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 ...
“How does it translate into usable political information?”
I’m sure it does. But, I wasn’t aware that it had to.
The point is about the limits of state power. If the state can arbitrarily change the definition of marriage to suit today’s fads, it can change the definition of citizen, or ownership, or whatever to something faddish tomorrow.
Consider the ramifications of the state’s redefinition of marriage to include gays, or animals for that matter. The power of the state will be brought to bear to silence all contrary voices, and thoughts, in the name of freedom no less.
As we know from recent events, the people wielding this ideology are not shy about coercing conformity to their orthodoxies. They’re not big on rights of conscience for dissenters to them either.
IMHO, the action to take is scream and protest so loudly about the state’s being beyond its legitimate limits that even the Stalinists in skirts will have to cease and desist.
Governments the world over are infested with these brown shirts. Borrowing a phrase from Louis Brandeis, light is the best disinfectant.
Shine light on them. Expose them. Perhaps the scales will fall off of people’s eyes when they see that the people screaming about rights and justice for gays, and all the sexual innovations of the past fifty years, are nothing more than wolves in sheep’s clothing. That would be a good thing for them to learn regardless of this concrete political outcome.
If you have been reading the thread, a common goal among some posters is to remove licensing from it, and just let everybody make up their own definitions and variations.
The only answer that I see is to put a brake on the weakening of existing law and pass a constitutional amendment.
I’m sorry. I don’t understand you, e.g., remove licensing.
I didn’t read through all the comments because I didn’t have time to. I merely saw the headline, read some the story, and reacted with my two cents worth.
I’ll have time to look through it tomorrow night.
The state licenses marriage, that has always meant that it was defined as a man and a woman with some age limits, incest and such, but what we all know as marriage.
Now some are pushing to end that government oversight, and just let everyone make up their own definitions of marriage, polygamy, homosexuals, bestiality what ever people can come up with would all be marriage.
I can see problems in the military when the Mormon soldier shows up with, or accumulates his 18 wives.
I want to preserve traditional marriage, not turn it over to the Muslims and cults, and freaks.
I should have said that applies in the West, the Muslim world may not have to deal with licenses from the state.
No one is “pushing” what you say people are pushing; you make up lists of things and then attribute those lists to others.
Your assertions fail the pattern match test: your lists of words cannot be found in the posts of those you attribute those lists of words to.
Fine, we keep the state defining marriage then, since no one is “pushing” to end that.
Lynne is going to marry her dog?
You are a study in obfuscation.
I and others advocate ending government licensure / control of marriage: the same government licensure / control which is directly resulting in gay marriage right now.
Ending government control is not the same as endorsing any of the things on the list that you a) made up b) repeat monotonously and c)attribute to others who never endorsed any of the things on your weird little list.
All of that happens because the government controls/licenses marriage, and thus controls the terms of the marriage contract.
I am not obfuscating anything, I am trying to get you people to tell us what the heck you are trying to get to, your obfuscation is impenetrable.
Look at your post 4, well I read it and then I asked you a simple question in post 23, you have ignored it, who decides that it is a man and a woman?
The mystery of the Church was revealed some 2000 years ago, but Christianity as the human fellowship with God the Son is as old as Creation.
It's best understood by studying the colonial history in the Church History.
While Lutherans and Puritans and Congregationalists left the Old World to form their colonies in the New World, they generally didn't unite, because they were from different denominations within the same Church.
Those who disagreed with the theology of others within their group, voted with their feet, moved either upstream or down the coast and formed other colonies. Generally they all agreed in the fundamental tenets of the Christian faith, but discerned their differences as different religions. None of them considered paganism a valid religion, but instead a false religion.
All of them had escaped the Old World conflicts which had merged the Church with the State, identifying nations with their faith.
Going back to Bloody Mary and Queen Elizabeth, the Separation of Church and State recognized only good men would attempt to obey they law but there was a difference between Divine Law and man-made Law. Such laws were to control the disobedient and those who would cause chaos within both the Church and the State.
Having voted with their feet, they intuitively understood some believers, became further sanctified by better honing some doctrines of the Church prior to others, but different believers were spiritually gifted differently from one another. This recognized different religions of Christianity as still good faith, but any general good man would attempt to live according to the edicts of both the Church and the State, but shouldn't be criminalized by one or the other for attempting to faithfully abide by both.
Hence the historical meaning of the doctrine of separation of Church and State. It recognized good men would attempt to abide by both sets of laws, and no law should be created forming an enemy between the two.
This is strictly a Christian doctrine.
It is not consistent with paganism. Paganism and other false religions drift towards anarchism on one hand and atheistic legalism on the other, having no qualms in criminalizing those who seek to worship God by His protocols, in part because they reject God and what He provides.
This thread is probably better served if it were to study the differences in colonial thought, addressing the same topic as to the domain of Church and State.
Compare the Bill of rights and Constitutions of Virginia, Massachusetts, Connecticut, etc, where different religions wrote tomes on the role of Church and State.
Some identified the role of Church defining the State, while others expressedly avoided any role of the State which touched upon an authority of the Church.
Everyone who gets legally married is bound to a legal contract, the terms of which is set - at the behest of feminist lobbyists - in state legislatures, and the dissolution of which is handled in feminist-driven divorce courts.
I liked the scene in “Braveheart” where William Wallace marries in the middle of the night in order to keep the English lord’s hands off his wife; we should have our religious weddings completely removed from the secular government, to keep their laws (and attending lawyers) out of it.
I believe it would create healthier families.
“All of that happens because the government controls/licenses marriage, and thus controls the terms of the marriage contract.”
Absolutely, and like everything else the government over-regulates, it kills it. The Judeo-Christian concept of marriage in America is dead.
Very interesting. Thank you.
Given ‘religion’ is the catch-all for Christianity by any name, it seems Judaism might be a casualty of this perspective. In your opinion, was Judaism, along with other ‘valid’ religions, at all a factor in the language? We might have a serious Constitutional problem if not.
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