I am a Christian, a person deeply formed by the Church and its gospel. Even more, I am a Baptist minister. For the past 35 years I have given my life to understanding, living and proclaiming the message of Jesus. It is because of this, not in spite of it, that I'll be voting "yes" in the upcoming plebiscite on same-sex marriage.

There is nothing that goes to the heart of human identity as much as our sexuality. It is that God-given reminder, persistent and powerful, that we are made for relationship — intimate, covenant relationship. When our need for intimate communion with another human being is violated through the horrors of sexual abuse, cheapened through sexual infidelity, or invalidated through sacraments of love that exclude, it is not only our rights that are threatened, but our identity as those created in God's image.

In his letter to the church in Rome, Saint Paul speaks of sexual failings as far more impacting than all others. "Don't be immoral in matters of sex," he writes, "that is a sin against your own body in a way that no other sin is." Why?Because our sexuality takes us beyond a particular sexual act to our embodied nature, our personhood. It is certainly true that for the majority of people, sexual identity is most naturally expressed in heterosexual unions. For a small number, however, it is in same-sex relationships that they find who they are as relational beings. The truth is, those of us who are gay or lesbian are wired differently from those of us who are not. Homosexual longing is as natural to some as heterosexual longing is to others.

Of course, this is not the view of all Christians. Indeed, the majority of those within my own tradition disagree with me. Their perspective is that homosexuality is a dysfunction of identity — a failing of personhood that needs to be confessed and overcome. It follows, then, that allowing same-sex couples to marry will only legitimise a dysfunction God never intended. My experience says otherwise.