Gay Marriage: The Arguments and the Motives
 

Regardless of what you want to call it you actually enter into a Civil Union at city hall, not a Marriage, at least not how it should be if you truly support the concept of separation of church and state.

Yes Marriage does have a certain cultural and symbolical meaning. Meaning that is forever tied up with thousands of years of religious belief and ceremony. Changing that meaning into something else just because a loud minority wants to piss off organized religion is not something that I will ever support.

I feel that the best solution is that everyone who wants to get married go through a secular civil ceremony. This establishes the legal state of marriage for the purposes of legal status and benefits from the viewpoint of the state.

Then after, if the couple wants to go through a religious ceremony, they can if they can find a religious organization that will accept them. This establishes the spiritual/religious state of marriage.

The problem is that for far too long we have intermixed the civil/legal aspects of marriage with the spiritual/religious aspects of marriage.

The two can, and in my opinion should, be kept separate.

That's what I was trying to say :up:
Were I live, the two are kept separate. If you want to marry, you have to have an official from city hall to seal the deal. That's what establishes the legal state. You can also have a wedding ceremony at the church or have the official come there. So the choice is yours; if you're gay and you want to marry, you can. If you also want to be married in your church, that depends on the church's rules regarding that. And that's how it should be imo.

btw, once again, marriage doesn't necessarily have anything to do with religion. There were wedding ceremonies long before Christianity was introduced.

You don't get a civil union license from the government, you get a marriage license.
Religion to me has nothing to do with it, being that the legal aspects of marriage are
decided by government law, not the church as you would probably like it on this issue.

What you're saying is because of your beliefs in God, others should abide in them. Simply, my religious beliefs should be government law. Sorry, we seperate church and state, marriage is
a government institution by law and should be protected by the constitution giving equal rights to all.

Gays have beliefs, many very strong. After they get their license they have the right to a religious wedding like it or not in a church that will accept them and thousands will.


It was culturally once OK to have slaves and approved by many churches. It was once culturally OK for a priest to cut your innards out and pull them out of your body as he sought
your confession... Sorry, people have wised up, we don't abide in past cultural acts that denied people rights.

There were religions long before christanity too. :D

Uganda gay activist Kasha Jacqueline Nabagesera hailede!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-13278374

Of course there were, what I'm trying to say is that marriage isn't inherently tied with a specific religion. For some people it might be, but that's their personal view. For a lot of people, marriage has nothing to do with religion.

Exactly, and the way to do it (imo) is to stop calling the civil aspect "marriage". If this happened gays would get their equal rights and the Holy Joes would have nothing to complain about.

But I've come to believe this isn't about obtaining equal rights but rather sticking it to organized religion. That being the case it won't stop even if gays "win" this battle.

What's this got to do with sticking it to organized religion, they have all their rights and tax exempt status. Maybe a better question to ask is why
are they given tax exemt status. Make them pay taxes like all, they can deduct charities like everyone else.

All through history those with power always cry foul when others are given the same rights they demand for themselves.

Not "a specific religion", but rather no religion at all. Don't atheists get married as well?

How many times do we need to repeat that marriage has nothing to do with religion before you finally grasp it?

That's exactly what I'm saying in the sentence at the end of the post you quoted. ;)

Well you can repeat that the sky is florescent green over and over but it still doesn't make it accurate or proper. The simple fact that Priests can perform marriages and are perfectly acceptable replacements for Justices of the Peace ought to tell you that religion does indeed have everything to do with it.

Just because secular government has appropriated a religious institution for it's own use. That does not make it right to do so.

It has caused and continues to cause a lot of social strife that could have been avoided, heck still could be avoided, if secular government used the proper term: ie Civil Unions.

All your insistence proves is the true objective is not social harmony but social unrest. Just lovely.

Best evidence indicates that it's the other way around. The institution seems to have originated with men's need to establish paternity, became a social institution and lastly a religious one. On the one hand this would indicate that it should indeed be between a man and a woman. On the other this raises complications.

If it's strictly religious then anyone should be able to marry, according to their beliefs.

If it's social then one could argue that societal conventions should be obeyed. The problem with that is that societal conventions change on a fairly regular basis, and we accept things that our grandfathers abhorred.

If it's governmental then the why's and wherefore's need to be examined, and laws clarified, if not necessarily changed.

Of course the biggest question to be answered is why people marry, and want to marry, in the first place. And that question, and its answers, are personal and varied. Should some members of society be barred from what is commonly accepted for others?