What Is the Big Deal With Gay Marriage?

[rolling7]

Big difference you and others keep forgetting.

Making gay marriage legal doesn't dictate that you and your religious buddies marry someone of the same sex.

So what's all the screaming for? Last time I looked gay people don't interfere with other people's lives behind the bedroom doors.

Geez at some of the reasoning here.

CAN YOU READ?? My post said "anything made legal" and is not about gay marriage nor religion. Leave right/wrong and moral/immoral out of this because it is really about legal/illegal. All three (i.e. right/wrong..moral/immoral...legal/illegal) will change at the will of mankind but only legal/illegal affects us all. A person determines what is right/wrong and what is moral/immoral for him/herself but the Law determines what is legal/illegal for ALL of us. So, therefore, to make a change of legal/illegal does dictate a change of lifestyle for ALL of us

 

[shel90]

CAN YOU READ?? My post said "anything made legal" and is not about gay marriage nor religion. Leave right/wrong and moral/immoral out of this because it is really about legal/illegal. All three (i.e. right/wrong..moral/immoral...legal/illegal) will change at the will of mankind but only legal/illegal affects us all. A person determines what is right/wrong and what is moral/immoral for him/herself but the Law determines what is legal/illegal for ALL of us. So, therefore, to make a change of legal/illegal does dictate a change of lifestyle for ALL of us

And my turn to ask you if you can read....

Making gay marriage legal doesn't make you marry someone of the same sex, doesn't it.

 

[Banjo]

HOW ARROGANT!!! Anything made legal dictates ALL people's lifestyle. For example lets say tomorrow it becomes legal for all people to walk around in the nude everywhere. Those who are uncomfortable with nudity will be FORCE to alter their lifestyle. Anything made legal becomes the business of all and, therefore, their lifestyle is being dictated by the majority.

How irrational.

 

[Banjo]

Sacredness is up to God.

There are a lot of so-called Christians who deceive their family, friends, co-workers, colleagues, neighbours and more.

I can name at least one... Dennis Rader. He was a member of the Christ Lutheran Church and he was the president of the Congregation Council. He was also a Cub Scout leader. Yet he had such a dark side to himself that no one knew about.

People shouldn't be speaking of sacredness. They are not worthy of using the word itself to defend their beliefs. Only God decides that, not you, not your church leader, the Bible nor anyone else.

 

[Steinhauer]

HOW ARROGANT!!! Anything made legal dictates ALL people's lifestyle. For example lets say tomorrow it becomes legal for all people to walk around in the nude everywhere. Those who are uncomfortable with nudity will be FORCE to alter their lifestyle. Anything made legal becomes the business of all and, therefore, their lifestyle is being dictated by the majority.

Or even legal to make everyone carry a rooster on their head? Mock people who don't carry roosters on their heads?

 

[Steinhauer]

There are a lot of so-called Christians who deceive their family, friends, co-workers, colleagues, neighbours and more.

I can name at least one... Dennis Rader. He was a member of the Christ Lutheran Church and he was the president of the Congregation Council. He was also a Cub Scout leader. Yet he had such a dark side to himself that no one knew about.

People shouldn't be speaking of sacredness. They are not worthy of using the word itself to defend their beliefs. Only God decides that, not you, not your church leader, the Bible nor anyone else.

Last paragraph is wrong. Ordained ministers and the bible can dictate. Saying it ain't so means marriage does not exist.

 

[rolling7]

And my turn to ask you if you can read....

Making gay marriage legal doesn't make you marry someone of the same sex, doesn't it.

No, it does not. My point was to Banjo saying "dictates". In other words, any change in legal/illegal, either positive or negative in your opinion, DOES dictate a lifestyle changefor ALL. However you feel about the change, positive or negative, you still have to live with it whether you like it or not.

 

[rolling7]

How irrational.

Correct you are but that is the game. However you feel about something made legal/illegal you are force to accept it. Irrational, yes but you can always move elsewhere.

 

[Reba]

There are a lot of so-called Christians who deceive their family, friends, co-workers, colleagues, neighbours and more.

I can name at least one... Dennis Rader. He was a member of the Christ Lutheran Church and he was the president of the Congregation Council. He was also a Cub Scout leader. Yet he had such a dark side to himself that no one knew about.

How is that relevant to the question? There are plenty of people who call themselves Christians yet they don't truly follow Christ. What does that have to do with same-sex marriage?

People shouldn't be speaking of sacredness. They are not worthy of using the word itself to defend their beliefs. Only God decides that, not you, not your church leader, the Bible nor anyone else.

Did you not read my post #90? Perhaps not because there are so many posts popping up here so quickly. I'm sure I've overlooked some, too.

Yes, God determines what is holy (sacred), and what is not. He doesn't want us to be clueless about it, so He put it down in His Book, the Bible.

No one is worthy except the Lamb that was slain for the unrighteousness of the world. That doesn't mean that He wants everyone to forgo righteousness and live any old way that we want.

 

[Steinhauer]

The Secular Case Against Gay Marriage

Adam Kolasinski


The debate over whether the state ought to recognize gay marriages has thus far focused on the issue as one of civil rights. Such a treatment is erroneous because state recognition of marriage is not a universal right. States regulate marriage in many ways besides denying men the right to marry men, and women the right to marry women. Roughly half of all states prohibit first cousins from marrying, and all prohibit marriage of closer blood relatives, even if the individuals being married are sterile. In all states, it is illegal to attempt to marry more than one person, or even to pass off more than one person as one’s spouse. Some states restrict the marriage of people suffering from syphilis or other venereal diseases. Homosexuals, therefore, are not the only people to be denied the right to marry the person of their choosing.

I do not claim that all of these other types of couples restricted from marrying are equivalent to homosexual couples. I only bring them up to illustrate that marriage is heavily regulated, and for good reason. When a state recognizes a marriage, it bestows upon the couple certain benefits which are costly to both the state and other individuals. Collecting a deceased spouse’s social security, claiming an extra tax exemption for a spouse, and having the right to be covered under a spouse’s health insurance policy are just a few examples of the costly benefits associated with marriage. In a sense, a married couple receives a subsidy. Why? Because a marriage between two unrelated heterosexuals is likely to result in a family with children, and propagation of society is a compelling state interest. For this reason, states have, in varying degrees, restricted from marriage couples unlikely to produce children.

Granted, these restrictions are not absolute. A small minority of married couples are infertile. However, excluding sterile couples from marriage, in all but the most obvious cases such as those of blood relatives, would be costly. Few people who are sterile know it, and fertility tests are too expensive and burdensome to mandate. One might argue that the exclusion of blood relatives from marriage is only necessary to prevent the conception of genetically defective children, but blood relatives cannot marry even if they undergo sterilization. Some couples who marry plan not to have children, but without mind-reading technology, excluding them is impossible. Elderly couples can marry, but such cases are so rare that it is simply not worth the effort to restrict them. The marriage laws, therefore, ensure, albeit imperfectly, that the vast majority of couples who do get the benefits of marriage are those who bear children.

Homosexual relationships do nothing to serve the state interest of propagating society, so there is no reason for the state to grant them the costly benefits of marriage, unless they serve some other state interest. The burden of proof, therefore, is on the advocates of gay marriage to show what state interest these marriages serve. Thus far, this burden has not been met.

One may argue that lesbians are capable of procreating via artificial insemination, so the state does have an interest in recognizing lesbian marriages, but a lesbian’s sexual relationship, committed or not, has no bearing on her ability to reproduce. Perhaps it may serve a state interest to recognize gay marriages to make it easier for gay couples to adopt. However, there is ample evidence (see, for example, David Popenoe’s Life Without Father) that children need both a male and female parent for proper development. Unfortunately, small sample sizes and other methodological problems make it impossible to draw conclusions from studies that directly examine the effects of gay parenting. However, the empirically verified common wisdom about the importance of a mother and father in a child’s development should give advocates of gay adoption pause. The differences between men and women extend beyond anatomy, so it is essential for a child to be nurtured by parents of both sexes if a child is to learn to function in a society made up of both sexes. Is it wise to have a social policy that encourages family arrangements that deny children such essentials? Gays are not necessarily bad parents, nor will they necessarily make their children gay, but they cannot provide a set of parents that includes both a male and a female.

Some have compared the prohibition of homosexual marriage to the prohibition of interracial marriage. This analogy fails because fertility does not depend on race, making race irrelevant to the state’s interest in marriage. By contrast, homosexuality is highly relevant because it precludes procreation.

Some argue that homosexual marriages serve a state interest because they enable gays to live in committed relationships. However, there is nothing stopping homosexuals from living in such relationships today. Advocates of gay marriage claim gay couples need marriage in order to have hospital visitation and inheritance rights, but they can easily obtain these rights by writing a living will and having each partner designate the other as trustee and heir. There is nothing stopping gay couples from signing a joint lease or owning a house jointly, as many single straight people do with roommates. The only benefits of marriage from which homosexual couples are restricted are those that are costly to the state and society.

Some argue that the link between marriage and procreation is not as strong as it once was, and they are correct. Until recently, the primary purpose of marriage, in every society around the world, has been procreation. In the 20th century, Western societies have downplayed the procreative aspect of marriage, much to our detriment. As a result, the happiness of the parties to the marriage, rather than the good of the children or the social order, has become its primary end, with disastrous consequences. When married persons care more about themselves than their responsibilities to their children and society, they become more willing to abandon these responsibilities, leading to broken homes, a plummeting birthrate, and countless other social pathologies that have become rampant over the last 40 years. Homosexual marriage is not the cause for any of these pathologies, but it will exacerbate them, as the granting of marital benefits to a category of sexual relationships that are necessarily sterile can only widen the separation between marriage and procreation.

The biggest danger homosexual civil marriage presents is the enshrining into law the notion that sexual love, regardless of its fecundity, is the sole criterion for marriage. If the state must recognize a marriage of two men simply because they love one another, upon what basis can it deny marital recognition to a group of two men and three women, for example, or a sterile brother and sister who claim to love each other? Homosexual activists protest that they only want all couples treated equally. But why is sexual love between two people more worthy of state sanction than love between three, or five? When the purpose of marriage is procreation, the answer is obvious. If sexual love becomes the primary purpose, the restriction of marriage to couples loses its logical basis, leading to marital chaos.

Adam Kolasinski is a doctoral student in financial economics.

The Secular Case Against Gay Marriage - The Tech

 

[deafdyke]

How is that relevant to the question? There are plenty of people who call themselves Christians yet they don't truly follow Christ. What does that have to do with same-sex marriage?


Did you not read my post #90? Perhaps not because there are so many posts popping up here so quickly. I'm sure I've overlooked some, too.

Yes, God determines what is holy (sacred), and what is not. He doesn't want us to be clueless about it, so He put it down in His Book, the Bible.

No one is worthy except the Lamb that was slain for the unrighteousness of the world. That doesn't mean that He wants everyone to forgo righteousness and live any old way that we want.

So how come there are mainline churches that argue about Biblical interpretation? Unitarians (Second Mom and her girls went to that church) , Episcaplain, Quakers and some other churches accept gay marriage....heck my friends who are Methodist preacher's kids are AWESOME with GLB stuff....it's just a matter of time until almost all christian churches are OK with GLB stuff....you doubt me? They went through the exact same stuff with interracial marriage and even *gasp* SEGREGATION. Did you know the reason why segregation existed was b/c they used *gasp* The BIBLE to justify it? That attitude was WIDESPREAD...........now a days interracial marraige is evil attitude is limited to extreme fundies or Christian Idneity churches! And Reba, how do you know it's bad? If churches are arguing over it...and MAINLINE churches nevertheless, maybe it's not that clear cut!

 

[Steinhauer]

So how come there are mainline churches that argue about Biblical interpretation? Unitarians (Second Mom and her girls went to that church) , Episcaplain, Quakers and some other churches accept gay marriage....heck my friends who are Methodist preacher's kids are AWESOME with GLB stuff....it's just a matter of time until almost all christian churches are OK with GLB stuff....you doubt me? They went through the exact same stuff with interracial marriage and even *gasp* SEGREGATION. Did you know the reason why segregation existed was b/c they used *gasp* The BIBLE to justify it? That attitude was WIDESPREAD...........now a days interracial marraige is evil attitude is limited to extreme fundies or Christian Idneity churches! And Reba, how do you know it's bad? If churches are arguing over it...and MAINLINE churches nevertheless, maybe it's not that clear cut!

I think there may be a lack of understanding or perhaps misunderstanding regarding biblical teachings concerning inter racial marriage and segregation. Nowhere does it specifically state anything concerning inter racial marriage is not allowed. In fact, there were inter racial marriages in the bible. Nowhere does it specifically state that segregation was permissible.

However, there are some very specific biblical scriptures regarding homosexuality. Disregarding that in a bible teaching environment would be disregarding the entire bible.

 

[Reba]

So how come there are mainline churches that argue about Biblical interpretation?

You'd have to ask them. Each church has its own reasons, I suppose. I'm not going to speak for other denominations

Unitarians (Second Mom and her girls went to that church) , Episcaplain, Quakers and some other churches accept gay marriage...

They also accept other doctrines that aren't supported by the Bible.

heck my friends who are Methodist preacher's kids are AWESOME with GLB stuff....

They're also "awesome" with other doctrines that we don't follow. I don't want to get into denomination bashing.

it's just a matter of time until almost all christian churches are OK with GLB stuff....

Almost all. Yes, there are many churches who have left the truth behind for popularity and political expediency. Biblical truth has never been about the numbers or percentages.

you doubt me?

No. The Bible says that there will be a falling away from the truth towards the end.

They went through the exact same stuff with interracial marriage and even *gasp* SEGREGATION. Did you know the reason why segregation existed was b/c they used *gasp* The BIBLE to justify it? That attitude was WIDESPREAD...........now a days interracial marraige is evil attitude is limited to extreme fundies or Christian Idneity churches!

There was nothing biblical about racial segregation or prohibiting interracial marriage. The Bible says that Christians are to not be unequally yoked in spiritual standing, not racial. That is, a Christian should not marry a non-Christian.

And Reba, how do you know it's bad? If churches are arguing over it...and MAINLINE churches nevertheless, maybe it's not that clear cut!

Why the emphasis on "MAINLINE?" Is that supposed to mean something? I'm not going to discuss denominations.

 

[Ildri]

However, there are some very specific biblical scriptures regarding homosexuality. Disregarding that in a bible teaching environment would be disregarding the entire bible.

There are also some very specific passages about keeping slaves, selling your daughters as slaves, when its okay to stone your children... is it disregarding everything to disregard those passages, too?

 

[FireTiger]

*sigh* Here's another religious post

Ok,

All sins are equal, lets just look at the main 10... (except that one about the Holy Spirit... Matthew 12:31-32, Mark 3:29, Luke 12:10)

The thought of sin (in this case Lust) is equivalent to the act... (Matthew 5:28)

Jesus came as a perfect and living sacrifice for all sins... (Hebrews 9:22-28, John 3:16-18)

Judging others is discouraged in (to put it mildly) ... (Matthew 7:1-3 and many others)

...

Then there's that 'remember the Sabbath Day and keep it Holy...' (Exodus 20:8)

That's from sun down Fri- Sun down on Sat -

So doing work on this Holy Day is a sin, being with family (as long as you are not traveling to do so) or being prayerful are two ways to keep the Sabbath Holy...

-so where does this leave people that have not been ordained by G-d to lead, (already posted the scriptures for this, but (Romans 13:1-7) ... judging others???

-----
I get 'I don't agree with this' ...

I get the... "oooh I know, I'll always vote anti-gay" ...

What I don't get is the lack of compassion and tolerance by (some) people against another group of people (homosexual, other faith, disabled, poor, rich, etc.) when all people fall short of the glory of G-d and are reliant on the mercy of G-d and the blood of Jesus.

 

[Steinhauer]

There are also some very specific passages about keeping slaves, selling your daughters as slaves, when its okay to stone your children... is it disregarding everything to disregard those passages, too?

The current term "slave" is used in regards to the mid Atlantic African slave trade. The term "slave" in the bible is from a Hebrew word meaning someone who owes a debt.

 

[Steinhauer]

*sigh* Here's another religious post

Ok,

All sins are equal, lets just look at the main 10... (except that one about the Holy Spirit... Matthew 12:31-32, Mark 3:29, Luke 12:10)

The thought of sin (in this case Lust) is equivalent to the act... (Matthew 5:28)

Jesus came as a perfect and living sacrifice for all sins... (Hebrews 9:22-28, John 3:16-18)

Judging others is discouraged in (to put it mildly) ... (Matthew 7:1-3 and many others)

...

Then there's that 'remember the Sabbath Day and keep it Holy...' (Exodus 20:8)

That's from sun down Fri- Sun down on Sat -

So doing work on this Holy Day is a sin, being with family (as long as you are not traveling to do so) or being prayerful are two ways to keep the Sabbath Holy...

-so where does this leave people that have not been ordained by G-d to lead, (already posted the scriptures for this, but (Romans 13:1-7) ... judging others???

-----
I get 'I don't agree with this' ...

I get the... "oooh I know, I'll always vote anti-gay" ...

What I don't get is the lack of compassion and tolerance by (some) people against another group of people (homosexual, other faith, disabled, poor, rich, etc.) when all people fall short of the glory of G-d and are reliant on the mercy of G-d and the blood of Jesus.

However, in your case I can understand why you would want to intentionally misrepresent a religious doctrine.

Jesus never said anything about not working on Sabbath. He said plenty in regards to those with disabilities. He also said a marriage is between a man and a woman.

What I don't get is why anyone who is opposed to gay marriage is somehow turned into an arrogant, self serving, racist, inconsiderate prick?

Kind of like those who would misrepresent religious doctrine ....

 

[deafdyke]

I think there may be a lack of understanding or perhaps misunderstanding regarding biblical teachings concerning inter racial marriage and segregation. Nowhere does it specifically state anything concerning inter racial marriage is not allowed. In fact, there were inter racial marriages in the bible. Nowhere does it specifically state that segregation was permissible.

However, there are some very specific biblical scriptures regarding homosexuality. Disregarding that in a bible teaching environment would be disregarding the entire bible.

Not today no, but back then it was mainline. Now it's limited to very conservative fundalmentalist churches, as well as Christian Idneity style churches. Hard to believe but yes........
And has it occured to you that perhaps the specific anti gay scriptures may have been mistranslated? If I recall correctly, from what I've read a lot of the "homosexual" verses, are actually in reference to sex slaves or people who misused their sexuality for bad.

 

[Ildri]

And has it occured to you that perhaps the specific anti gay scriptures may have been mistranslated? If I recall correctly, from what I've read a lot of the "homosexual" verses, are actually in reference to sex slaves or people who misused their sexuality for bad.

And, correct me if I'm wrong, one of the more commonly cited stories is that of Lot- but as I understand it, it wasnt just that there was homosexual sex, it was that there were men trying to rape other men. A different thing entirely.

 

[Doug5]

Yep.

I don't often see people using the latin letter for Christ like you just did. A lot of often often mistake Xmas for being a way of removing Christ from Christmas.

i didnt know it was latin, did it to save typing