Which is precisely my point. They may have been religious in nature in the past, but are not treated as such by the VAST majority of people in the US.
Sure, you do. It is “marriage.” You simply have a wider pool from which to draw parents.
I deny your gratuitous assertion. There is no reason to believe that your claim has any validity and your insistence that the opposite argument is a “lie” is, itself, not true.
However, there is no evidence that the differences between men and women are required to raise children in an optimum environment. That may be your personal belief, but it has no facts to support it. Most marriages have a more dominant and a less dominant partner, but dominance is not tied to sex. Sex does not determine which parent is better with finances, is more compassionate, is more grounded in discipline, is smarter, or possesses any other traits. Aside from breast feeding, (hardly a universal practice), there is no trait that a person of either sex may not bring to a marriage or to parenting.
What society believes, (with some support from science), is that children do best in a stable, two parent home. There is no evidence that the parents must be of different sexes. (And since you are even willing, (grudgingly?), to let homosexual couples adopt, your position does nothing more than to place a stigma of “other” on families who have same sex parents, thus contributing to societal pressures that may interfere with the raising of children.
Federal law already requires employers to make accommodations for religious holidays. So someone who wants to get the day off to celebrate Zeus day, for example, has the legal right to do so. In the meantime, notice that the government can not let all Christians get the day off for Christmas (with pay) without also letting all Muslims and Jews off for the same day (also with pay). Even if they don’t celebrate those holidays, they still get the day off and they still get paid for it. This is not an endorsement of any one religion. When you go home from work on Christmas Eve you are not required to celebrate the birth of Christ in the morning in place of going to work.
So what if we decide as a group to consider marriage a Roman Catholic sacrament? Simple. We remove the legal institution per the establishment clause. Marriage becomes something that is essentially meaningless in the eyes of the law. That’s why we distinguish between marriage, the religious institution, and marriage the legal institution. Notice that the officiant at a legal wedding does not have to have any religious affiliation.
Don’t go easy on him. Thanksgiving was not and has never been a Christian holiday.
New Year’s may be a Catholic holiday, but it’s also a secular holiday that pre-dates Christianity, probably by thousands of years.
Civil order. I’ve also already laid out the reasons the state is involved.
More out of what? Children are part and parcel of the family unit.
I was pretty snarky earlier in the thread, trying be a little nicer. 
It would be nice though if he would make any real points and give some backing for them.
New Years was a pagan tradition that the Catholics co-opted because it was fun. (The real reason is they couldn’t stop people from celebrating the new year, so they Catholicized it.)
The Pilgrims celebrated the day the natives saved them from starvation and combined it with a post-good-harvest celebration. It’s never been co-opted by Christians as a Christian holiday, even though some groups play of the religiousness of the Pilgrims, it’s just not what it is or was about.
That’s like saying the Fourth of July is a Christian holiday. Sure, it’s celebrating a secular event, but some people hold crosses and thank Jesus when they say the pledge of allegiance on that day.
The only two “Christian” federal holidays are Thanksgiving and Christmas, and calling Thanksgiving a Christian holiday is dicey since it was not that big of a deal until Lincoln made it a federal holiday. On a more local level, you can find government offices and businesses that close on other religious holidays. Schools in downstate New York will sometimes close for Jewish holidays, and I bet you can find the same in, say, Dearborn on major Islamic holidays.
They could try, but I doubt the courts would agree. This would probably be considered ceremonial deism: the government isn’t endorsing the holidays as much as it is recognizing that a lot of people (including its employees) celebrate these holidays and would rather be with their families.
No, it couldn’t. And you’re trying (badly) to have it both ways: you’re saying some holidays that are “observed” in a secular fashion are Christian because of their origins, and on the other you’re saying religious stuff can be “secularized.” You’re throwing stuff against the wall to see if it sticks, and it really doesn’t make any sense.
Not to my satisfaction. Civil order is incredibly vague. What exactly would happen to civil society without marriage?
Better, more robust arguments. You know, like how when the right-wing says “marriage is about children” and we think it’s bullshit?
One could argue that it was a religious holiday. Who do you think the thanks is being given to? It was a prayer service/feast, which is typical of many Christian holidays. Even if this version made it to our civic calendar without being specifically included in a church’s calendar, it’s certainly got a religious component.
It does? I don’t think so. Employers aren’t required to do that at all. They just do.
I’ll bet a majority of Americans still consider Thanksgiving to be specifically for giving thanks to God, and say grace before the dinner. Maybe 40%.
Just because a holiday isn’t an official holiday of a specific religion’s calendar doesn’t make it “secular” or at least not originally secular.
Title vii of the Civil Rights Act (that I linked to earlier) has been defined by the US Department of Labor to include time off for religious reasons.
“Why should I care” has become the new homophobia.
The short version is: you should care because this is a big issue, because this represents a change in the status quo, because there are still gay people who don’t have all the rights straights do, and are being bullied or killed. That is why should care.
Throwing up your hands and say “I don’t care” ignores the fundamental truth that this is a big fucking deal. Pretending like its nothing when so many fellow human beings are being killed, jailed, or denied rights is like supporting those committing those heinous acts. You might not want to hear that, but its the truth. There’s no staying on the sidelines when a huge shift in society is made, you will have an opinion on it whether you like it or not, and through your actions you have expressed that opinion already. Save your outrage, your exhaustion, your faux anger not at the ones promoting change, but those denying it
I’m trying to find any polls regarding that, the only one I’ve found so far is from a foodie blog where 80% of the people responding said they consider Thanksgiving the most important non-religious holiday. Not much else coming up that I can see.
Why is this even relevant? We don’t need to prove that marriage is necessary or important for same-sex couples to enjoy the benefits of it in equal measure to opposite-sex couples.
That moves into supposition, since governments haven’t lacked next of kin details for thousands of years. But, assuming we start from current US society: Most every death with more than one survivor and no will immediately goes to the courts for resolution. Emergency medical decisions are no longer in the realm of choice of loved ones. Social security survivor and army survivor benefits no longer apply without legal documentation.
Basically, you’ll make a winner out of lawyers and give everyone else a burden by removing the presumption that life long partners have more say than any other family member.
So, why don’t you develop a counter argument that we can actually argue in a way that gives you illumination on other aspects of the debate? If we wanted to argue with ourselves, most of us have a mirror, thanks.
THANK YOU! For getting back to the point of the thread. I did not intend for this to be a discussion of whether or not SSM should be legalized (though I am not so naive that I did not foresee it would) but on the morality of remaining neutral.
“Convince me to care” was not intended to mean “convince me your side is right”, rather “convince me that this is an important issue that that is worthy of taking a stand”. Thank you to those few (you know who you are) who addressed this. As for the rest of you all, carry on…but can we PLEASE end the “what is/is not a religious holiday” hijack ( or maybe start a separate thread if it’s that interesting)?