In an article about gay marrige on yahoo it said that Republican Representivehttp://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/newthread.php?do=newthread&f=7&subscription=0# said “God created Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve”. Republicans ant-gayness has always been associated with religion doesnt this seem like its going a bit far. I mean going all the way back to god for support. Now I am not an athiest yet I still would never use god as my back up on a political stance.
Which being would you prefer to enlist?
And AFAIK some gays would use a similar position of calling in God:‘God created us all equal’.
My preference? Human beings.
And some gays might use that position…it would be just as irrelevant to a legal debate.
I don’t know how one can reconcile religious beliefs with trying to be a politician in a secular society. You can feel it’s your moral duty to work for laws and a society that fits in with your religion, but this isn’t the first duty of a politician in a country without a state religion. Right-wing politicians as in the OP are trying to appeal to citizens who feel Christianity should be the basis for law.
I know I couldn’t do it. Even deciding whom to vote for becomes compromising in the light of my religious beliefs, and choosing the least evil of the candidates. Any choice offends some part of my moral view (usually sanctity of life issues) and sometimes it seems like the only choice is no choice at all.
It’s part of Western culture, which is heavily influenced by Judaism and Christianity. Like it or not, the United States is a Christian country. It may not have an established religion, but 82% of Americans identify themselves as Christian. The law is heavily influenced by the culture. Marriage is, by definition, a union between a man and a woman.
While I agree that the U.S. is demographically Christian, I disagree that marriage is, by definition, the union of a man and a woman. For instance, in a polygamous society, marriage may be the union of a man with many women. Or consider “The chef, with a deft touch, married chocolate and orange to create a flavorful but not overpowering souffle.” No people involved in that marriage whatever. Besides, definitions change over time - language evolves and are not carved in stone. We can, as a society, define marriage to be what we want, we aren’t limited by language or history. Now, as a society we may decide we like the one man one woman definition (I don’t, but “we” currently seem to). But ten years from now “we” might have a different opinion on the matter and change our minds. Which is what gets me about the “argument from the majority.” I wonder if people making that argument are going to be so quick to switch sides when (not if, when) “we” change our minds.
maybe we should change the definition of marriage! but that doesnt even matter because on dictionary.com this is their defintion of marriage “A union between two persons having the customary and the legal force of marriage” so maybe not everyone is looking at this through as stubborn eyes
Nitpick: roughly 80% of Americans identify themselves with a specific religion, while 76.5% consider themselves Christian.
Aside: That’s a ten point loss over the last decade, leading the National Opinion Research Center’s General Social Survey (2004), to conclude that “…the number of Protestants soon will slip below 50 percent of the nation’s population.”
Which IMO is neither a good thing nor a bad thing, but it does mean that people who argue for a particular legal stance based on Christian doctrine “because the US is majority Christian” are building their houses on sand.
Actually, I do kind of have a hankering to see the proportion of Christians in the US diminish, solely so that I can watch certain Christians suddenly jump on the strict-separationist bandwagon when local majority populations of different faiths try to use government to promote their religion. “Hey! You can’t put that Bismillah banner up on the courthouse lawn! That’s government entanglement with religion! This is a secular nation!” Sweeeeeeeeet. 
I can’t get your cite to come up, but just to make the record clear, the assertion, “If this trend continues, then by about the year 2042, non-Christians will outnumber the Christians in the U.S.” is not original either to Religioius Tolerance or NORC. It is from Diana Eck, A New Religious America: How a “Christian Country” Has Become the World’s Most Religiously Diverse Nation, 2001. She is a professor of comparative religion and Indian studies at Harvard. Another interesting tidbit from the book is that “We are surprised to find that there are more Muslim Americans than Episcopalians, more Muslims than members of the Presbyterian Church USA, and as many Muslims as there are Jews — that is, about six million.” She declares that America has always been religiously diverse, but that the explosion in the second half of the 20th century is directly linkable to Lyndon Johnson’s Immigration Act of 1965, which she says is directly tied to the Civil Rights Act.
The site quotes her, actually. They don’t claim it as their own, just for the record. I haven’t read the book, so thanks for the additional info.
I know it’s not polite, but heck, this is hilarious. Thanks for the belly laugh, I needed one. I agree with you also that this is neither a good nor a bad thing. Your point about sand is excellent indeed.
In making decisions, especially tough decisions, we all fall back on whatever moral/ethical code we’ve come to accept, whether that’s the J/C Bible, enlightened self-interest, the Great Bird of the Galaxy or the Invisible Pink Unicorn.
It then becomes a question of whether or not enacting legislation based upon an expressly religious code would violate the Establishment Clause. While many religions condemn homosexuality, others do not and some take no position on the subject at all. Republicians who say “Adam and Eve NOT Adam and Steve” seem to think that Christianity is the only religion worth considering. Even then, they’re acting with deliberate blindness since the question of homosexuality being good or bad in the eyes of the Christian god is still hotly debated. The matter is hardly settled.
So, I think any politician who give the “Adam and Eve NOT Adam and Steve” quote is really saying: I think homosexuality is icky but I can’t think of a good reason to justify it, so I’ll give this cute sound-bite instead!
It is important to note that God created Adam and Eve, not adam and eve.
It’s even more important to note that this “God created Adam and Eve” is pure mythology and has no basis in reality.
Cite for this?? FTR, I BELIEVE this to be true too…but I don’t know it for a fact. Do you?
-XT
Just once I’d like to see a vocal, obnoxious, Madalyn Murray O’Hare type atheist get elected to Congress to counterract crap like this.
Could you expand on what you mean by ‘crap like this’? Are you talking about the OP or about a specific post in the thread?
-XT
Further nitpick: Most modern American “Christians” would have been regarded as heretics by earlier generations of Christians, Catholic and Protestant alike. From The Next American Nation, by Michael Lind (New York: Free Press Paperbacks, 1996), pp. 278-279:
It’s also an ice cream country; 94% of Americans eat ice cream!! By definition, ice cream needs to contain greater than 10% milkfat. And remember, God created Ben and Jerry as well as Adam and Eve.
But perhaps more on point, why are you in favor of the Government fobidding Epicsopalians and Unitarians from marrying couples of the same sex? Do you oppose religious freedom?