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letting gay marriage happen will interfere with the rights of the church  
in other words: if gay marriage is legal they'll ask us Christians to marry them we'll have to say no or we will be lieing to our beliefs then they sue us the church falls and everyone is sad

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Did you miss the point here? If homosexuals get a civil union, as they should be equally allowed to, and they want a marriage ceremony, religious freedom shows that a church is not at all required to perform the ceremony. And they cannot file a lawsuit to for refusing to perform the ceremony, as religion is protected. This will not affect religion in the least.

FP

Post edited at 12:19 pm on Nov. 6, 2008 by FurryPanther

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I think we are in rats' alley
Where the dead men lost their bones.

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letting gay marriage happen will interfere with the rights of the church
in other words: if gay marriage is legal they'll ask us Christians to marry them we'll have to say no or we will be lieing to our beliefs then they sue us the church falls and everyone is sad

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Please try not to use arguments that I directly address and refute in the OP. To quote myself:

Example 2) Two LaVeyan Satanist butt-buddies decide to get hitched. If they tried to go to a Catholic Church they would be denied, but since their religion openly embraces gay marriage they can get in touch with their local grotto and organize a ceremony. Like the Roman Catholics, they need to get a civil union to make it legal and obtain power of attorney rights and the like, though.

You have the right to say no. No one is saying that Christians have to perform gay marriage. No one has ever said that.

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"Hey, that's not very nice, Mayor--
just because a person's gay doesn't mean he's a fag!"
-Stan

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letting gay marriage happen will interfere with the rights of the church
in other words: if gay marriage is legal they'll ask us Christians to marry them we'll have to say no or we will be lieing to our beliefs then they sue us the church falls and everyone is sad

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I am so tired of Christians who have no fucking clue what they're talking about. No one will ask an evangelical church to join their same-sex union in holy matramony. Not at least when Unitarians are so understanding and willing. And if you had read one post in this whole topic you would understand that we don't support the "fall of the church". God knows that would be a pity, losing all the zealots and what not. We're advocating that everyone should be able to do as their religion, heart, or personal morals dictate. Nothing more, nothing less. But thanks for giving another reason why the government shouldn't be interfering here. Their not supposed to deal with religion at all. Not even to protect the dictatorship of intolerance that is Christianity. Thanks for proving our point.

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Enrique's (21 months) and Chase's (2 months) mommy www.myspace.com/Chaya77

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And yeah the government should get the fuck out and stay the fuck out of it. I mean they've had trouble with the religious people too regarding polygamy and you can't help falling in love with more than one person anymore than you can help falling in love with the same sex. Religion/government should not be allowed to establish marriage laws.

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The only problem with this was that polygamy generally doesn't have anything to do with love and has everything to do with control, particularly in the FLDS. Now, I don't have a problem with polygamy existing in and of itself, but polygamy as practiced by the FLDS tends to remove people's right to choose with whom they wish to spend the rest of their lives and also often involves pedophilia on some level.

Of course, people who genuinely do love more than one person and can make that sort of situation work...more power to 'em.

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letting gay marriage happen will interfere with the rights of the church
in other words: if gay marriage is legal they'll ask us Christians to marry them we'll have to say no or we will be lieing to our beliefs then they sue us the church falls and everyone is sad

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No.

Churches are generally private institutions and are therefore able to choose whom they marry and don't marry, whom they exclude and include, whom they teach and don't teach, to whom they give money and to whom they don't, etc. If they were state-run, then yes, they could be forced to start performing gay marriages; however, they are not state run because of something beautiful known as the First Amendment.

Post edited at 12:25 pm on Nov. 6, 2008 by exceedinglyrare

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Let yourself be enchanted,
You just might break through
To ever ever after

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Frankly the solution is for the government to get the fuck out of the marriage business altogether.

Give civil unions all the current rights marriages have and call all legal unions that. Let churches do whatever they want with the religious aspect.

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I agree with you wilder, but like sean, I may not follow the same path to get there.

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Do not abandon yourselves to despair.
We are the Easter people and hallelujah is our song.

Pope John Paul II

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Quote: from Chava at 3:13 pm on Nov. 6, 2008

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And yeah the government should get the fuck out and stay the fuck out of it. I mean they've had trouble with the religious people too regarding polygamy and you can't help falling in love with more than one person anymore than you can help falling in love with the same sex. Religion/government should not be allowed to establish marriage laws.

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The only problem with this was that polygamy generally doesn't have anything to do with love and has everything to do with control, particularly in the FLDS. Now, I don't have a problem with polygamy existing in and of itself, but polygamy as practiced by the FLDS tends to remove people's right to choose with whom they wish to spend the rest of their lives and also often involves pedophilia on some level.

Of course, people who genuinely do love more than one person and can make that sort of situation work...more power to 'em.

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letting gay marriage happen will interfere with the rights of the church
in other words: if gay marriage is legal they'll ask us Christians to marry them we'll have to say no or we will be lieing to our beliefs then they sue us the church falls and everyone is sad

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No.

Churches are generally private institutions and are therefore able to choose whom they marry and don't marry, whom they exclude and include, whom they teach and don't teach, to whom they give money and to whom they don't, etc. If they were state-run, then yes, they could be forced to start performing gay marriages; however, they are not state run because of something beautiful known as the First Amendment.

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I was just pointing out that any time government gets involved with religion or marriage it doesn't end up good. Those kids are still being abused after they were forced to be given back.

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Enrique's (21 months) and Chase's (2 months) mommy www.myspace.com/Chaya77

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I was just pointing out that any time government gets involved with religion or marriage it doesn't end up good. Those kids are still being abused after they were forced to be given back.

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Right now the government is involved, and we're saying it shouldn't be.

FP

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I think we are in rats' alley
Where the dead men lost their bones.

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I was just pointing out that any time government gets involved with religion or marriage it doesn't end up good. Those kids are still being abused after they were forced to be given back.

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I agree with that point; however, my point was that the government's recent beef with polygamy has nothing to do with polygamous marriages that are just a bunch of people who love each other and freely chose to be married in that way, but rather with situations in which thirteen- and fourteen-year-old girls were being forced to enter into sexual relationships with men who were much older than they were. Frankly, I'd be appalled if the government didn't step in and help in that situation.

Regarding the recent problems with the YFZ, the main issue there is that the government was chomping at the bit too much to find more evidence against the FLDS, to the point where they didn't bother to find the girl who called in saying that she'd been abused, and just swept in without gathering further evidence. It had nothing to do, really, with it being a religious matter or cultural matter, and everything to do with the government having a vendetta against the FLDS (understandably so, but that it caused them to act so irrationally and hastily is obviously a serious problem). It's just what happens when the people in power take issue with a certain group.

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Let yourself be enchanted,
You just might break through
To ever ever after

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letting gay marriage happen will interfere with the rights of the church
in other words: if gay marriage is legal they'll ask us Christians to marry them we'll have to say no or we will be lieing to our beliefs then they sue us the church falls and everyone is sad

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I have to say that the bible's disapproval of homosexuality is totally outdated. It was only believed to be disapproved by God because people (specifically men) who were gay couldn't reproduce, and they were thought to be evil because of their indirect hindering of reproduction. Scholars thought that by being homosexual, you were intentionally trying to stop the procreation of mankind. but nowadays, same sex couples have the choice of adoption, or artificial insemination. i believe the bible shouldn't even be mentioned in the court when it comes to the subject of same-sex marriage, its irrelevant.

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While this is a decent point concerning when homosexual sex was originally condemned in the Bible (when it was part of the Law of the Hebrews, way back in the day, when they were still trying to grow from a wandering tribe into an actual nation and the only way to do that properly is to make babies), a more logical explanation when it came to homosexual acts' future condemnation was to set Christianity apart. I agree with your last sentence, though...but you seem to be kind of missing the point of Wilder's original post in the writing of it.

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Let yourself be enchanted,
You just might break through
To ever ever after

Post edited at 11:24 am on Nov. 9, 2008 by hithere