Christian Group has bank account removed due to "unacceptable views"

How does a gay marriage destablize the state?

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

I think it is more important that a child have loving parents than the sexuality of said parents.Heterosexual marriage you have to admit does not frequently equal stable families. This difference was most noticable during a sunday school craft that we did recently. The family tree, with the members of the family. In the craft guide it suggested, get the children to draw their mum, dad and siblings. Not so simple any more!Stable parenting can be provided by single people or single sex couples if they have a suitable supportive network. Surely we should be focusing more on providing strong supportive networks with people than condemning them to single childless lives because we disagree with the way they express their sexuality.

Yes, it is moot to the question of if we can or should change the qualification.Just because something has been one way "forever", is not an indication that it must be that way forevermore.The universal custom was polytheism until monotheism came along. All cultures were based around polytheistic religion. Wasn't whether polytheism had been the universal custom up to that point moot when considering whether to accept monotheism as a viable religion? Not in all cultures. In any case you have avoided the question. No, there WAS no purpose for it. Since legitimation of any sexual relationship socially, as well as the conference of rights governmentally has become the nature of marriage, the nature of marriage itself has changed such that gays might want to partake in it.If you want to blame anyone for changing what marriage is about, blame Xians for hammering home the idea that the only sex which is socially and legally legitimate is the sex within marriage. Upon much more serious reflection you will realize that without an answer to that question, your position is without evidence and so untenable. In other words my position is more accurate. It is unique only in the fact that it will be about gay marriage in specific, rather than changing other parts of marriage (like losing polygamy), though I guess it should be pointed out that the US has now failed to keep up with or make history. The historic act of recognizing gay marriage was already done by Netherlands, Canada, and Spain. Your reasoning is circular. Either changes have an effect or they do not. They can be demonstrated or they cannot. Your claim is that changing marriage customs is detrimental. You have proof or you do not. Even if you specify the criteria to only gay marriages then you have proof or you do not.If there is no historical evidence of ill befalling any nation because it accepted gay marriage then you are lacking any basis for claiming that it will cause something bad to happen. What are you talking about? In no way did I exempt the people who voted for Bush from the problems he has caused our nation. I am for a diverse population. Can you tell me what will happen to me in the end times? So you are admitting you want an activist judge? No, that and the reduction of prophylactics being disseminated for use in poor areas around the world cause a greater spread of STDs. That is absolutely true.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

Their natural desires will be egging them on just as much as and likely more than anyone else. I'm glad you admit that abstinence programs are a weak alternative to adequate sexual health programs, when sex is likely to occur at some point anyway. Condoms are certainly not the answer to the problem. I know some seafe sex advocates push that line but that is simply not true.First and foremost people need to understand more about their own sexual health. People need to get tested and govts need to get active in encouraging citizens to get tested.Second people need to engage in less dangerous sex acts. With those of quetionable or unknown sexual health, penetrative sex should not be engaged in without protection. That still leaves masturbation.Even oral sex without swallowing cum, if you are certain your mouth does not have any open sores, would be safe from HIV infection, though there could be some lesser STD infections.If one is going to engage in penetrative sex with someone of unknwon health, then condoms... while not a guaranteed solution... are without question the very next best thing. You don't need 100% success to drastically reduce problems in a pandemic.So know your health and that of your partners, stick with masturbation (or at most oral without swallowing), and if you go further use condoms. That is near 100%, and if you stick with masturbation will be 100%. Anything else will be risky behavior.And that beats abstinence every single day of the week.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

Yes, as I've been saying, marriage is being devalued daily in our society, has been pretty much trashed over the last few decades, but that means the task is to try to resuscitate it, not give it the death blow.Love has historically not been the primary reason for marriage. That is a rather recent romantic idea. Marriage is for sanctifying and legitimizing, setting apart and making permanent the heterosexual union that produces children, and it extends to all heterosexual unions, fertile or not, on principle. There is no principle that includes gays in this definition and to include them is to redefine marriage to the point that it loses all meaning.

Not that it affects a given marriage, but that it demeans the IDEA of marriage, contributes to its trivialization. If it is merely to give an aura of phony legitimacy to a sexual aberration, it loses what little seriousness is still attached to it.

By demeaning marriage which is the basis of a stable state, by rendering it a travesty.

You are correct that love was rarely a reason to enter into a marriage. One of the primary purposes of marriage was to cement alliances and bonds between different tribes and clans, or even between important individuals. If you look historically, the bride and groom usually had very little say in who they would marry, or at least their choices were very constrained.

No it's not so simple any more. The family structure is fragmented beyond recognition in many cases.Yes, alternative situations may work out fine, and yes, some traditional families are not good for children, but as a general principle hetero marriage and the nuclear family is the best system for raising children.

According to the Bible, our first parents knew the One God, and polytheism was a degeneration after the Fall when the true God was forgotten and the demons impersonated "gods" to spiritually dead humanity. Polygamy also was a degeneration from the original God-ordained monogamy, again as a result of the Fall. Nevertheless the formal recognition of marriage was a part of every culture and it never ordained gay marriage. Name the cultures that have sanctified gay marriage. They want it to give an aura of legitimacy to their unnatural sexuality, that's all. While I can sympathize, I can't see allowing this demeaning of marriage to be done to society as a whole. Also, the first gay rights groups were radical leftists and they stated their goal of DESTROYING marriage. Actually it is the Left that has destroyed marriage pretty successfully by many means over the last few decades, by redefining rights and freedoms to cover sins and crimes and aberrations. And what does this CHANGE? Marriage is not the invention of Christians or of any religion. It goes back to the beginning of history and exists in every culture as a rite for legitimizing heterosexuality, period. It has included polygamy, wrongly, but it has never legitimized anything but heterosexual sex. I answered it in a subsequent post. The "loss" of polygamy started a couple of millennia ago, it's not exactly new, and it can be credited as one of the improvements in the West that led to our great success as a culture. Yes, it is sad how fast the once great West has been deteriorating. In one part of Canada they even put pastors into prison for preaching that homosexuality is a sin. Also happened in Australia. No you are making the generalization about all marriage customs. Some customs were bad and needed to be changed for the good of society. But heterosexuality is THE standard and changing THAT is as good as asking for the destruction of society altogether. Practically speaking, gay marriage does NOTHING for society, it is merely a self-indulgence that trivializes marriage and contributes to the fragmentation and confusion we're already seeing so much of. So far I've been avoiding bringing God into this but at some point it has to be said that this is just inviting God's judgment, along with all the other ridiculous social "freedoms" we've been entertaining. In fact this fragmentation IS the beginning of God's judgment. When chaos reigns and diseases can't be stopped and people continue to do whatever they please, we're on the way to total destruction. "Science" will be the death of us all. Common sense is thrown out and now we must do everything by "evidence." Do you have to conduct a double-blind experiment to find out if it's wise to get out of bed in the morning or not?

Some evidence of this? It ensures that the members of the society have equal rights. Do you think inequality is good for society?This message has been edited by DrJones*, 07-04-2005 07:53 PM

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*not an actual doctor

Yea, I'd like to see where that happened too. If it was local to me I think it would be worth doing something about it.(However, my best guess is that Faith has this wrong -- wouldn't be the first "fact" that ain't)

Yes, that is true. That demonstrates the social importance of marriage, doesn't it, although of course that can be abused also. Is absolute chaos a better alternative to such abuses? Children who have a variety of temporary "parents" for instance instead of their natural father and mother, or an artificial parentage of gays, often in that case impermanent too. What's good about this? This is the result of legally indulging the whims of individuals instead of enforcing sane rules on all of us.This message has been edited by Faith, 07-04-2005 08:03 PM

Some inequalities are natural inequalities. Gays are not equal to straights and do not qualify for hetero marriage.

So you do think that homosexuals are second class citizens. Are you going to provide any support for your assertion that pastors have been jailed in Canada for speaking out against homosexuals?

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*not an actual doctor