Quote:

Jim Jackson said:

Quote:

Dave said: "Or more accurately, SAVING the rights of those who believe marriage is one man/one woman, protecting that definition, which has endured for over 6000 years, from perversion."



Dave, this is the United States of America. It is not a Judeo-Christian theocracy. It was not set up to be run in that fashion regardless of how much The Ten Commandments influenced our nation's laws. If the Founding Fathers wanted the Bible followed explicitly, they would have said so.

The marriage of any man and woman is no more threatened by a gay civil union (I fully accept that if a religion says a gay union is verboten then it's verboten IN THAT RELIGION) than it is threatened by a black marrying a white.

You cannot deny a civil liberty to one group of people that is afforded by another group of people.

The Constitution protects people and expands the rights of people. Not a "definition."

Jim



If I did not exert restraint on my response here, this could easily expand into a flame-war that would fill another two or three topic pages.
Feel free to re-read the arguments I made over the previous 10 topic pages, to save us from re-treading the same territory.

Answering your specific points, it's not entirely about religion. Many who are Christian or Jewish or Muslim or Hindu or Buddhist (every major world religion) vaguely follow in that cultural tradition, but are not overly religious. But they still live by the concept of marriage = one man + one woman.

Being gay is not the same as being black or white or some other race. Being gay is a lifestyle choice. By your argument, we'd have to start giving minority protection rights to unabombers and skydivers and drug addicts and compulsive gamblers and (gasp ! Choke !) Christians.
( I mean hey, it's who they are, they aren't capable of being anything other than what they are. They shouldn't be treated differently because of what they're compelled to be, right? )

But we've already been through this argument several times.

The entire world, not just fundamentalist Christians, lives by the definition of marriage = one man + one woman.

Less than 2% of the U.S. is gay. So by what right, by what arrogance, does the gay community think it has the right to change the definition of marriage out from under the rest of us?

Let marriage keep its long-established definition, and civil union be established as the standard for gays. The term civil union makes no pretense of being sanctioned by God.

Although as I said a few pages ago, I find it hard to support ANY further rights for gays beyond what already exists, because any concessions are used by gay activists to push for more and more concessions, infringing on the rights of conservatives.
Gays will only be happy when Christians can't even say in a church that the Bible condemns homosexuality.

~

Penwing,

You're correct in saying the Bible allows for divorce under certain circumstances. The Old Testament allows for divorce in many circumstances.

In the New Testament, Christ himself states in Matthew that the only legitimate grounds for divorce is adultery. ( chapter 5: verses 31-32 ;chapter 19, verses 3-8, and also Mark 10: verses 2-12, and 1 Corinthians 7: verses 11-27, and Luke 16:verse 18 ) The New Testament has a much narrower set of circumstances that permit divorce.
The only non-adultery provision for divorce being if someone previously married as a non-Christian, and then became a Christian, if their spouse then leaves them, they can then select a Christian spouse ( 1 Corinthians 7: verses 12-16 ).
[ *** I edited this paragraph slightly after-the-fact, to include verses, and to write it more accurately than I previously had, from slightly faulty memory. ]

Although even adultery can be forgiven by a spouse, and a marriage can emerge even stronger from infidelity or other sources of contention.
But I certainly don't blame anyone for ending a marriage when they find their mate has been cheating on them.