Didn’t the Mormons overstep themselves as a tax-exempt religious group by using their influence to lobby for a political cause?
I love it how Bishop Weigand decries negative sentiment against the LDS church for behavior we find disgusting, but is A-OK for them to campaign to pass laws enshrining their bigotry against people they find disgusting. There’s nobody like the religious types for being vile hypocrites propagating double standards.
No. They can lobby for causes, but not for or against candidates.
Am I alone in thinking it reasonable that alterations to the constitution should be included in the same separation of church and state as applies to candidates?
What do you think of this?
ETA: I see there is a GD thread on this, but it’s still not clear to me why what they did is not in violation.
No, you’re not.
The city of Santa Cruz may be entering the legal fray against Prop 8. We hope to head to the gathering being held there tonight at 7pm.
I think that sounds like sour grapes. How much money actually came from the Church itself, as opposed to individual members of the Church? Still, I think the IRS rules are that a Church can use up to $1M of its own funds before it becomes “substantial”. That is the upper limit, and it can be a smaller amount for smaller Churches, but I’d guess that the LDS is large enough that the upper limit would apply.
I think it goes well beyond mere sour grapes all the way into righteous outrage.
52% achieved with out of state funds that allows you to outspend your opponent by what, 3:1, 5:1 constitues a groundswell???
Not on my home planet
I suspect that the churchs, all of them, know exactly where the lines are drawn by the law, what they can and can’t defend in court.
Yeek. It seems some gays activist are blaming African-American voters for this (although, as the blog entry points out, there are other facts besides race that affected a “yes” vote a LOT more). I hope these are only a few bad/angry actors and that this doesn’t cause any sort of rift between gays and African-Americans.
Gays are perfectly right to hold African American culture responsible. But don’t get excited. Gays are perfectly aware some of their own are black and a couple people feeling really angry and venting is hardly going to turn into a race war or Rodney King riots.
The first sentence has no bearing on the discussion. Just because we have a history that assumes marriage to be between a man and a woman, and there are other things in our past that we now view as wrong, doe not mean that all past thinking was wrong. I think you know this.
Your last sentence is plainly untrue. If you’d like to stand by it I’ll have to ask you for a cite.
Huh? You offer a cite bringing forth a tired, old argument, which I chose to ignore. You asked me to comment on it. I then did so, politely, even though I felt it insulting. And I shared that fact in the process. Yet you say…well, whatever that sentence is supposed to mean.:rolleyes:
I did comment on it. But again, just because one might work to reach a desirable outcome does not mean that one should institute draconian measures. Especially when the laws will be ineffective and cruel. Do you really want to keep a woman locked in a marriage that is abusive? One of the reasons I’m pro-choice on abortion is that the laws will not stop abortions. And in the process it places the state in a very undesirable position in having to stop a woman who they hear is going to get an abortion. And then that leads to stopping women who are causing their child harm because of what they eat and drink, for fear that they’d be doing it intentionally. For an easier example, look to prohibition.
Don’t be ridiculous. Anyone familiar with the term “sexual reproduction” can tell you making babies has something to do with men and women, not necessarily marriage. Anyone with the reading ability to grasp “sexual reproduction” could also tell you humans are tribal and form family groups. This might be a stretch for you, but evolution didn’t create homosexuality and spread the gene throughout humanity starting around 1960, or whenever you think it originated. I’m simply not going to provide you cite that gays create their own families. You’re being ludicrous.
I think that children benefit from growing up with clear guidelines in place, guard rails, if you will. I’ve had talks with my liberal friends here in SF, some of them gay. I ask them a question: while you will love your child equally whether they are gay or straight, would you prefer them to be straight or gay? Most agree that they would prefer they be straight. And this is not just because they will have an easier time in life, not being discriminated against, it is because that a straight person is able to enjoy a fuller human experience, maybe the most fundamental one: procreation.
Given that, it behooves society to have signals up to children, especially as they’re sexuality develops, that here is the usual road over here. There are other roads, as well, and you’re free to take them—and should—if you are so inclined. But understand that it is a deviation for the norm.
I don’t find the accidental alignment you mention personally troubling. If a group I find repulsive also likes The Shield or Entourage or Twizzlers, why should that effect me?
And again, and I think this is fundamental to our disagreement. I have a narrower view of what constitutes a protected “right” than you do.
Not quite. Here was your claim for which I requested a cite:
So feel free to provide a cite, particularly for the first part. If you cannot, we’ll just have to ignore it.
You’re arguing gay adoption, which I favor. I have no doubt, partially from first-hand experience, that a gay couple can offer a child a healthy, loving and nurturing environment. But even at its best, it will fall short of the ideal, which offers all those things plus that which a child gets from a mother and a father, the female and the male.