I don’t understand the question. A person doesn’t need to believe in God to receive things from Him. The central nervous system comes from God, and atheists still have it. The power of speech comes from God, and atheists still have it. So why would the fact that the ability to marry comes from God mean that atheists couldn’t have it? I don’t follow your reasoning.
What about them? They don’t have the authority to redefine marriage, either.
You can remain an atheist and still believe that marriage is a union between a man and a woman – the issue of who created that union is a separate question. It’s no different from an atheist who believes human beings have an inherent right to life – you need not believe that right originated from God to believe the right exists. Suppose a Marxist state sought to remove babies from their mother’s homes to live in state-run nurseries. An atheist could believe that mothers have an inherent right to live with their babies, even if he disbelieves that such a right comes from God. Christians would oppose the baby-snatching measure upon the further ground that God gives parents a right to their children, but that doesn’t mean the atheist couldn’t recognize that same right without believing that it comes from God.
What do you mean by “accept?” No, I shouldn’t be forced by civil authority to believe anything, but that is not the issue here. The issue here is whether the government has the authority to change the definition of marriage. Since government didn’t create marriage, the answer is no. That is outside the scope of the government’s authority.
ANYBODY and any group can call themselves Christian. Can the Metropolitan Community Churches be regard as Christian? They seem to think so.
Government has always had the power to define marriage - it just hasn’t been used until relatively recently.
And this is the appropriate attitude for government to take. Mixing in religious concepts muddies the water and leads to discrimination against some segments of society. I think this is good reason for government to stop issuing marriage licenses and simply give civil union licenses to all couples. Get government out of the marriage business.
Indeed. How would you have liked it if the people of your state voted to declare your marriage outside the law? Doesn’t that sound a bit like Proposition 8?
The government isn’t changing its definition of marriage, it is for the first time establishing a definition of marriage. That said, there is no reason why government can’t change its definition later on. Its not uncommon for legal terms to be re-defined with changing situations.
No, government never has had that power. ours is a society of limited government – it isn’t founded on the principle that “government can do whatever it wants,” but on the principle that the government has only limited authority.
I didn’t mix in any religious concept. Religious belief isn’t the reason to oppose gay marriage. The reason to oppose gay marriage is that there is that marriage is a union between a man and a woman by its very nature, and the government lacks authority to change that.
It would be an invalid governmental law, just like a law recognizing gay unions as “marriages” also would be an invalid governmental law. That is my whole point.
Strange, I’ve been an attorney since 1991 and I’ve never heard of the government claiming to have the power to redefine marriage until this movement arose.
I don’t agree. That would be more about a law against sodomy, which this isn’t. Proposition 8 is about whether government has the authority to ignore facts (that marriage is a male/female union) in favor of zeitgeist ideology (the lie that gay unions constitute marriages). Morality isn’t the issue. A person could consider sodomy moral and still recognize that marriage is exclusively a male/female union.
According your your religious beliefs, marriage is a union only between a man and a woman. Many would disagree with that.
Perhaps because no one cared to define marriage until conservative Christians began the movement to define marriage in a way that would exclude gays and lesbians.
No. Not “according to my religious beliefs.” According to reality.
Actually in reality, many same-sex couples were married in my beloved home state of California.
Because female and male are inherently complimentary, whereas female/female and male/male are not. One need not believe in any religion or even in the supernatural to acknowledge that male and female compliment each other in ways which members of the same gender cannot.
Mustard on a hot dog is complimentary. Let’s define a hot dog as the bun, the meat, and some mustard. If anyone wants to put chocolate syrup on their hot dog, we won’t stand for it!
I have to admit, I am glad that I did not have to vote on this one. I know that many folks collapse the Church’s teaching to “anti gay marriage”, but Rome puts it a little differently. “[T]he family needs to be safeguarded and promoted, based on monogamous marriage between a man and a woman, and protected in its unity and stability in the face of modern laws on divorce: in no way can other forms of cohabitation be placed on the same level as marriage, nor can they receive legal recognition as such.”
Gamera,