Stephen168
New member
Because we vote against them, and that is wrong.
They have no reason why it is wrong but it just is.
If you demand a reason, they will stomp their feet, walk away, and call us names.
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They have no reason why it is wrong but it just is.
If you demand a reason, they will stomp their feet, walk away, and call us names.
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RevDon
Guest
Ed,Again, why do proponents of civil marriage need our approval? And why the reference to God/Jesus? As it stands, civil means secular and excludes all religious beliefs/trappings. So that argument doesn’t mean anything.
The two can’t mix meanings. One is civil (no God/religion), the other is sacramental (including God/religion).
This is just repeating the repetitions.
Ed
You are absolutely right. We should make that distinction. I noted that and then went off on a religious rabbit trail. Sorry.
This string has often strayed in that direction. I guess people are realizing how hard it is to leave your faith out of your overall decision making.
As I approach civil decision making (as when I go tp the polls) I take my religious convictions with me.
I believe that religion can be very helpful in forming civic decisions, since I believe that the good of people should be the aim of both.
Since life is lived in the secular arena, the experience we gain there can inform our religious thinking, too.
That’s why I think this discussion is worth my effort. I’m working hard to keep my mind open to ideas that I haven’t sufficiently considered. I try to offer rational responses based in actual experiences of human beings, and when I ask a question, it really is for the purpose of clarifying the issue, not to create a pitfall for someone who holds a contrary opinion. I do sometimes use irony and even sarcasm, which are not always seen to be what I intend them to be. Again, sorry.
Stephen168
New member
I complete disagree. You seem to avoid anything you haven’t already considered. I’ve asked you to consider two ideas which you avoid.
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Monkey1976
Guest
And all of those ideas can be addressed with a durable power of attorney and good estate planning. Marriage is not necessary for those things. Does marriage make such things simpler? Yes. Does not being married make them impossible? No. Therefore, is it necessary to overturn our oldest institution on the basis of “I want it”? No.
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RevDon
Guest
My post 324 includes a great many benefits that cannot be achieved by other means, including those found here:
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2614329/
hrc.org/resources/entry/an-overview-of-federal-rights-and-protections-granted-to-married-couples
These couples don’t want to overturn the oldest institution; to the contrary, they want to be included in it.
Stephen168
New member
Many of the 'benefits," listed by people who believe in same sex marriage, do not exist anymore because marriage barely exists anymore. As they support their fiction, I believe they will disappear all together.
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The_Bucket
Guest
This is quite the excellent point actually. I mean, we’re getting to the point where nearly half of all children are born out of wedlock and marriage is becoming close to nonexistent for the poor. At a certain point, marriage is going to be basically exclusively a middle to upper class thing. The amazing irony is that while marriage will continue in the middle and upper classes, those marriages will produce fewer and fewer children while unmarried/poorer individuals produce a greater and greater percentage of the next generation.
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polki
Guest
The oldest institution has always been between one man and one woman, regardless of the role of religion or other cultural beliefs. Somehow people in this generation feel that they can change this definition because of “unfair” tax codes and inheritance laws.
Any discussion of marriage needs to include children, since marriage is about raising future generations in a stable environment; allowing children to be raised by both a mother and a father. You don’t need “marriage” to make a lifelong commit to someone either, but it sure benefits children. Even the research will tell you that.
We should support what is best for society but instead people make silly arguments about who should be included in what institution by changing the definition of that institution in the name of “fairness” and “equality”. Two men and two women can’t have what a man and a woman have together. It is anatomically impossible.
Any discussion of marriage needs to include children, since marriage is about raising future generations in a stable environment; allowing children to be raised by both a mother and a father. You don’t need “marriage” to make a lifelong commit to someone either, but it sure benefits children. Even the research will tell you that.
We should support what is best for society but instead people make silly arguments about who should be included in what institution by changing the definition of that institution in the name of “fairness” and “equality”. Two men and two women can’t have what a man and a woman have together. It is anatomically impossible.
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The_Bucket
Guest
I don’t take issue with anything else you wrote, but this is factually incorrect. Marriage has not always been one man and one woman. It has, however, always been between men and women. There have sometimes been more than two parties to the arrangement, however.
Stephen168
New member
Reality does matter to them. They want what they want. You can’t reason with someone having a tantrum.
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polki
Guest
OK I’d agree with that. I should have worded it differently. Hopefully my point isn’t lost.
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TEPO
Guest
As to the topic of this thread,
I don’t have any reason to second guess my stance that marriage should be between a man and a woman.
That’s what I believe, and no amount of negotiating will tire me from holding onto what my conscience tells me. It’s my free will, and I’ve made my final decision.
I don’t have any reason to second guess my stance that marriage should be between a man and a woman.
That’s what I believe, and no amount of negotiating will tire me from holding onto what my conscience tells me. It’s my free will, and I’ve made my final decision.
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The_Bucket
Guest
No, it isn’t.
Anyway, I hope I’ve made my stance on the issue eminently clear as well over the last who knows how many posts!
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Monkey1976
Guest
A marriage license isn’t magical. The physical and psychological benefits accrue as a result of the relationship between two complimentary sexes. I’m willing to concede the possibility that same-sex couples who live in an exclusive, lifelong relationship might gain some of these benefits as well, but that doesn’t make what they have a marriage, nor does the government have any interest in such a relationship.
These financial rights and protections are for the benefit of the children born to the couple. That the spouse benefits is a side effect. Gay “marriages” are guaranteed to be incapable of producing children, rendering these unnecessary.
And they can - by marring a member of the opposite sex and producing children. If I want to get the tax benefit given to Alaska residents from pipeline profits, I need to move to Alaska. For me to argue that the definition of “Alaska resident” should be expanded to include those who don’t live in Alaska on the basis of “fairness” or “inclusivity” would be selfish and nonsensical.
Once again, I ask: Can you - or anyone else - provide single example of a civilization anywhere in the world from the dawn of history to AD2000 that accepted same-sex “marriage” as equal to marriage? If same-sex “marriage” is such a wonderful thing with so many benefits, it follows that it would have been adopted by someone at some point in history. After all, homosexual behavior has been with us for just as long, even among the rulers of civilizations who would have had nothing to lose. Just show us one example behind which the banners of same-sex “marriage” supporters could rally.
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rotlex
Guest
This as well. It is what I use in discussion with those “for gay marriage”. It is not marriage; call it a civil union as that is what it is.
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JimG
Guest
Yes we should support what is best for society. And that is to treat the institution of marriage in accordance with the nature of human beings, created male and female, as an institution ordered to sexual complementarity and the procreation of the next generation.
Every act of unimpeded marital intercourse is ordered to the generation of new life. Not every marital act results in conception, not even the majority. But the design and nature of man and woman ensures that if we act according to our nature, a new generation will ensue. Fertility of individuals is not an issue. Sexual complementarity is, and it is essential to marriage.
To deliberately act against our nature is wrong. To codify and institutionalize acting against our nature is worse. To call something marriage which as you note is “anatomically impossible” is simply a loss of reason. Same sex unions are not marital.
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edwest2
Guest
RevDon,
My worldview is informed more by religion than anything else. With all due respect, I do not live in a secular world. I know some who want me to think that but it’s simply not true. The majority of the people in this country hold to some religious belief, our coins have In God We Trust on them. However, the idea that secularization has come to America is simply a promotion campaign, and for what benefit? Like the photo I saw in a newsweekly magazine showing a man with a placard that read: “America! Get off your knees!” or a non-book review on amazon.com that read: “Keep your Bible out of my government.” or the idea that we can be “Good without God.” Good based on what?
We should work to our mutual benefit but without agreed upon goals and principles, some tend to either (A) ignore (name removed by moderator)ut from religious people, or (B) become individualists all running off in different directions.
The Holy Father says:
Code:
"If we cannot have common values, common truths, sufficient communication on the essentials of human life–how to live how to respond to the great challenges of human life–then true society becomes impossible.""How true this is. Where there is no communication, no culture, no shared experience, there is no society; because there is no people. There remains only a vast and foreboding, unforgiving sea of individuals ready to crash upon each other and the world with the slightest wind. Without a common basis, we have not the vaulted pluralism we’re taught to embrace, but Babel, in all the confusion and madness of a society with no binding forces. Already we are seeing the tensions of this fragmentation breaking out across cultures.
“Without common values and truths, such as in the socieites we find ourselves in, we find the fabric of society torn like Joseph’s cloak, by a great many tribes which would like to lay claim to the title of favored. Leftists, conservatives, anarchists, nihilists, secularists, objectivists, the shallow, the entertainers, the entertained, all vying for control against each other. Tribalism can indeed spawn differentiation, but without some common ground, and in the face of increasing jargon not only in the academies but in the cultures; we shall be left with madness. In the end this tribalism can only result in the decline of all their claims, and the alienation of one from the other. Babel is the happenstance when society tries to become God.”
Hope this helps,
Ed
Stephen168
New member
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RevDon
Guest
- A government ought to be interested in the physical and psychological well-being of its citizens.
Healthy citizens are an asset to the benefit of society as a whole. What makes “marriage” marriage strictly speaking is that the usage of the term may be applied to the res (a Latin term meaning “thing, substance, being, reality”) by virtue of permission of competent authorities or the general population to make the definition stick. - The financial benefits are extended to childless heterosexual couples. Many of these benefits have nothing to do with children at all. It is my observation that, in the long run, a society uses its tax structure to promote what it sees as good and to deter what it sees as bad. Married couples are perceived as good because they do raise children, the next generation of citizens, so there are tax breaks for havibg children. Home ownership is seen as good, so tax breaks for that. Making investments in business = good, so tax breaks. (my point is that commonly held principles about what’s good are expressed even in tax code.) I think that our society still sees that married life, whether there are children or not, is something that contributes positively to the good of society. It is an opinion, one which I also hold. If the structure of two daduts sharing a life that is described as marriage (regardless of how happy or spiritual or successful it may be) is encouraged by society, then we should be encouraging as many people as possible to live that way. The government has consistently (in recent years) drawn back from involvement in the sexual expression of that relationship, though there were laws in place that would make certain kinds of sexual activity punishable under the law even when employed by heterosexual married couples.
- What if Alaska were to say, you come from New Jersey. You can never be a citizen of Alaska and have the benefits from our oil deposits?
- The not until now argument is used to uphold tradition. You would have been hard-put to find a culture anywhere in the world that treated women as humann beings, let alone as equals in the time of Jesus. He was a radical, a revolutionary who clearly thwarted the tradition and common practice of his culture. I’m sure there are other practices and valuues that we can discover that have changed, sometimes dramatically and suddenly. The right of women to vote, the morality of slavery, the practice of bathing. Some important, some not.
- Society has changed a lot. At one time it was hunter-gatherer, with very distinct roles for men and women, then it was agricultural, then industrial. Now we are in a culture in which it seems information describes the main feature. This might on its face suggest that how we look at people’s roles might also need to change. An Information Age certainly demands that how we look at authority has changed. Just because something didn’t exist in an earlier age doesn’t mean it can’t be held now as a way to do things. There are those who are even going so far as to suggest that some very basic things about human anatomy like brain structure have been changed by the way society is operating. Wouldn’t that suggest that we should be open to changing our ideas?
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JimG
Guest
It would seem that Western society has been quite open to new ideas, embracing first contraception, which decoupled marriage from children and led to no fault divorce and abortion, then increased promiscuity, cohabitation, fatherless children, abandoned mothers, the call for yet more abortion, and a society in which stable families are legal but rare, and no longer safe. The results of embracing the new ideas have been summarized in Mary Eberstadt’s book “Adam and Eve After the Pill,” which I highly recommend. The civilizational landscape has been left devastated. And yet we ask for more of the same.
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