Michigan House passes religious freedom bill (demon, difference, attend, examples)
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I don't actually think this is unfair. It's a bit harsh to force a Catholic adoption agency to place a catholic born infant into a Muslim home to be raised as a Muslim. Or to be placed into an Odinist home, or any other non-catholic home.
Hmm, roughly 29,000 kids spend most of their lives living in the system and are never adopted; they are turned out into the streets after turning 18. I wonder what happens to them ...
And with that many kids being abandoned, can any agency really afford to begin turning away qualified couples because of their idiotic, small-minded religious beliefs? We all should know by now that Catholicism has the absolute WORST track record when it comes to kids. If it's not about hiding pedophile priests, it's about the Church denying birth control to people living in the midst of a sexual plague. And now they want to make it more difficult for kids to be adopted. Oh, I just can't get over how kind and loving and compassionate religion is! Wow!
If you have to ask that then apparently you don't really get why the gay wedding poses a moral conflict for Christians. God certainly wants us to interact with gay people showing them kindness and friendship like any other group. But assisting or aiding in the context of a gay marriage is different because you are helping in some way with your products and services to allow an act that is the exactly opposite of God's design and purpose to take place. It's the act, not the person that is the issue. It's no different than if the government forced a business to cater or a a photographer to take photos of a a swingers convention. It doesn't have anything to do with the person as an individual.
Except that nowhere in the bible does it say that. So it's not God's design, but your personal discomfort with the institution that drives your views.
It will also be interesting to see how far Christians are willing to go in marginalizing themselves and becoming unable to function in society.
I can't think of a business or even a job in which you can function while limiting yourself to serving heterosexuals. You can't, say, be a tool booth attendant and refuse to accept a toll from car in which a couple of guys are holding hands.
I guess this case gets a slight traction from the idea that a florist or cake-maker or photographer would be creating artistic expressions that they disagree with or find distasteful. But even there ... heck, I have been in a position as an editor of doing technical edits on articles that I have zero personal interest in, or that I disagree with, or that I don't think should have even been accepted for publication. What this ultimately boils down to is an infantile desire to have the world conform to your ideals simply because you have them.
More so as society becomes more secular and they continue losing in court.
God certainly wants us to interact with gay people showing them kindness and friendship like any other group. But assisting or aiding in the context of a gay marriage is different because you are helping in some way with your products and services to allow an act that is the exactly opposite of God's design and purpose to take place.
Are you seriously suggesting that you have a problem with the act of conducting a marriage ceremony between two persons of the same gender, yet no problem with expressions of or living out of homosexuality in any other respect? I have had Christians tell me that a person can have gay impulses but can't act on them. No gay sex, no gay significant other, with or without marriage. God loves you if you're gay but wants you to be repressed and unfulfilled and without the same intimacies and commitments others enjoy. Which is one of the reasons you folks mostly deny that the person is simply that way from birth; it is claimed against massive evidence to be a chosen orientation. Because it would be obviously absurd for god to make a person gay and then call their god-given sexual inclinations sinful and shameful or the desire to marry someone of their choosing sinful.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jeffbase40
It's the act, not the person that is the issue...it doesn't have anything to do with the person as an individual.
Oh, of course it doesn't. Sure. You might have yourself convinced of that, but not anyone listening to you. If I were gay and you were a florist who refused to provide me services because of that, I'd take it quite personally despite your protestations. And I should. Because it's a personal insult, and impertinent to boot. It is none of your business if a gay person wants to get married and you get to treat it no differently than any other wedding.
Except that nowhere in the bible does it say that. So it's not God's design, but your personal discomfort with the institution that drives your views.
And He answered and said to them, “Have you not read that He who made them at the beginning ‘made them male and female, and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’ So then, they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let not man separate.”
And He answered and said to them, “Have you not read that He who made them at the beginning ‘made them male and female, and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’ So then, they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let not man separate.”
Jesus Christ
Matthew 19:4
There is nothing in that to prohibit a person from selling a product or service to a homosexual person. As there were places in the Bible that spoke about how to treat slaves why did some Christians oppose slavery.
This is a fine example of cherry picking passages in the Bible and forcing those passages to try to say what you want them to say.
This passage could also go against any person moving out of home to live by themselves, go against nuns and priests and those who join the military when single.
There is nothing in that to prohibit a person from selling a product or service to a homosexual person. As there were places in the Bible that spoke about how to treat slaves why did some Christians oppose slavery.
This is a fine example of cherry picking passages in the Bible and forcing those passages to try to say what you want them to say.
This passage could also go against any person moving out of home to live by themselves, go against nuns and priests and those who join the military when single.
It is a pointless debate because people like you just don't understand why forcing someone to participate on any level in a gay wedding is offensive to their strongly held beliefs.
And you do not understand that that is a misrepresentation. If someone enters the public sphere by opening a business for example, then there are laws they are expected to follow. No one is forcing them to participate in gay weddings. They are forcing them to follow the laws that apply to ALL such businesses EQUALLY.
So it is not so much people forcing Christians to participate in gay ceremonies. It IS about not allowing theists to use their religion as a cop out excuse for following the law. Being a christian does not give you license to flout the law.
If you fear having to offer products and services to people, then simply do not open a business. It really is that simple. Seems no matter how simple you make it however, some people still can not get it.
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