Professor Buzzkill, on 10 October 2012 - 02:48 AM, said:
They are responsible for the "little ceremony" (or wedding as we call it). Should we force them to allow those who do not fit their religious view to marry in their churches with their priests?
They (and you) seem to be forgetting something. They already have a clause for them to do that. Since catholic churches don't allow divorce they are entitled not to allow people that have divorced from marrying there. In other words they don't have to marry people who don't fit their religious view. So there's already somethng that covers that. However they also don't have the right to say to those divorced people 'we don't think you should marry, so you never can'. A divorced catholic is completely free to marry just not in a catholic church.
So as you see, that issue is already covered.
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Can you not see the hypocrisy of this statement? Freedom of religion means you can believe whatever you want and be a part of any religion you agree with. The only time we should get involved is when their rights are infringing other people rights. This is not occurring at the moment, but will occur when this law is passed.
Now you can legally allow gay marriage, and tell the religious leaders that they do not have to perform gay weddings, but as soon as a gay person is denied service because they are gay IT INFRINGES THEIR RIGHTS.
As long as gay people can get married and also have the option to get married in a church that wants them to, there's really no issue. Think about it. Most religious gay people would already have migrated to more accepting churches (aka the churches that want to perform gay marriages) so why would they force those churches?
The key is if you want churches to hae the right to say no, the churches that want to say yes should be able to do so too.
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I don't believe the religious leaders would have a problem allowing "civil weddings" by law, but legalizing gay marriage means that eventually all discriminating churches will be taken to the human rights tribunal to argue one human right over the other.
The law clearly says what it wants. The churches know full well the law means civil marriages but they're still causing a fuss anyway. They're shooting themselves in the foot, especially wtht he language they use. If they said 'right, we want to protections so we don't have to do this' then there wouldn't be much of an issue. Instead they're saying gay marriage will 'lead to the break down of society'. Instead of making a reasoned arguement they'd likely win, they choose to go over the top and offensive.
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Another point is that marriage is defined in all dictionaries as between a man and a woman, hence when discussing marriage between two same sex partners i use the term "gay marriage"
I'll make the same two points I always make to that. Point the first, things change. If you look at an old dictionary and compare it with now, you'd find that many words have changed ther meaning (or outright been discarded).
The second point is that marriage itself has evolved. Originally, women were treated as property to be bartered with. People would exchange their daughters for land, money or animals. Over time that's changed. Marriage today is a much mpore equal state, one freely entered into by both parties (and can freely be dissolved by them as well). Why, then, should marriage not further evolve?
Just because something has existed for a long time doesn't make it right and nor should it make it immune to change and alteration. Marriage is something that has already changed a great deal since it's inception and there's really no reason not to change it further other thaan what religions say. And, since marriage isn't owned by any religion and anyone of any and no faith can legally marry, what religion has to say about the issue shouldn't be taken as law.
So just take off that disguise, everyone knows that you're only, pretty on the outside
Where are those droideka?
No one can tell you who you are
"There's the trouble with fanatics. They're easy to manipulate, but somehow they take everything five steps too far."
"The circumstances of one's birth are irrelevent, it's what you do with the gift of life that determines who you are."