Posted on 07/16/2004 8:09:37 AM PDT by Voice in your head
This is the position of libertarians (generally extreme secularist cultural liberals) who don't have the guts to say they want sodomite marriage.
Marriage is a contract between two people and society. A contract between two people is just in a lawyer's office. A marriage is and has always been a very expensive public ceremony surrounded by elaborate ritual. Society no longer has the power to use tradition, family, religion, or fear of ostracism to protect marriage, to protect wives and children from the vagaries of male hormones and mid life crises so it employs the state to do so.
The same way that using an Easy-Bake oven could screw up a dinner party for fourteen guests.
BUMP
It doesn't, which is the point I keep trying to make. Marriage isn't the real issue. It's a stalking horse. Homosexuality is the issue. Once you approve of one you have to approve of the other.
As for the Romans, they lasted 1,000 years because the pace of life back then was so much slower, without modern communications or transportation. It's probably equal to 200 years of today. It's widely understood that Rome collapsed because of moral decay. Just like us.
These days, a marriage contract is a far weaker legal instrument than any other contract. A marriage contract can be dissolved by either party for any or no reason. No lawyer would let a business sign such a meaningless contract.
They are still wrong, even if they did win. And I don't really care how much coffee they make, they continue to be wrong.
Government recognition of marriage makes no more sense than government regulation of the sacrament of baptism.
Many of the arguments for government recognition of marriage center on the need to legally protect the family from government intrusion. Do we really believe that a power hungry government will be stifled by its own regulatory institutions.
If we aren't living in a nation that dutifully respects the god given rights of each of its citizens then a government supplied contract is going to do little to help that.
That's debatable. During the last century or so of the Empire, Rome experienced a period of nearly puritanical moralism.
In any event, the morals of the average Roman (as opposed to the morals of their leaders) didn't change much throughout the span of the Empire.
I disagree. My "secular" understanding of "sanctity of marriage" agrees (I think) with the "sacred" understand of it, but I do not share the religious view of homosexual behavior as sin per se.
Naturally, I think the wildly promiscuous sexual behavior by many gays in our country is unfortunate. Plus, I heartily condemn the refusal of the gay community to respond to HIV crisis by adopting epidemiologically prescribed procedures to identify and isolate sexual partners. And I don't disagree that these goings-on in our midst has a generally bad effect on everyone. And I don't think it is appropriate for schools to be actively preaching anything about homosexual sex.
For all this, I am excoriated as a right-wing intolerant homophobe by my own family.
I do not subscribe to some mythical equality of heterosexuality and homosexuality, especially when it comes to marriage. Neither church nor state, in my view, is under any obligation to equalize them.
However, for homosexuals themselves, love and sex are what they are: love and sex. I do not see anything sinful or inherently wrong with homosexual activity.
[Little Boy] - Then we could make all sorts of crazy laws!
[Amendment] Now you're catching on!
[Little Boy] But what if they say you're not good enough to be in the constitution?
[Amendment] Then I'll crush all opposition to me!
And I'll make Ted Kennedy pay
If he fights back, I'll say that he's gay
You see?
On the other hand, having sex with another man, which historically gives you a 14,000% greater chance of getting AIDS, should be practiced, but safely.
... homosexuality is a filthy and evil perversion
I believe that is true.
It's Time to Privatize Marriage:
http://www.zetetics.com/mac/ifeminists/2002/0716.html
"Why is marriage declining?" — the question buzzes in the news.
I believe one reason is because marriage has become a three-way contract between two people and the government, which is regulated by the state from wedding vows to divorce decrees.
Marriage should be privatized. Let people make their own marriage contracts according to their conscience, religion and common sense. Those contracts could be registered with the state, recognized as legal and arbitrated by the courts, but the terms would be determined by those involved.
*click the link for more*
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1162445/posts
The entire agenda of gay marriage is about destroying the traditional family, NOT about gays getting "married."
In places like the Netherlands and Scandinavia, marriage is in decline due to the pervasiveness of the socialist nanny-state which has eliminated the need for a stable two-parent family to provide for children.
"If we aren't living in a nation that dutifully respects the god given rights of each of its citizens then a government supplied contract is going to do little to help that."
Tell that to the kids receiving child support from fathers whose pay is being attached for failing to provide for his kids after a divorce. The point you are trying to dismiss is the reason the gov't keeps track of who marries who. It is fundamentally different than other religious rights, in which the gov't has no interest.
Just what is the difference between marriage and civil unions other than the name. For example, if Massachusetts passes an amendment that defines "marriage" as between a man and a womnan, yet constitutionalizes civil unions that are 100% equal to marriage, then what have they accomplished? What will be different?
Yup. When the right side can't even muster the faithfulness to defend the 10 commandments or the use of the bible in a public school or prayer, it has turned it's back on God as much as the left. Romans 1:24 and 1:26 shows that homosexuality is the punishment for turning from God and that is what we are reaping. We deserve it as a nation.
That's only part of it. The sociologists there are saying it has to do with gay marriage too.
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