You only count the expressed views of under 30s in the US? Better to assess the entire world! I find “millions and millions” vast, but the term is indeed relative. Marriage does not meet with such opposition - just SSM.I wouldn’t consider 27% or even less to meet the definition of “vast numbers,” but if that seems “vast” to you, it’s fine with me.
If acceptability of a lesser SS legal vehicle was possible you would want the eligibility conditions to exclude faithfulness, permanence and loving commitment to the other person
?That may well be true - though some may have once said the same re abortion.
No. Rather attributes of the arrangement that imply romantic involvement ought simply to be irrelevant.
How so?
I try to use SSM to make the distinction. Except when addressing my friend Thor personally. Even then he did not answer.
It opposes all marriage look-a-likes too - called “civil unions” in many jurisdictions.
Strange reasoning.
If you reflect a little more in good faith I am sure you can find for yourself the advantages that two sisters have, as sisters, over an unrelated committed couple.
I am not talking about SSMarriage at all.
Yeah right, just like Communion for irregulars
.Given many States are OK with SSM, they may see little reason to pursue yet more variants of domestic legal frameworks. But along the lines of your post #88…I cannot see *the Church *smiling on societal sanctioning of (indeed, rejoicing in) sexual relationships other than marriage.
Now you’re talking. Precisely my earlier point. Unlike marriage, the sexual dimension is (should be) irrelevant then in so far as the nature of the relationship in concerned.
I generally try to do that, and I assume you do too.
And I predict we’ll both be dead in 50 years.
Irrelevant, I am not interested in discussing SSM.
Great, we are agreed there can be acceptable Civil Unions then … just like adoption and marriage. That does not mean “Romance” (whatever it is you actually mean by that) cannot be a secondary accompaniment to aiding commitment and permanence just as the intense personal feeling parents have towards protecting their children can be in adoptive unions and Godchild relationships outside of bloodlines.
Why is it a surprise to you that this is pretty much what I have been saying from the beginning
. Of course it isn’t a marriage look-alike.Nor am I. The existence and relatively wide acceptance of SSM IS very relevant to explaining why State’s (generally) won’t be pursuing what you advocate. The “customers” are already onto something they find superior.
As Thor noted above.Never said there can’t be acceptable arrangements. I just said they can’t be understood to be sexual - which the Civil Unions established in various jurisdictions were understood to be. But when you talk of “faithful” relationships, “lesser forms of gay union”, “gay couples”, relationships that lead away from “promiscuity”, “prostitution”, “disease”, etc - it sounds as though you envisage a romantic / sexual dimension being germane. If not, all good!
I do think there could be some law or recognition of long term (for lack of a better term, committed friendship). What it’s called in all honestly would be immaterial. For example (to steal an old TV sitcom’s theme), the Golden Girls was a show about women living together who were friends (one I think was a widow, one divorced, etc.). There is no reason there can’t be some way for them to ensure their ability to support each other if they are committed to living together (for medical purposes, etc.). No one would recognizing that imply any type of sexual relationship. Like for example, allowing them to group themselves together under a single insurance plan. They may not be a ‘nuclear family’ but the commitment to each other would represent a family of friends. Real life example: washingtonpost.com/local/they-met-in-a-1960s-group-house-nearly-50-years-later-theyre-still-roommates/2016/01/29/3ef27e30-a5de-11e5-b53d-972e2751f433_story.html?utm_term=.47f543b1acd8.
I actually really like the term Committed Friendship. It’s a thoroughly Christian concept that if codified could allow related or unrelated groups of people to financially and emotionally support one another in a way that I think would be very acceptable to the Church.
I agree. And there are even a lot of churches that are now willing to perform same-sex marriages and say they are equivalent to heterosexual marriage (Presbyterian Church USA, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Episcopal Church, United Church of Christ). Even many Methodist ministers are now willing to perform same-sex marriages although officially they are not supposed to. I can’t imagine most gay people wanting to go back to something lesser when they can have a union called “marriage” that is supported by much of the population, the State, and according to some churches, blessed by God.Nor am I. The existence and relatively wide acceptance of SSM IS very relevant to explaining why State’s (generally) won’t be pursuing what you advocate. The “customers” are already onto something they find superior.
It is irrelevant to my simple point…which is that there are possible forms of civil union a State might legislate that the Church is not on principle bound to oppose.Nor am I. The existence and relatively wide acceptance of SSM IS very relevant to explaining why State’s (generally) won’t be pursuing what you advocate. The “customers” are already onto something they find superior.
Obviously if such legal vehicles reduce promiscuity and crime then these are additional good reasons for enacting them and that aspect is just as germain as it has always been re all couples in society. However it does not appear to intrinsically give absolute rights to sexual faithfulness any more than do current state marriages given adultery is no longer a crime.
My intention is that it be entirely decoupled, thus my point that it should not be seen as an arrangement for “gays” (which your initial presentation implied).
You would agree i think that State endorsement and support is not the flip side of the absence of State sanction? And the Church routinely exhorts us to avoid various evils without simultaneously advocating for the State to criminalize them. Different thresholds and considerations.
Rationalization - even in some Churches is an amazing thing. ELCA simultaneously advocates and condemns SSM. Depending on the Minister he can choose to refuse SSM for no reason other than…the parties are same sex. And then another Minister has no issue. This suggests that SSM must be a lesser union, at least in the ELCA.
I agree. This is in large part what I’ve argued.
Because the Christian side with traditional views grounded in Scripture have been defeated (likely permanently) in every other ‘modern’ country except America. Poland and the Irish Republic will follow the rest of the ‘modern’ countries in a matter of time. Malta, I’m not sure. In America, the chances of reversing abortion-on-demand and restrictions on religious freedoms are much higher than in any other ‘modern’ country.
I think your reasoning is faulty here. The ELCA is not a top down organization like the Catholic Church. Most authority on almost everything resides with each congregation and its pastor. Bishops and synod assemblies are relatively weak. The ELCA document you are talking about on Human Sexuality is really more descriptive of the different possible beliefs on homosexuality that might exist in the ELCA rather than being prescriptive, so it doesn’t really advocate or condemn anything.Rationalization - even in some Churches is an amazing thing. ELCA simultaneously advocates and condemns SSM. Depending on the Minister he can choose to refuse SSM for no reason other than…the parties are same sex. And then another Minister has no issue. This suggests that SSM must be a lesser union, at least in the ELCA.
BTW - what position does ELCA take on couples living as man and wife but unmarried? Is this wrong?