Magellan, do you think women should be allowed to speak in church?
You still haven’t told us where you are getting your definitions.
I have noticed that you tend to put forth your personal opinions as if they were proven facts, but you have yet to back up these “facts”.
Here’s an article from Fred Clark which discusses some of the various methodologies that are used to selectively ignore passages from the OT.
I don’t want to quote the whole thing, but it covers three main methodologies that people seem to use to justify their opposition to homosexuality, and he rebuts them. Here’s one of the rebuttals.
There’s more good stuff in the article.
Do you have a cite for this? Or more detail, at any rate?
Sorry, what? The definition of the English word ‘sex’* is a universal constant?
*That is, the thing you saw fit to correct us all about on the last page.
I suspect you have your own personal Jesus who is no more, or less, valid than his.
Well, they’re not. If there were no difference we wouldn’t refer to one group as straight and one group as gay, now would we?
Just as magellan01 has declared his point on several previous occasions, I have noted the flaw of that point nearly as often–a flaw that astorian’s observation does nothing to override.
References to previous societies that never even considered Same Sex Marriage ignore a significant point: the world has changed.
Marriage has definitely been tied to procreation throughout history: responsibility for children, provisions for inheritance, identification of family/clan bonds, and a number of other issues.
However, just as family/clan importance has been dwindling in Western society for several hundred years, significant factors that bonded marriage to procreation have changed.
Specifically, the necessary tie between sex, marriage, and procreation has been utterly lost.
Chemical contraception, (“the Pill”), removed the direct connection between sex and inevitable procreation.
The development of IVF and similar therapies broke the last bond that limited procreation to actual sex.
Changing attitudes toward adoption have made it more acceptable for people to raise children whom they did not procreate, themselves.
At a time when any heterosexual union was liable to result in procreation and when no homosexual union could possibly result in procreation marriage was the device by which societies regulated the relationships that sexual activity initiated. (Marriage was never limited to only a method to regulate the results of procreation, of course. Even such a conservative institution as the Catholic Church has long acknowledged the unitive nature of marriage beyond the procreative nature.) Around this societal device, other roles and functions arose in conjunction with marriage that were not directly tied to procreation. With the immutable nature of procreation-only-through-sex irrevocably changed, the societal bond between procreation and marriage was no longer necessary. The other functions and roles of marriage within society, (focusing on many aspects of partnership), remain while the role of procreation, while hardly disappearing, is no longer a necessary aspect.
Pretty much simultaneously, recognition that homosexuality was not a deviant behavior, (neither criminal in intent nor disordered in psychology), opened the possibility of open discussion of homosexual relationships.
Sufficient numbers of homosexuals came out into the open that most of society could see and recognize that their lives were pretty much the same, on a day-to-day basis, as those of heterosexuals.
So, art the same time that heterosexual marriage stopped having a necessary relationship to procreation, science and changing attitudes toward adoption provided homosexual couples that ability to engage in child rearing.
With the lack of a necessary connection between marriage and procreation or child rearing, and with the availability of ways for homosexual couples to raise children as a couple, an idea that would not have occurred to Alexander makes sense, today, and the fact that he would not have understood the concept points only to the level of biological science in his day, not to any legitimate societal barrier to SSM.
I, for one, have very little desire to tell others what they should or should not believe when it comes to religious faith. I just won’t tolerate it when they want to use their religious faith to limit the rights extended to my by the law.
And as for the part about transubtantiation, there are plenty of Christians who are more than willing to tell other Christians the host doesn’t transubstantiate into anything, much less the Body of Christ.
They are called Protestants. 
And thus my argument is proved.
Know what else a good Christian shouldn’t do? Meddle in other people’s lives.
Everyone has an opinion, and now we know what yours is. As long as Christians don’t discriminate against others over issues that don’t concern them, they are free to hold whatever opinion they like.
News Flash!
People wrap their hateful opinions in Religion!
Imagine that!
How odd…it looks like the rest of that quote got left off somehow. Here is the full quote again:
[QUOTE=magellan01]
Well, they’re not. If there were no difference we wouldn’t refer to one group as straight and one group as gay, now would we?
[/QUOTE]
The statement that was made was that gays and straights “[are] both people, and you think one group of people isn’t equal to another group of people”. So when you reply “well, they’re not”, that seems pretty clear. The “rest of that quote” that you so helpfully provided is a non sequitur, since no one here has argued that gays and straights are identical, only that they deserve equal rights. There are a few participants here who for some reason feel that they don’t.
:dubious:
You appear to be making the mistake of conflating “equal” with “identical.” No one is saying that there is no difference, because that’s NOT what “equal” means.
Harrumph… so now they’re down to “can’t you see it’s bloody obvious what the meaning of the word is” ?
And furthermore it’s a matter of how reserving another distinct word to designate the same legal civil status implicitly creates a “separate-but-(allegedly)equal” situation that we already have determined is NOT the right way to organize things. If it walks like a marriage and quacks like a marriage and entails rights and duties like a marriage, it’s a marriage. IANAL but AFAIK there is no current legal contract where signing the exact same paper results in it being called one thing or the a whole other depending on the gender indentities of the signers.
First and foremost, i’d like us to recall that God created man and woman(not man nd man or woman nd woman)…
Secondly, if i’m not mistaken, it is clearly stated in the bible that a man and woman(again not man nd man or woman nd woman) shall leave their parents home nd come together to live as one…
Now, what i’m tryinq to point out is the simple, clear, nd obvious fact that the bible never for one mention ‘gay marriage’… Then why should we as xtians support that which was not commanded by God… Nd i’m sure that if God wanted gay marriage then the bible would av made that know to us…
Well, back in the bad old days, not only were “husband” and “wife” different words, but they had very different rights, despite both signing the same papers. For instance, if the wife died, the property they owned as a couple was assumed to belong to the husband, who did not pay inheritance tax. If the husband died, the property was assumed to have been owned by the husband, and the wife had to pay tax on the estate.
Thanks!