Or Bryan Fischer’s of the AFA - one of my favorite entertainment-level explodees…
Fischer’s website, BTW is incredibly ripe pickings for the ongoing “Stupid Republican idea of the Day” thread, should anyone have the fortitude to wade through the mire to retrieve them… but I digress.
And for some real entertainment, wander over to the freeper’s site. Heads assploding all over the place there… 
Perhaps more importantly, a majority of Americans now approve of SSM. That wasn’t the case for interracial marriage until the early 1990s - although I’m not sure in that case how much of that was “disapprove of” versus “should be prevented by law”. Only about 20% of the public approved of interracial marriage in 1968.
Banning divorce entirely, wouldn’t 'force [anyone] to stay together." Separation is always a possibility, and has been for centuries. What used to be the case, back in the day, is that you would not have the right to remarry, as long as your first spouse was living. Hell, if remarriage was banned you could even shack up with anyone you liked, you just wouldn’t be able to call it a marriage. And of course you could continue living together with your spouse and banging your paramour on the side.
As for what that good that would accomplish, Chesterton points out in one of his essays that the whole reason we (used to) revere and honour marriage is precisely because it was permanent, and when you take away the permanence you also take away what gives (or gave) marriage much of its meaning.
Let’s consult the Anglican marriage service here:
“duly considering the causes for which Matrimony was ordained. First, It was ordained for the procreation of children, to be brought up in the fear and nurture of the Lord, and to the praise of his holy Name. Secondly, It was ordained for a remedy against sin, and to avoid fornication; that such persons as have not the gift of continency might marry, and keep themselves undefiled members of Christ’s body.
Thirdly, It was ordained for the mutual society, help, and comfort, that the one ought to have of the other, both in prosperity and adversity.”
Let’s also look at what the Catholic Church has to say on the matter.
Yup, openness to children is a requirement for a valid Catholic marriage.
Children (specifically, the assurance of paternity and the delegation of responsibility for parenting) is the primary reason that marriage exists, in European Christian cultures. Not ‘love’. Why is it my business if a particular couple loves each other or not, and why am I supposed to care?
Wait, this was a liberal idea? The point of two-income households was not “give women freedom”, it was “make more money”. Because the cost of living was going up. You seem to be drastically missing the point.
Married women were never considered ‘property’ in Christian civilizations. They didn’t have the same rights as their husbands, but neither did children, and certainly no one would describe children as property.
It’s true that marriage has shifted, in the minds of many, from having a distinct leader and a follower, a superior and a subordinate, to being a supposed ‘partnership of equals’. You’ll of course pardon me if I don’t view that as a good thing, and view it as part of the breakdown of authority in the liberal west.
Gay marriage is a result of the way that we (or many of us) have come to view marriage, and so it’s both inevitable and (in a sense) the fair thing to do. I don’t oppose it, as a legal matter. But don’t expect me to approve the modern construct called ‘marriage’ which has largely replaced the older idea.
LMAO! You are right on the money. Concerning SCOUTUS having declined to hear the appeals, one of them seriously stated : “Appeal it.”
Can you expand on what you’re saying here?
What court(s) do the other 11 fall under?
I get where you’re coming from, but I think you’re calling the game a bit early. It may be that this is done as an effective wedge issue but I doubt some of the more virulent homophobes will find it possible to resist using this to whip up fear among the GOP base. We will see if it ends up mattering or not. I doubt Cruz, Huckabee, etc are just going to shut up.
The “liberal” in this conversation, of course, being Ronald Reagan, who signed the nation’s first no-fault divorce law.
I’m sorry, but are you somehow under the impression that it used to be illegal for people to get married and not have children? Because I genuinely cannot figure out how this “conversation” fits into the larger narrative you’re trying to construct.
This is just hilariously middle class. Do you really think that households with two working parents are a new invention? For most of human history, it required the constant labor of both parents to keep a family fed, clothed, and housed. Granted, in a rural context, a lot of this labor was performed at home, but the culprit behind that change isn’t “liberals,” it’s the industrial revolution and increased urbanization.
Okay, this one I’ll give you. Liberals have, indeed, been more consistently in favor of the idea of social and legal equity between men and women, while conservatives, on the whole, have opposed this idea. I encourage you to repeat this particular complaint as often and as widely as you can, particularly before November 4th.
And that, of course, is not actually an argument used by SSM advocates. We do, on occasion, point out that what marriage means has changed a lot in this country, sometimes due to a liberal agenda, sometimes due to a conservative agenda, but most of the time due to fundamental shifts in the nature of modern society that are not directly related to attitudes towards marriage.
I do think it’s telling that, of the examples you have there that are to some extent based on reality, the liberals were right every time, and the conservatives were left defending the utterly indefensible. We were right about equality between men and women. We were right about striking down miscegenation laws. And we’re right about gay marriage. Folks like yourself and Hector here are nothing more than an object lesson for future historians.
Enjoy your dustbin.
Hector, you’re really ducking and weaving all over the shop here. You are conflating social, religious and legal aspects of marriage until what you end up with is a giant casserole of gibberish.
This is simply nonsense. The fact that people who were blatantly dishonoring their marriage vows by desertion and/or infidelity were still officially just as “married” as the most faithful and devoted couple was something that tarnished the social status of legal marriage, rather than enhancing it.
People still do honor the concept of permanence in marriage as long as it’s voluntary permanence, as you can tell from all the sympathetic admiration for elderly couples who boast of being happily married for five or six decades. But nobody thinks more highly of marriage just because a couple of mutually hate-filled long-separated adulterers ended up never getting divorced. Nor has there ever been a time when anyone did.
Irrelevant to the question of necessary contingency for legal marriage, which is what BPC was talking about.
Well, the Anglican and Catholic authorities that you quote with so much approval evidently think it’s your business, because they wrote explicit declarations of mutual love into the sacred marriage vows that a bridal couple is supposed to exchange in front of God and the congregation.
If it was really considered to be no business of society’s whether a particular couple loves each other or not, then the marriage vows would just be “I promise to be a good and loving parent to whatever children we may have and I promise not to let any dislike I may feel for you either now or in the future goad me to the point of actually murdering you.”
Boy, you live in the past. This changed in 1534! when Henry split from the Catholic church.
(Divorce in the Church of England was a pain in the ass until the 1920s sometime, but its been permitted for going on 500 years.)
The Church of England really didn’t recognize divorce until 2002. The CoE was one of the strictest Christian churches in regard to divorce. Divorce ultimately became legal in England under civil law, but the CoE didn’t recognize it.
Wrong.
The Church of England didn’t, officially, permit remarriage of divorced people with a living spouse until 2003. For a very long time it was the most anti-divorce of any major Protestant church. Though they would ‘bless’ remarried couples and the like. What changed in the 1920s (I think) was English civil marriage.
I’m baffled what you think Henry VIII has to do with divorce, but he got an annulment of his first marriage (on grounds of Levitical incest, though the Pope didn’t sign on to that), not a divorce. Remairraige remained a no-no in the C of E until (depending how you parse things) quite recently.
This is the middle ground I hope for on gay marriage.
This is a distinction without a difference.
They belong to the fourth, ninth, and tenth circuits. Colorado (4th) already became the 25th SSM state this morning. Nevada and Idaho (9th) had their bans on SSM struck down this afternoon, and are quasi-SSM now pending … what? Just procedural stuff I think.
So, by federal circuits:
That’s not really a middle ground - it’s pretty much precisely the goal of SSM advocates, who are seeking civil marriage rights, with no interest in forcing religious institutions to change.
Florida is in the Eleventh Circuit.
There’s also still chance for the First and Third Circuits to get involved - Puerto Rico falls within the purview of the First, and I know there’s currently a challenge going on there; the US Virgin Islands fall under the Third, although I don’t know if there’s a challenge currently active there. I think all the US Pacific island territories fall under the Ninth Circuit, but I could be wrong about that.
Wow. Just…wow. You know, within the realm of the possible, that’s actually a pretty classy* move on their part. It ain’t all that and a slice of bread, but it’s damn close.
*Yeah, I know. They fought tooth-and-nail against it for a long time, but I really expected them to carry the torch for a LOT longer than this.
Fischer is hysterical. He has recently argued that atheists shouldn’t be allowed in the military and that when the first amendment says ‘religion’ that only apples to Christians.
In Adam’s fall/We sinned all.