Gay Marriage as an attack on Christianity

The problem people are struggling with - and it's the same with every subject you take on from geology to evolution to bible interpretations - is that you have a programmed mind which can't be influenced by facts and evidence. You are under the delusion that you actually know the mind of god and in a very specific kind of way.You don't know his mind of course, you've fallen for a particular cult's explanation that matches your mood and you now inhabit the bubble which reinforces it. That bubble has had as one of its tennets that homosexuality is an abomination for generations so you're sensitised to it - or as you put it, you've developed a 'conscience' about it. You see, you haven't yet had your consciousness raised on this issue but now that Islam has become an issue in our cultures I'm sure you'll be able to let this into your 'conscience' too. It looks like you already are.'Conscience' is what you have learned from the culture you buy into - it has no supernatural origin.Edited by Tangle, : No reason given.

No, you still misunderstand the Tatchell piece: But Tatchell is saying the opposite. His article is all about the message. In Tatchell's example, if I were purchasing the cake with the message then the baker would object, while if there were no message he would not object. The message makes all the difference in the Tatchell piece. This gets back to the question of how selling a cake legitimizes a wedding.A baker can't pick and choose which members of the public he sells his unannotated cakes to, but I think he's got a good basis for refusal if he objects to the message.--Percy

I think he's probably wished many people "Happy Birthday," he's probably written it on many cakes, he thinks it's a fine idea to give these wishes on such occasions, so he would of course have no problem with it. But he doesn't accept gay marriage and finds the idea abhorrent, so he of course objects to writing "Support Gay Marriage" on a cake. In neither case does he believe that writing the message would be "participating in a celebration in any way."--Percy

Yes, I think that's correct. You mean what if the Supreme Court ruled that cake baking was a form of speech, the way they ruled money is a form of speech? Yes, then that would mean that cake baking is protected, too. Speech is the expression of an idea, and one shouldn't be compelled to express ideas one objects to.--Percy

Yeah, that's what I meant. And if the service provider says that the service they are providing is expressing an idea they object to?Does that need to be determined? Or can we take their word for it?Can creating a particular cake for a particular reason be consider expressing an idea? Or does it require writing something?

OK, the LAWSUIT came out of the blue, as I doubt that they ever had any idea of such a possibility before that. I was answering the specific question why it seems to Mod that Christians focus particularly on homosexuality. I was saying it's a reaction to their actions and otherwise we don't.Christians have fought against gay rights for years, or aspects of it, but that is not what the specific issues on this thread are about. We are talking about the specific request to do something for a gay wedding that a Christian in good conscience cannot do. Period. No it really is not. Homosexual acts are sin and same sex relationships are the reason for legalizing gay marriage, but it's not the sin that is the reason for refusing to serve a gay wedding, it's the fact that marriage is only for male and female. The reason for the same sex relationship is really irrelevant, it simply does not fit the qualifications for marriage. Again, it's the meaning of marriage that is the whole point. I'm not addressing "the legal benefits of marriage," just the institution of marriage itself. Before it was legalized there was lots of discussion about how benefits could be legally acquired without changing the meaning of marriage, but gays wanted marriage so they got marriage, and that's what Christians can't support. Whatever. I guess we'll just go on objecting to gay marriage without your approval.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

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OK, the LAWSUIT came out of the blue, as I doubt that they ever had any idea of such a possibility before that.

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They knew what they had done, they should have known about the law.

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I was answering the specific question why it seems to Mod that Christians focus particularly on homosexuality. I was saying it's a reaction to their actions and otherwise we don't.

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Exactly - you preach against homosexuality to stir up resistance to gay rights.

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No it really is not. Homosexual acts are sin and same sex relationships are the reason for legalizing gay marriage, but it's not the sin that is the reason for refusing to serve a gay wedding, it's the fact that marriage is only for male and female.

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Your idea of marriage is. But there is no reason why you have to object to other ideas to the point of rudely refusing services.

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I'm not addressing "the legal benefits of marriage,"

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According to the title of this thread granting gay couples the legal benefits of marriage is "an attack on Christianity". Because that is what the SCOTUS decision is all about.

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Before it was legalized there was lots of discussion about how benefits could be legally acquired without changing the meaning of marriage, but gays wanted marriage so they got marriage, and that's what Christians can't support.

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It was tried and "Christians" wouldn't let it work - they used the difference to try to withhold the legal benefits of marriage from gay couples.So either that is what you are upset about or we're back to your silly belief in word magic where just calling it marriage is the problem.

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Whatever. I guess we'll just go on objecting to gay marriage without your approval.

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Sure, you can go on stewing in your sins. Funny how you don't like something you call "kindness" when you are on the receiving end.

It isn't kind to destroy the concept of marriage or treat sin as not sin.

Nobody is destroying the concept of marriage, and the second is exactly what I meant.

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Matthew 22:35-40 Then one of them, which was a lawyer, asked him a question, tempting him, and saying, Master, which is the great commandment in the law? Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.

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Loving thy neighbor supersedes all other considerations of "the law".

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Galatians 5:22-23 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, Meekness, temperance: against such there is no law.

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There is no law against loving your gay neighbour.And by the way, longsuffering means patience, not whining about how you're being treated.

Love does not lie about sin, pretend sin is not sin, pretend sin doesn't take people to Hell, pretend marriage can apply to anyone other than male and female.. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

No one is destroying the concept of marriage Faith. In fact they are enhancing and improving the concept of marriage.Other peoples sins are none of your business.

Nor does it shoot off its mouth about sin.

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7:1-5 Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again. And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye? Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye.

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A related verse:

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John 8:7 So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself, and said unto them, He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.

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When you're without sin, you're free to talk about somebody else's.

Interestingly you are accusing me of exactly what I do not do. I keep saying I'm not talking about sin and I'm not. On the other hand people here love to point the finger at sin, make up sins to accuse me of for instance, most of which I haven't committed, but I don't talk about sin. It's not my subject and one thing I hate is moralizing. Leftists however love to moralize and try to skewer people with moralistic accusations, most of them made up out of the Marxist playbook rather than the Bible, but you aren't at all hesitant about accusing people of sins from the Bible either, misapplying them with a heavy hand.

Gay marriage is about a cultural institution, marriage and its purpose, while the sin of homosexual acts is incidental to it, really doesn't even need to be brought into it. I'm not interested in people's sins. The main time I bring them up is in a very general sense and for the purpose of describing the gospel of salvation, which I really don't do very often here.But David Horowitz was quite right in his book Big Agenda, and the talk I linked some time back, when he said moralizing is THE weapon of the Left. The Leftists he said sound like hellfire and brimstone preachers. Political Correctness is the catchall term for it. Just about every post against me accuses me of something from the PC catalog, either directly or indirectly. It's really a weapons arsenal.It's rare to have a discussion here that is a dispassionate analysis of intormation.; Just about everything posted to me here is some kind of moralistic fingerpointing. This topic right now is that: supposedly I'm the one wrongly accusing people of sin when that's YOUR endless tactic against ME. Accuse accuse accuse. If you thought for even half a minute about my style of posting you'd have to recognize that is NOT what I'm doing. But jar just did it to me, ringo just did it to me, and PaulK never says anything to me without accusing me of some hideous moral failure or other. You really need to learn to listen to yourselves. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.