The campaign for what has been dubbed ‘marriage equality’ is gaining ground in many Western countries, including Australia, despite religious and secular people not always sharing a common point of view on the matter. In an accompanying development, the cause of marriage equality has become something of proxy for those who advance an aggressive secularism and dismiss the religious reservations of believers. The Australian Greens have been at the forefront of this assault on religious liberty. Many religious believers are concerned that aggressive secularism is driving religion from the public sphere where it is practised. Rather than constructing and imposing models of equality upon the individual, the political and cultural framework of the liberal state needs to allow believers and non-believers alike, with differing and even conflicting points of view, to live together peacefully.

Peter Kurti is a Research Fellow in the Religion and the Free Society program at The Centre for Independent Studies.