Letters

Searching Over and Over

SIR: “And yet God has not said a word!” Well, perhaps not exactly apposite but like the silent God, the Australian Research Council also remains silent. Philippa Martyr hit the spot in “Taken for Granted” (October 2012). Her reminder of the confusion between “grants”, and “gifts”, is indeed the hub of the problem. Little supervision, no accountability, minimal relevance, seem to be the hallmark of university research grants, not only in literature and the social sciences but also in hard sciences. This infection has spread to all manner of granting bodies in the arts, and even service organisations (usually in the form of projects but called “grants” and included in general revenue).

The ARC is a joke but few seem to be laughing. The word research says it all—re-search—that is, “search over and over and over and over”. It doesn’t matter if you don’t find anything, but keep on searching, old mate, we’re paying!

Alston Unwin
Brisbane, Qld

A Clear Distinction

SIR: Martin Gordon (Letters, October 2012) is, to this observer, among many who confuse social “discrimination” with the need for “distinction” between two very different lifestyles.

Looming problems arising from the extension of heterosexual marriage to include homosexual cohabitations will include conflict between church and state, disruption of society’s long-serving core values of marriage and parenthood, and legal challenges to a fundamental change to the definition of marriage, all due to a failure of conservative politicians to state the basic conservative case.

This “weak case” (according to Malcolm Turnbull and others), as seen by this parent and grandparent, boils down to serious concern at adding further confusion to children and adolescents negotiating the already confused years of sexual awareness and development. For several decades, Western society has been saturated with media messages that juvenile heterosexual promiscuity is fine, precocious sexual activity is the norm, marriage is a temporary convenience, parenthood and child-rearing are an inconvenient interference with careers, and much more along similar lines.

The additional notion that no significant difference exists between homosexual and heterosexual unions must inevitably lead to increased risky homosexual experimentation, exposure to disease, and further sexual confusion among immature young people. We are told that it is “discriminatory” to point to the difference and dangers of homosexual attractions. So it is—in the sense of discriminating or distinguishing between two very different lifestyles, requiring different descriptors.

This is not social discrimination, nor is it illiberal prejudice, nor is it “treating anyone as lesser people”. It is a reminder to a rights-driven homosexual minority (approximately 5 per cent?) that, as well as rights, you also have a responsibility not to further sexually confuse the children of the 95 per cent heterosexual majority, and thereby risk further weakening of the society which endows you with your rights. And it is asserting the right of the 95 per cent heterosexual majority to raise their sons and daughters in a society which admits a clear distinction between two very different lifestyles.

John O’Connor
Cottles Bridge, Vic

SIR: Why is Martin Gordon so indignant when he writes that he was “appalled when [he] read the Gerard Calilhanna piece” in the September issue?

He asserts that the “gay lobby or whatever” has the “right to put its views as does any group within a liberal democratic society”. There is not the slightest evidence of any such denial to be found in Gerard Calilhanna’s article; and even so, would not Mr Calilhanna have the same right to put his views?

Mr Gordon goes on to assert that he, as a fearless advocate of the “rights, and interventions to maintain, and expand and defend the rights of people both here and overseas … is criticised regularly for standing up for what is important, such as the rights of women and girls in Afghanistan, or people resisting dictators”.

Why anyone would criticise him for that reason, or just what it has to do with the article, is not clear. But he then asserts that, being for thirty-eight years a member of the Liberal Party, “it is liberals who have stood up for the rights of individuals (including homosexual law reform)” and that he is “not inclined to take arrogant assertions to treat anyone as lesser people [quoting Orwell] or that conservative or liberal views should make life hard for homosexuals; we are not about to start now”. Again, there is nothing in the article to support such response.

What Mr Gordon seems to be declaring, is that he, like David Cameron (who is quoted in the article as saying, illogically, that he doesn’t support gay marriage despite being a Conservative, that he supports it because he is a Conservative), is likewise compelled to support gay marriage irrespective of any argument against it merely because he is a liberal.

The assertion is equally illogical.

John de Meyrick
St Ives, NSW

SIR: Between them Gerard Calilhanna and Martin Gordon have missed the simple, liberal and conservative, point.

The sophisticated advocacy of Malcolm Turnbull for encouraging relationships of loyalty, faithfulness and mutual support may be at least offset by a wish to give the remaining traditionalists amongst Abrahamic monogamists some moral support for their primary task—their main duty of public interest—of providing a stable environment for any children they produce. So what might tip the balance?

The recent fashion for changing the traditional meaning of “marriage” and seeing that as something which must be done by legislation is just that: a concern for fashion in language use. As such it is trivial unless a serious case can be made that proper respect for homosexual people will be greatly enhanced by, and not achieved without, people knowing that a lot of vote-seeking or confused or oddly motivated politicians have applied the word marriage to relationships that have not, in thousands of years, been called marriage.

While awaiting any such case to be reasoned, and not merely felt as strongly as traditionalists will feel the strength of their arguments, there is the one clear and simple point which should guide our generally utilitarian and pragmatic politicians. Some elementary questions lead quickly to it.

Why is there a Marriage Act? What was and is the public interest? Why are there specialised jurisdictions, indeed specialised and separate courts, for dealing with divorce and the incidents of marriage such as property and children? It is because marriage was once important because of the inequality of men and women, which was even greater in marriage than outside, and—still relevant—because most marriages produced children and the children needed to be protected from the consequences of breakdowns in marriage.

So why would one even think of adding to the expense in taxpayers’ money and diversion of specialised professional skills involved in giving gays and lesbians the right to have their unenforceable contracts to live together dealt with by special courts? Why would one not leave their property disputes, whether or not simple matters of contracts voluntarily entered into or the consequences of less than everlasting infatuations, to be dealt with in ordinary courts?

Politicians should not waste time and money for no practical benefit and no reason other than the hope of some that a symbol may be manipulated in a way they approve.

In the meantime, let gay and lesbian activists begin to behave as though they are not troubled outsiders. Instead let them accept some responsibility for any small part that they may play in undermining the residual support that the traditional marriage institution may give some parents seeking a stable and moral upbringing for their children, the only worthy objects of MPs’ time and thinking.

James Guest
East Melbourne, Vic

Evidence and the Bible

SIR: Peter Barclay and I seem to have different understandings of the concepts of evidence and good scholarship.

His letter in the October edition correctly stated that the author of Luke’s Gospel claimed at the beginning of that gospel that he had interviewed people who knew Jesus. Apparently this claim must be true! Apparently all those interviewed must have been eyewitnesses who must have been telling the truth, without exaggeration or embellishment, and they must have had perfect memories of events that took place decades earlier! Likewise, Barclay is correct in stating that a certain Bishop Papias claimed in a letter in around 130 AD that the disciple Peter was the source for the Gospel of Mark. This claim also must be true!

When one actually reads these two gospels one discovers that the author of Mark claimed that the disciples were told by the young man/angel at the empty tomb that the resurrected Jesus would first appear to them in Galilee. By contrast, the author of Luke claimed that the resurrected Jesus first appeared to the disciples in Jerusalem on the day that he rose, and told them to stay in the city pending the coming of the Holy Spirit. Given that Jerusalem and Galilee are separated by 100 kilometres or so, I am unsure how the imagined High Court of Sir Edward Clarke would deal with this discrepancy in “eyewitness” testimony!

Mr Barclay also writes of a consensus of biblical scholars. Presumably any scholar guilty of heresy would be outside this consensus. Thankfully the church no longer burns those who deviate from the consensus scholarship and are convicted of heresy. It is true though that the wealthy churches reward consensus scholars with study grants, salaried employment and career advancement. Likewise, any non-consensus scholarship would represent career suicide within the churches led by Archbishops Pell and Jensen, for example. Even Mr Barclay’s Presbyterian Church convicted the Principal of St Andrew’s College at the University of Sydney, Peter Cameron, of heresy as recently as 1993, thus effectively ending his career. One imagines then that most new scholarship will remain within consensus!

Samuel Beaux
Neutral Bay, NSW

SIR: Peter Barclay, when contradicting what Samuel Beaux (Letters, September 2012) had to say about the authorship of the Gospels, writes:

Although Mr Beaux may be able to rustle up the odd scholar who thinks otherwise, there is an overwhelming consensus among biblical scholars that Luke, John and Mark wrote the Gospels attributed to them.

Mr Barclay quotes from the Greek scholar E.V. Rieu, in what is said to be a summary of his claims. Rieu, who died forty years ago, was a noted translator of the ancient Greek classics but was neither a historian nor a theologian.

Bart D. Ehrman, Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies at North Carolina University, in his book Jesus Interrupted (2009), tells how, having graduated from the Moody Bible Institute, he went on to do a PhD at Princeton Theological Seminary, one of the most prestigious seats of biblical studies in the world. He went in as a committed Bible-believing Christian, certain that the Bible had been inspired by God.

What he learned at Princeton forced him, after a great struggle, to change his mind about the Bible. In one part of his book, after a detailed dissertation on the reasons, he has this to say about what he was eventually forced to accept regarding the authorship of the Gospels:

They were not written by Jesus’ companions or by companions of his companions. They were written decades later by people who didn’t know Jesus, who lived in a different country from Jesus and who spoke a different language from Jesus … Most of the books in the New Testament go under the names of people who didn’t actually write them. This has been well known among scholars for the greater part of the past century, and it is taught widely in mainline seminaries and divinity schools throughout the country [USA].

I do not pretend to know who between Messrs Rieu and Ehrman speaks the truth. I merely contend that the “overwhelming consensus” may be on the opposite side from Mr Rieu’s. Those contrary-thinking scholars might not be as scarce as Mr Barclay suggests.

Tom Nunan
Lisarow, NSW