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Good grief. I don't think they are equivalent. But the thought seems to have crossed your mind. Do you think they are equivalent? There is no element of bestiality or incest implied; marriage doesn't mean that -- simply a legal arrangement to extend benefits to disenfranchised, offended parties. Moreover, several posters here have argued that my concept of morality or your concept of morality be damned.
So then -- what about polygamy? Phooey with the morality aspect. Say a Corporate Warrior Woman wants to pick up an extra hubby or two. Why not? Or a maybe a Frenchman-American wants benefits for his paramour.
Well, I'm losing interest now, so this will be my last post on the subject. But I have enjoyed chatting with you.
Best wishes -- Hamish
I'm happy that you are stepping down because you seem to have this habit of making huge fallacies in your arguments. This post is filled with them.
One, I think its funny how you attempt to throw off my argument by saying that because I say something isn't equal it means that in some part of my brain maybe they are equal, why do you bring this up, I tend to believe its because you tend to do it a lot and therefore believe that everyone else does it, that must say something about the things you say you contradict.
Two, people already do use marriages with no sex or relationships to get benefits, you know what happens when they get caught...they goto jail because its illegal. Once again your straw man arguments fail because they are asking that commiting an act that is illegal is equivalent. Which is the EXACT same thing your new Polygamy argument has with it.
Come up with some type of contention that isn't your exact argument repeated if you do decide to come back.
Fact is, marriage is murky when you mix in the religious aspect. Why not let everyone procure a civil marriage, then let those who wish to do so get married in whatever church will marry them. Those that don't can choose not to, and still be married in a civil sense... this would entitle them to the same benefits as any other married couple.
Actually this already happens. Plenty of people obtain a civil marriage from their county courthouse, Elvis impersonator, etc. These people have the same rights and responsibilities under the law as anyone married in a elaborate church wedding. These marriages are not "sanctified" by any religious institution and nobody is out to stop them.
Likewise, nobody is out to stop those who get married without the intention of having children.
Simply said, there's not a single legal requirement for marriage that has anything to do with any of the arguments put forth by those who oppose it. Let me summarize:
There's no requirement that a religious institution sanctify a marriage
There's no requirement that a marriage produces offspring
Frankly, there's no requirement that a marriage involves intimate relations and there's no requirement that a married couple reside in the same household
Additionally, there's no law that even requires fidelity. Yet, when gay couples want the same rights, all the arguments against it are based on one of the above. For me, before any credibility can be solidified for these arguments, marriage as an institution would have be revised for straight couples. Divorce would have to be made illegal and children would have to be a requirement of a marriage. Good luck getting that passed the American people.
In the end, the "state" allows churches to confer legal marriages as a priviledge. "By the power vested in me by the state of (your state here), I now pronounce you man and wife". The state can perform a legally recognized marriage without a church but a church cannot perform a legally recognized marriage without the state.
One way to solve the issue is to take away that priviledge from churches and make couples marry twice: once legally and another (if so desired) at a religious institution of their choice. Then, the instititution can put whatever requirements that they might have on the couple....as if they don't do this already. I for one think that would be a shame. It would require couples to have two ceremonies and it would probably be awkward for them. But, if that is what it takes to end the legal discirmination put upon a minority of people, then so be it.
So murder, theft, rape, etc are ok with you? These are all moral values.Another fallacy from the Gay community. As someone who is gay, you have all the same civil rights as anyone else. You don't, however, just like EVERYONE ELSE, have the right to engage in immoral behaviour.Religion is not the same as morality. Again, being gay is not equivalent to being black, hispanic, a woman, etc.
None of these things is a moral issue.
These two things are not equivalent. There is nothing immoral about interracial marriage. Gay marriage, however, is immoral.More fallacious ad hominen.No, we don't.
Chris
Nothing Immoral about interracial marriage? Ha. Maybe not NOW but take a look in past decades...
And I don't think you understand discrimination...
Quote:
[SIZE=4]dis·crim·i·na·tion[/SIZE]
treatment or consideration of, or making a distinction in favor of or against, a person or thing based on the group, class, or category to which that person or thing belongs rather than on individual merit
- NOBODY is allowed to muder...
NOBODY.... NOBODY IS ALLOWED TO MURDER.... NOBODY..... NO ONE.... NO ONE... NOBODY....
It doesn't matter if you're Black.... It doesn't matter if you're Muslim... It doesn't matter if you're Straight.... It's doesn't matter if you're Gay....
That is not discrimination....
YOU are discriminating when you say "Only Straight people are allowed to marriage"
There is one really really big question I am interested in knowing
Nobody is entitled to a polygamous ceremony. Where as in the case of a monogamous ceremony, some people are granted the rights to marry based on religion/sexuality.
Same Sex Marriage is not equivalent to Polygamous marriage.
Why is it not?
Because Nobody is allowed a polygamous marriage Where as only xxx People are allowed to get a monogamous marriage.
Hmmm, for the millions of Americans who don't believe in a god or religion, there's nothing sacred about marriage at all. That doesn't lessen the importance of the institution to them, it just doesn't have any religious meaning.
As for incest and polygamy, those things are immoral to you, but in many cultures they are quite acceptable and even encouraged. Neither is particularly immoral to me because I don't presume to tell others what their morals should be. Doesn't mean I would want to do it myself, but if two (or more) adults of sound mind decide they want to live a different lifestyle, I consider that their business as long as it doesn't harm me. And for the life of me I can't see how gay people getting married has anything at all to do with my marriage. Yet the Bible-thumpers would have us believe gay marriage will destroy the institution, destroy families, and maybe even turn all of our children gay. Come on, really?
Same for polygamy--so what if it becomes legal? How does that affect you, and why would you care? Beyond a religious argument, I don't see how there's any harm to anyone else other than the poor sap who has to live with multiple women.
The irony about the poygamy argument is that the only notable group practicing it is doing so citing their freedom of religion.
The fallacy of the gay rights movement is that it is a civil rights issue.
This is from an article in today's WSJ and explains it better than I can - the defense of marriage act "prevents couples from receiving certain federal services & rights including Social security, tax benefits, and the ability to sponsor a foreign spouse for a visa/citizenship." Of course, this is a civil rights issue! It's a human rights issue.
I hate when ignorant people who read only a few passages in the Bible hijack Christianity as a way to exclude and demean others. How very Christian!
These two things are not equivalent. There is nothing immoral about interracial marriage. Gay marriage, however, is immoral.
Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.
So declared the Virginia judge who sentenced Mildred and Richard Loving to jail for being married. Clearly the attitude was that interracial marriage went against God's will, and therefore was immoral.
People were constantly invoking either "God's will" or "God's laws" to justify anti-miscegenation laws, just as they did to justify slavery, just as they did to justify Jim Crow, just as they do to justify discriminating against homosexuals.
Intermarriage between whites and blacks is repulsive and averse to every sentiment of pure American spirit. It is abhorrent and repugnant to the very principles of Saxon government. It is subversive of social peace. It is destructive of moral supremacy.
-Representative Seaborn Roddenbery (Georgia) 1912
Substitute "gay marriage" for "intermarriage between whites and blacks" and you've got the standard homophobe's argument (in more florid language).
There are even people today who argue that mixed-race relationships (sexual, marriage) are immoral and against God. Thankfully they're on the fringe, where you are heading.
People who oppose Gay Marriage have a right in this country to do so, for whatever reasons they may have...
However, to base this belief on the Bible, more specifically the teachings of Jesus, is in my opinion the 21st Century moral equivalent of the 19th Century model of using the Bible to justify slavery.
In the 1800's, pro-slavery advocates cherry-picked biblical verses from the OLD TESTAMENT to justify the institution of slavery. Not only did they use the Bible as a justification, the people of that time fervently believed it was their moral responsibility to maintain their agragian form of society, which was dependent on slavery being a permanent institution.
On a personal note, having North Carolina roots dating back to the late 1700's, some of my distant ancestors pre-Civil War were in fact small slave owners, based on living wills that were discovered. What I find the most interesting about these wills is the overall moral tone. My ancestors were highly religious Protestants who truly believed they were doing "God's will." Along with bequeathing their personal possesions (which included dishes, farm animals, and in a few cases, slaves), moral instruction was given.
Instructions were given to treat slaves fairly (many slaves, especially among small slave-owners, were considered quasi-family) and not to break up families, which I guess was a moral step up among some of the practices of the day. However, it does not erase the base issue that my ancestors could somehow reconcile the idea of owning another human being with living a moral, Christian lifestyle, no matter how they treated their slaves.
In 2011, any reasonable person would agree that the institution of slavery was deplorable and a stain on our country's history. Yet, it is important to remember that society did not always take this view. Even Lincoln himself did not start out with the intention of eradicating slavery.
In 2011, people use cherry-picked biblical verses from the OLD TESTAMENT to justify denying gay Americans full rights that straight Americans enjoy under the law. The NEW TESTAMENT, which includes the stories about Jesus's minstry called the Gospels, a history of the early Church (Acts, Romans, etc.), Paul's expounding on Jesus's teachings through his letters to the early Churches (which include his own prejudices against women and marriage in general along with a radical reintrepretation of what Jesus's minstry meant), and finally the lucid dream of an exiled man named John (Revelation) that became the adopted dogma for the Christian view of the Apocalypse.
The NEW TESTAMENT really does not provide any direct guidance for understanding and making judgments about homosexuality in the modern world.
To the extentthat it does talk about homosexuality, the New Testament appears to be talking about only certain types of homosexuality, and it speaks on the basis of assumptions about homosexuality that are now regarded as highly dubious. Perhaps, then, we could paraphrase what the New Testament says about homosexuality as follows:
If homosexuality is exploitive, then it is wrong; if homosexuality is rooted in idolatry, then it is wrong; if homosexuality represents a denial of one’s own true nature, then it is wrong; if homosexuality is an expression of insatiable lust, then it is wrong. But we could say exactly the same thing about heterosexuality, couldn’t we?
If homosexuality is not necessarily any of these things, however, then it would appear that the NEW TESTAMENT has nothing to say about it in any direct sense. Using the OLD TESTAMENT as a moral compass for all behaviors would lead us all to destruction, based on every activity that is "outlawed."
Eating pork or shrimp, getting drunk, fornicating (sex outside marriage), overindulging in food, etc. and the list goes on. I do not believe anyone would live up to the OLD TESTAMENT edicts on righteous living, many of which are contradicted somewhere else in the very same OLD TESTAMENT.
Most Christians flippantly dimiss most of the OLD TESTAMENT laws, and use they idea that Jesus and the NEW TESTAMENT commandments supercede anything in the OLD TESTAMENT. Which is fine by me, but I don't really know how you can exclude one law and no the other.
A large part of Jesus's minstry was based on pointing out the hyprocrisy of the Jewish leaders of the day who tried (and failed) to live up to the unattainable lifestyle based on the law. Christians believe they are saved by Grace for their past sins, and are covered for future sins by virtue of their relationship with Jesus.
But yet they put this little caveat in there that God will forgive you for sins, but not if you continue indifinitely in that activity or lifestyle (i.e. being gay). My question would be what happens to the people who continue to live in gluttony? Which, according to most calculations, is about 50% of all Americans.
I spent 18 years growing up in the Southern Baptist demonination, and if anything, we glorified over-eating at church events. I'm slightly overweight today- I struggle daily with my food consumption. Everyone in my family is big- it is in our genes. I like to eat, and to a certain extent, I can't help it. It's who I am!!
Gay people are born gay- It's who they are!! If you factor in the ~10% of the population that is gay, and the approximately 50% of the US who are by OLD TESTAMENT definitions gluttons like me, then at least a good 60% of us are going to hell.
Factor in the alcoholics and you've got another 10-15%. The remaining 10-15% percent of people who have escaped gluttony, alcoholism, and gayness are probably the most suspectible to adultery with their rock-hard bodies and straight genes.
In the end, you are left with no one...
It's 2011, and people in modern society need to GROW UP!! Years ago, I was anti-Gay Marriage because I grew up in the Church and that's what was taught. But then, as I GREW UP and widened my view on society and realized if we are going to a "free" society, we have to extend full rights to all our citizens.
No more of this civil unions/ partners rights BS which is Jim Crow for the 21st Century. I am married, and my wife and I are expecting our first child. My child is not going to be damaged by being raised along with kids with same-sex parents, and society as a whole is not going to fall apart.
If anything, same-sex parents adopting and/or having kids that they will properly raise and support is a blessing to our modern society. No reasonable person can make the arguement the good parents, whether same-sex or not, aren't better for a child than being raised by abusive or neglective biological parents or being pulled in/out of foster care. One of the biggest issues Modern Society faces is a lack of committed parents, both to themselves and their children, not Gay Marriage.
The thing I have come to terms with over the last few years regarding Gay Marriage is this... There is no true biblical or moral arguement against Gay Marriage!! And once you get past that, I am not sure how anyone can be oppossed to it other than prejudice and fear.
Everyone is entitled to their opinion and/or vote, but I really believe even Christians if they studied the issue (and critically interpreted the Bible for themselves independent of what the preacher tells you to believe) would reach this conclusion.
Churches and Christians still do a lot of good in modern society through their volunteer work and community involvement, but much like the slavery issue 200 years ago, Churches and Christians could do more good for society if they were more progressive in their views on homosexuality in 2011.
I sincerely applaud Senator Forrester for his effort to sustain the traditional concept of marriage between man and woman.
Why doesn't he fight to ban divorce. In my opinion, that should have a heck of a lot more precedence than Gay Marriage and a much much bigger problem.
Radicals like you who want to ban Divorce to sustain the "traditional concept of marriage" are quite funny
Oh well. The Ma & Pa Kettles of NC are losing their grip in the Ole North State. As Laura Bush said. It's only really the old folk who have a problem. Where as young people find it perfectly normal. Youth these days! We need more hate in the world.
I just don't understand why people care about wanting Gay Marriage and Divorce to be banned. That's me. All my coworkers, All my friends, All my family (who are christian conservatives...) are perfectly fine with me being gay and Dating other dudes. I bring David to work all the time and my boss is mad because she is never there when I bring David. I am a Cashier and when ladies hit on me, I tell them I am into dudes and they think it's "cool." That's my life.... Why do YOU want to interfere with my life?!
There is no such thing as "Traditional Marriage" these days. It's dead. Sorry. There is nothing holy about marriage these days. Even if they are, look at all the people who cheat that are oh so holy... Look at all the priest who mess with little boys. Republican "Traditionalist" who get caught with ladies in South America or just gay or just cheating on their wives.
Do you want to ban premarital Sex? Of course you do. You want Government to regulate who we have sex with. Because you're a traditionalist and Lord only knows that you should ONLY have sex with someone you're married to.
You also want to ban Divorce. Because Marriage is just so holy!
I can't believe some people want it to be the governments right to know who you have sex with.... It shouldn't be the business of anyone.
Last edited by Charlotte485; 02-25-2011 at 11:00 AM..
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How is this not a civil rights issue?
