Should the state marry gay lovers?

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I have often considered whether it might well be workable to make ALL legal unions/marriages a matter of contract law falling explicitly under the domain of corporate law.

If you think, as Catholics or members of any other faith that it’s easier to get out of a marriage via annulment than corporate obligations, boy are you wrong! 😉

And yes, some people sign into some pretty stupid contracts, the same way they sign into some pretty stupid marriages as things are right now, but that would clarify the gravity of the situation and allow the partners to clearly define terms, with a fair amount of protection too in cases of contractual abuse - and it can apply to any consenting adults, at least in the loosest definition.

I see no reason whatsoever not to make this workable - the marriage laws need some overhauling badly anyway, especially interstate - and perhaps an excellent start would be trying it out as a form of carefully-negotiated two-person incorporation, and then possibly expansion should there be any viable forms of consenting-adult partnerships (which need not necessarily include sexual anything! Two couples could incorporate for things like childcare, housing and finance while remaining distinctly two couples with provisos that would make a partner of one couple sleeping with a partner from the other couple an actionable violation, etc).

It’s just a thought, but perhaps a very practical and humane one, and of course it would include matters of child care, visiting rights in both hospitals and prisons, and so forth, depending on how the contract is drawn, and with much clarification needed for all aspects of such a contract.

Sure, some people here think everyone should be Catholic, but that just ain’t gonna happen, cap’n, so, since this is about the state and legality, perhaps this is a good option.
 
Nepenthe said:
I have often considered whether it might well be workable to make ALL legal unions/marriages a matter of contract law falling explicitly under the domain of corporate law.

If you think, as Catholics or members of any other faith that it’s easier to get out of a marriage via annulment than corporate obligations, boy are you wrong! 😉

And yes, some people sign into some pretty stupid contracts, the same way they sign into some pretty stupid marriages as things are right now, but that would clarify the gravity of the situation and allow the partners to clearly define terms, with a fair amount of protection too in cases of contractual abuse - and it can apply to any consenting adults, at least in the loosest definition.

I see no reason whatsoever not to make this workable - the marriage laws need some overhauling badly anyway, especially interstate - and perhaps an excellent start would be trying it out as a form of carefully-negotiated two-person incorporation, and then possibly expansion should there be any viable forms of consenting-adult partnerships (which need not necessarily include sexual anything! Two couples could incorporate for things like childcare, housing and finance while remaining distinctly two couples with provisos that would make a partner of one couple sleeping with a partner from the other couple an actionable violation, etc).

It’s just a thought, but perhaps a very practical and humane one, and of course it would include matters of child care, visiting rights in both hospitals and prisons, and so forth, depending on how the contract is drawn, and with much clarification needed for all aspects of such a contract.

Sure, some people here think everyone should be Catholic, but that just ain’t gonna happen, cap’n, so, since this is about the state and legality, perhaps this is a good option.
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Sign a prenup agreement if you want to alter some of the basic rights and duties that arise from a civil marriage. I don’t get the corporate law stuff, a married couple is not a separate entity and third parties would just make the H and W personally guarantee any “marriage corporation” debt.
 
Mike_Dye said:
The same Judeo-Christian ethic that our society is founded on cannot accept a disordered and unnatural so called marriage. Two people of the same sex should be allowed to do anything that they want together in private (God never interferes in our free will). But the Church or State should never condone Godless unions.
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Well, we were not founded on the Judeo-Christian faith. I think the way you phrased it - “ethic” - is simply another way of saying something our founding fathers denied.

Treaty of Tripoli, Article 11, signed by President John Adams:

As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion…

Certain Christian apologists - Tektonics, most notably - claim the original version ratified by Congress didn’t contain article 11; however, under close inspection, this argument fails miserably. The Philadelphia Gazette and several other newspapers printed the Treaty of Tripoli with article 11 included a day after it was ratified by Congress. In fact, the link above will take you to the Library of Congress to view the treaty yourself. Article 11 is obviously included.
 
peduzzi89 said:
I guess my point, Fr., was that I don’t see how the other types of marriage that you mentioned belong in the same argument…people said the same things when blacks were allowed to marry…that people would want 8 wives next. But the point was about discrimination…against blacks and now against sexual orientation…polygamy is not a sexual orientation.

Spire, why do you say it’s impossible for homosexuals to get married.
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Once you arbitrarily redefine marriage you can keep changing it.

There is no equivalence between race and disordered sexual inclination or conduct.

The state should use its authority justly, not simply make stuff up to appease some folks who support some morally incoherent issue that happens to be popular currently.
 
fix said:
Once you arbitrarily redefine marriage you can keep changing it.

There is no equivalence between race and disordered sexual inclination or conduct.

The state should use its authority justly, not simply make stuff up to appease some folks who support some morally incoherent issue that happens to be popular currently.
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There is no slippery slope with redefining marriage, period. There is a clear equivalence between race and sexual orientation. The Church will hopefully catch up on the latter like it finally did with the former.

What’s so morally incoherent about civil rights?
 
thewalrus said:
There is no slippery slope with redefining marriage, period. There is a clear equivalence between race and sexual orientation. The Church will hopefully catch up on the latter like it finally did with the former.

What’s so morally incoherent about civil rights?
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There is no right to do wrong.
 
The state can offer “marriage” to whom ever they deem qualified. It is the state that decides “state marriage” not religious institutions. If the state decrees two people of the same sex “married”…they are “married” regardless what one’s religious beliefs dictate…one’s religious beliefs do not determine state law.

It is religious prople who claim that gay relationships are “disordered” and therefore cannot marry…in those states where marriage between same sex couples is legal…these couples are not 'disordered". Neither is their “marriage” “godless” as the state has nothing to do with defining “godliness” or “godlessness”.

Religious institutions can and do define who and who cannot be “married”…a growing number of religious institutions are allowing gay people to be married…their beliefs are not dictated nor defined by Catholic belief…they determine their own belief…just as with “civil second marriages” the Catholic church does not deem them “valid”…but the state does.
 
thewalrus said:
Oh not to worry, I’m not. I’m supporting equality and justice. Talk to your friend here though, he needs to hop on board.
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It would not be equality nor justice for the state to sanction Gay Marrage for it would lead to Churches being sued to allow Gay Marriages to be performed on Church property. So in reality the whole Gay Movement is not about rights of one group but the ability of a minority to take a right from another and to silence it on moral issues.

What is at state is the possible abolishment of the First Amendment in order that a small minority may flaunt thier immorality against the mores of the rest of society.

**News in two con law cases, still in early stages **
The New Jersey Civil Rights Division has issued a Final Report finding that the Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association discriminated against Harriet Bernstein and Luisa Paster by refusing to rent them a boardwalk pavilion for a civil union ceremony. OGCMA describes itself as “a ministry organization, rooted in Methodist heritage.” It argued that being forced to rent the pavilion for a civil union would violate its religious liberty and expressive association rights.
The agency found that the church was operating the pavilion as a public accommodation, not as a religious facility, evidenced by the fact that it rented it to any and all couples who wanted it for a wedding, regardless of religious affiliation, and had represented to the state that the pavilion was “open to the public” in order to obtain an exemption from property tax. (The group has now stopped renting the pavilion.) I am calling this an early stage in the case, despite the fact that it is the final agency action, because the defendant’s lawyer, the Alliance Defense Fund, is announcing that it will seek reversal of the decision in court. An ACLU cooperating attorney is representing Bernstein and Paster.
Meanwhile, the ACLU LGBT Rights Project has filed a challenge to the statute adopted by Arkansas voters on election day that bars adoption and foster care placement with any unmarried couples. The complaint alleges equal protection and due process violations on both federal and state constitutional grounds; the case was filed in state court. The law is scheduled to take effect January 1; no motion for a preliminary injunction has been filed.
Doubtless there will be more to come on both these cases in future months.
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Parnoid, nah, I know and understand what the gig is all about… Power and dominance over an unwilling partner — the rape of our society…
wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=66247
A priest is being investigated as a potential criminal under a federal “hate crimes” law for quoting from the Bible, and he’s being targeted using a Canadian provision under which no defendant ever has been acquitted, according to a new report.
Pete Vere, a canon lawyer and Catholic journalist, has reported on the prosecution of Father Alphonse de Valk, a pro-life activist known across Canada, by the Canadian Human Rights Commission – “a quasi-judicial investigative body with the power of the Canadian government behind it” – at CatholicExchange.com.
“What was Father de Valk’s alleged ‘hate act’?” Vere wrote.
“Father defended the [Catholic] Church’s teaching on marriage during Canada’s same-sex ‘marriage’ debate, quoting extensively from the Bible, the Catechism of the Catholic Church, and Pope John Paul II’s encyclicals. Each of these documents contains official Catholic teaching. And like millions of other people throughout the world and the ages – many of whom are non-Catholics and non-Christians — Father believes that marriage is an exclusive union between a man and a woman,” he wrote.
The new case comes just as columnist and author Mark Steyn, and Maclean’s magazine which published an excerpt from his “America Alone” book, are on trial before the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal for similar “offenses.”
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For a read that either make you see the truth or boil inside, maybe both, click and read the truth.

“Excellent book! This book gives ample evidence that the sexual perversion of homosexuality easily lends itself to authoritarian impulses…The underlying theme is that when a society accepts a moral relativistic philosophy (leading to acceptance of homosexuality) it could very well lead to the eventual destruction of…constitutional rights…”
Steve Baldwin, Executive Director, Council for National Policy
 
Bennie_P said:
It would not be equality nor justice for the state to sanction Gay Marrage for it would lead to Churches being sued to allow Gay Marriages to be performed on Church property. So in reality the whole Gay Movement is not about rights of one group but the ability of a minority to take a right from another and to silence it on moral issues.

What is at state is the possible abolishment of the First Amendment in order that a small minority may flaunt thier immorality against the mores of the rest of society.

News in two con law cases, still in early stages

Parnoid, nah, I know and understand what the gig is all about… Power and dominance over an unwilling partner — the rape of our society…

For a read that either make you see the truth or boil inside, maybe both, click and read the truth.

“Excellent book! This book gives ample evidence that the sexual perversion of homosexuality easily lends itself to authoritarian impulses…The underlying theme is that when a society accepts a moral relativistic philosophy (leading to acceptance of homosexuality) it could very well lead to the eventual destruction of…constitutional rights…”
Steve Baldwin, Executive Director, Council for National Policy
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Bennie, I kid you not. I truly could not come up with a better poster boy for fundamentalist fanaticism than you. That anyone actually thinks that the “Gay Movement” will destroy the “First Amendment” as well as the rest of our “constitutional rights” and thereby “rape society” is a sight to behold with wonder.
 
The state should not marry them but if they choose to leave possessions to another homosexual when they die the state should uphold the will and prevent anyone from going against that individuals wishes. It happens so often that a family who didn;t like their homosexual sibling contests the will. A will should be executed as it is written with no ability to fight it.
 
thewalrus said:
Bennie, I kid you not. I truly could not come up with a better poster boy for fundamentalist fanaticism than you. That anyone actually thinks that the “Gay Movement” will destroy the “First Amendment” as well as the rest of our “constitutional rights” and thereby “rape society” is a sight to behold with wonder.
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Despite your confidence and self assuredness that you are right and the Christian majority is wrong, you will have wished that Gay marriage didn’t become the law of the land. Once morality is totally stripped away from society and the Church is silenced, all the injustice in which you thought happen to gays in the past will become rule of the land, for there will be no stopping of the striping away of individual rights and liberties.

Yes, gays will have “rights” for a spell (even though today, despite what you perceive, they have all the same rights as everyone else does.), but other liberties you now enjoy such as freedom of speech, freedom from undue search and seizure, the freedom to assembly will be taken away. For in order to keep the Christian, the Muslim and the Jew inline and quiet over the issues of morality those types of rights will have to go in order for the ruling class to have and maintain control. Once those rights are taken from others then those same rights will no longer exist for you.

Then we will see laws which at first are meant to be laws of compassion, such as allow the sick and the invalid take their own lives in order to have mercy from their pain, then you see the government through the denial of live-giving care force those that are sick and invalid to accept early death (euthanasia) in order not to be a burden on themselves or society.

You will see women forced to have abortions and sterilized if they break child bearing restrictions or have children without the proper means to support them, done in the name of the welfare of society. Of course the children will be forced to leave their parents’ care and attend state run schools, because private and religious schools will be banned, in order to shape the minds of the children so they will have the proper intellectual mindset, with no old fashion ideas, such as the superstitious ideas presented in the ideas of Judea-Christianity. For those ideas of their parents and grandparents should never be allowed to fester within their young brains. They will be tested and guided into the professions or work in which is deemed best for the welfare of the state and if they seem to lack the ability to muster up to the standards of the state perhaps the ideal of late abortive measures can be used, surly the state should be able to judge ones abilities before they reach the age of 10.

You are sitting there reading this and think this to be absurd, yet many of these measures I present are being used somewhere and justified by different governments around the world, or are being discussed in the halls of academia in Europe and America today.

To make it a right for “Gays” to marry as policy across the nation, the government will have to take the right of free speech and the freedom of religion away. Already in nations were they have made “Gay” marriage a reality; they have had to make speaking against it a hate crime in order to keep the peace. Once freedom of thought is taken away then all other rights will become history.

We in America have had a grand experiment once having what many see as the perfect constitution ever written giving the best security of rights to individuals than any other nation has ever been able to do or has done. But we started losing those individual rights when the courts ruled that it was OK for a mother to kill her own child, the most innocent of all persons, right in the safety of her womb. This made the first mockery of motherhood and family security. And now the final nail in the coffin which will entomb individual rights and will probably bring the downfall of the greatest experiment in self-government, is being hammered in just for the pleasure of minute minority of immature adults that want to play house as they thumb their nose at God.

Should the state marry gay lovers? Only if it wants to destroy itself, those it governs and civil society in general.

And the culture of death marches on, the piper pipes and dances as the silly mice dance and follow him to Hell.

Goodnight, God Bless.
 
Bennie_P said:
Despite your confidence and self assuredness that you are right and the Christian majority is wrong, you will have wished that Gay marriage didn’t become the law of the land. Once morality is totally stripped away from society and the Church is silenced, all the injustice in which you thought happen to gays in the past will become rule of the land, for there will be no stopping of the striping away of individual rights and liberties.

Yes, gays will have “rights” for a spell (even though today, despite what you perceive, they have all the same rights as everyone else does.), but other liberties you now enjoy such as freedom of speech, freedom from undue search and seizure, the freedom to assembly will be taken away. For in order to keep the Christian, the Muslim and the Jew inline and quiet over the issues of morality those types of rights will have to go in order for the ruling class to have and maintain control. Once those rights are taken from others then those same rights will no longer exist for you.

Then we will see laws which at first are meant to be laws of compassion, such as allow the sick and the invalid take their own lives in order to have mercy from their pain, then you see the government through the denial of live-giving care force those that are sick and invalid to accept early death (euthanasia) in order not to be a burden on themselves or society.

You will see women forced to have abortions and sterilized if they break child bearing restrictions or have children without the proper means to support them, done in the name of the welfare of society. Of course the children will be forced to leave their parents’ care and attend state run schools, because private and religious schools will be banned, in order to shape the minds of the children so they will have the proper intellectual mindset, with no old fashion ideas, such as the superstitious ideas presented in the ideas of Judea-Christianity. For those ideas of their parents and grandparents should never be allowed to fester within their young brains. They will be tested and guided into the professions or work in which is deemed best for the welfare of the state and if they seem to lack the ability to muster up to the standards of the state perhaps the ideal of late abortive measures can be used, surly the state should be able to judge ones abilities before they reach the age of 10.

You are sitting there reading this and think this to be absurd, yet many of these measures I present are being used somewhere and justified by different governments around the world, or are being discussed in the halls of academia in Europe and America today.

To make it a right for “Gays” to marry as policy across the nation, the government will have to take the right of free speech and the freedom of religion away. Already in nations were they have made “Gay” marriage a reality; they have had to make speaking against it a hate crime in order to keep the peace. Once freedom of thought is taken away then all other rights will become history.

We in America have had a grand experiment once having what many see as the perfect constitution ever written giving the best security of rights to individuals than any other nation has ever been able to do or has done. But we started losing those individual rights when the courts ruled that it was OK for a mother to kill her own child, the most innocent of all persons, right in the safety of her womb. This made the first mockery of motherhood and family security. And now the final nail in the coffin which will entomb individual rights and will probably bring the downfall of the greatest experiment in self-government, is being hammered in just for the pleasure of minute minority of immature adults that want to play house as they thumb their nose at God.

Should the state marry gay lovers? Only if it wants to destroy itself, those it governs and civil society in general.

And the culture of death marches on, the piper pipes and dances as the silly mice dance and follow him to Hell.

Goodnight, God Bless.
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Your scenario is captivating but I really wish you’d skip to the chase. When are these homo’s gonna start eatin’ our chillins?
 
Hey I am late to get in here as I have had a terribly busy day. But I wanted to respond to some of the earlier posts since I started this thread last night. sorry if my points seem out of context with those on this page…

Here is what some of you have posted:

**Verisimilitude **
Rational adults should be allowed to form what ever association they want with each other.

Mike Dye
*Two people of the same sex should be allowed to do anything that they want together in private… *

Nepenthe
I see no reason whatsoever not to make this workable - the marriage laws need some overhauling badly anyway, especially interstate - and perhaps an excellent start would be trying it out as a form of carefully-negotiated two-person incorporation, and then possibly expansion should there be any viable forms of consenting-adult partnerships (which need not necessarily include sexual anything! Two couples could incorporate for things like childcare, housing and finance while remaining distinctly two couples with provisos that would make a partner of one couple sleeping with a partner from the other couple an actionable violation, etc).

I wholeheartedly agree with all of you!
The question of the definition of marriage does need redefining by the state and modern culture according to the new exigencies of those who seek it… Verisimilitude, Mike Dye and Nepenthe you all make the point for that.

But does marriage need redefining by the Church? Of course not and moreso, the Church, seeking to accomodate the exigencies of culture in Her teaching and practice, never does so at the expense of compromising Her Sacred Tradition. And it is this Judea-Christian tradition that defines marriage to be between a man and a woman raising their ‘consent’ to the level of a sacrament conferring sanctifying Grace, the Grace of indissoluble and exclusive love between them.

I think that this is exactly what the lobby for the equal recognition of homosexual unions is seeking: what this term ‘marriage’ implies for the Judeau Christian tradition: stability, legitimacy and blessing. But all these qualities of marriage, if they do signify indissolubility and exclusivity of love, are essentially based on Grace, God’s Grace. It is God that gives true legitimacy, stability and blessing to marriage by His power within the united souls. But inasmuch as the State seeks to separate herself from the Church she separates herself from the possibility of cooperating in that. So I think the homosexual lobby is asking the ‘secularized’ state to confer what it cannot in wanting a traditional notion of marital union as compared to merely ‘civil’ union.

Remember that the question of this thread was: “Should the state marry gay lovers?” So I think we would all agree that the state can marry but that she also has no power to confer what the Church can. Nor can the State adequately define marriage, she can only do so according the notion of ‘legal contract.’ So these three qualities (legitimacy, stability and blessing) must somehow be artificially produced by the State through contractual agreement enforced by some kind of mutually agreed upon ‘external’ coercion.

So to define and legislate marriage, according to the authority of the state, as the sole union of a consenting male and female is quickly becoming impossible.
On the other hand, nor can the State presume to offer qualities of Judeau-Christian marriage to the contractual union of consenting parties (whatever they may be and whatever they might seek to agree to) in terms of Grace, rather only secular ‘institutions’ as ever-shifting and changing as man’s own whim when he be left to himself…

“O wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is!
O brave new world!
That has such people in’t!”

from Miranda’s speech in Shakespeare’s “The Tempest”, Act V, Scene I
 
Fr. Mike, you’re truly one of the finest. You remind me very much of the monks and priests I knew well in my youthful education - who showed me great compassion and friendship and fed my ravenous mind without stint though I have never been and most likely never will be a theist - and I can think of no higher compliment. 🙂

Thank you, just for existing! 😃
 
Mulepadre said:
Hey I am late to get in here as I have had a terribly busy day. But I wanted to respond to some of the earlier posts since I started this thread last night. sorry if my points seem out of context with those on this page…

Here is what some of you have posted:

**Verisimilitude **
Rational adults should be allowed to form what ever association they want with each other.

Mike Dye
*Two people of the same sex should be allowed to do anything that they want together in private… *

Nepenthe
I see no reason whatsoever not to make this workable - the marriage laws need some overhauling badly anyway, especially interstate - and perhaps an excellent start would be trying it out as a form of carefully-negotiated two-person incorporation, and then possibly expansion should there be any viable forms of consenting-adult partnerships (which need not necessarily include sexual anything! Two couples could incorporate for things like childcare, housing and finance while remaining distinctly two couples with provisos that would make a partner of one couple sleeping with a partner from the other couple an actionable violation, etc).

I wholeheartedly agree with all of you!
The question of the definition of marriage does need redefining by the state and modern culture according to the new exigencies of those who seek it… Verisimilitude, Mike Dye and Nepenthe you all make the point for that.

But does marriage need redefining by the Church? Of course not and moreso, the Church, seeking to accomodate the exigencies of culture in Her teaching and practice, never does so at the expense of compromising Her Sacred Tradition. And it is this Judea-Christian tradition that defines marriage to be between a man and a woman raising their ‘consent’ to the level of a sacrament conferring sanctifying Grace, the Grace of indissoluble and exclusive love between them.

I think that this is exactly what the lobby for the equal recognition of homosexual unions is seeking: what this term ‘marriage’ implies for the Judeau Christian tradition: stability, legitimacy and blessing. But all these qualities of marriage, if they do signify indissolubility and exclusivity of love, are essentially based on Grace, God’s Grace. It is God that gives true legitimacy, stability and blessing to marriage by His power within the united souls. But inasmuch as the State seeks to separate herself from the Church she separates herself from the possibility of cooperating in that. So I think the homosexual lobby is asking the ‘secularized’ state to confer what it cannot in wanting a traditional notion of marital union as compared to merely ‘civil’ union.

Remember that the question of this thread was: “Should the state marry gay lovers?” So I think we would all agree that the state can marry but that she also has no power to confer what the Church can. Nor can the State adequately define marriage, she can only do so according the notion of ‘legal contract.’ So these three qualities (legitimacy, stability and blessing) must somehow be artificially produced by the State through contractual agreement enforced by some kind of mutually agreed upon ‘external’ coercion.

So to define and legislate marriage, according to the authority of the state, as the sole union of a consenting male and female is quickly becoming impossible.
On the other hand, nor can the State presume to offer qualities of Judeau-Christian marriage to the contractual union of consenting parties (whatever they may be and whatever they might seek to agree to) in terms of Grace, rather only secular ‘institutions’ as ever-shifting and changing as man’s own whim when he be left to himself…

“O wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is!
O brave new world!
That has such people in’t!”

from Miranda’s speech in Shakespeare’s “The Tempest”, Act V, Scene I
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Thank you for providing a reasoned analysis. I am not an expert in Catholicism so I do not know the exact referent for “Her Sacred Tradition.” Also, why does that tradition need to be static? Is there no room for the Church to grow in the guidance of the Holy Spirit? You seem to speak of “culture” and “secular institutions” a bit disparagingly, namely, that they are in stark opposition to the Church. I’m just not convinced this is a proper model. We don’t have to get into a discussion of Niebuhr or anything. I’d just like some clarification.
 
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