North Carolina voters ban gay marriage, civil unions

[rossum]

Once you arbitrarily redefine marriage anything goes. Pardon me if I have concern that goes beyond fulfilling the desires of some misdirected persons.

How many wives did Solomon have? How many concubines. Shall we repeal all the various redefinitions of marriage since Solomon?

rossum

 

[ASimon]

Not true. If a man loves his son he cannot marry him, yet.

If you think you’re scoring any points in this debate by equating homosexuality and incest (and possibly child rape), then please keep doing so. All you’re doing is marginalizing your position and making it clear to anyone with anything resembling an open mind that your argument has gone off the rails.

 

[ignatius777]

In principle, you’re correct, that marriage need have nothing to do with love. In practice, though, it has everything to do with it, and nobody would argue that society would be better off if we made decisions about whom to marry on bases that were completely divorced from questions of love.

Your side rattles on endlessly about the damage that would be done to “families” if gays were allowed to marry. Which is incredibly insulting, presumptuous, and demonstrably false, but leave that aside for a second. Ask yourself - how well would the family unit be served if people were marrying each other for reasons having nothing to do with love?

The fact is, love is an integral part of the decision to marry in 21st century America. The withered old chestnut that “Gays can marry anyone of the opposite sex, just like straight people” is a bad punchline to a stupid joke.

It would be of great help if you separated out your emotion from the law. The LAW does not require the parties to love one another. Should love be a part of why peole get married? Of course but should that be a part of why govt makes the law? Of course NOT.

Please post where is said it would damage ANYHTHING. I admitted in one other post and will restate it here gay “marriage” and marriage are both neutral in the damage they do but only marriage ADDS to society as a whole while gay “marriage” adds nothing which you as well admitted to a previous post.

again your emotionalism reveals the weakness of your argument

 

[ignatius777]

False. Gays are denied the right to pursue happiness by marrying the person they love. Heterosexuals are not.

rossum

LOL A gay person and I could each marry someone we dont love. The law does not provide one thing for straight people while denying the same thing for gays. love is NOT a requirement to get a license to marry. When it is THEN you’ll have a legitiamte argument

 

[Ronald_E]

Grace & Peace!

It saddens me to see such rhetoric, particularly from people, like the second poster quoted above, whom I know to be thoughtful Christians.

We do ourselves no great service when we commit ourselves to devisive rhetoric, the root of which is always this question: who has power over whom? The question of who has power over whom belongs to the sphere of sin, of violence and death, because power in this context is* always* related to violence as the rhetoric above eloqently demonstrates.

In the light of the Resurrection–revealing to us the union of Heaven and Earth, showing us definitively that the nature of God is a Love that has no part in death and violence, but is lovingly willing to become a victim of that death and violence in order to empty it of meaning and power–in such a light, using the language of violence and death, of us v. them, is un-Christian, to say the least.

Drawing these lines in the sand gives us an incredible sense of self-identity, granted. But this identity is always forged at the expense of and over against the other whom we see as our enemy and who will ultimately be seen as worthy of execution or obliteration. This is no way to form a healthy self-understanding, particularly when God has freely given us his own self-understanding to be our own self-understanding: Jesus Christ.

In these sorts of heated debates where religion and politics appear to overlap, it often seems that being “right” or “correct” (regardless of one’s leaning on the political spectrum) begins to be seen as a substitute for being the Deathless Love of Christ in the world. This is lamentable, particularly because it shows a tendency in us to trust in the apparatus of the modern liberal state to engineer a more moral citizenry or validate a holy or religious end. But using the apparatus of the modern liberal state to accomplish or validate what is believed to be a holy or religious end does not make us or the modern liberal state more holy or religious, but merely recasts the holy, the moral, or the religious in the terms of the modern liberal state. We might do well to remember the Psalmist’s words: “Some put their trust in chariots, and some in horses : but we will remember the Name of the Lord our God.”

With regard to the NC vote, the people of NC have spoken and will get what they wanted. That’s fine. Whether or not we or they will ultimately like what they’ve gotten is beside the point. “All shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well,” as Our Lord told his servant, Dame Julian of Norwich.

Under the Mercy,
Mark

All is Grace and Mercy! Deo Gratias!

Mark, Thank you for the clarity of faith which does not fear, but only searches ever deeper into the Mystery of God’s Love.

 

[ignatius777]

You have the right to pursue happiness by marrying the person you love. A gay man does not have that right in much of America. The right to pursue happiness is written into the constitution.

rossum

but there is no guarentee of attainment. by your rationale if you thought a $100,000/yr job would make you happy then you are entitled to it. You arent. The law as written apples to EVERYONE.

 

[JaKael02]

If you think you’re scoring any points in this debate by equating homosexuality and incest (and possibly child rape), then please keep doing so. All you’re doing is marginalizing your position and making it clear to anyone with anything resembling an open mind that your argument has gone off the rails.

Simon,

He is not marginalizing. He is stating that one you redefine marriage, who defines the redefinition of marriage? It has the possibility of a slippery slope regarding the definition of marriage.

In my opinion, his argument is not off the rails.

Kind regards,

James

 

[sw85]

So, you agree that children are not the fundamental point of marriage. What is your reason for denying gays the possibility of a civil marriage?

rossum

Again: I’m always amazed that you folks recycle the same trite arguments we refute here literally every time, as if you’ve never heard them before.

I’m not going to drop everything I’m doing so I can familiarize you with 2500 years of natural theology you can’t be bothered to learn yourself. Read a book. Edward Feser’s *Aquinas *is a good place to start.

 

[ignatius777]

How many wives did Solomon have? How many concubines. Shall we repeal all the various redefinitions of marriage since Solomon?

rossum

Doesnt matter. Current law says one wife. if incsetous marriage makes someone happy andthey love that person then why not allow it?

 

[Orogeny]

You have the right to pursue happiness by marrying the person you love. A gay man does not have that right in much of America. The right to pursue happiness is written into the constitution.

rossum

No I don’t. If I love another man, I can’t marry him. I can’t marry another man’s wife. I can’t marry my mother.

What can I do that a gay man can’t?

Peace

Tim

 

[ASimon]

It would be of great help if you separated out your emotion from the law. The LAW does not require the parties to love one another. Should love be a part of why peole get married? Of course but should that be a part of why govt makes the law? Of course NOT.

Why not? You’ve conceded that gay marriage has a net neutral effect on society (I would say the effect is net-positive, but nevermind that). So, in your view, gay marriage wouldn’t hurt anything, even if it didn’t help. But gays want it, and they have a legitimate reason to want it. And by your own admission, it wouldn’t hurt society if they had it. So why not?

 

[Ronald_E]

Serious question to you. Does absolute right and wrong exist?

Peace

Tim

Tim, There is a right and wrong way to live our faith. In this case I do not put faith in the courts for conversion.

 

[ignatius777]

No I don’t. If I love another man, I can’t marry him. I can’t marry another man’s wife. I can’t marry my mother.

What can I do that a gay man can’t?

Peace

Tim

He will say while you cant do the things you listed you CAN marry who you love and he CANT. But that only brings us back to love which is not a requirement for getting a license to marry.

 

[Orogeny]

No, they don’t. You can marry someone you love, and a gay person cannot. If you want to marry someone you love, you can. If you decide you love someone else, you can divorce that first person, and marry the second. A gay person is denied the right to marry anyone they love in the first place.

There is no right to marry someone based on love alone. I have demonstrated that. The same rules that apply to a gay man apply to me.

Your pretense of fairness is absurd. But maybe more capital letters and feigned ignorance will help.

Your pretense of logic is absurd. But more maybe more silly arguments will help.

Peace

Tim

 

[ASimon]

Simon,

He is not marginalizing. He is stating that one you redefine marriage, who defines the redefinition of marriage? It has the possibility of a slippery slope regarding the definition of marriage.

In my opinion, his argument is not off the rails.

Kind regards,

James

Sure it is. The slippery slope argument just isn’t a practical concern. For at least two reasons. For one thing, where are the legions of people picketing for their rights to marry their family members or children, or pets? They don’t exist. There’s virtually no intra-societal pressure to redefine marriage in any of those ways.

But suppose we did see these legions materialize, what then? Well, the same tests would apply then as do now? Are we better off as a nation if mothers could marry sons, or fathers to cats? I think we could apply some very common sense standards to conclude that we would not be better off.

 

[ignatius777]

Why not? You’ve conceded that gay marriage has a net neutral effect on society (I would say the effect is net-positive, but nevermind that). So, in your view, gay marriage wouldn’t hurt anything, even if it didn’t help. But gays want it, and they have a legitimate reason to want it. And by your own admission, it wouldn’t hurt society if they had it. So why not?

Correct the net impact of gay “marriage” on society is neutral while you admit and agreed with me that the net impact of marriage on society is positive. And the net impact of people marrying their dogs or their own children would be neutral on society as well but few if anyone advocates those. In the best interest of EVERYONE, which is why govts are insituted amongst men, the govt should sanction marriage over any other kind of relationship because of its benefits fro EVERYONE and not just one small fraction of the population

 

[Deo_Volente]

Grace & Peace!

Mark, my response was to the triumphalism of a leftist. I’m simply pointing out that it’s baseless.

Understood, sw, and I agree with you that leftist triumphalism is baseless. But “conservative” or rightist triumphalism is also baseless. I can’t think of any sort of political triumphalism that does not have its base in an us/them dialectic and that is not thereby revealed to be just another articulation of sin and death in the end.

…] evil is *always *its own undoing.

I wholeheartedly agree!

(By the way, a belated congratulations on your confirmation! And this is entirely off topic, but I wonder what you would make of John Milbank et al’s Radical Orthodoxy movement?)

Under the Mercy,
Mark

All is Grace and Mercy! Deo Gratias!

 

[rossum]

So are those who say they love little children…

And rightly so.

We are discussing adults here. The age of consent is a different question.

rossum

 

[rossum]

LOL A gay person and I could each marry someone we dont love. The law does not provide one thing for straight people while denying the same thing for gays. love is NOT a requirement to get a license to marry. When it is THEN you’ll have a legitiamte argument

The pursuit of happiness is a right in the US Constitution. Are heterosexual marriages all as miserable as you suggest? I wonder why they are so popular?

rossum

 

[rossum]

but there is no guarentee of attainment. by your rationale if you thought a $100,000/yr job would make you happy then you are entitled to it. You arent. The law as written apples to EVERYONE.

But one potential avenue of happiness is shut off for gays, but not shut off for heterosexuals. The law is the same, but its effect is to block off a potential route to a constitutional right.

rossum