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Realistically -- what's got to happen with gay marriage?
California is the biggest example of gay people married and other gay people not able to get married -- in the same state. Some people are heartbroken and others are having a huge sigh of relief over the recent ruling in that state. Realistically -- what's got to happen?
What do you think?
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Paul Daniels
June 2, 2009 - 9:30 am EDTMs. McLaughlin: I would very much like to see a free and open debate of the the issue. No more bludgeoning people into submission by calling them bigot and homophobes because they oppose homosexual marriage. If the merits really are on the side of homosexual marriage supporters, they will carry the day.
Get A Clue
June 2, 2009 - 10:25 am EDTNever mind the fact that the Bible is unequivocably contradictory on many points and that those who have no problem following it as the unalterable word of God regarding homosexuality conveniently skip over the parts about adultery, honoring the Sabbath and dietary laws, not to mention most of the Ten Commandments.
This is the United States of America and the law of this land is the U.S. Constitution. End of that discussion.
Marriage is a legal contract and its powers, rights and responsibilities come from the government. That's why you need a marriage license to make it all legal. If you wish to also have your marriage approved as a religious sacrement via your particular brand of mythology, then by all means have your rabbi, minister, imam or chief potentate perform the service and give you the pomp and ceremony you so desperately crave from your particular supernatural idol.
But let's all agree to stop pretending that anyone else's marriage somehow affects yours in any way whatsoever. If you won't stop sleeping around, it's not because a couple homos also tied the knot. Your 'irreconcilable differences' weren't caused by Heather's two mommies. And that shotgun marriage you forced your pregnant teen daughter into isn't because Adam and Steve had a wedding cake with two plastic grooms on top.
Whatever particular religious sect you may have decided to follow is your business. But it has no bearing whatsoever on how this country is run.
Paul Daniels
June 2, 2009 - 11:38 am EDTClue:
I believe that what you and others see as "contradictory" in the Bible, is not contradictory at all, but rather a poor reading or misunderstanding of the Bible. (I don't mean to disparage you, rather, I would like to open a debate with you on the contradictions you believe exist. The Bible may be complicated in many areas, but too many detractors are willing to call these complications "contradictions" simply to undermine the authority of the Bible). It is easy for one who is sceptical of the Bible to pick it up and "proof text" and proclaim it contradictory (just as it is easy for those who are not sceptical of the Bible to pick it up and find support for anything they want it to say). I find that many of those on both sides are functionally illiterate when it comes to the Bible, unfortunately.
The fact that people don't obey the sabath does not mean that the Bible is not true; rather, it means that (surprise) people are disobedient to God. The fact that hetrosexuals get divorced doesn't mean that the Bible doesn't prohibit divorce (except for adultery and one or two other exceptions) any more than the fact that we have murders means that the law does not proscribe murder. This argument is a red herring and easily debunked.
With regard to the adultery argument, I dare say while it obviously exists, no one is proclaiming that it is a good thing, or something that we should embrace, morally or legally. There are, however, many who believe that homosexual marriage is something that should be embraced, even a good thing. A big difference, don't you think?
Finally, yes, the Constitution is the law of the land. However, it does not exist in a vacuum. It was written by men, many of whom had a profound faith in God (even if some were deists). They believed in divine providence and that the hand of God was at work. It is fair to say that the foundational document for America, the Declaration of Independence is, as some have said, a religious document (written by a deist, no less). However, it was not until 2003 that the Supreme Court, the "so-called" final arbiter of what the law is, decided that homosexual behavior is protected by the Constitution. As recent as 1986 the same Supreme Court had said that it wasn't (O'Connor simply changed her mind in 2003 and voted the other way). If the Constitution really did protect homosexual behavior, don't you think that some of the great minds on the Court would have discovered that right before 2003?
Get A Clue
June 2, 2009 - 1:51 pm EDTOur Supreme Court also took a few hundred years and a few back and forth decisions to decide that non-caucasians were actually 100% human and 'allowed' to marry caucasians, so there goes your whole 'original meaning' argument. Our Republic began as an experiment in democracy and the documents upon which our country was founded were always meant to be re-interpreted, even altered, by our founders. The ink on the original Constitution was hardly dry before they chose to add the first 10 amendments. (So, to poke fun at your illogical argument, If the Constitution really did mean for all adults to have the right to vote, don't you think some of the great minds on the Supreme Court would have thought of it a lot sooner? Please, sir, do not enter a battle of wits unarmed.)
I don't feel a need to 'debate' you on the numerous contradictions in the Bible. You can say you don't wish to insult me while calling me "functionally illiterate" but all anyone needs to do is read it to see it for the book of conflicting myths it is. I love a good myth with rich meaning and life lessons, but I'll take science and hard evidence any day over a feel-good story.
Incidentally, the Bible was also written by many men, over many decades, and edited and retranslated over hundreds of years. Hardly a vacuum.
Thanks for playing!
Paul Daniels
June 2, 2009 - 6:32 pm EDTClue:
As the dean of my law school used to say, a constitution which is subject to change is no constitution at all. If, as you suggest, the Constitution is a living document, and its meaning varies with the personalities on the court, we are all in big, big trouble, because no one's right to life, liberty or property are safe. Suggesting that the the fact that Constitution has been amended undermines the original intent argument is also misplaced, as the Constitution makes clear that it is constitutional to amend the Constitution by following a certain procedure. There is a way to change the rules, but you have to follow the rules to do it. Incidently, I would much rather have the Constitution amended in the way provided in the Constitution, than to have it amended by nine folks in black robes who are not accountable to anyone.
The fact that the Supreme Court didn't rule that women were allowed to vote is almost certainly because the Constitution said that they couldn't until 1920. The Supreme Court's failure to grant them that right doesn't undermine my argument, it supports it. The Court is to interpret the law, not make it. The right for women to vote was not granted until the people again amended the Constitution to allow them to do so. It is fair to say that the court had a much better understanding of its role than it does now.
Get A Clue
June 2, 2009 - 9:10 pm EDTI really should have listened to the dean of my Master's program when he said, "Never argue with a pig. You both get muddy and soon passers-by won't be able to tell you from the pig."
It would be fun to keep this up, but I've read all this circular silliness on www.freerepublic.com and heard it all spewed on right-wing talk radio. After awhile it gets boring watching racist misogynists cherry-pick slivers of a fact-based argument and apply their smug circular logic to it as they equate quantity for quality.
So I'll say this once more, hoping (in vain, no doubt) that even far-right morons can grasp it: the founders created the Supreme Court for the very reasons it exists. They knew what they were doing when they gave us 3 branches of government. And the only time in recent history when our right to life, liberty and property were not safe was the 8 years of the Bush administration willfully gutting said Constitution. Even a rudimentary reading of U.S. history shows that the Constitution is, in fact, a living document...and after 230+ years the United States of America still carries on.
Any time you want to join us over here in the reality-based community, Paul. Any time.
Lakeshia
June 9, 2009 - 10:45 pm EDTAll this squabbling -
Thank God I'm an atheist -
Dman94
June 25, 2009 - 8:05 am EDTIs Nancy still among the N & R staff? What is the problem with keeping the Religion blog more up to date? It seems that all of the other N & R blogs are updated at least weekly. The Religion blog has not been updated in nearly a month! Come on N & R, either put up or shut up on the Religion Blog!!!!!
nemo0037 (imported)
May 27, 2009 - 10:38 am EDTRealistically, I expect that society will continue to move toward accepting gay marriage, until it's legal throughout that country. Shortly before the last set of states agree to it, I would expect Christian churches to suddenly find support for it in the Bible, just as they found support for ending slavery, allowing women's votes and inter-racial marriage after those social changes were a "done deal."
Buz (imported)
May 27, 2009 - 9:57 pm EDTnemo,
many 'christian' churches already support gay marriage. some christians on this blog are gay. if a believer is tied to their churches belief structure and not basing the own beliefs based upon the revelation which God has provided them - then they could be led down most any path. as you must be aware there are still many Christians who have a spine and will not be subject to heresy. just as atheist can't be heaped into the same mold, neither can all Christians.
nemo0037
May 28, 2009 - 3:35 pm EDTBuz, your response appears to me to be confused. You apparently don't accept churches that accept gays as truly Christian, but you argue that Christian responses in this matter should be diverse. You also state that truly Christian churches need to follow the Bible, or be in danger of turning to heresy. IIRC, it was once heresy to stand against slavery, to support allowing women to vote, and to allow people of different races to marry. These are examples (as I mentioned earlier) of instances where Christianity has changed views to accommodate society's changes. Can you state with certainty that YOU are not a heretic, as it was defined, say, 200 years ago?
Paul Daniels
June 2, 2009 - 9:37 am EDTNemo: The Bible is unequivocal on the issue of homosexuality. Even those who are unfamiliar with the Bible and Christianity can read the plain language of the Old and New Testaments and see that it is proscribed. The issue of slavery was more unequivocal for some. Slavery clearly is something that was going on in Old and New Testaments. Presumably, this meant to some (at least ostensibly) that slavery was all right. They didn't understand or refused to understand that through the changed heart and life that comes with Christianity, they were called to end slavery (as the Christian abolitionists did).
We are called to be salt and light, and we are failing. When the Church looks just like society, why should we bother to go? We should be transforming culture, not being tranformed by it.
kuranes
June 2, 2009 - 10:41 pm EDTNot all the abolitionists were Christian. A lot of the most prominent, including William Lloyd Garroison and Lucretia Mott, were unbelievers. See Susan Jacoby's book Freethinkers, chapter 3. Don't forget that a lot of Christians, both southern and northern, used the Bible to justify slavery throughout our history until the end of the Civil War (and many soldiered on after that), so don't strain yourself patting Christianity on the back. Slavery wasn't outlawed in England and America until the 19th century, so it took awhile for the alleged Christian "changed heart" to overcome the plain letter of the New Testament that slaves were to obey their masters. So stop taking all the credit. You don't deserve it.
Paul Daniels
June 4, 2009 - 6:57 pm EDTAbraham Lincoln, William Wilberforce . . . tough to argue that Christians didn't abolish slavery, don't you think.
Get A Clue
June 5, 2009 - 10:28 am EDTThe few Christians who understood the tenets of Christianity helped many others abolish slavery. Truth is, most self-proclaimed practicing caucasian Christians supported and owned slaves.
kuranes
June 11, 2009 - 10:47 pm EDTI never said that no Christians helped to overcome slavery, only that a lot of unbelievers helped as well, while a lot of Christians in both the north and south used the Bible to uphold slavery, and prayed to the same God for victory. Sorry if you don't like these facts; just sweep them under the rug with all the others. I grant you Wilberforce, but as Jacoby shows in her book Freethinkers: A History of Secularism in America, those who knew Lincoln longest said he was a skeptic; hagiographers who knew him less well, but wanted to claim him for Christianity, played up (or made up) his references to God (or advised him that it was politic to add them) to make him look more pious than he was. He never joined a church, despite the political advantages of doing so, and his friend and law partner Ward Hill Lamon wrote of Lincoln, "I have no difficulty believing he was a religious man! Yet he was not a Christian. He possessed, it is true, a system of faith and worship, but it was one which Orthodox Christianity stigmatizes as a false religion." quoted in jacoby, p. 116.
nemo0037
June 3, 2009 - 8:44 am EDTThe Bible is also unequivocal on the subject of slavery. It is supported and treated as the most natural of institutions from front to back. In fact, while Jesus never said a word about homosexuality, he said a lot in support of slavery. So why is it that so few Christians these days support the Bible-endorsed state of slavery?
Similarly, there are a few spots where the Bible mentions homosexuality negatively. But just as Christians managed to find ways to ignore the slavery parts of the Bible, I feel sure they will find ways to ignore the parts that address homosexuality. But only after nearly everyone else in our society has left them behind.
Paul Daniels
June 4, 2009 - 6:54 pm EDTThe argument that Jesus didn't say anything about "fill in the blank" is a red herring. Is it really your position that if Jesus did not categorically prohibit "fill in the blank", it is permissible? Afterall, He made clear that he came to fulfil the law (every dot and iota) of it. He did not abolish it and the law clearly forbid homosexuality. I disagree that Jesus did not say anything about homosexuality. He said that a man will leave his family for his WIFE and the two shall become one flesh. Presumably if Jesus was, as you suggest ambivalent on the issue, he would have said something along the lines of a man/woman will leave his family for a husband/wife and the two shall become one flesh. Moreover, Paul, the great apostle is very outspoken about homosexuality in Romans.
Get A Clue
June 5, 2009 - 10:26 am EDTLast I checked my country's principles were based on its laws, not on the mistranslations and fabrications of ancient mythmakers. My wife and I kiss in public because we're in love. When my gay friend kisses his spouse in public I'm happy they're in love, too. It doesn't affect my marriage one bit. And our children are happy to see committed couples sharing their love in public. If you don't like our system of government and the respect for plurality, then get out. It really is that simple. You'd enjoy one of those Taliban-run nations based on your blatherings about narrow-minded, myth-based governments.
Paul Daniels
June 8, 2009 - 1:51 pm EDTClue:
Laws? What laws? You just spent the last few paragraphs telling us all the the Constitution means what ever the Supreme Court says it does. You can't have a stable system of laws under that sort of jurisprudence. That's what happens in third-world countries. Tell me, what are these laws based on? Just the will of a ficle majority, subject to change at any time.
Additionally, you should read the thread to which I am commenting. We were discussing what Jesus said about homosexuality. Certainly, in that context, reference to the Bible is appropriate, don't you agree.
Now, for my last point: your intolerance. You pretend to be tolerant by your support of gays kissing in public. However, you are overtly hostile to my position based on 2000 years of Western Civilization guided largely by Biblical principals. What gives? Shouldn't a truly "tolerant" person seek understand my point of view? Further, is there such a thing as right and wrong, good and bad? If no, then you have no basis for disputing my version of reality, do you? And if there is a right and wrong, then that right and wrong has to be based on something more than your standard refrain of "because I say so" doesn't it? There must be some ontological basis for what you believe. Pray tell, what is it?
nemo0037
June 8, 2009 - 3:05 pm EDTPaul, I think you misunderstand me. Regarding Jesus' moral pronouncements, I noted that he clearly and unambiguously supported slavery in the Gospels. He obviously considered it a natural state of affairs, and expected his followers to consider it so as well. Yet nearly all Christians today repudiate slavery. I invite you to explore the question of how this could possibly happen, that even the most devoted and fundamentalist of followers would abandon this thing that Jesus considered natural.
I then ask you and others to consider that a similar shift regarding gay marriage could take place, particularly considering the fact that the texts in the Bible that condemn homosexuality are far less prevalent than the ones that support slavery.
I hope this is clear enough for you now.
Get A Clue
June 9, 2009 - 9:06 am EDTNemo, you can't get blood from a stone.
Paul, I don't give a rat's patootie what Jesus said about homosexuality. I live in the United States of America, a Republic. We have 3 branches of government and a set of documents that have been in place well over 200 years as this "experiment in democracy" has continued to grow and evolve--sometimes in fits and starts--but nonetheless evolve as (to borrow a phrase) certain truths have become more self-evident. I welcome all historical documents brought to the table as we continue to forge policy, write and revamp laws and shape this great nation. All ideas are welcome. But sunlight is still the best disinfectant. Great ideas stand the tests of time until better ideas come along. It's called progress; it's been in all the papers. I would no more dismiss that entire book of myths (called the Bible by some) than I would cut off my nose to spite my face. Nor would I be foolish enough to call this a Representative Democracy and then adopt wholesale that ancient text and pretend our work here is now officially done with respect to forging or interpreting laws.
Paul, I'll bet you're a happy guy so long as you're in that safe white male-dominated world you grew up in. I encourage you to step out into the rest of the world, if only for what new perspectives do with respect to our ability to grow and mature. For starters, your wife and daughters would certainly appreciate some respect and empathy instead of unyielding dogma. And you might even discover how much you can learn about what Jesus preached from people who don't share your pigmentation.
It's a big world, Paul. Give it a try.
By the way, a 'confirmed bachelor' who has never been on a date, now in his early 30s, worships his mother and hangs out exclusively with a dozen men and a 'fag hag' or two. Gay or straight? I'm just askin'. ;-)
Kuranes (imported)
May 27, 2009 - 10:19 pm EDTBuz, I have a question for you: suppose a man wanted to have more than one living wife at a time, as did many heroes of Biblical faith such as Abraham and David. The Bible nowhere forbids this practice except to bishops and deacons. Would you object, and if so, on what grounds?
Gay marriage has cultural momentum and is legal in several states already. I think that trend will continue, unless a Christian backlash imposes a theocratic tyranny on the nation, which I think unlikely. One interesting thing is that laws against gay marriage are not "discriminatory," in the sense that gays have the same right as anyone else to marry any consenting adult of the opposite gender who is not too closely related. I and my wife of fourteen years have proven it can work. Discrimination exists when one group lives under different laws than another.
Of course, they object that they don't want to marry someone of the opposite gender, but that's a different issue; it doesn't make the laws different for them than for straights, unless you want to claim that there is a "civil right" to marry two people if you want, or your son or daughter or other close relation, or your dog, for that matter. Is "marrying whoever one wishes" a civil right? No. Should it be? That is the question. Calling gay marriage a "civil rights issue" is inaccurate, though it is an effective propaganda term, giving gays a kind of reflected virtue from real civil rights struggles.
Paul Daniels
June 2, 2009 - 9:39 am EDTKuranes: As you know, that is what is called proof texting. Not a good way to read the Bible (as I am sure you know).
kuranes
June 2, 2009 - 10:46 pm EDTSorry, but I thought prooftexting required one to quote a text, rather than ask for one as I did. But I learned prooftexting when I was a fundamentalist, so maybe I was taught as incorrectly in that as I was about evolution, Biblical inerrancy, and many other things.
Paul Daniels
June 4, 2009 - 6:55 pm EDTKuranes: Are you sure you were a fundamentalist? What are the tenants of fundamentalism?
Get A Clue
June 5, 2009 - 10:20 am EDTThat's easy. Just look at any fundamentalist group on the planet and you'll easily see their creed is "kill everyone not like us or against us." From Christians assasinating doctors to Jews murdering Palestinians to Muslims murdering infidels...fundamentalists of any stripe are to be feared for their dogmatic, murderous behavior.
Paul Daniels
June 8, 2009 - 1:53 pm EDTClue:
You need to see if they have a refund program at that graduate program you attended. If that's all you can come up with your money was not well-spent. I take it you don't have a clue as to the difference between a fundamentalist and an orthodox Christian, do you?
Get A Clue
June 9, 2009 - 8:47 am EDTBased on their narrow-mindedness and willingness to kill others despite what their good book says about killing, no. There's no discernable difference between fundamentalists of any organized religion. Fanatics and murderers all who do nothing but spew hateful rhetoric as they attempt to win their ignoble wars through attrition of the enemy.
However, each college I have attended based its pedagogy on the scientific method, not an ancient book of edited myths. That's why I continue to make yearly contributions to each institute instead of throwing it away in the collection plate on Sunday mornings.
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