Generally speaking, each state has a list of persons authorized to “solemnize” marriages. This can include but is not limited to clergy, mayors, justices of the peace, judges, magistrates, etc. It is not the ceremony that legally solemnizes the marriage. It is the signatures of the parties and witnesses on the documentation and the filing of that paperwork with the appropriate governmental office.
(please don’t pipe up with exceptions or localized oddities in the rules…I’m speaking in generalities here)
While I understand it is symbolically important for people of various faiths to participate in religious ceremonies to have their diety join them in the “bonds of matrimony,” it is not necessary for legal purposes to have any ceremony beyond the signing of the papers. Every religious or non-religious non-governmental body has the absolute right to refuse to perform a ceremony or for its leader to sign the papers, but no religious or non-religious body ought to have the power to prevent consenting adults of the same sex from joining into a legal civil marriage.
There are two separate issues here:
People of the same sex having sex.
People of the same sex getting married.
You are trying to imply hypocrisy because he opposes the second while preaching tolerance for the first. There is nothing hypocritical about this, and if you insist that everyone must accept all pro-gay positions or none at all, you will find yourself with many fewer supporters.
Why would people who work on SUnday be killed?
Jodi:
Not that I don’t agree with your position on homosexuality, but can’t that argument be used to justify adultery?
I cannot help but wonder if President Bush will uphold the “sanctity” of legal marriage by outlawing divorce, or at least outlawing remarraige. For did not Jesus say that two people joined before God can never be seperated, and those who divorced their spouses and remarried were adulterous?
I, personally, consider marraige to be a sacrament, with all that implies. However, lagal marraige does not count, for straights or gays. It is a contract for the state. If Joe Blow Homosexual wants to join in a legal marriage/union/whater with his boyfriend, then he should be allowed to. While Bush was unusually clever in trodding the line between showing tolerance of homosexuality and condemnation of it, the idea that he is wasting tax dollars on finding a way to keep my friend Steve from being able to see his love at the hospital is irritating, to say the least.
I don’t get modern Catholicism. You no longer even have to believe in Jesus to be saved, yet if you give two gay people civil benefits, you burn in hell?
I may have been a little harsh in stating categorically that your books were “wrong.” They do accurately reflect how translators have traditionally rendered that word but the exact meaning is simply unknown.
I’m not sure exactly what kind of books you’re asking for. Are you asking specifically for something similar to Strong which would contain a more thorough discussion of the word in question? I’m not aware of one.
Many of the books and articles which discuss this subject tend to come from pro-gay groups or liberal Christian scholars. Would you consider those sources biased?
Are you asking for a general “cite” for my claims. I can post a couple of links like [urlhttp://www.youdebate.com/cgi-bin/scarecrow/topic.cgi?forum=18&topic=789]this one or [url=http://www.sexuality.org/l/religion/bible2.html]this[/url one which provide further discussion, but I don’t know how biased you would consider them to be.
My own knowledge of this is largely derived from an academic background in Biblical and classical studies and my conclusions represent an educated guess rather than a factual assertion.
The honest truth about the word [symbol]arsenokoitai[/symbol] is that it seems to have been coined by Paul and nobody really knows what it means. A straight reading of “homosexual” would be anchronistic and highly unlikely.That doesn’t mean that many conservative scholars don’t read it that way. One conservative theory is that Paul coined the word from the passage in Leviticus 20:13 which seems to suggest the active partner in homosexual intercourse (the “top” if you will). I think there may be something to that in a social context of boy prostitutes and sex slaves. I don’t think it was a blanket condemnation of all homosexual behaviour. That is only IMO, but that’s the point. All we have is opinions on this word, we don’t have knowledge.
In short, while it cannot be said with absolute certainty that Paul was not condemning all homosexuals, it is far from a slam dunk that he was.
"More homophobia from Bush: gay people are “sinners.”
Like it or not, the Bible condemns homosexuality as a sin, just as it condemns murder and adultery. No amount of revisionism or reinterpretation in the name of making things politically correct will change that. It doesn’t list homosexuality as being in any degree less or more grievous a sin than any other, but it very much does label homosexuality as a sin.
Therefore it is NOT homophobic for a Christian believer to adhere to the doctrine that homosexuality is a sin. It is entirely possible to hate the sin without hating the sinner. A Christian who rejects homosexuality as a sin but acknowledges that all people are sinners regardless of sexual orientation, and behaves accordingly, is a far cry from a person who rejects homosexuals and calls them fags, spits on them, harbors the notion that homosexuals are filthy untouchables, and sometimes even goes so far as to judge gays and threaten their very lives. The latter is the homophobe, but the former is merely a religious adherent.
If you’re going to suggest that believing homosexuality is a sin unequivocally means that someone is a homophobe, you might as well draw similar conclusions about people who believe adultery is a sin or that murder is.
And before anyone jumps to this erroneous assumption, I am not a Christian and have absolutely no moral stances against homosexuality.
Yes, anybody who thinks that homosexuality is a sin is a homophobe just like anybody who thinks interracial marriage is a sin is a racist. It is an ignorant and backwards thing to believe. I don’t care how they justify it. Hiding behind the bible doesn’t excuse it. The Bible contains a lot of passages which reflect archaic and and unenlightened cultural attitudes.
If Shrub had said that women should submit to their husbands, be silent in church and have no authority over men would it be out of line to call him a sexist? He would only be quoting the Bible.
Any tool can cite the Bible to support a stupid viewpoint. It doesn’t mean he’s not a tool.
Uh, did you not read the news yesterday? Like when a prominent Roman Catholic suggested that Canadian leaders were impeirling their immortal souls if they let gay marriage stand? Or how the Pope called gay love “evil” and said that gay adoption does violence to children?
Andrew Sullivan pointed out something interesting: when the SC ruled against state laws that banned racially mixed marriages, the U.S. populace was substantially more against those marriages being legal (72%) then they currently are against gay unions (50-60% overall, and only a minority in those states seriously considering it).
Eusebias, the Bishop of Caesarea 313 AD, said “Moses prohibited adultery, [symbol]arsenokoitai[/symbol], and indulgence in pleasures against nature.” Since “pleasures against nature” most likely refers to homosexuality it is assumed that [symbol]arsenokoitai[/symbol] were male prostitutes who serviced women.
It is telling that there were several popular and widely spread words at the time used to refer to men who had sex with men yet Paul does not use any of them. Also, other writers at the time, and shortly later, who spoke out against homosexuality used different words. Eusabias’ quote is the only other place I’ve seen the word.
For a very good breakdown on this issue, check out “Christianity, Social Tolerance and Homosexuality” by John Boswell.
“Yes, anybody who thinks that homosexuality is a sin is a homophobe just like anybody who thinks interracial marriage is a sin is a racist. It is an ignorant and backwards thing to believe. I don’t care how they justify it. Hiding behind the bible doesn’t excuse it. The Bible contains a lot of passages which reflect archaic and and unenlightened cultural attitudes.”
Sorry, but that is just not true. Believing that homosexuality is a sin is not the same thing as believing that a homosexual man or woman is evil and somehow less human than heterosexuals. You want to considre it ignorant and backwards? That’s your business. But it is a doctrine of a religion that many people adhere to, and that fact alone does NOT make people homophobes. It’s the same thing with interracial marriages–a person very well can believe that people were not meant to marry outside their race without being racist. Believing that a certain behavior is immoral is <b>not</b> the same thing as hating people who engage in that behavior.
If Shrub had said that women should submit to their husbands, be silent in church and have no authority over men would it be out of line to call him a sexist? He would only be quoting the Bible.
Would I call him sexist? NO, absolutely not. I would say that he’s following a tenet of his religion. Would I agree with him. Absolutely NOT, and if he tried to pass laws reflecting his belief I would fight him tooth and nail. However, I wouldn’t consider him to be sexist because of that one fact.
“Any tool can cite the Bible to support a stupid viewpoint. It doesn’t mean he’s not a tool.”
You’re looking at it from a skewed angle. This is not a case of people using the Bible to justifiy bigotry, this is people honestly believing, out of an earnest belief in the teachings of their religion, that homosexuality is a sin. It’s your own perogative if you think that this particular viewpoint is stupid. But to call them homophobes is off the mark.
re “hating the sin, loving the sinner”: I believe homophobia is a sin when action is taken against those who are, or are thought to be, gay. This includes legal action, exclusion from groups (such as the Scouts), violence, name-calling and the like. It doesn’t include feeling “icky” about gay sexuality, or even believing that homosexual sex is sinful. I feel a bit “icky” about straight sexuality, and have been known to say quite loudly in movie theaters during straight love scenes that it “makes me sick at my stomach to see straight people have sex.” One of my long-time friends feels icky about my relationship with my partner, or would if she gave it any thought, but she doesn’t – any more than I think about her relationship with her husband on the sexual level. I know that she’s been involved in a couple of adulterous affairs, and I think that’s sinful. Her husband’s nice guy, and would be terribly hurt if he knew. But it’s okay with me that the idea of having sex with a woman turns her off, as long as she agrees I have the right to differ, which she does.
Anyway, I think it’s entirely possible and desirable to “love” people who are homophobic, if they are civilized about it. My part of the country is full of people who aren’t terribly happy about racial integration, but they keep their mouths shut in public and behave like civilized people, and that’s all we can expect.
Some fundamentalist churches refuse to hold marriage ceremonies for hetero couples who have lived together (happened to a co-worker). Seems to me this is worse than opposing gay marriages.
I’d realy like to hear your explaination of how that is possible.
So? If I quote the writings of David Duke to tell black people to go back to Africa, I’m no longer racist? The Bible contains plenty of sexist ideas. It contains, arguably, some homophobic ideas. You either agree with those ideas or you don’t, but I don’t see how anyone could claim that thinking homosexuality is an abomination against nature is not homophobic, no matter where they got the idea or how passionately they believe it. Either this homophobia is justified or not, but it certainly is homophobia.
I could see it. A racist would think that blacks are inferior, whereas someone who thinks they shouldn’t marry outside their race for biblical-type reasons (not that I’m saying the Bible says that) could feel blacks are equal, but simply not marry-able because of the rules they choose to follow.
I agree there’s going to be a lot of overlap, but the two ideas are not completely bound.