Posted on 02/24/2012 11:18:47 PM PST by EnglishCon
The Church does not "own" marriage nor have the exclusive right to say who can marry, a government minister has said.
Equalities minister Lynne Featherstone said the government was entitled to introduce same-sex marriages, which she says would be a "change for the better".
Her comments come as ministers prepare to launch a public consultation on legalising gay marriage next month.
Traditionalists want the law on marriage to remain unchanged.
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.co.uk ...
I would expect nothing less from someone with the title, “Equalities Minister.”
It was always a danger, as the state’s definition of marriage is simply what judges, pols, or the majority think it can be at any one time. That works fine, up until the state’s definition departs from the actual definition, and society has become used to letting the state determine what a marriage can be.
Many have been conditioned to think that the institution comes from man and thus the state, 40% in a recent poll. This is wonderful for statists and homosexualists. Because if folks think marriage comes from the state, they will accept whatever impossibility the state puts forth as marriage that year, and society can then be manipulated through gubbermental rewards and punishments that already exist concerning gov’t recognition of the institution.
Marriage will never be let go by the state, in my opinion. They will never give up the power to punish those who look to their faith to define the institution, intead of pieces of paper issued to folks the state claims can be married. Same thing with charity and education, in my opinion.
“Now, since the family and human society at large spring from marriage, these men will on no account allow matrimony to be the subject of the jurisdiction of the Church. Nay, they endeavor to deprive it of all holiness, and so bring it within the contracted sphere of those rights which, having been instituted by man, are ruled and administered by the civil jurisprudence of the community. Wherefore it necessarily follows that they attribute all power over marriage to civil rulers, and allow none whatever to the Church; and, when the Church exercises any such power, they think that she acts either by favor of the civil authority or to its injury. Now is the time, they say, for the heads of the State to vindicate their rights unflinchingly, and to do their best to settle all that relates to marriage according as to them seems good.”
—Pope Leo XIII about a hundred and thirty years ago.
Freegards, thanks for all the pings on FR
Christianity is from the beginning, else the entire story doesn’t make sense.
England, of course, though I fully expect Wales to win. They have a rocking good team this year.
Sorry for the delay - the usual Saturday shopping run got in the way!
Both of em.
Oh, I agree. I have zero desire to see inside their relationship. I would have the same lack of interest if my friend was with a woman and not married though.
It just strikes me as ironic that one of the longest relationships of any of my friends is a sinful one.
Yeah, it’s going to be like in the army. You can have gay marriage but there’s a catch, you must not shirk of your government mandated duties and the commander can decide whether or when you can party or not.
What is going to happen is utterly complete chaos because of lack of leadership.
Gayness is about shirking responsabilities, and one of which is the responsability coming in inherently over each and every gender. Some stuff we can choose, others we are born with, and these are our lot of reasonable responsabilities.
HAving a budget to pay for sex changes and boob jobs is the most outrageous wasteful thing yet. Not everybody can live like Michael Jackson at the taxpayer’s or money printing “science” whim.
This is a debauchery of science, money and life, because it is based in immorality, decadence and early aging and death.
I agree with you,sir. And I note we Americans cited a Frenchman ,Montesquieu -and two Englishmen Blackstone and Locke more than any other European during the Founding Era.
Common to all three (see John Eidsmoe Christianity and the Constitution ,Baker Books ppb 1995 pp51-63 All three three considered Gods’ Law supreme. And our laws must conform to those laws dictated by God ,Himself. For Lynn Featherstone to be so featherbrained to suggest this is “change for the better” leads me to ask what proof does she offer? and For the betterment of what greater good? I find both proofs lacking in the BBC report.
Though I am a firm supporter of free, faithful, sacred fertile union of one man and one woman -— I too wonder how the federal govt. could stop polygamy. I don’t mean that they should *approve* and *license* it, I just mean why should they butt into a private contractual agreement?
I’m open to discussion on this, one way or the other.
My default position seems to be: I am highly skeptical of civil marriage.
Yes, that simply baffles me.
I highly doubt there is a single person here on FR who would deny that marriage - in the God given sense of one man and one woman made one flesh - is a good and right and just thing.
Yet government intervening in the discussion? I know the intervention is pro family, pro Christian and pro life, and personally I approve, but it is still a precedent for interference of the government in your personal life.
Well, I better get my shopping run over with before the match.
Cheers.
Thanks EnglishCon.
As soon as you mentioned CONTRACT you illustrated why the libertarian model of "private" marriage has never existed, and never will exist--and hence is nonsense. "Private" marriage is not just a legal fiction, it is fiction period.
Marriage, by it's definition is a publicly & legally acknowledged relationship, involving a covenant or contract, between a man and a woman....and actually the community.
WHAT, THE COMMUNITY? ARE YOU CRAZY? you say?
Yes, the community--in in that contract shared property and (usually) children are involved, hence you have issues of law:
1)If and when one spouse dies (inheritance & adoption issues)
2)If or when one spouse leaves/divorces or disappears
3)Regarding benefits or privileges allowed by the government (there are many (many).
Because of those 3 realities the State has ALWAYS recognized marriage--as a legal state of life--even back before marriage licenses--where the Church blessing was all it took to make it legally recognized. The abolition of marriage licenses may of been possible before the complex of government benefits/priveleges of the modern welfare state--but until (or unless) the welfare state is gone--(#3) there can be no doing away with marriage licenses.
Even without a welfare state (news flash: it ain't going away any time soon!)a Church form or some other legally binding format would have to exist....becoming the de facto "marriage license."
Even such things as mortgages and insurance rates are varied--depending on marital status--and only law....can determine who is really married, and who is not. Once law in involved, the State is involved.
Since marriage and the family is THE primary building-block of civilization and government...it does no good to naively call for a "privitization" of marriage--as by definition, marriage never has been, and never will be private.
I'll give you an example: Two lesbians "marry" and adopt a child (wait, do we allow lesbians to adopt? Do we allow singles to adopt? What's single, what's married, with "government out of the marriage business?" They separate, and both want the child. But were they "married" in the first place (I would say under God, not...) A friend of their's with a mail order "ordination" in the Church of What's Goin Down had a little ceremony for them--and s/he has disappeared in San Francisco's transgendered community. They have a piece of paper signed with an illegible signature by the guy/girl they say has disappeared...from a "church" that never really existed either. Who gets the kid? Were they legally married or not? Who get's the Miata? The hot tub? How would any such set of conundrums be resolved in the mythical libertarian world?
:)
+
This IS America—as has been free for 225+ years. Or do you think it’s been a theocracy all that time...because Muslims, Mormons and homosexuals haven’t been allowed to make “marriage” into a mockery?
Do you support adult incest too? How about bestiality?
What a terrible Taliban theocrat you must be to prevent a man from marrying his horse!
Muslims, Mormons and homosexuals have all...since America’s founding lived under one law—and that has not been theocratic, just sane.
Marriage, by definition—in Western civilization (NOT theocratic, m*ron!) is between one man and one woman. Has been since Roman days—and that has also been the fundamental building block of our civilization. To throw it out the window for some cuckoo 1970s idea of liberation is insane.
Our church does not recognize state marriages, Marriage is in the realm of the church or religion whatever that is.
You're right, 1010RD, inasmuch as Jesus Christ is God, co-eternal, co-equal and consubstantial with the Father and the Holy Spirit, One God. So, yes.
However, in the sense of "Christianity," you've got a degree of equivocation in the term, since it stems historically from certain A.D. events, such as:
"Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church..." ("will build," implying it isn't built yet, but when it IS built it will be built on this rock)... and...
Pentecost, which sees the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the APostles and Mary, this signifying the birth of the Church.
So in one sense, Christ defines marriage as being "in the beginning" as far back as Eden; in another sense, it got degraded over time, for example Moses' marriage legislation was predicated on the people's "hardness of heart" (and notice how many of the sons-by-polygamous-unions end up wanting to kill their brothers or their fathers: Jacob's sons, David's sons, Solomon's sons). My imporession is that polygamy didns't work out very well, it occasioned a lot of doemstic strife, and the whole marriage deal had to be sort of RE-established as monogamous and indissoluble, by Jesus.
As I understand it.
In as much as your church accepts law, it accepts state marriages.
If for example your Church purchased a property to build a Church building from a couple (not from your church) who only had a “state marriage” it accepted (legally, not spiritually) that state marriage.
Our legal system would collapse if no one accepted the legality of other peoples marriages (be they state marriages or not). While for most marriage certainly is religious....marriage by definition is not JUST religious or private.
Inheritance, adoption, divorce, state benefits, legality of private contracts, etc. ALL involve a legal (state) definition of marriage. See my posts above.
I couldn't possibly agree more.
The marriage license as we know it didn't come into existence until after the Civil War, and didn't become standard practice in all the states until after 1900, becoming firmly established by 1920.
In effect, the states or governments appropriated or usurped control of marriages in secular form and in the process declared Common Law applicable to marriages "abrogated."
As the States view it, a marriage license is an ongoing contractual relationship with the State. Technically, the marriage license is a business license allowing the husband and wife, in the name of the marriage, to enter into contracts with third parties and contract mortgages and debts. They can get car loans, home mortgages, and installment debts in the name of the marriage because it is not only a secular enterprise, but it is looked upon by the State as a privileged business enterprise as well as a for-profit business enterprise.
The marriage contract acquires property throughout its existence and over time, it is hoped, increases in value. Also, the marriage contract "bears fruit" by adding children. If sometime later, the marriage fails, and a "divorce" results the contract continues in existence.
The "divorce" is merely a contractual dissolution or amendment of the terms and conditions of the contract. Jurisdiction of the State over the marriage, over the husband and wife, now separated, continues and continues over all aspects of the marriage, over marital property and over children brought into the marriage.
That is why family law and the Domestic Relations court calls "divorce" a dissolution of the marriage because the contract continues in operation but in amended or modified form. A marriage license contract is one of the strongest, most binding contractual relationships the States has on people.
Source: How Did Gov't Get Involved in "Marriage", a Matter of Religious Tradition?
Therefore, MONEY is the State's only LEGITIMATE interest in "Marriage."
Now ask yourself this question: Why do some states want to legalize gay marriage? Simple: MONEY.
No, Mrs. Don-o I didn’t mean that. I consider the Trinity to be hokum. What we do know from the Bible is that Jesus Christ is Jehovah and the Creator. We also know that there were many faithful believers prior to Moses and thus the 10 Commandments. What faith tradition did they follow and how was Salvation garnered unto them? Clearly, Christianity as defined by God and not man had to exist prior to Adam and Eve. If Christianity is the doctrine of Salvation and reconciliation to God then the foregoing must be true.
As an aside, I don’t mind that you believe what you want to and respect your right to conscience. I just don’t want to mislead you into thinking that I am a Trinitarian Christian.
As to Peter and “this rock” you’re confusing and conflating two Greek words that don’t mean the same thing. In doing so you confuse the very purpose of Jesus’ words. If by the Church you mean the Catholic Church then we’re not talking about the same Church. I mean the Church of Jesus Christ which predates the Catholic Church by millenia.
Regarding polygyny (not polygamy - God’s always defined marriage as between a man and a woman/women and never as anything else) it has been at times acceptable to God. We shouldn’t assume that the natural fallen state of men precludes good plygynist marriages. The counter factual is the amount of strife in monogamous marriages along with the amount of strife in all human relationships. We have to compare our worst with their worst and our best with their best. Many polygynist marriages work very well and the women in them praise it as a benefit.
Furthermore, that “hardness of heart” has always been among us humans and it continues today. How many hate homosexuals as opposed to homosexuality? They are, if they are Christians, under greater condemnation than the homosexual who sins in ignorance. Christ’s message is clearly to the sinner and that the sinner may be reconciled, though the sin never be.
This issue will be won by defining marriage as a sacrament between a man and a woman, while at the same time showing the greatest compassion for those disposed to lifestyles not in keeping with God’s definition of marriage.
You can not ever force acceptance. That is what this is all about. It's not visiting rights,that can be taken care of with a power of attorney. It's not property rights, that can be taken care of with a contract. It's not about survivor benefits because that can be taken care of with a will. It's about attempting to force acceptance on a society that will not accept you.
Guess what, any hurt you feel about not being accepted will be magnified by the knowledge that people now not only don't accept you, they resent you for attempting to force them to accept you.
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