Gay Marriage as an attack on Christianity

That is untrue. I gave the references on the Bible's definition of marriage in Message 278. It doesn't matter that you aren't convinced, it's the reason conservative Christians object to gay marriage and will act on it when pushed to accept it. Marriage is marriage, it is defined by God for all peoples in all times no matter what any other authority thinks about it. Gays CALL it "marriage," they refer to their "wedding," I've even been told by a gay guy about his male "wife" -- that is how THEY think about it so don't pull a semantic trick here. They fought tooth and nail against all proposals for legal alternatives to marriage and what they got is marriage, not a "civil union" without the trappings of marriage. There is no distinction being made in any sense at all. The Biblical definition is what motivates conservative Christians and you cannot tell us we need to agree with some other definition instead.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Well we do "own the concept," in that God "owns the concept"and the Bible is God's word, but no, I've made no such claim, you can certainly go on with your own definitions as of course you do and will, which is why we get pu8nished for OUR definition. Hey? It's YOUR concept that is judging ours, not the other way around. And it's you that are not allowing us our idea. Alas, how true, which has been affirmed from the beginning of this thread, it's why we can't object to gay marriage any more, the pagans have won, the world is getting darker by the minute, very very true. Believe it or not I could not care less what the immediate source of this PC murk is, I don't care where it came from, the only point of this whole thread is that there is a law that legitimizes gay marriage that Christians cannot accept, that has authority to dictate this legitimization against our beliefs. Pretty obvious I would think.Yup, "justice and freedom" for selected leftist favorites, against the Christian traditions that were once the foundation of law in the West. Hey I've accepted the handwriting on the wall, you're beating a dead horse over and over and over. Paganism has won, we've lost, why not just jump up and down with joy? What's this need to keep on beating us?TRUE freedom is gone, TRUE justice is gone, TRUE diversity is gone, we are now under totalitarian leftist rule, though nobody here is willing to acknowledge it.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

What are you so worried about? The law says we can't so we can't and yet you go on bleating about it. (I suggest that you know that we represent the true God and you have to shut HIM up because he DOES have power over you. Yet here you've pretty much shut him up with laws and yet you go on yelling about it.) If you don't want to hear my point of view you don't have to read it you know. Proof thatour view of marriage is not enforced against anybody is that Christian businesses get punished for refusing service to a gay wedding. Yet you keep acting like we have some kind of power over you.Just to say it again, refusing service for a gay wedding, is not discrimination against persons as I've pointed out again and again, but specifically refusing to legitimize a particular social institution. And it's in your power to encourage lots of such arrangements and surround us with them, against our definition of marriage. So what ARE you bleating about. Yes, I think you do know you're fighting against God Himself. Nobody wins that fight. You can have thousands of gay marriages, and all the Christians could disappear -- and maybe we will -- but you can't get rid of God. Can't object without being punished. Why do you pretend that wasn't the point? Anything to obscure the truth.So you are right that we can't do it, because we get punished for it Except of course that you've got good and evil reversed, you are quite right and I've never said otherwise. And yet you keep on bleating about it. Again, I could not care less what keeps us from objecting to gay marriage (but you certainly enjoy calling us liars. And all the rest of the PC baggage) the only point is that we CAN'T object without being punished. The usual stupid nitpick to distract from the point, which is that we CAN'T object without being punished. Who cares what the source is? SCOTUS is a high profile source of such a ruling, there is nothing wrong with referring to it.

I don't "demand" anything. Forget it all, I could NOT care less what you think. The fact remains that conservative Christians understand the passages already quoted to require us to deny gay marriage.I certainly CAN make declarations about all peoples and all cultures because there is one God over them all. YOU can believe what you want but this is what God's word says and I'm not going to pretend it doesn't.The problem is not my inability to show the principle in the Bible, the problem as usual is the obtuseness of people who don't believe the Bible.

Yes I claim that the Bible is the truth, about marriage and everything else, but when I said I made no such claim what I meant was that I don't claim there are no other views or that they don't have power or however that was said. That is certainly not true and I didn't claim it was. Well, not quite. I claim that marriage is defined by the Bible as quoted and that it governs all cultures and peoples, but I didn't claim that all cultures and peoples recognize it, because clearly they don't. They all have some law about marriage, however, that in most cases reflects the basics of God's law, man leaves family and cleaves to one wife. Remember I said "in most cases" and "reflects" because there's plenty of deviation and sin involved too. The reason marriage laws imperfectly reflect God's law is because humanity is fallen, lost our contact with God and since then have lost true memory of Him, which is why God gave us the Bible, to teach us what we lost. Nobody is refusing "to sell a cake" -- they can have all the cake they want for any purpose they want except a cake clearly intended for a gay wedding. As the Guardian author concluded about the bakery in his story, they did not discriminate against PEOPLE but against an idea, a concept, a belief system. We're refusing a service for a particular occasion that represents gay marriage which we are bound by God to deny, but the people themselves, the gays themselves, are welcome to anything else in the bakery. But they can interfere with ours, sue us etc., if we act on ours against their point of view. Theirs isn't even called a "religious" opinion yet it's protected against ours.
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Please consider the thinking of the writer of the Guardian piece (Or Message 469). He started out defending the gays against the bakery and ended up defending the bakery's right to their religious view of gay marriage. In that case it was writing on a cake, in the American cases it's the cake itself as a symbol of a wedding we cannot accept as legitimate. I guess you can fiddle with semantics all you want, and make up all the definitions you want to try to disqualify ours, but ours is the one we act on. When asked to provide a wedding cake for a gay wedding we are being asked to treat gay marriage as legitimate. All of us see it that way, funny you don't get it.And just cuz you tried to denigrate it by calling it hyperventilating I think I'll repeat my last line here: How true.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Oh NONSENSE.We don't want to do ANYTHING that even MAKES IT LOOK LIKE we accept gay marriage as legitimate. Good grief.

they6 called it a marriage, they called it a wedding, that is what the bakery objected to. I don't see any place for figuring out the legalities involved.

I said "even" makes it look like...In other words we don't want EVEN to create the impression that we are in favor of gay marriage.

It doesn't matter what the legal basis for punishing the bakery is, the point is refusing to serve a gay wedding is subject to punishment. Any law, the SCOTUS ruling, or just the fact that the courts are disposed to punish Christians for acting on our objection to gay marriage, it's all the same in the end.

HOWEVER, I would still like to see a distinction made between discriminating against a concept, an opinion, a theological position or whatnot, and against a person, since the former is the case in all the situations we've been discussing, and not the latter. This is clearly a violation of freedom of religion or opinion or thought or however that should be put, it is not about idiscrimination against persons.I'd also be for any legal provision that would protect gays against the painful encounters that they are suing about. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Funny I just happened to be writing a post that IS concerned with finding a better way.

If we were discriminating against persons we wouldn't even sell them a cupcake.I said I'd be open to suggestions, I don't offhand know what would work as a solution myself but it's something that could be discussed here."Up until now" I've been run ragged trying to keep up with all the idiotic irrelevant arguments and accusations everybody is throwing at me, haven't had enough breathing space even to stop and think about a way to ameliorate the problems experienced by the gays.You haven't a smidgen of fairness in you. You spit venom with every word.

So obviously YOU have no interest in trying to find a solution that protects both.

If there is no actual discrimination against persons but only a specific request I don't see how you can justify making it a bigger thing than that.Unlike a funeral denying a specific cake doesn't preclude the customer's having anything else in the bakery.Thanks for conceding that it IS a violation of freedom of religion.What you said about needing to establish primacy is what led me to assume you weren't interested in thinking about how to find a solution that would protect both parties. So I guess I got that wrong. As long as the law says businesses can't refuse to serve a gay wedding there isn't much point in looking for a way to protect both. First something would have to be established along the lines of Tatchell's observations that discriminating against a particular request is not discriminating against persons.Then what would I have in mind? I was hoping you or someone else might have an idea. All I think of is making sure everybody knows where everybody else stands. Some kind of information campaign. "Christians can't serve a gay wedding but you can have anything else you want." Brochures about the business explaining all that. Some businesses here put the fish symbol on their door which says they are Christians, but many don't like to do that becase it creates unreasonable expectations or something like that.But again, I think first the law would have to change to take the Christian point of view into account. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Of course not. It's the people who hold that view who are hurt.