Sorry, the government is involved, so this is not true.
If a church doesn’t want to host a ceremony for homosexuals, fine, I could care less.
The abrahamic religion shouldn’t dictate policy for US citizens. Red Lobster isn’t illegal and nor should homosexual marriage be illegal.
Ok if you don’t like to “play by the rules”. There is something called civil union, as far as I understand it is has the same legal status as a marriage.
problem solved. But if you chose to marry in a christian church then you have to play along with their rules. sounds fair to me
The OP presents a false equivalence. Marriage has nothing to do with criminal activity, so criminal activity doesn’t impact upon it. Marriage on the other hand, has traditionally been a socio-religious ceremony intended to merge a man and a woman into a cohesive relationship, primarily with the idea in mind of providing future parental support and guidance for children. Thus provisions have not traditionally been made for same sex relationships, and some people, holding to that tradition, maintain the belief expressed in the OP where marriage is “not for gay people”.
Or, to put it more simply, the issue of crime vs. homosexuality when it comes to marriage is apples and oranges.
**Explain to me why marriage is OK for murders and child molesters but not for gay people **
Because murderers and child molesters deserve it.
Also, nothing has stopped gay people from getting married. You just can’t legally marry someone of the same sex.
And for anybody that worries about the sanctity of marriage, take a look at all the married people you know, and Brittany Spears, and Charlie Sheen, and the list could go on a long way. Where is the sanctity?
No it’s not. It’s intrinsically a social institution. In communities with highly religious insititutions, marriage tends to be religious; in highly secular communities, it tends not to be. True, human history is overwhelmingly religious, but that correlation is still there. (FTR, I think the confusion about whether marriage is originally religious is because in most civilizations religion and government have been intimately intertwined).
My wife and I were married in an almost completely secular ceremony (my father-in-law read a lovely and not particularly religious passage from Ecclesiastes), and our marriage is among the most important things in our lives. It didn’t need the state, and it didn’t need God, to make it important. It needed our friends and our family. It needed the people we love.
I’m on the record as saying I prefer no governmental marriage. But if I believed for a second that this would deny meaningful marriage to atheists gay or straight I’d back off of that belief.
Except that it doesn’t have anything close to the same legal status, which is the point of it; it’s a ghetto. It’s just a modern version of segregation, an attempt to write bigotry into law.
I didn’t say it always worked; I merely said that was its purpose.
Separate but equal?
I don’t think so. Also, and I could be wrong, but I thought that civil unions were also in dispute.
I see no reason to care if homosexuals get married. Their marriages will not effect mine and they are consenting adults.
As to getting married in a christian church - the christian church can be bigoted for all I care. They could say that they will not marry two people of different races. I don’t care what a church does, I care what the government does/allows.
Also, wasn’t marriage traditionally about ownership rights? As in, the man has paid for his wife with a dowry. We shouldn’t covet our neighbor’s house, pets, wife, and other property…
Your understanding is incorrect. In no state in the country are civil unions completely equal to marriage. Many states have explicitly banned civil unions - Texas is one, I believe Florida is another. On a federal level, there is no recognition of civil unions, so none of the federal rights and priviledges that attach to marriage apply to civil unions.
Yes, well, my purpose in burrying Euro bills in my planters is to make them grow into money trees, but it doesn’t always work either.
And those Christian churches that don’t have a problem with it? Is the state going to enforce a Christian orthodoxy?
CMC fnord!
I guess they don’t count. It’s apparently OK to write religion into law, as long as it’s right wing religion.
Because most states do not allow it yet. I assume you must know this.
Not that I’m aware of. I know that in ancient Rome in pagan times a man had total power over his wife (and children) up to and including the power to kill her, so it might reasonably be said that the wife was the husband’s property. After Christianity became the dominant religion that power was abolished and women’s rights were established for the first time. If you have evidence that the law treated women as “property” more recently, I’d like to see it.
I think you mean bride price. Dowryis something else.
Canada’s had gay marriage for over six years now.
Are Americans a bunch of chickens? bwock-bwock-bwock!
Yeah all you find in trailer parks and ghettos are gay couples wanting to adopt.
:rolleyes: You know what I mean, considering that it’s the entire point of this thread. What justification do they have besides bigotry? None.
Jesus, what part of that isn’t religious? 