[discostu]

I've never felt things like that give insight. They might teach you rote things to say but they don't garner core level understanding. I've thrown out some of those rote things picked up from books, most of the time it seems like they help, but I feel dirty afterwards, like a charlatan pretending to understand that which I don't. Maybe I'm just too finicky but I put no trust in the "insight" gained from second and third hand experience. I don't like using it on others (and will only use it for grief, a time when people need all the help they can get even if it leaves the helper feeling like a schmuck) and I won't let it be used on me.

[Askel5]

You realize, of course, that you're severely limiting the power of human reason, intelligence and logic to perceive the truth of things sans actual experience?

Take a look at this thread -- Marriage and "De Facto" Unions (Cohabitation and Homosexual Marriage).

It's a perfectly objective discourse on the essential differences between marriage and de facto unions. It defends marriage absolutely, recognizes precisely the differences which set marriage apart and excoriates de facto unions without damning to hell the participants in same.

If you can improve somehow on the argument (or prove even one point objectively wrong) by virtue of your having been a homosexual, shacked up or married ... please let me know. I'm very interested.

The true beauty -- for me, anyway -- of the priest's counsel is that he is limited, or should by all rights limit himself, to what is Enduring and Universally true about marriage, sex, love, commitment, children, family, etc.

It is EXACTLY when some participant colored by experience or pycholo-psychiatrist colored by their Method seek to impose always Their Own Views that one runs aground. Lessons learned or imparted in the strictly personal or particular do not end up of much enduring value.