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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Katelew who wrote (94644)	11/7/2008 5:37:43 PM
From: Rambi	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 541375

Kate, I am so close to understanding what you are saying. But it keeps sliding away from me. My fault, not yours. Adultery and bestiality - well, I am having trouble coming up with scenarios for legally legitimizing them, but fornication is pretty much accepted now with the idea of legal significant others. (IN a way not allowing gays to legitimize their relationship is encouraging fornication, isn't it?) It used to be a mortal sin to eat meat on Friday when I was growing up. Many sins are based on now outdated rationales. Surely much of the OT is. Is it Paul who provides the NT scriptural basis for the idea of homosexuality as sin? Because he had some pretty weird ideas about women and sex, too, that I think may have caused static in his direct line to God's word. I have no idea why marriage can't be separated from the legal concept anyway, and be relegated to the church for the spiritual legitimizing. Let all consenting adults be joined under under the law in a non-discriminatory contract, and let the church "marry". If a church is ok with marrying gays, so be it. I am trying very hard, but I just can't get beyond understanding your view to allowing it to punish a group to satisfy your religious based definition. It just doesn't do personal harm to you that I can see.

To: Katelew who wrote (94644)	11/7/2008 5:42:04 PM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (5) \| Respond to of 541375

All it means is that I prefer the traditional legal definition of marriage be upheld and not overturned. That's a just another way to frame a preference for others not having equal rights. Which has more value, your preferences or someone else's rights? No contest. Lots of people preferred not to have to interact with blacks. Until they were forced to. And until time passed and they got used to it or died off. And their grandchildren grew up to wonder what all the fuss was about. We're trying to preserve a belief system, not neccessarily expand it. I take your point about aggressors. But being the aggressor in seeking justice is hardly a moral negative. I agree that the status quo is the default. I have said often that it is a strategic negative to press this the way it has been. I really think there was a lot of overreach on this issue that is doing more harm to the cause than good. But a strategic mistake is not the same as being wrong on the issue. will most likely always vote against any initiative that asks me to legitimize adultery, fornication, homosexuality and bestiality. That's a odd grouping. Apples and oranges. By your grouping it looks like you're thinking about this in terms of "weird sex." Others are thinking in terms of the rights of citizens to do their own thing as long as they don't hurt anyone. I don't think you have to worry about bestiality. You have a victim there. In adultery you have a victim. With fornication and homosexuality among consenting adults there is no victim.

To: Katelew who wrote (94644)	11/7/2008 6:14:53 PM
From: thames_sider	Respond to of 541375

Just quickly, because I can see others have answered this far more thoughtfully than I can , I would actually agree with you on the issue of church marriage: inasmuch as it is not IMO the role or right of the state to dictate what any church must do [within regular law, obviously]. So if it is against the internal laws of a church to marry gays, or have women priests, or whatever, then fine. That's the choice of that religion, and as long as no one is forced to follow it and people are free to leave then I see no foul. Of course, if that church wants public funding or special dispensation in some relevant matter, then the state is quite entitled to refuse it on the grounds that it does not follow civil law by its discrimination. And the rules of the church should absolutely not prevent gays "marrying" by civil service (in the UK at a registry office, for example): i.e., the church should not be able to deny marriage in law. It simply need not be bound to recognise or perform such marriages as religious/sanctioned unions. Freedom cuts both ways.

To: Katelew who wrote (94644)	11/7/2008 6:20:12 PM
From: Travis_Bickle	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 541375

"I have a different rationale and thus will most likely always vote against any initiative that asks me to legitimize adultery, fornication, homosexuality and bestiality." Or as I like to think of it, "Friday night."

To: Katelew who wrote (94644)	11/7/2008 9:38:51 PM
From: Cogito	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 541375

>>All it means is that I prefer the traditional legal definition of marriage be upheld and not overturned. It seems to me that it's the side you represent that's the aggressor and trying to force an issue. Yet it's my side that's always accused of trying to force a belief system on other people. We're trying to preserve a belief system, not neccessarily expand it. It's your side that's always pushing to turn things over, don't you think? At any rate, this is the way I see it and it can be mildly irritating at times.<< Kate - It's been brought up before, but it wasn't that long ago that it was illegal for people of different races to marry. Arguing that it was traditional for them not to marry didn't hold water, since it was clear that this was a matter of some people wanting to continue to impose their belief system on others, and to deny them basic equality under the law. The present situation is precisely analogous. The imposition of your view on others, in denying them the right to marry, has been ongoing. You accept that as "the norm." So you see efforts to change this as the imposition of somebody else's belief system on you. But you are not the one who is being denied equality under the law. You have the legal right to marry, which you have exercised. Nobody is going to take that right away from you. The idea is simply to stop taking it away from homosexuals, as the law currently does in most states. I notice that in places where homosexual marriage is permitted legally, there is no evidence of harm to the marriages of heterosexuals. - Allen