Why not tolerate non-sacramental, civil gay marriage?

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Since Catholics don’t consider civil marriage a sacrament anyway, then why not just let homosexuals marry each other civilly? So long as any laws passed passed do not force Catholic sacramental gay unions, why not just tolerate them? We don’t even allow two straight Catholics who are merely married civilly to receive Communion, because we don’t consider civil marriage to be an authentic marial union in the Christian sense.

To say otherwise would mean that we actually are giving civil unions a significant measure of validity.
 
For the same reason that we oppose abortion. It is intrinsic evil, disordered behavior and destructive of the human souls that participate in it. We cannot love our neighbor if we -]tolerate/-] endorse his or her self-detrcutive behavior.
 
For me it’s because the term “marriage” is still used.

A civil union, on the other hand, is not something I’m going to object to on a legal level.
 
GWright said:
Because then, after some years pass and gay marriage becomes the norm, someone will suggest:

“Why not tolerate religious gay marriage?”
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You are behind the times. Some denominations already offer gay religious marriage. It is already tolerated.

rossum
 
Debora123 said:
For me it’s because the term “marriage” is still used.

A civil union, on the other hand, is not something I’m going to object to on a legal level.
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This. If anyone ever wants a non-religious reason I’m opposed to gay marriage, this is the one I use. Part of me just doesn’t like the government defining what a religious term means
 
TheAdvocate said:
Since Catholics don’t consider civil marriage a sacrament anyway, then why not just let homosexuals marry each other civilly? So long as any laws passed passed do not force Catholic sacramental gay unions, why not just tolerate them? We don’t even allow two straight Catholics who are merely married civilly to receive Communion, because we don’t consider civil marriage to be an authentic marial union in the Christian sense.

To say otherwise would mean that we actually are giving civil unions a significant measure of validity.
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If the government were countenancing a proposal to declare that triangles have four sides, would you or would you not oppose it? Maybe we should let them have their four-sided triangles and we can keep our three-sided triangles?

The issue is that marriage is a fact of reality – a thing we discover, like the laws of mathematics, not a thing we invent ourselves, like driver’s licenses. Since reality is intrinsically good (God made it, after all), it is good for the state (and everything/everyone else) to conform themselves to that objective reality. This is especially so since man is a social animal and his good is intrinsically bound up with the good of others. The state does not act in a vacuum, so when it embraces falsehood, evil, and nonsense, it has a real effect on the health of the entire polity.
 
rossum said:
You are behind the times. Some denominations already offer gay religious marriage. It is already tolerated.

rossum
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Yes - and the world allows abortions. That doesn’t mean we are “behind the times”. It means that the law is in conflict with the church.

Peace,
John
 
Razanir said:
This. If anyone ever wants a non-religious reason I’m opposed to gay marriage, this is the one I use. Part of me just doesn’t like the government defining what a religious term means
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Don’t they already do that though?

I think in the United States to be Catholic and married, there are two parts - the religious aspect, and the legal aspect.

The legal portion uses the term marriage now. If a heterosexual couple went down to the City Hall and say vows and sign on the line, most people call that marriage. While it may not align with the religious aspect (and our ideals of getting married in the Church and viewing it as a Sacrament), I don’t see how there is a difference in being legally married as a heterosexual couple or being legally married as a homosexual couple. Neither would have to have any religious elements.

I personally believe that the religious aspect of marriage will always be up to the religion, and as Rossum has pointed out, some religions already have made the decision to allow same sex couples to wed within their churches.
 
Razanir said:
This. If anyone ever wants a non-religious reason I’m opposed to gay marriage, this is the one I use. Part of me just doesn’t like the government defining what a religious term means
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“Marriage” is not an exclusively religious term. And that’s my point. I’m not talking about “religious” marriages, but civil ones.
 
Debora123 said:
For me it’s because the term “marriage” is still used.

A civil union, on the other hand, is not something I’m going to object to on a legal level.
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Yep.

Legally, I think gay people should have every right to choose to share their income/assets/etc with a partner in the same way that heterosexual people do, whether married or defacto. On this level, I see it as a legal issue, not a religious or moral one. But even on religious or moral grounds, since the Church is in favour of religious freedom, I think it needs to concede this legal possibility, without necessarily endorsing it.
 
TheAdvocate said:
Since Catholics don’t consider civil marriage a sacrament anyway, then why not just let homosexuals marry each other civilly? So long as any laws passed passed do not force Catholic sacramental gay unions, why not just tolerate them? We don’t even allow two straight Catholics who are merely married civilly to receive Communion, because we don’t consider civil marriage to be an authentic marial union in the Christian sense.

To say otherwise would mean that we actually are giving civil unions a significant measure of validity.
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We can tolerate grown, consenting adults to be free to choose whom they live with and what they call that relationship. We can’t tolerate being legally obligated to call it the same thing as a marriage when it isn’t. We can’t tolerate being forced out of business for refusing to participate in or acknowlege this lie.
 
Allegra said:
We can tolerate grown, consenting adults to be free to choose whom they live with and what they call that relationship. We can’t tolerate being legally obligated to call it the same thing as a marriage when it isn’t. We can’t tolerate being forced out of business for refusing to participate in or acknowlege this lie.
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👍

Precisely.

It’s a duck. You can’t make me start calling it a horse.
 
I don’t think the word ‘marriage’ is specifically a religious one.

You ‘marry’ a plug to a socket, or two pieces of wallpaper up to each other, but nobody would say that either was a religious or sacramental thing.

However… for the sake of doing away with an argument that is doing nobody any good, personally I would be happier if the State (government) got out of the ‘marriage business’ altogether and simply provided a legal framework (that provided the State sanctioned rights and responsibilities that we recognise for married people) which only required two people to agree to it in the presence of a notary. Clergy could register as notaries where people wanted to carry out a sacramental bonding ceremony at the same time and churches could, within their rights, refuse to carry out that sacramental bonding ceremony (marriage) unless it was also accompanied by the notarised agreement signing.

Keep the sacrament of ‘marriage’ for Churches, and keep the legal arrangements for the state. That way people of the same gender can arrange their legal affairs as they so wish and churches can minister to people’s souls as they, in turn, wish. We need not have this wearisome argument at all.
 
rossum
**
You are behind the times. Some denominations already offer gay religious marriage. It is already tolerated.**

So you think time itself determines moral values?

How quaint! 😉

The state has no obligation to validate sexual perversions with a marriage license.
 
“Gay marriage” or civil unions have other issues than religious ones. There are a variety of sociological and economic reasons.

And there’s the other argument that seems old hat, but if “Gay marriage”/civil unions become legal across the U.S., you will have others coming out of the woodwork asking for polygamous marriages to be legalized, marriages between siblings or parents and their children, and other random stuff.

It just isn’t healthy for society.
 
I don’t know about polyamorous relationships being ‘next on the list’, but I wouldn’t worry about incestuous relationships being legalised. There isn’t a lobby for that anywhere in the world that I’ve ever heard of, and the medical ramifications alone for offspring of that type of union are more than sufficient to keep the law on the correct side of things.

Making the argument that legalising same-gender unions will lead to other currently illegal activities being legalised is specious and essentially a ‘straw man’ argument (i.e building up a non-existant awful thing in order to prove the argument against something else does not work).
 
TheAdvocate said:
We don’t even allow two straight Catholics who are merely married civilly to receive Communion, because we don’t consider civil marriage to be an authentic marial union in the Christian sense.

To say otherwise would mean that we actually are giving civil unions a significant measure of validity.
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Just a slight correction. In some places, a civil union is required before the religious ceremony. A civil union is not recognized not because it is not considered authentic but because it does not meet the form that the Church requires. Civil marriage is recognized by the Church when it is between those who are not obligated to marry as Catholics.
 
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