You know, in a few minutes, there are going to be a whole bunch of people in here challenging you on your biblical knowledge, and educating you, if you’re willing to learn, about the details of the religious document in question. I’m not going to get into that.
Here’s my question for you, mama2nate&anna. Why should your religious beliefs impede my ability to enter into a legal contract with the consensual adult with whom I choose to spend my life?
My boyfriend and I want to be together, to love each other, for our whole lives. It’s taken us forever to find each other, and we’re committed to being together. Our families are very supportive, and my mom in particular just loves my boyfriend, and is overwhelmingly glad that I’ve found someone so wonderful.
The biggest problems we have right now come from our inability to have our relationship’s legal status recognized. We’re planning on buying a house together. We’d like to adopt children someday. We’d like to make sure that we’ve taken care of each other in the event that something should happen to either of us. All of these legal issues are dealt with when a marriage license is granted by the state. We’re going to have to spend thousands of dollars, and hours and hours of time, trying to secure less effective legal protections.
Why would religion even enter into this issue? Why is it relevant to me, an agnostic, and my boyfriend, who was brought up in the Navajo tradition? What relevance does Christianity have to the purely legal aspect of assuring that we can take care of each other, and our potential adoptive offspring? How do you justify discriminatory laws based on purely religious tenets? Why does your moral code apply to me?
Don’t you see anything wrong with insisting that people who don’t ascribe to your religion follow your rules?
It’s great that you had the power of will to follow thru on that. Kudos for you and your boyfriend. But what if other people don’t follow your particular sect of Christianity or even Christianity itself? Why should they have to follow rules that aren’t part of their religion? Would it be right for us to write into secular law the morality of Buddhism, Shinto, Jainism, etc? If your answer to this question is no, then why does Christianity have the privilege of doing so?
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Sorry, I’m not Christian so the J/C/I God has no power over me. I don’t have to follow His rules any more than you have to follow the rules of Hinduism, Jainism, Shinto or any of the other myraid of religions out there.
Does Christianity consider homosexuality wrong? That’s a good question and there are plenty of good answers on both sides of that question. But that’s not the issue here. The real issue is whether or not Christianity has the privilege of encoding its morality into secular law, especially in a country which specificially prohibits such an action, such as the United States.
I started this thread looking for the specific damage or harm done by homosexual marriage to society. So far, nothing specific has been offered. You’ve said that homosexual marriage violates the sanctity of marriage, that if homosexuals marry, then people will be able to marry their cousins, their children and even their pets. Please explain precisely how that would occur? And please demonstrate to me that it’s a real danger, just not some imagined threat.
mama2, the main fault in your argument is that you are attempting to let your religious beliefs influence what you believe secular (i.e. federal/state/local/whatever) law should entail. Just as Freedom of speech goes against “Thou shalt not take the name of thy lord in vain”, this country and its laws do not automatically coincide with Christian Doctrine. As such, any biblical arguments raised in an attempt to have them serve some sort of point regarding secular law are misplaced however otherwise-properly they are constructed.
It would not matter, in short, if Christianity said that anyone who ever has a thought about any sort of romantic involvement with anyone of the same sex should be stoned, since Christianity (and Christian dogma/doctrine/law) does not dictate secular law.
Freyr and iampunha go a bridge too far in their statements regarding the First Amendment.
Morality is a perfectly legitimate basis for lawmaking, and indeed does in fact form the basis for many laws within the US. Religion and religious dogma informs and influences public conceptions of morality. It is therefore incorrect to say, as iampunha does, that religious beliefs cannot influence secular law. Nothing in the First Amendment prevents that from happening.
I was thinking about the title of the thread – “the Republic falls; how?” It got me wondering about Thomas Jefferson, puritans, and the separation of Church and State.
Wouldn’t the Republic (or the values of Jeffersonian Democracy embodied as the Republic) be more in danger of falling if gay marriage is not allowed. After all, it would be a violation of the spirit, if not the letter of your constitution, to impose one set of religious beliefs on the population, where there’s no indication that the public good is at stake.
When did puritan religious values become intrinsic to your government? When did the architects throw away the plans for the Republic, and started raising New Jerusalem in its stead?
But mainstream Christianity does it all the time. There are plenty of edicts and contradictions that are ignored all the time.
If the religion’s own followers get to pick and choose, why not everyone else? And what does that say about the belief that the entire document is the unerring word of the Lord, and not the erring beliefs of a group of mortals interpreting the word of the Lord, and having their words Babelfished over and over for hundreds of years?
Law is dispassionate while morality and religion are not.
To base a law on morals, which are a subjective concept based on the prejudices of the majority is not good law, nor is it something that can stand the test of time or impartiality.
While religious beliefs can, do, and have affected the creation and the application of law, that doesn’t make it right, correct, or necessary.
To take the tone of the opponents of homosexuality: just because you can do something, should you? Shouldn’t you refrain from using the government as a bully pulpit, enforcing your version of morality to try and recreate the world in the image of what you would like it to be, rather than what it actually is?
Nowhere in my post will you find a statement to that effect, and I wsa in fact very careful with the language I used. So if you are going to say I am incorrect, you might wish to reacquaint yourself with what I actually said:
I would be, quite frankly, speaking out of a rather smelly orifice if I said that religion cannot influence secular law. But I do not see the error in saying that religion does not dictate secular law.
I agree. It’s a good thing I didn’t say that, then, isn’t it?
Ah, but you refrained knowing that there would be a time when you could engage in them with God’s blessing.
If someone were to say to you, “You are a fornicator. The love you feel for your husband is condemned by God, who knows it’s nothing but your sinful lust. We need to outlaw all these sinful unions of man and woman – after all, the first couple were Adam and Eve, the first sinners! – and make sure that they don’t have any chance to influence children. In fact, take Nat and Anna away from her and put them in a decent home.” – why,. you’d be outraged. But that’s exactly what you are saying to these gay people.
I completely agree with you that good people should follow the teachings of God. Now, what did the Incarnate Word of God say were the two most important things you should do? What did he say about using the Scriptures to sit in judgment over the sins of others? How will He judge the deeds of men when He comes in His glory?
I suppose it would be nit-picking to point out that there are plenty of ways, depending on what you believe the Bible says, to engage in pre-marital sexual sin without once having penile-vaginal sexual intercourse…
The answer?
Didn’t the god smack somebody down for “withdrawing and spilling his seed upon the ground”? Or is that just another urban legend I picked up in catholic school.
And a lot of very devout people still respect the dietary laws.
This is the kind of statement that college sophomores think is really hip and deep but just doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. Morals are an inseparable part of law. Try walking down the street naked in broad daylight sometime if you’d like a lesson in this simple fact.
For that matter, consider laws against theft. They spring from a moral judgment that taking the possessions of others is wrong. Yes, it’s a moral judgment shared by virtually everyone outside of the criminal element, but it’s a moral judgment nonetheless.
Your points are immutably valid and others fall before your wisdom.
Morals should not be the yardstick, ethics should be.
But of course, I’m wrong, your knowledge is superior, and attempting to show you a different point of view is about as useful as trying to explain what it is to be poor to our President.
