In a series of recent federal court cases here in Australia, judges have ruled that it is discriminatory to restrict artificial insemination and in vitro fertilisation to married or even to committed (‘de facto married’) heterosexual couples, and implied that it is discriminatory to give married couples any legal recognition or advantages not granted other unions. Adults may have a legal ‘right to children’ or at least to child-making technologies, even if children have no ‘right to a father’.

What should we expect from the state? St Thomas Aquinas thought that government was a vocation by which certain people are given the means and authority to direct the course of affairs of their community so that each and all are safe, healthy and virtuous. Our governors should challenge, entice, censure and reward us so that we live in peace and harmony, flourish in accord with human dignity, and move closer to being the saints God calls us all to be. Their authority is limited by, among other things, their duty to recognize that persons and families, as the first cells of society and the rationale for its existence, have moral priority and that the natural law (of which marriage and family are fundamental parts) must underlie all laws and policies.

Can governments today take on such a role? In a series of documents including Vatican II’s Gaudium et spes, the many social encyclicals of the popes, documents of John Paul II such as Familiaris consortio and Evangelium vitæ, the Holy See’s Charter of Family Rights and CDF documents such as Donum vitae, The Doctrinal Note on Political Participation of Catholics and most recently its Considerations regarding Legal Recognition of Homosexual Unions the Church has developed its teaching on the rôle of the state in supporting marriage and the family.

The Church understands that:

• political community and public authority are founded on human nature and divine order, and are ordered toward the common good
• political power should always be exercised within those limits
• the well-being of individuals and societies is intimately linked with the health of marriages and families
• the state should recognize, protect and favour authentic married and family life
• the state should support a culture and public morality which sustain such healthy family life
• the laws of the state should support the unity and continuity of marriages and families, not their destruction
• the state should promote the orderly pursuit of legitimate and constructive activities by and for families, and not hamper the development of families
• the state should recognize genuine rights such as: the right of married couples to the intimacy appropriate to their state and responsibly to beget and educate their children in the bosom of the family; the right of children to healthy society with their parents and to protection when this is unavailable; the right of families to those economic and cultural opportunities necessary for the flourishing of the family, such as freedom of association and religious profession, suitable housing, and physical, social, political and economic security;
• the state should not recognize false rights such as a right to same-sex marriage or to legal recognition of non-marital relationships as if they were marriages or to artificially created children. The Church calls on government authority to recognise that support for family is of critical importance for the future health and wellbeing of the society as a whole.