From the Church Times . Do go read the whole thing.
COMPLEMENTARITY is central to any marriage. The Church, however, holds that sexual difference is the foundation of that complementarity.
What sort of claim is being made, here? Are we saying that sexual difference is enough, by itself, for us to know that two people complement each other, just as having a pulse is enough, by itself, for us to know that someone is alive?...
Writers of church documents cannot mean that. Or, if they do, then they are wrong. ...A collapse of difference into male-female difference, which so undergirds current Church of England formulations, reduces our vision of sexual relationships to the level of a budget brothel: you ask for a woman, you ask for a man, and you take the first one who's free: sexual difference is what matters, not particularity.
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In a relationship that lives up to what Christians might most value, however, it is that how two people are similar or different is understood within the call for each to change, and to grow into the likeness of Christ. ...
We might put it like this: there has always been more than one species within the genus we call marriage; and admitting a new species to a genus does not change the definition of the other species. Species Y can differ from species X, in the same genus, without changing the definition of species X.
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Remembering this, any claim that different forms of marriage are related analogically need not subordinate one to another. We are not necessarily saying that one is an imitation of the other. A distinctively Christian vision of marriage - whatever it is, whatever form it takes (and that is clearly under debate) - sees marriage as an imitation of something about Christ and his relationship with the Church, and as a participation in the life and love of the Trinity.
That is ultimately where we must look for the source and meaning of complementarity.
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