought for­ward by the Gov­ern­ment.

Re­cent­ly a group of Chris­t­ian pas­tors even went so far as to protest out­side Par­lia­ment against a bill le­gal­is­ing same-sex mar­riage which they said was to be passed that day. In fact, no such bill has been de­bat­ed, draft­ed or even dreamed of. The arch­bish­op, the bish­op and the at­tor­neys of a re­li­gious per­sua­sion have come for­ward with their state­ments af­ter Gen­der Af­fairs Min­is­ter Ver­na St Rose-Greaves gave an in­di­ca­tion that her min­istry and the Gov­ern­ment will be bring­ing for­ward for de­bate a new gen­der pol­i­cy.

The min­is­ter, how­ev­er, did not in­di­cate that same-sex mar­riages would be an item in the draft pol­i­cy; nei­ther have gay-rights groups been de­mand­ing any such thing. In­stead the fo­cus of the gay-rights groups has been on so­ci­etal dis­crim­i­na­tion prac­tised con­sis­tent­ly against them for their sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion.

As far as the groups are con­cerned, what is very trou­bling to them is the bla­tant dis­crim­i­na­tion they face when they seek to find em­ploy­ment or ac­cess ser­vices-even health­care at pub­lic in­sti­tu­tions. So too their protests are against the vi­o­lence they say is per­pe­trat­ed against them mere­ly for be­ing who they are rather than on ac­count of any­thing they have done.

One pos­si­ble dan­ger of such pre­ma­ture com­men­tary on same-sex mar­riages is that the emo­tion­al de­bate, not found­ed in re­al­i­ty, could pre­dis­pose large seg­ments of the re­li­gious com­mu­ni­ty against the gen­der pol­i­cy doc­u­ment as a whole when it is even­tu­al­ly made pub­lic.

That is not a far-fetched no­tion: on the last oc­ca­sion when a draft gen­der pol­i­cy was moot­ed for dis­cus­sion and de­bate, it was scut­tled when emo­tion­al out­pour­ings against the le­gal­i­sa­tion of abor­tion were splashed in the pub­lic do­main. Then, the de­bate on the pro­pos­als of the over­all doc­u­ment nev­er got off the ground be­cause the coun­try re­mained mired in the back-and-forth con­flict over one is­sue.

So the dan­ger could be that a full spread of in­for­ma­tion on all mat­ters pro­posed for pub­lic dis­cus­sion in the gen­der doc­u­ment could be de­nied the so­ci­ety and pre­vent ad­vance in so vi­tal a dis­cus­sion as the need to trans­form out­dat­ed poli­cies on gen­der.

The Catholic and An­gli­can lead­ers, like those in the le­gal fra­ter­ni­ty and oth­ers anx­ious to have their voic­es heard on gen­der and how it is to fea­ture in a draft pol­i­cy, should not har­bour fears that this or any oth­er gov­ern­ment could eas­i­ly take to the Par­lia­ment draft leg­is­la­tion that will seek to change fun­da­men­tal gen­der re­la­tion­ships in the so­ci­ety with­out first en­gag­ing the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty in dis­course on the is­sues in­volved. In fact nu­mer­ous such con­sul­ta­tions have al­ready tak­en place.

Pow­er­ful in­sti­tu­tions such as the Catholic and An­gli­can church­es and oth­er ad­vo­ca­cy groups must sure­ly be aware of the con­sid­er­able in­flu­ence they have and have an in­sti­tu­tion­al mem­o­ry of how to ex­er­cise that in­flu­ence at the right mo­ment.

What the lead­ers of these groups must al­so recog­nise is the need for a holis­tic dis­cus­sion. Hasty and un­found­ed cam­paign­ing on mat­ters which may not even be con­tained in a draft pol­i­cy could pre­empt full, rea­soned, calm dis­cus­sion. And sure­ly no one can ob­ject to that.