While the two of you argue against gov involvement in what should be a private arrangement, the rest of us realize that the marriage subsidy is one of the few good things that gov does and should be maintained.
If we do not defend the concept of marriage legally we will never be able to defend it culturally. Therefore we must defend it legally. The only way to do that is by law defining marriage as being one man joined to one woman enforced through marriage licenses or some other gov arrangement.
There are Liars, there are Damn Liars... and then there are those who try to "justify" the usurpations of the God-State.
Since the State is doing such a great job "defending our values and culture" by establishing a Legal Definition of Marriage, why don't we also ask them to "defend our values and culture" by establishing a Legal Definition of Christianity??
Don't worry... they're from the Government, they're here to help.
Since you refuse to see what I'm saying we'll just have to agree to disagree.
GSA(P)
Since the State is doing such a great job "defending our values and culture" by establishing a Legal Definition of Marriage, why don't we also ask them to "defend our values and culture" by establishing a Legal Definition of Christianity??
Perhaps this is just another page -- like execution squads and political assassination -- we're taking from the Israelis whose Knesset rules on whether or not Orthodox and Reformed Judaism are the same.
In any case ... I'm not some Useful Idiot "separation of Church and State" sort who believes the Establishment clause empowers the State to backhand its way into ruling what is and is not "religious" (or, rather, suitably unreligious) to be vested in some "faithbased partnership".
It's been by empowering the State to remove God from the classroom, from City Hall and the public square that the State's been most successful in inserting itself into and regulating religious life.
Don't even get me started on the current complicity of Bishops and Archbishops in the Catholic Church who -- I strongly suspect -- exacerbated the "crisis" to proportions guaranteed to compel the State's intervention in the Church ... be it nosing around records for the purposes of proving bankruptcy or (as suggested in Massachusetts) having the State be a part of the evalutation process for potential seminarians.
As usual, the revolution within the Catholic Church making that of the rest of the world look like child's play.
As delineated in the Catholic Catechism, there are certain self evident truths about the Creator and his natural moral law that are universal in their ability to be consistently apprehended by mankind. It is these Self-Evident truths -- as cited in our founding documents -- on which our true liberty rests.
It is essential for the State to defend these truths ... including the FACT of a Creator whose design of human nature included the freedom and liberty intended for all men as created equally human.
I see no reason the State must become some sort of theologian or Pope in order to remain faithful to the self-evident truths of our Declaration.
The only religion I see the State establishing is the atheistic evolutionism so essential to softening brains such that they accept all manner of egalitarian nonsense and state-sanctioned "rights" based on state-sanctioned artificial realities of one sort or another.