From here:
(emphasis mine) Like me, for example.
After all the waffling and hedging and tiptoeing and “we’ll keep referring it to someone higher up”, finally, there’s this. I’m frustrated, and I’m disappointed, and I don’t even know if there’s anything I, or anybody I know, can do, and I can’t even work up enough vitriol for a good rant. I’m just so let down at this point I can’t manage it.
Time to seek out other churches in my area.
If alot more people voted with their feet like this you would probably see many churches changing their minds about gay marriage or ceasing to exist.
The United Church has recognized SSM for a number of years now, as have the Unitarians, and you have a branch of the Metropolitan Community Church in Toronto (a specifically gay-friendly church that actually performed what would eventually be retroactively recognized as the first legal same-sex marriage in the world).
Or else the exodus leaves some now-divided denominations decidedly unanimous against SSM.
As frustrating as it is, it can’t really be that big a suprise, can it? Marriage is a religious institution, controlled by folks bent on their own agenda, meanwhile SSM advocates are telling the religious folks how THEY are gonna (or at least should) react around SS couples, and what THEIR rules OUGHT to be.
Im for people getting whatever it is they wish for, but in earnest, I don’t see the screaming need to call it “marriage” when civil unions are a sufficient replacement. If the legal societal protections exist within the scope of civil unions (and they may not, I don’t know, somebody fight my ignorance if I’m wrong) then why the semantic hangups?
IMO the “Church” et. al, is kind of a private club. You join, take some classes, give their deity access to your very soul, show up once a week dressed nice, hand over wads and wads of your hard earned money, and they promise, along with the best real estate in only the finest cemetaries (for yet another fee) eternal salvation and the greatest reward in the known universe. Only one catch, you have to sleep with the opposing sex, make lots of little believers, and you have to follow rules and dictactes that the head guys in the club make up, or interpret, or guess about, and you’ve got to do it, because if you don’t , and should you happen to have a safe fall on you whilst walking down street, that deity, the one with access to your very soul, will push the down button, and send the aforementioned soul, via the down escalator, to burn in a fiery lake for all of eternity, or until the Cubs win the World Series.
Bah.
If you can get everything you need from civil unions, I say take it, and let the nutters have their “marriage”. The whole concept is outmoded and arcane anyhow.
Look, sorry you don’t like it, but generally speaking more or less all Christianity is opposed to it. More to the point, we don’t even think we can make it exist, to the extent we think it is a sacrament given out by God. It’s not there for our fun or pleasure; it’s there for the future generations as set down by God himself.
Just out of curiousity, who does the “you” in this post refer to? The OP? Because it appears the OP is a Christian, just like you. And she doesn’t seem to have any problems with the idea of sacramental marriage being applied to gay couples. Nor, if the article she linked to is to be believed, do the majority of Christians (or, at least, Anglicans) in Canada. Even among the Anglican hierarchy in Canada, opposition to gay marriage has only a slim majority. Which kinda makes your protestations that you have to oppose sacramental gay marriage because you’re a Christian ring just a tad hollow. If all these other Christians can reconcole their faith and respect for homosexuals, why can’t you do the same?
Yeah, sure, you believe that God is opposed to it. But incorporating that belief into your value system was a choice you’ve made at some point in your life. It’s one you continue to make, every time you re-affirm it as part of your value system, as you’ve done in this thread. And like any choice a person makes, what you choose to believe is a reflection of who you are as a person.
Similar to what Miller pointed out above, this isn’t the issue. We have legal same-sex marriage throughout the country already.
I feel bad for you. I hope you can find a good church to go to but I can’t really recommend any as I’m a Catholic and you know how they feel about such things. Just pray and seek His guidance. He loves you, period. No matter what any bishops say anyway. Just trust in Him ,he will guide you. He’s right there with you.
Perhaps. Anglicans have sometimes been rather… odd, not intending any insult. The Anglican Church of England (in England) has pretty much fallen to peices.
You are apparently laboring under the illusion that I simply go out and believe what I want to. Not quite. I believe what I believe because I believe it to be true. And in any case, the Church (in its most expansive sense) does not limit its interests to one nation or one group. I’m not terribly interested in what Canadians or even just Anglicans do alone, but in how to affect the rest of us.
It is? People don’t get married in China?
Happy Pride weekend. 
Yea, but as a heterosexual, I don’t really care what the Anglican Church has to say about gay marriage, I ain’t gonna marry another dude. What is their position on the sanctity of possible marital situations I might actually find myself in.
For example, If im a heterosexual monarch of an island nation, and want to declare myself head of the Church so I can divorce my brothers wife and marry a woman who due to her failure to produce a male heir, I later jail and execute for witchcraft and adultery so that I can marry my mistress. Is that OK, as long as all these wives are female.
Somewhere Sir Thomas More’s head is laughing his bodies ass off.
You seem to have missed that this isn’t a matter of “SSM advocates” telling “religious folks” how “their” rules ought to be. This is an internal discussion within the Anglican Church of Canada, with a hefty proportion of said church being in favour of blessing same-sex unions. Lesbian, gay, and bisexual Anglicans as well as Anglicans who are straight allies have every right to be upset.
And as I attempted to point out, Christians who are in favour of SSM are hardly a lunatic fringe. The largest Protestant denomination in Canada solemnizes same-sex marriages and ordains LGBT people as ministers.
The thing is, as the OP’s link pointed out, the majority of the religious folks THEMSELVES in this case were in favor of allowing SSM blessings, but they got undemocratically smacked down by the upper levels of the church hierarchy:
However, as I already noted, a sizable majority of this particular Christian church is in favor of it. It is rather understandable that they’re pissed off at the closed-minded unresponsiveness of the higher-ups.
[In preview: And yeah, what matt said.]
So, are you saying that infertile people shouldn’t get married (since there would be no future generation to get married for)?
Right. Try filing your taxes as ‘Civil Unioned’.
“I don’t see why those uppity negroes are screaming for integrated schools when ‘separate but equal’ colored schools are a sufficient replacement.”
Why, your Holiness, I’m glad you’ve finally decided to out yourself on the Dope. With your expertise about Vatican affairs, I’m sure you can clear up a lot of discussions about what the Catholic Church really believes. :rolleyes:
Of course, with me being an Anglican, even if you were Benedict XVI, I’d still tell you: Don’t EVER fucking presume to speak for all of Christianity – especially when better than a dozen Christian Dopers have gone on record as supporting same-sex marriages!
And yes, we too believe it’s a sacrament given by God, not a casual thing. And we think that couples don’t have to be one from column A and one from column B to feel lifelong love and commitment for each other. And that includes adopting or, rarely, begetting/bearing children as a part of creating a family, just like everyone else.
I trust I make myself clear? :mad:
Well, that’s an ugly little tautology you’ve got there. I think we can safely assume that everyone “believes what they believe because they believe it to be true.” The racist believes blacks are inferior to whites, because he believes that to be true. The pacifist believes it is never okay to harm another person, because he believes that to be true. In both cases, what those people believe, tells us about what sort of person they are. And so, too, does your beliefs about how God thinks homosexuals should be treated, tell us something about you. It’s got nothing to do with how deeply or tightly you hold that belief. It’s about what sort of person would look at the world, and come to that particular conclusion.
Those Anglican Bishops sure need to learn a thing or two about Christianity… :mad:
I’m more and more proud of the United Church. The other week here in Toronto, they had “Doors Open”, and the church that hubby and I were married in was open to visit - we had some friends from Europe visiting, so we brought them to the church to show them where we had had our wedding 3 years ago.
It was such a kick talking with all the elderly volunteers about our marriage, and feeling totally welcomed. The United Church is truly a Christian place.