Okay, fine. What I don’t understand is that if you’re fine with giving homosexuals the right to adopt couples, then you’re probably fine with giving them Civil Unions that are pretty much marriages in everything but name. So, what difference does it make? Why not just give them marriage?
Reg, I really don’t want to argue too much about this. I’ve probably said enough.
I’ve already stated on this forum - I think in this thread - my position on homosexual marriage. In brevity that is I view homosexual marriage as an oxymoron. Nonetheless, if in this very secularized world it will better help assimilate homosexuals into society and thereby help reduce their suicide rates, then I can support it. No skin off my nose. And I’ll acknowledge society can change the definition of marriage.
But “marriage” has always (well, in most societies) had a specific connotation or meaning. It connoted or meant a man and a woman. And along with that married people would almost always (not outliers) produce children and that producing a family. Family was regarded as the basic unit of society and therefore thought to rate certain social or even state support and promotion.
It’s only very recently anyways in human history (just about the beginning of the 20th Century or so) that “marriage” is viewed as contingent on romantic love or infatuation. This partly leads people to think why not “gay marriage” since two gay people can be in love and that’s what marriage is about.
I do not think gay married people produce children. I think that’s more an outlier. Some may adopt and some may go through other means for one in the couple to create a child.
I also think “families” can be formed in unconventional means. Like street kids in Brazil decades ago. While not the most ideal situation I can acknowledge it’s benefits and good.
You might like this movie:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madame_Sat%C3%A3 if you don’t mind films from Brazil. It’s based on a true story. The main character essentially became a father (father figure) to a number of homeless street kids. To me, the movie demonstrates the complexities of life, and how even men with great flaws can do very charitable or good things at times. (I don’t think any Catholic or Protestant needs to get to caught up in the title - in the English translation)
My example with the contemporary Black-American community (I’m ethnically Black-American but racially mulatto) is that its single parent homes has not contradicted either the Catholic Church’s worry about the decline of “family” nor has it contradict the traditional political view of the family being the basic unit of society and that if it declines so goes that society.
As for the Civil Rights Movement it produced it’s good. However, many negative things followed. It used to be Black-Americans had very self sustained communities where rich, middle-class, and poor blacks all lived along side one another and the black communities were full of small black owned businesses. That has almost disappeared entirely. Now, mostly Koreans, Arabs, and East Indian Sikhs run the businesses in Black-American communities.
Does one see narcissism and hubris? Then the devil is nearby.
Amen, AMEN! And while secular culture may “change the definition of marriage,” the Roman Catholic Church cannot and will not, and will never allow homosexuals to marry within the Church. If the homosexualists who call themselves “Catholic” don’t like it, they can shape up or ship out.