Most responses to Kevin Rudd's conversion on same-sex marriage have inevitably focused on whether it will change Australia's political dynamic on the issue. Equally predictably, more cynical members of the commentariat have chosen to see Rudd's announcement as his latest round of jousting with the woman who deposed him as prime minister.
Well, yes. Rudd's addition to the ranks of those advocating a change in the law is a reminder, if one were needed, that by opposing same-sex marriage Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott are adhering to the view of a shrinking minority of the Australian community. Polls regularly indicate that more than 60 per cent of voters now favour change, with support rising to more than 80 per cent among those aged 18–24.
The momentum is almost certainly irreversible, and the question is not whether, but when, there will be legal equality for same-sex relationships, including the right to use the 'm'-word.
On this issue, the prime minister and the opposition leader have, to use the apt if cliched phrase chosen by Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young, placed themselves on the wrong side of history.
That's the politics. Those who bother to read the lengthy blog entry in which Rudd announced his change of heart, however, will be drawn into a broader debate about the relationship between church and state, a debate of a kind that takes place too rarely in Australian politics.
We are familiar with sloganeering — from partisans of both church and state — about what that relationship should be, and with the invective that gets hurled whenever legislation is mooted on issues such as reproductive medicine or the hiring policies of church institutions.
But Rudd's argument does not descend to slogans or invective, and may profoundly discomfit those who think civilisation will somehow be imperilled if church teaching on marriage and family is not enshrined in secular law.
Rudd accepts the traditional Christian understanding of sacramental marriage as an exclusive relationship of one man and one woman, and insists that a change in the law should not impose on religious institutions any alteration in their own practice. But he argues that the churches' teaching and practice can and should coexist with a secular law that acknowledges same-sex as well as heterosexual marriage, and with various models of parenting — heterosexual, same-sex, and single-sex.
These assertions should not even be contentious. The Catholic Church has always taught that marriage is a natural institution, properly regulated