Gay Marriage

[elSicomoro]

Originally posted by jimf747
The U.S. was founded by a religious people looking to practice religion without discrimination. The simple
fact that the Ten Commandments are written on the ceiling of the Supreme Court should tell you something. When you go to court you swear to God to tell the truth! The oaths of judicial office are made with the right hand on the Bible. The Ten Commandments are considered the first laws handed to civilized men by God. There is more then enough material floating around the net to support any kind research along these lines.

I don't deny that there is some religion involved in our laws. Religion is not the reference for ALL law though.

As far as morality, there are various theories as to how morality came to be, including divine laws, convention and rational laws. The problem, as I see it, is that there is too much religious morality in our current laws...morals can vary widely from person to person, and we practically have a state religion as it is.

I don't think morals are necessarily right or wrong...they just are.

If you say a human being has value then you must define the substance or units with which this value is expressed… shall we use dollars and cents or the promise immortality and the immortal soul.

One does not necessarily need to use either to determine value. Maybe I use a point system; maybe you use a rating system.

Communism and Socialism preached atheism and killed over 100 million people, those people who did the killing went home and hugged their kids and slept well. They slept well because they believed that they were not going to pay any price for their actions. In their eyes the people who they killed had no supernatural value.

You can't blame communism and socialism for those deaths...you can only blame the people that did it. That's like cities that are trying to sue gun manufacturers because their guns kill people.

There are people in New York that have been charged with Sodomy recently.

New York doesn't have a sodomy law a la Texas or some of the other states. What's the background on the cases?

Without Sodomy laws it would not be possible to charge a child molester with Sodomy… if that was the extent of the transgression.

Consider sodomy a sex act. Depending on the circumstances, if an adult performs a sex act with a child, it could fall under a child abuse statute.

I never made the connection between Sodomy and Bestiality, I only said that they are considered to be un natural acts under the law.

As a few of us have mentioned already, that's not really the case anymore in regards to sodomy, given the recent Supreme Court ruling. And based on your floodgates comment, I inferred (incorrectly, perhaps, but I doubt it) that you were connecting the two beyond them being "unnatural acts under the law".

When a male and female get married, the state sanctifies it, and therefore sanctifies the acts performed, right? Well, there seem to be quite a few straight people out there that engage in sodomy...and prior to the Supreme Court ruling, 41 states allowed that.

So, how exactly would allowing gay marriage open the floodgates?

[Happy Monkey]

Originally posted by jimf747
The U.S. was founded by a religious people looking to practice religion without discrimination. The simple fact that the Ten Commandments are written on the ceiling of the Supreme Court should tell you something.

On the ceiling of the Supreme Court - as part of the same frieze - are Confucius, Solon, and the Tortoise and the Hare. It is merely a depiction of various lawgivers in history, from various cultures.

When you go to court you swear to God to tell the truth! The oaths of judicial office are made with the right hand on the Bible.

I have been on two juries, and have been a defendant in a civil suit once. I never saw a Bible. This was in the Federal Court, and the Superior Court, in the District of Columbia. Don't trust TV too much -it ain't always like that anymore.

As for oaths of office, that is completely up to the person taking the oath. It is not required to use a Bible, and the oath does not end with "so help me God". That is either a sincere request or a PR move, depending on the person.

The Ten Commandments are considered the first laws handed to civilized men by God. There is more then enough material floating around the net to support any kind research along these lines.

That is true, for Christians, Jews, and Muslims. There were earlier civilizations with divine laws, but Abrahamic religions don't recognize them.

Without religion the actual word morality has no meaning with relation to cause and effect. Without religion the human being has worth expressed in dollars and sense… 68 cents in materials. The ideas of right and wrong need to have certain preconditions to have meaning.

Personally, I find people frightening when they say they wouldn't be moral if God wasn't threatening them with Hell. I'm not religious, and I still wouldn't kill someone - even if I knew I could get away with it.

For instance there were many tribal cultures that sacrificed people for many supernatural ideas… those tribes considered their actions moral and right, do you, if you don’t, then you have to ask why. If you say a human being has value then you must define the substance or units with which this value is expressed… shall we use dollars and cents or the promise immortality and the immortal soul.

I suspect that most of them acted somewhat morally - truly believing that they had to do it. I blame whoever set up the rules more than the people who believed them. They were products of their times. However, I am not a product of those times, and cnanot speak with authority on them.

Human life cannot be given a value. There is no way to measure it. Any attempt to do so is inherently religious in nature, or inherently selfish. In either case, it is an attempt to justify murder by giving a life a lower value than another goal.

Communism and Socialism preached atheism and killed over 100 million people, those people who did the killing went home and hugged their kids and slept well. They slept well because they believed that they were not going to pay any price for their actions. In their eyes the people who they killed had no supernatural value.

Indeed. Evil is not monopolized by religious fanatics. People in subservient positions find it horrifyingly easy to completely shut out empathy for fellow humans, in an Us Vs. Them situation, where "they" are subhuman. People in power find it easy to consider others to be less than human, and expendable. Whether the goals are religious or not is not really relevant. If they were religious people, they would have decided that their enemies were the wrong religion.

There are people in New York that have been charged with Sodomy recently. Be very careful what you put forth. Without Sodomy laws it would not be possible to charge a child molester with Sodomy… if that was the extent of the transgression. How would you like to come home and find you 9-year-old child has been sodomized and you couldn’t do anything about it except maybe charge the person with a minor assault.

This is completely wrong. You are either being deliberately obtuse, being trollish, or are just not that clever. First, anti-sodomy laws have been ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. It may not have been challenged yet in NY (do you have a cite on the case?), but if challenged, the law will go down. Second, if someone sodomizes a 9-year-old, the crimes are child abuse, sexual assault, and rape, not sodomy. The rapist is off to prison, even without your precious sodomy laws. Come on, this isn't too hard to figure out.

I never made the connection between Sodomy and Bestiality, I only said that they are considered to be un natural acts under the law. It’s the phrase “un-natural act” that would generate the problems in the courtrooms and legal circles, lawyers would have a field day with it, and they have hundreds of years of legal precedent to call on.

Connecting sodomy and bestiality is legally worthless. Laws against sodomy are already dead. Laws against bestiality are in no danger. What's the difference? Animals can't consent. Neither can children, in reference to your last paragraph. So those issues aren't even on the same mountain, let alone the same slippery slope.

[juju]

I'm just curious, Jim... how do you feel about anal sex between a man and a woman? And how do you feel about oral sex between a man and a woman?

[vsp]

You know, I'd get into this debate, but this line:

Originally posted by jimf747
Without religion the actual word morality has no meaning with relation to cause and effect.

makes it pointless. We can throw facts, conjectures, case studies, principles and such at him for weeks, but he seems to believe that "Because The Bible Said So" trumps all other arguments, and that the burden of proof is on the non-religious side.

Originally posted by Happy Monkey
For instance there were many tribal cultures that sacrificed people for many supernatural ideas… those tribes considered their actions moral and right, do you, if you don’t, then you have to ask why.

I suspect that most of them acted somewhat morally - truly believing that they had to do it. I blame whoever set up the rules more than the people who believed them. They were products of their times. However, I am not a product of those times, and cannot speak with authority on them.

You hit it right on the nose. The tribal cultures _did_ act morally... according to their own standards of morality. By contemporary American standards, they did not. That's what "morality" is -- a set of rules and standards for behavior, presumably for the benefit of all. Those rules vary from time to time, place to place, culture to culture.

Who's to say that "our" morality is "better" than theirs was?

There's a certain humor value in the notion of "good Christians" dying and going to their eternal judgement, only to find that instead of God or Jesus, there's a thirty-foot tribal god waiting for them who's pissed because they never sacrificed to him.

[OnyxCougar]

I bow to the Happy Monkey. This 747 person appears to be a troll. Like we need another.

[wolf]

There's a quota. Didn't you know? It's in the bylaws.

[Whit]

      I thought I'd take things a step further on the troll thing, and explain to 747 (not Jim as I'd prefer no confusion with our own Lumberjim) where the assertions are coming from.
      First of all, you came into a discussion without reading what came before. That or you didn't pay much attention to it. Most of you arguments had already been made and dealt with. Yet you showed no sign of knowing that. That's rude. It suggests that no one on here could possibly be as smart as you, at least in your opinion. This is a method a lot of trolls use to be offensive.
      Second Juju asked if you were a troll. Not long after that you asked if Wolf was a socialist. Which most of us would consider far worse than being a troll. Yet you claimed that you didn't call her one, just asked. Well, that's what Juju did with you. This kind of double standard is typical of trolls.
      Third, Syc has refuted your arguments continuously and politely. You've pretty well ignored his arguments. Also, you tell us to research for you. Why should we? A troll might well try to send people on a wild internet goose chase.
      Fourth, your trump card, so to speak, is that religion is the basis of all morality. That is just frightening. Very few of my friends attend church or have faith in any religion. Yet these are the most honest moral people I know. Thus you strike me as making a crazy statement to stir up trouble. That's pretty much the definition of what a troll is. By the by, are you saying that without church you would instantly become a callous hedonist? Just curious.
      Anyway, you've been getting pissy about the troll assertions. I thought you might want to know why they were made.

[ladysycamore]

Originally posted by jimf747
Personally I could care less what gay people do, until they start throwing their life style in my face every ten minutes.

And how do gays throw their lifestyle in your face every ten minutes?

[wolf]

He must leave the TV on Bravo and Showtime a lot. (Or live/work near Christopher Street, or The Villlage, or SoHo).

[vsp]

I suspect it's one of those "Do what you want in your own bedroom -- just don't venture _outside of it_ where I might see or hear you, much less see you engaging in public displays of affection, ewwwwwwwwww" mental blocks.

Could be worse. I'm perversely amused by the "repulsed by gays' very existence" religious wingnut crowd, especially since they're many of the people screaming about how gay marriages will "devalue marriage for everyone." Since their own churches would never perform newly-legalized gay marriages (nor would they ever be compelled by law to do so), and since their own hetero marriages would continue to be performed as before, what exactly about their church communities and their lifestyle would change?

[wolf]

I disagree on the "would never be compelled by law to do so."

The way things are going, if gay marriage does become the law of the land, any church refusing to do so would be charged with a civil rights violation, or worse, a hate crime.

[vsp]

A church is a private organization, no? Sort of like the Boy Scouts, and they've had a pretty good success rate at retaining their bigotry^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hrestrictive membership criteria. I don't believe that a minister is compelled to marry anyone who asks him to perform the service, much like a business can be choosy about who they sell to. They could come up with more reasons than H&R Block why they "couldn't" do it without touching "because you're gay," if they wanted to be subtle.

And if they don't want to be subtle, a countersuit claiming that forcing the church to marry gays violates the church's freedom of religion and is itself discriminatory could muddle up the courts for a while. They'd have better success denying gays in that manner than, for example, denying interracial or non-white marriages, because they can point to (varyingly-interpretatable) Scripture concerning homosexuality.

The point is not to drag all churches kicking-and-screaming into the 21st Century. Many would gladly remain in the 17th, and may do so. But those who wish to modernize and adapt should be allowed to have their marriages recognized, and those who are non-religious should not be denied rights specifically because certain religious groups have a problem with it.

[Happy Monkey]

Originally posted by wolf
I disagree on the "would never be compelled by law to do so."

The way things are going, if gay marriage does become the law of the land, any church refusing to do so would be charged with a civil rights violation, or worse, a hate crime.

This is not true. Things are not going this way. Nobody is trying to get the government to force churches to perform gay marriages. Churches always have been able to use their own criteria to prohibit marriages. In fact, the only way the government EVER interferes in marriages is to add more restrictions - ( against polygamy, incest, and interracial marriage ) - not remove them.

A church is perfectly within its rights to deny an interracial couple a church marriage. Likewise - and less controvercially - an interfaith couple. On the other hand, a church is capable of performing marriages prohibited by the government. There are gay couple now who have been married in their churches. They are just as married in the eyes of their God as any other couple. The only issue at stake is whether the government will also recognise their union.

[quzah]

Originally posted by jimf747
Can you explain your sudden move toward name-calling?

It's not sudden. I called you an idiot three or four pages ago...

Quzah.

[quzah]

Originally posted by jimf747
but you need a dose of reality my friend. I’m telling you that you have no choice but to address the Bible and the precedents under the law. On the ceiling above the Supreme Court is the Ten Commandments… who do you think put them there.

Sorry to burst your little bubble, well no I'm really not, but that's an aside, but not everyone here is Jewish. Show me in the New Testamant where Jesus spoke against homosexuality. Oh that's right, you can't. Or do you only pick out the parts you like and ignore the rest? Shouldn't you be off stoning people who cheat on their husbands? Or making a burnt offering or something?


Quzah.