That’s a pretty interesting point. In Exodus, or perhaps Leviticus, the proper composition of government is described; I believe only men were allowed to help choose leadership. When you see women helping choose our leadership, does it hurt your (to paraphrase you) “need to continue seeing what [you] consider a Christian (or whatever religion to others) sacrament of [government] as established by God’s vision continue to reflect God’s vision”?
Or do you accept that others might relate to the government in a way inconsistent with your own religion, and consider that to be an all right situation in a pluralistic society?
But our modern concept is fairly new. God clearly approved of polygamous marriages in David and Solomon’s time. (Isaac also.) The Greek gods engaged in homosexual sex. Zeus was definitely bi. Aristotle was of the opinion that true love was between men, marriage to a woman was necessary but not as deep. So, if God did bless marriage before Christianity, he didn’t seem to tell anyone about it.
Why let religions marry anyone while having the government enforce the view of only one religion? Islamic states, Egypt for example, allow polygamy. Why shouldn’t the government allow it? Why ban it just because Christianity does? (I happen to think there are good secular arguments against it, I’m just talking religion here.)
So, if we have a secular government, we should have secular marriage laws. SSM should be banned only if their are good secular arguments against it. As in the Prop 8 case, opponents have had a remarkably difficult time coming up with any.
Good. So how about this. Since historically civil unions have been seen as inferior to marriage, why not call government sanctioned unions marriage and let religions have “religious unions” which are important only in eyes of a church and its members. If a church wants to sanction polygamy or the fundamentalist bugaboo of dog marriage, fine with me, so long as all civil laws are respected.
I worked for a company which had a required class on dealing with conflicts like this. You can compromise, you can agree to disagree, all fine. But none of that involves denying someone the right to do something they want to do - so long as that action does not hurt you or others. You are basically saying that people should give up some of their rights to stop infringing on one of your values, even though they are not directly hurting you. 50 years ago segregation was a value many southerners held dear. Were civil rights movements wrong because they infringed on those values? And remember, southerners were forced to mix with, and have their children, mix with people they didn’t want to. I can’t imagine that the gay couple across the street being in a marriage versus a civil union would have the slightest impact on you.
When I lived in NJ there was a nice lesbian couple across the street, in a long term relationship. Next door there was a woman on her third husband. I far preferred the lesbians as a role model for my kids.
Cite? The punishments are certainly different.
Yes you are - or for marriage which is indistinguishable from Christian marriage.
Whatever the specifics of your belief, you base your opinions on marriage coming from God. If so, you need to demonstrate that God exists. Otherwise those of us with no God belief should not be bound by your opinion. You might as well say that only marriages which are astrologically promising be allowed, without demonstrating that astrology works. And you must also demonstrate that God really does disapprove of homosexuality, and that the Biblical passages about it are not just as bogus as the creation story.
You are welcome to your opinion. You are free to never be involved in an SSM marriage - either as participant or guest. But you shouldn’t use your undemonstrated beliefs to stomp on the rights of others when your rights are not being affected.
Oh, please; you aren’t going with the “anything God does is right by definition” routine are you? It is not “irrational” to call God a bigot if he holds bigoted positions. If God hated black people, would that suddenly make hating black people not a bigoted position?
And if your god does something evil, it’s still evil. Calling a god evil is not some logical contradiction like you are trying to imply.
I can do without the skulls and strangling cords and everything, but, ooh, those arms!
I withdraw my objections; you’re okay in my book!
I only late in life learned about the English Civil War; it’s something I think most Americans have no idea about whatsoever, and this is a shame, as it compresses a great many moral lessons – moral, religious, and legal – into a relatively short period of time. (Also a lot of very useful military lessons.)
Another intriguing period in history that almost no one knows about is Burma, in 1963, when, for a brief time, Buddhist Fundamentalists came to power, and passed laws based on strict Buddhist theology. One of their laws was to ban the use of insecticide – since all life is sacred. This led to the loss of much of their food supply, and especially seed grain for planting. They also banned dealing in dead animal parts – which hit the Muslim minority very hard, as they had been traditionally involved in leather-working.
(And…yeah…state mandated atheism also sucks!)
Anyway…thank you for your clarifications. (One of the noblest sentiments in the Bible is “The soft answer turneth away wrath.”)
Well…why not? As far as the law is concerned, terminology is very important. Murder vs. manslaughter vs. homicide. In common, everyday, water-cooler-at-work language, they all mean much the same, but in legal terms, they are very distinct.
Of course, that’s part of the problem. If Jackson and Joseph were only in a “civil union,” there isn’t anything to keep them from saying, “We’re married.” If enough people use the term, then it ceases to have the functional distinction.
(In fact, I know several gay couples who say “We’re married” when they aren’t. I’ve never seen any point in correcting them. It wouldn’t change anything.)
Looking at Torn’s quotes, he seems to be of a varying mind on the issue. I’d like a simple clarification:
Torn: if your home state holds a vote of some kind to make gay marriage illegal, how would you vote? If it has already, did you vote and how? This represents, I gather, the way an ordinary citizen gets to take action on the legal issue.
I’ve seen this sentiment expressed in quite a few of the SSM threads. It’s always phrased as if it’s the most ridiculous position in the world to want to preserve the meaning of a word. Of course, it’s not just a word. The word expresses an idea. One, in this case, that some people, myself included, is worth protecting. To pooh=pooh this as just protecting a word misses the point. Words matter, to the extent that they communicate concepts. Are there any words you might think worthy of preserving? How about if we didn’t have a word for love, or hate, or rape, or gluttony, kindness, snow, chair, skateboard, avocado…? Words help us communicate certain concepts. One concept that has been fundamental to our society id the notion that a man and woman come together and form a union, and that that union is the ideal place in which to raise children. The word for that has been “marriage”. It works. It’s useful. And until recently, it was crystal clear what the word meant. Now, people want to change the definition to include concepts that the original concept disallows as a possibility. Those of us who think that a concept that has been so intrinsic, so fundamental, to our society deserves to have a word to describe it, find the expansion of the meaning of the word as unhelpful, nonsensical, even dangerous.
This, to any fair opponent of the position, does NOT equate to hate or even to wanting to deny SS couples of those same legal protections and benefits that OS couples enjoy. Speaking for myself, I actively desire that SS couples enjoy all those benefits and privileges. (I think that everyone should be spending all their energies seeking full and equal benefits via civil unions.) At the same time, I firmly believe that it benefits our society to not muddle the definition of “marriage”. That it serves a valuable function, particularly for laying the world out for children. I think it behooves us to communicate to future generations that there is a, if you will, a default course for their lives. There is a period in child development that involves sexual development. If I recall correctly from one of my college Psych course, something like 7 out of 10 children engage in sexual playing with those of the same sex. This doesn’t necessarily mean orgasm-oriented sexual play, some kids would be too young for that even. It’s a fairly normal thing. But it helps kids to look at the world and see their are guardrails of sorts. Taking that away does not serve them well.
So, yes, if you would like look at my position askew and phrase it it in as demeaning way as you can, i.e., “That’s what you want to cling to, a word?”, then yes. Of course, that doesn’t capture the position fully—kinda like referring to Superman as some guy in blue tights—but I understand that you want to present the position in as disparagingly a light as possible. It’s not helpful, but I doubt anyone really cares about that.
By the way, everysingleoneoftheseisachair. Yet somehow we can still identify this as a chair. All those other chairs do nothing to undermine that one’s essential chairness. It is still in every way a chair, regardless of how inventive and derivative the others get.
Your argument makes zero sense. It always has and it always will.
Yeah, I don’t really see how “I’m totally fine with gays getting civil unions, which I acknowledge is just a cheap knockoff of marriage, so long as we maintain the word “marriage” so that it’s clear to everyone that what gays do is inferior and kids don’t get any funny ideas, because applying that word to gay couples would irreparably and dramatically harm the fabric of society” is any less homophobic than any number of the more overt arguments.
And if every homosexual person in the world suddenly evaporated, that meaning of the word would already have changed, significantly, years ago.
People have been marrying with no intention of begetting or raising children for a very long time–increasingly so since the advent of chemical contraceptives. People have recognized marriages among the elderly, who have no possibility of begetting or raising children, for many years. Similarly, the Free Love movement that originated in the late eighteenth century and ran through the 1950s saw marriage in terms of slavery or, alternatively, as the imposition of the state on personal matters that should preclude state intervention. Even your use of the phrase “a man and a woman” is an arbitrarily imposed aspect of the definition given the large number of societies that recognize polygyny, (and the much smaller number that recognize polyandry).
Chemical contraceptives are over 50 years old and IVF and similar processes are over 30 years old. So, for at least a generation, there has no longer been a direct connection between marriage and procreation and child rearing. I will agree that SSM is a change, but it is not a change that is imposed. Rather, it is the natural recognition of an already changed aspect of society.
This is why your effort to propose a civil union in place of simply identifying same sex unions as marriage fails. If, indeed, the participants of such civil unions are going to have all the rights, privileges, and obligations of a heterosexual marrige, they are, indeed, married. Such couples can beget and rear children, (with the aid of surrogate sperm or egg donors–just as some heterosexual couples do), or they may use adoption as a method to bring children into the relationship, (just as some heterosexual couples do), or they may choose to remain childless, (just as some heterosexual couples do). If, under your proposed law, they are not recognized as being distinguishable from a heterosexual couple and they are behaving in an identical manner to a heterosexual couple–toward each other and toward any children included in their home–then you are insisting on a distinction without a difference.
The word marriage is going to undergo the change to which you object regardless of any recognition in U.S. law. It has already undergone that change in Canada, as well as portions of Mexico and the United States. Such usage will continue to expand into more of the language. (Canada and South Africa, with large English speaking populations, already use the term in law. The United Kingdom, where the law employed used the term “Civil Union,” already sees many people referring informally to those unions as marriages. Australia, which has not begun authorizing same sex marriage, has several states that have declared that they will recognize same sex marriages contracted outside their jurisdictions.) The use of the word marriage to indicate same sex couples has already entered the English language and objecting to laws that recognize that existing and ongoing change in the language will not stop the actual change from occurring.
So you can condone civil unions and same sex partners in long term relationships wih legal rights like marriage, but not the use of the word marriage?
You accept that at least some homosexuals are born that way, but it’s still a sin.
It certainly presents a conundrum.
Personally I think if there’s truly any holy in matrimony it exists only in the hearts of the two people making that commitment, not in ther word itself. If you can sit back and tolerate civl unions and allow God to judge , why not use of the word.
Is it a sin for a married couple to have an open marriage and sleep with other people? How about wife swapping or orgies? Are they married?
Thanks for the NT verses. Is it possible to accept that the NT was written by men in a different time and culture and didn’t get everything right? It seems to me that Chrisianity explains away and ignores certain verses equally plain spoken.
Women covering their heads, having long hair, speaking in church. Christian history is full of changing beliefs.
bigotry, in it’s mildest most soft spoken, seemingly reasonable form, is still bigotry.
Homophobe? Maybe maybe not. Christian indoctrination in this country , teaching that homosexuals are sick perverts , is what drove homosexuals into hiding who they are, and tore so many families apart.
We will always get back to the why? In this case it appears to be verses in the Bible. So, the law of the nation for a diverse people should reflect one groups personal interpretation of thier holy book?
If your why is , “that’s just how I feel about it” it’s still bigotry.
I see your point, but still disagree. If they happen to be correct, and God does deplore homosexuality as a sin, does that make God a bigot? In your estimation, perhaps, but by some definitions of “bigot” above, it might make you the bigot (unwilling to change your attitude). (Not that I think this is in the least bit likely, since I don’t believe in God.) But in my mind there’s a huge difference between what I’d call “bigotry” where people feel hatred or superiority for a group, versus empathetic disagreement with certain behaviors. Note that I don’t even think there’s a good Biblical argument for their position, but I draw a distinction and feel the word “bigot” is abused when applied to people who are doing their gosh-darndest to do the right thing. (It’s a shame that they’re mislead by their priests and ministers, since IMHO the anti-homosexuality bias in Christianity is based on culture rather than good theology.)
Yeah, there’s a huge difference. The former is deplorable, but constitutional. The latter is unconstitutional. I’d rather see bad behavior on the part of individuals and corporations than on the part of the government.
I’d go further to say that if you’re unwilling to look at the causes of unacceptance and show a little empathy, and would rather just label those who oppose you bigots, then you’re a bigot yourself.
Good for you. However, why can’t you accept that “marriage” has two aspects: a legal one and (for you) a religious one? Why should your religious views on marriage be imposed on those who don’t share your religion? Isn’t that unconstitutional? Why does changing the name make a difference?
From a practical standpoint, having two names, “civil union” and “marriage”, where the two are legally identical (in ALL jurisdictions, including reciprocity among states, etc), is an easier pill for a lot of the country to swallow, and it’s mostly based on tradition.
But from the standpoint of legal theory, if two things are legally the same, why give them different names in the law? That makes no sense.
Doing so turns him into the victim, and turns the debate into one about who is a bigot. Instead of talking about why he’s wrong, it’s now about how he’s been treated unfairly. It’s how conservatives deflect the issue over and over - it’s the liberal media! or intolerant liberals!
He’s wrong. Let’s focus on that. Don’t let him off the hook.
This is a bigoted statement. What you’re saying here is “If your religion disagrees with anything anyone else thinks is OK, you’re a bigot.”
Please examine your views carefully and realize that differences in opinion, difference in religious views, and different values are not bigotry. If we use the word that way, it loses a lot of its usefulness as a word.
But what’s worse, by using the word, we anathematise those who disagree with us. That’s not a healthy or useful place from where to start any kind of discussion that might improve things.
So, eating shellfish is still a sin, only the consequences are different? Witches are to be burnt? For a woman to go into church uncovered, or to cook for men during her period, is a sin, but only the consequences are different?
I suppose we shouldn’t go into theology here. But the concept that the New Testament doesn’t change the rules, only the outcomes, can’t be reconciled with Christian mores, behavior, or theology.
More on point of this discussion: I don’t think it serves us well to call people like you bigots, just because your theology disagrees with our views. But I do think you should carefully consider the semantic issue, and take the burden on yourself to deal with the division of church and state, rather than having your distinction between marriage and civil unions enshrined in law, and forcing the problem onto others.
It’s your religion, please take responsibility for it.
That’s absurd. Just because bigotry is based in religious views does not suddenly make it non-bigoted. That Klan based(s) their bigotry on religion, too. The idea that it’s just “differences in opinion, difference in religious views, and different values” is a dodge of the first order, and it’s transparently so.
Between “gays don’t deserve full civil rights” and “blacks don’t deserve full civil rights” and “Jews don’t deserve full civil rights”, the idea that any of them become okay because religious bigots have a “difference in opinion” as to whether or not people deserve full civil rights and a “different values” as to whether or not oppressing people is okay. Your religion is not a get out of jail free card.
You have some extra straw you’re trying to get rid of or something?
This isn’t an instance of “disagreeing with anything anyone else thinks is OK”, this is an issue of denying civil rights to a group.
