Illegality of gay marriage

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Marc_Anthony

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All right, w/o getting into a long, boring post, suffice to say in short that my view, right now, is one where I do not support gay marriage and do not think the Catholic Church should ever sanction it but don’t accept the arguments for its illegality.

However, I’m willing to be convinced. So, my request: Post your reasons and arguments, if you’re in the mood, of why gay marriage should be made illegal. Just a couple things though:
  1. Don’t post reasons why it’s WRONG, I get that. Post why it should be made illegal, please.
  2. Please don’t just post links. If there’s something in a link you want me to read, I’d prefer if you summarized the link or just coppied and pasted relevant bits. I’m not really interested in going through a thousand links thouh, if that’s all race.
Just so you kow, this isn’t a challenge in the sense that I’m asking you this to unearth how silly the arguments against gay marriage are or anything like that. If you can give me a good enough argument, I’ll be convinced. I’m open to discussion.

Thanks.
 
Marc_Anthony said:
  1. Don’t post reasons why it’s WRONG, I get that. Post why it should be made illegal, please.
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I’m struggling with this because generally speaking, actions and such are illegal because they are morally wrong. My general line of thought is: Don’t make it legal because it is wrong and here is why it is wrong (insert reasons).

Can you clarify your question or give an example of what you are thinking?
 
fermat said:
I’m struggling with this because generally speaking, actions and such are illegal because they are morally wrong. My general line of thought is: Don’t make it legal because it is wrong and here is why it is wrong (insert reasons).

Can you clarify your question or give an example of what you are thinking?
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That’s fair.

Okay, we know, as catholics, that condom use is wrong. Should it be made illegal?

How about sex before marriage (for those 18 and over)?
 
I understand your intent, but the premise itself is backwards…

gay “marriage” IS illegal in all but the few states that have gone through the process to legalize it.

…just saying…
 
All immoral things should be illegal.

Making artifical distinctions between fornication; sodomy; beastiality; masturbation; contraceptive use; adultery and so forth is nothing but relativism.

It follows from the belief that what is immoral should also be illegal that we have laws against bestiality; abortion; murder; pedophillia and so forth. As Catholics we should fight to have what we believe to be moral upheld by the law; just as other social groups fight to have what they believe to be moral upheld by the law – if votes are to have any worth they must represent what we believe.

If you don’t think what is immoral should also be illegal why (if you do) do you support laws against murder; pedophillia; and theft?
 
I had a teacher once tell me when we were talking about the Supreme court’s role in the government that there primary job was to interpret the constitution and decide what the founding fathers were thinking when they created this document.

Well I don’t think they were thinking about gay marriage.
I know they were not thinking of burning the flag
I know they were not thinking about taking God off the money

Even though the document can be changed via ammendment doesn’t make it right.

JUST BECAUSE YOU CAN DO SOMETHING DOESN’T MEAN YOU SHOULD DO IT.
 
JohnDamian said:
All immoral things should be illegal.
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Do you think you should be able to call the cops and have them charge someone with a crime every time he tells a lie? thoughtlessly says something hurtful? fails to adequately support the poor, the needy, and the Church? All these things and many more are immoral. Certainly the civil law must be Based on the natural moral low, but we only make civil crimes of those immoral acts which cause grave damage to society.
And yes I agree sodomy, contraception and adultery should be illegal.

I agree, the OP’s premise is backwards. It is not a matter of “gay marriage is illegal”.

In the 19th century civil governments began to make and keep government registers of the names of people who are married. (Before that the regulation of marriage entirely a Church matter.) The reason is that governments recognise that marriage, and especially strong and stable marriages, benefits civil society in many ways, by producing the essential new citizens and giving them the best chance of being emotionally, mentally and physically healthy and productive members of society. Hence it has laws which support marriage and give married people certain advantages, for the good of siociety as a whole including unmarried people.

The proposal is that civil governments should register sodomite relationships between people of the same sex in the same way as it registers marriages, and perhaps even CALL them “marriages”, and give unmarried people the same benefits that married people get, just because they regularly sodomise each other. (If anyone claims that this is not the reason, ask him if he would agree to the sdame “marriages”/partnerships being registered between two people who are not sodomising, eg two siblings sharing a household.) But it would be counterproductive for governments to do this, because sodomy does not give any benefit to society, but rather causes many ills and costss to society, so governments should discourage it, not encourage and support it.

Marriage has existed since the dawn of human existence. It long precedes any state, and even any religion, and no state has the authority to reinvent or redefine marriage.
 
Dj87 said:
I know they were not thinking about taking God off the money
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I know that they were not thinking about putting God on the money either. The words “In God we Trust” were first added in 1864 (on a two cent coin). That was not the work of the Founding Fathers.

rossum
 
Marc_Anthony said:
All right, w/o getting into a long, boring post, suffice to say in short that my view, right now, is one where I do not support gay marriage and do not think the Catholic Church should ever sanction it but don’t accept the arguments for its illegality.

However, I’m willing to be convinced. So, my request: Post your reasons and arguments, if you’re in the mood, of why gay marriage should be made illegal. …
Click to expand...
There is not a big upswelling of support to make gay unions illegal. No one is suggesting throwing people in jail because they are in a gay relationship.

Our society has a ban it or fund it mentality and the question at point is do we invest government resources promoting gay unions by opening up the marriage licensing process to them.

The union of would be fathers and would be mothers is embedded in our society. Typically men had the role of bread winner and defender and women had the role of caretaker and home keaper. In this traditional model, it was appropriate for a partnership. It was further in the best interest of society to endorse this situation. (Few will say that unwed mothers is a good thing.) To facilitate this traditional situation employers frequently offer bennefits to the worker and the wife and children. Appartment and hotel owners would use the marrital relationship to distinguish betweeen customers that were legitimate and those who were living in sin.

The gay marriage agenda is an attempt to by pass the moral choices of those in society and to force the gay version of morality (immorality) on others.

There are legitimate reasons for civil unions that have similar conditions as marriages but are not marriages. For instance Two elderly lifelong friends who are with out fammily partnering up in a plutonic way to share a home, and provide next of kin legal status to the other. Or, two people who could not find love in a traditional marriage who are sharing a home for other financial purposes. In situations like this the union would grant next of kin status for hospital visitation and emergency medical decisions, and inheritance. But it would not force other private individuals such as hotel owners, and employers to grant the arrangement the same bennefits as given to a married couple.

So no one is trying to make gays or gay unions illegal, they are just trying to prevent those who are not meeting the basic requirements for marriage to be called married via government licensing.
 
rossum said:
I know that they were not thinking about putting God on the money either. The words “In God we Trust” were first added in 1864 (on a two cent coin). That was not the work of the Founding Fathers.

rossum
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Seeing as they were all CHRISTIANS I would think they would expect that it be on the money. Plain and simple be it Catholic or Protestant The founding fathers were all Christian and Christ founded one church the Catholic church! By the Way, the colonial currency did say “in the year of out lord or Anno Domini”, Look it up!
 
Dj87 said:
Seeing as they were all CHRISTIANS I would think they would expect that it be on the money.
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No, they were not all Christians as some of them were Deists. If they had wanted those words on US money then they would have said so. They didn’t. I am inclined to take them at their word.
The founding fathers were all Christian
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You have been misinformed, as I pointed out. I suggest that you double check all other information you got from that source, it is not reliable.

rossum
 
Religious Affiliation
of U.S. Founding Fathers # of Founding Fathers % of Founding Fathers
Episcopalian/Anglican 88 54.7%
Presbyterian 30 18.6%
Congregationalist 27 16.8%
Quaker 7 4.3%
Dutch Reformed/German Reformed 6 3.7%
Lutheran 5 3.1%
Catholic 3 1.9%
Huguenot 3 1.9%
Unitarian 3 1.9%
Methodist 2 1.2%
Calvinist 1 0.6%
TOTAL 204

Figures don’t lie and liars don’t figure.
 
Marc_Anthony said:
All right, w/o getting into a long, boring post, suffice to say in short that my view, right now, is one where I do not support gay marriage and do not think the Catholic Church should ever sanction it but don’t accept the arguments for its illegality.

However, I’m willing to be convinced. So, my request: Post your reasons and arguments, if you’re in the mood, of why gay marriage should be made illegal. Just a couple things though:
  1. Don’t post reasons why it’s WRONG, I get that. Post why it should be made illegal, please.
  2. Please don’t just post links. If there’s something in a link you want me to read, I’d prefer if you summarized the link or just coppied and pasted relevant bits. I’m not really interested in going through a thousand links thouh, if that’s all race.
Just so you kow, this isn’t a challenge in the sense that I’m asking you this to unearth how silly the arguments against gay marriage are or anything like that. If you can give me a good enough argument, I’ll be convinced. I’m open to discussion.

Thanks.
Click to expand...
This has been asked in various posts all over the boards. I, also, have not seen any convincing points made. I understand what you are asking for, and I am waiting for a similar answer. So far, I have seen lots of posts making vague references to dire effects on the family, children, society, or my personal favorite, the old slippery slope argument that I will soon marry a Buick. Regardless, I understand why a religious group would thumb their noses and steadfastly hold to their time honored traditions and recognize only heterosexual unions. No disagreement whatsoever. But I have still yet to see any convincing negative effects other than what can best be described as unfounded fear.
 
For the purposes of the argument, here’s an intriguing comparison and a ‘devils advocate’ argument…

We call it sinful for Catholics to eat meat on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, yet we do not call for everyone who is not Catholic to observe this discipline.

We call it sinful for two homosexuals to purport to contract a marriage and we call on everyone to render that attempt at formalised cohabitation legally void.

Here’s the question: why is it that some of our disciplines, as relate to sin, are specific just to us and we don’t object when others don’t follow our rules, and yet in the case of homosexual legal unions we do object and seek actively to prevent those unions being recognised in law?

Surely what we hold to be sin in these matters pertains only to those who wish to be part of our faith? If two Catholic men wanted to ‘wed’ then we would call it sinful. But if two non-Catholic people eat meat on Good Friday, we don’t call it sinful. So why should we impose our rules on people who are not bound by any of the other of our rules?

Is there a satisfactory answer to that?
 
DexUK said:
For the purposes of the argument, here’s an intriguing comparison and a ‘devils advocate’ argument…

We call it sinful for Catholics to eat meat on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, yet we do not call for everyone who is not Catholic to observe this discipline.

We call it sinful for two homosexuals to purport to contract a marriage and we call on everyone to render that attempt at formalised cohabitation legally void.

Here’s the question: why is it that some of our disciplines, as relate to sin, are specific just to us and we don’t object when others don’t follow our rules, and yet in the case of homosexual legal unions we do object and seek actively to prevent those unions being recognised in law?

Surely what we hold to be sin in these matters pertains only to those who wish to be part of our faith? If two Catholic men wanted to ‘wed’ then we would call it sinful. But if two non-Catholic people eat meat on Good Friday, we don’t call it sinful. So why should we impose our rules on people who are not bound by any of the other of our rules?

Is there a satisfactory answer to that?
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If two athiests/ protestants/ what ever come to my home on a Friday (in lent) they will be served fish. They are not welcome to come in and demand to be served meat. If they want to back lunchmeat sandwhiches for their children, it is not impacting us. if they tell christian children it is OK to eat meat on Friday’s it is a problem. If they choose to eat meat in their own homes it is their problem. If they have a grocery store and sell fish such as canned tuna with meat in it, and deny what it is, then that is deceitfull. With gay unions, it is not a matter of them keeping it in the privacy of their own homes, they are forcing it on others demanding equal accomodation as married couples. When they do so and attempt to do so under the penalty of law it becomes our business. When they try to teach our children in government mandated schools that their perverted view of morality is acceptable, then it is a violation of our rights.
 
Dj87 said:
I had a teacher once tell me when we were talking about the Supreme court’s role in the government that there primary job was to interpret the constitution and decide what the founding fathers were thinking when they created this document.

Well I don’t think they were thinking about gay marriage.
I know they were not thinking of burning the flag
I know they were not thinking about taking God off the money

Even though the document can be changed via ammendment doesn’t make it right.

JUST BECAUSE YOU CAN DO SOMETHING DOESN’T MEAN YOU SHOULD DO IT.
Click to expand...
A little flaw there…they were thinking about slavery, they weren’t thinking of women having the right to vote, they weren’t thinking about an industrial age…etc.
 
royal_archer said:
If two athiests/ protestants/ what ever come to my home on a Friday (in lent) they will be served fish. They are not welcome to come in and demand to be served meat. If they want to back lunchmeat sandwhiches for their children, it is not impacting us. if they tell christian children it is OK to eat meat on Friday’s it is a problem. If they choose to eat meat in their own homes it is their problem. If they have a grocery store and sell fish such as canned tuna with meat in it, and deny what it is, then that is deceitfull. With gay unions, it is not a matter of them keeping it in the privacy of their own homes, they are forcing it on others demanding equal accomodation as married couples. When they do so and attempt to do so under the penalty of law it becomes our business. When they try to teach our children in government mandated schools that their perverted view of morality is acceptable, then it is a violation of our rights.
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Two homosexuals in a legally recognised partnership should not expect that partnership to be recognised as a marriage by the Church. That’s a given and you are correct because it would violate our rights to freedom of belief.

However, how does a legally recognised union between two persons of the same gender affect our understanding of the sacrament of marriage? What impact does it actually have on marriage since it isn’t actually marriage that these two same-gender people can contract between each other? (At least, it’s not what we call sacramental marriage)

Is it just that same-sex couples wish to co-opt the word ‘marriage’? What difference does it make to our beliefs and our religion if the Government chooses to legislate for certain groups of people with whom we have nothing in common?

Taking proscriptions about what we eat on certain days… Jews will not eat meat that is not kosher. Muslims are the same (although they call it halal). Now some Muslims are sufficiently sensitive about the problem of non-halal meat that they would wish to impose their proscriptions on the rest of society (i.e. sharia law). We would, quite rightly, object to being told we can’t eat pork or prawns or whatever else is ‘unclean’ by those rules that we do not share.

So the question arises, quite logically from the above examples, about why it is that we Catholics think that we should force legislation that restricts what other people wish to do? We’re totally free to legislate within our own community, by means of the standards by which we insist that people in our community abide by if they wish to remain ‘in communion’ with us, after all. Essentially, shouldn’t our particular morals as applied to our community only be mandatory within that community? Surely everyone else is free to make up their own minds, whether we like it or not? Render unto Caesar?
 
Dj87 said:
Religious Affiliation
of U.S. Founding Fathers # of Founding Fathers % of Founding Fathers
Episcopalian/Anglican 88 54.7%
Presbyterian 30 18.6%
Congregationalist 27 16.8%
Quaker 7 4.3%
Dutch Reformed/German Reformed 6 3.7%
Lutheran 5 3.1%
Catholic 3 1.9%
Huguenot 3 1.9%
Unitarian 3 1.9%
Methodist 2 1.2%
Calvinist 1 0.6%
TOTAL 204

Figures don’t lie and liars don’t figure.
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Figures with no source are 85.263% likely to have been made up on the spot.

When posting tables you may find [noparse]
Code: 
...
[/noparse] tags useful.

Try: Founding Fathers, Deists, Orthodox Christians, and the Spiritual Context of 18th Century America instead.

rossum
 
Marc_Anthony said:
All right, w/o getting into a long, boring post, suffice to say in short that my view, right now, is one where I do not support gay marriage and do not think the Catholic Church should ever sanction it but don’t accept the arguments for its illegality.

However, I’m willing to be convinced. So, my request: Post your reasons and arguments, if you’re in the mood, of why gay marriage should be made illegal. Just a couple things though:
  1. Don’t post reasons why it’s WRONG, I get that. Post why it should be made illegal, please.
  2. Please don’t just post links. If there’s something in a link you want me to read, I’d prefer if you summarized the link or just coppied and pasted relevant bits. I’m not really interested in going through a thousand links thouh, if that’s all race.
Just so you kow, this isn’t a challenge in the sense that I’m asking you this to unearth how silly the arguments against gay marriage are or anything like that. If you can give me a good enough argument, I’ll be convinced. I’m open to discussion.

Thanks.
Click to expand...
The social data bearing on this issue of same-sex “marriage” strike me as meager: as the US Bishops say, we don’t know what will happen if the definition of marriage is added to (Marriage and Same-Sex Unions, question 7).

Given that the data simply aren’t there, opinions on this matter, for the time being, can only be justified on the basis of principle. The side in favor has a pretty good case, since it seems reasonable to believe that same-sex “marriage” will make society more equal and will contribute to a social atmosphere in which LGBT persons are no longer thought of as vicious extra-terrestrials.

What does the side in opposition to same-sex “marriage” have to offer, aside from scare quotes and rhetoric? As Marc Anthony points out, if you ask someone why he or she thinks same-sex unions should not be recognized by the law, you will be told that such unions are “wrong.” But to get from “wrong” to “not recognized by the law,” you need a premise that says, at the very least, that all things being equal, anything wrong (in the same way that same-sex unions are wrong) should never be recognized by the law.

How plausible is that premise? I won’t argue for it. I will say, however, that while its validity depends critically on the meaning of “wrong,” it is not trivially false (thanks to the all-things-being-equal clause), and it draws some weak support from the common reasons people have for exclaiming “There ought to be a law against that!”
 
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