This is gonna have to be a group effort.

I'll get it started:

[QUOTE=Bristol Palin]While it's great to listen to your kids' ideas, ... that's not a reason to change thousands of years of thinking about marriage. Ideally, fathers help shape their kids' worldview.[/QUOTE]Thanks for the lesson on marriage and parenting, Bristol! She's right. We can't just change thousands of years of thinking about marriage. As the past thousands of years have taught us, marriage is meant to be an eternal reproductive union between one man and one woman, who share the same race. That's why divorce is illegal, mixed marriages are outlawed, and why sterile couples aren't allowed to marry. It just wouldn't make sense otherwise.

What's next, Lie-berals? Making it so we aren't allowed to stone unwed pregnant women to death anymore?

Oh wait.

Hey, speaking of unwed teenage moms,... Todd Palin sure did an awesome job shaping Bristol's worldview, am I right?

lol.
im not going to lie. there is a good amount of animosity and ill-feelings toward same sex marriage amongst Christians, and a lot of conservatives in general. while i cant claim to be christian i do tend more toward "conservative" than "liberal"... But, gay marriage is not something i care about. As in, I dont care if your gay and get married. Go for it, Good on-Ya.
There are more that a few conservatives and Christians who really do HATE homosexual people, but most*, really dont. What there IS a lot of is fear and misunderstanding.
I do still think that Marriage should be discontinued as a LEGAL practice, and replaced for EVERYONE with civil unions.



*completely anecdotal from personal experience.

The most common reaction I have seen is "why don't we worry about something that matters". Christian conservatives are, instead of coming out in droves against it, dismissing it as something that shouldn't even be talked about. "Who cares about gay marriage? It doesn't effect me! I ain't no queer!" They're complaining that gay marriage doesn't give them job, fix the economy, end wars, etc... This is the basic problem with Christian Conservatives. If it doesn't directly help them, they don't want it. We shouldn't have welfare because they've never needed it. We shouldn't allow homosexuals to marry, because they're not homosexuals. We don't need universal healthcare because they have healthcare. The issue is the lack of understanding of the position of other people in our society. It's impossible to know how another human being feels about something, because you're never in the same situation with all of the same variables, but you can do your best to try to understand their position. It's called empathy, and we're sorely lacking in that department. We're a nation of "I'm right and you're wrong" for that reason alone. We don't care, at all, about the problems of other people.

I'd also like to address the issue of the hypocrisy in the Conservative viewpoint on this issue. Conservatives will trumpet on at length about how big government should not interfere with the lives of citizens. They want rid of the EPA, they want the banks deregulated, etc... But they're fine with the government telling you who you can marry, and forcing you to have intrusive vaginal probes and ultrasounds done to attempt to talk you out of an abortion. This is another part of the same problem. Christian conservatives are against having abortions, so that means everyone should be against having abortions. They aren't gay, so gay people shouldn't be allowed to get married. The Christian Conservatives in America want the US Government to stay out of their lives, but they want that same government to tell you what you can and cannot do based on a religion that you may not even subscribe to. They don't want freedom. If freedom was the idea, they wouldn't have been trying to prove that Barack Obama is a Muslim, because it wouldn't matter if he was or not. The idea is that everyone needs to be a Christian Conservative, because anything else is wrong. The government can interfere all they want to as long as it is to push a Christian Conservative agenda, but when it comes to the things that they'd like to get away with, they'd like the government to stay out of it.

All of the things that the Republican party claims to be about are blatantly hypocritical. They love their freedom of speech, yet they condemn anyone who disagrees with them as anti-American. They love marriage, as long as it's their way. They love the right to bear arms, as long as those guns aren't in the hands of black people. Freedom to practice whatever religion you want to is great, as long as it's a form of Christianity. These people are completely incapable of seeing the world from the perspective of anyone else. I think it's honestly laughable that they talk about keeping the government out of our lives, while they want to regulate our behavior more than the god damned Democrats do.

There's also a raging anti-intellectualism. People don't want to question their own beliefs and think doing so is a bad thing. See: wookie06 thinking that questioning one's core beliefs was a "lack of character" or some other hilarious bull**** nonsense.

O.o Honestly you lost me on that one. never ran into that myself... or even heard that, or even know anyone whos heard this.

This is QUITE true. You run into this consistently on both sides of the isle.

I'm not saying they literally set out to make it difficult for black people to get guns. The point is, the average Christian Conservative sees a white guy with a gun and says that it's a guy who's exercising his first amendment rights. They see a black guy with a gun and say he's a criminal. Hell, the black guy doesn't even have to have a gun. A hooded sweatshirt will suffice in most cases.

honestly ill agree with you on the, lots of conservative christians types being suspicious of black people in general. oddly enough possession of a gun probably plays LESS of a role than skin color.

would a black man in a uniform* with a gun make you think he was a criminal?
what if he was sitting with a shotgun in a rocking chair on his porch?
at a shooting range?
wearing a tuxedo and holding a walter pp7?
skeet shooting?
deer hunting?

walking down the street with a handgun... that would probably raise some serious questions from most... lets be honest what were getting at here... white people. but seeing a young white dude walking down the street with a handgun would also probably result in police being called.

*police or military

My own grandmother doesn't care about same-sex marriage, and she's both conservative and Christian. She watches Fox News daily, and hates Obama for everything. And even she can't find reason to oppose it. The only complaint she has about it is she doesn't think it's a big enough issue compared to the economy, middle east, etc.

That's the ****ing problem, Cool Matty. People think that the civil rights of American citizens is not an important issue.

It wasn't so much that she doesn't think it's an important issue, she just thinks it's less important than the other stuff listed. Doesn't really matter, because that's about as much support as you'll ever get out of her.

i agree with you antony. apathy is a huge problem in the U.S.

I think same sex marriages should be legal, but I have to know: Why the hell would two gays want to get married? Why would they want to perform a ritual belonging to a religion that wants them dead? What? Why not make your own ritual or something that has all the chimes and bells and whistles but has nothing to do with Jesus Christ

[QUOTE=Rush Limbaugh]People like me who were minding their own business all of a sudden have to stand up and defend these traditions and institutions from people like you, and now the president, who's waging a war on traditional America.[/QUOTE]Rush Limbaugh's plan to defend traditional marriage, of course, is to get an extra marriage for every gay couple that isn't getting one.

Why the hell would black people want to ride in the front of the bus? The back of the bus is safer, and you get there just as fast.

It's frustrating that it gets marginalized, too. There are approximately 4 million openly gay people in the United States. I am sure that many of those 4 million people probably support the idea of everyone in America being allowed to marry who they want to.

We also have a problem in the fact that we view issues in an order of importance. This or that is more important, than such and such an issue. Says who? Explain to the man or woman who can't go see their terminally ill partner in the hospital that the economy is more important. I will say this again: The biggest problem in the United States (and in the world, really) is that we are incapable of empathizing with other human beings. Just because something doesn't matter to you, doesn't mean it doesn't mean the world to someone else. And vice versa. We have got to develop the ability to understand each other in a more real way, or we're in serious god damned trouble. If we don't actually start to give a **** about our fellow man, we're going to head deeper and deeper into the ****ter.

Spoiler alert: Some gay people are Christians.

Yeah I know, but why, why embrace something that wants you dead right in the religious text. I don't get it. Am I the only one who doesn't get this? According to the other thread I "don't get things". Is this one of them?

Person 1: Hi I'm gay.
Person 2: My religious text indicates you should die a horrible death, care to join?
Person 1: Sure! Only if you allow me to perform your sacred rituals and worship your god that is sending me to hell anyway!

????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

Spoiler alert: Not everyone thinks everything in The Bible is literal.

spoiler alert: also not everyone thinks that ancient religious law meant specifically for the Israelites was meant to apply to anyone else in any other time ever.

but probably mostly the other thing...

Then what is the point?

Oh I forgot Christianity is the religion where people pick and choose the rules and believe the parts they want to believe to make their lifes convenient/easier

Christianity isn't really christianity without the bible right? Can you really just ignore part of the sacred text because it says it'll send you to hell? "Well its all true except the part about me burning for eternity" Can you seriously tell me that that kind of crap doesnt make your eyes roll? How many more subdivisions of christianity do we honestly need each believing what little part they want. Isn't religion suppose to accomplish the opposite? Isn't it suppose to unite people under a single belief system?

I'm not saying it is stupid for a gay (or anyone) to believe in a God, I'm just saying it is stupid, and very counter productive for a gay to believe in the christian God

The part that is really funny is how some Christians will tell you that you can ignore certain parts of The Bible because times have changed, so the **** about cutting your hair and having slaves and such doesn't apply anymore. Then they'll turn around and say that being gay is wrong because it says so in The Bible. Pretty lulz.

Also...

Spoiler Alert: I am way better at spoiler alert posts than Darth_Alran, but I applaud his desire to emulate me. The world would be a better place if more people did.

Hint: marriage is not exclusive to Christianity. In fact, the ritual (in some form or another) can be argued to predate religion.

Another hint: marriage has legal ramifications unrelated to religion. Under current law, gay couples are not equal to straight couples.

spoiler alert: damn you antony!!! and your superior spoiler alert skills too!!!



the main reason i think marriage needs to either be separated from religion and be purely a legal contract...
or separated from and semblance of legal... things... and be a purely religious practice.
doesn't really matter which way to me.

Protip: You will not win at this, either.

almost literally... yes. Aside from being incredibly fragmented and almost impossible to determine the context... the old testament really never mentions hell. that doesnt happen till the new testament. In the new testament its even a little vague some areas.
i still hold that Christianity (if your actually following the teaching of christ... which most people aren't) really boils down to Mathew 22: 34-39.

Nah, dude. The real essence of Christianity is the title of a 2005 film directed by F. Gary Gray, starring John Travolta and Uma Thurman.

IOW you've never read the Bible before and your entire concept of Christianity is based upon terrible subhuman pseudo-Christian Evangelicals who genuinely believe in Biblical inerrancy but choose to act like doucheheels anyway.

I bet you think the Bible prohibits masturbation, right? It doesn't. Evangelicals cite Genesis 38:8-10 as evidence that masturbation is evil, but the passage actually refers to disobeying the will of God (Onan pulled out so he wouldn't get a woman pregnant.) Every other ****ing example the Evangelicals dredge up refer to adultery, fornication, and "uncleanness," which said Evangelicals have interpreted to mean masturbation in spite of evidence to the contrary. (The Bible is slightly less ambiguous about homosexuality: Leviticus 18:22. Anything else they quote, though, such as the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, actually has nothing to do with homosexuality at all.)

Christianity isn't a "pick and choose" religion, but like most popular things it has a good number of supremely ****ty human beings (read: Evangelicals. Are you seeing a pattern yet?) Christianity's not all like that. e.g. Colossians 2:16-23, 1 Corinthians 10:23, 1 Thessalonians 5:21, etc. Basically everything from the Old Testament has been superseded by the works of Jesus. For example, the Old Testament specifically prohibits doing any manual labour on the Sabbath. This is a good idea for your mental health, but it shouldn't be a hard rule (and it isn't, cf. Matthew 12.)

The challenge here is that many American Christians are functionally illiterate and intellectually lazy, and have never studied the Bible in any depth or with any degree of comprehension. That's how you get "creative" interpretations of the Bible from people like the Evangelicals.

Evangelicals are also convinced that the world is going to end soon. So they really don't give a **** about anything, not pollution, not global warming, not making a future for their kids. Nothing. **** Evangelicals.

[quote=Mitt Romney]Well, when these issues were raised in my state of Massachusetts, I indicated my view, which is I do not favor marriage between people of the same gender, and I do not favor civil unions if they are identical to marriage other than by name. My view is the domestic partnership benefits, hospital visitation rights, and the like are appropriate but that the others are not.[/quote]

"If elected, I will be the last American president to oppose same-sex marriage."

While the point Antony brings up about apathy is an important one, I think he is vastly underplaying the real malice that a lot of Christians have for homosexual, and who will do anything they can to spite them. It's pretty widespread, and these people are backed up by a religion and a tradition of brainwashing their kids in their youth to harbor that same malice.

I encourage each and every one of you to constantly suggest that these people should not be called Christian since they aren't following Christ's teachings. Nothing will annoy them more.

OH LOOK
QUICK GUYS LET'S POST SOME GAY **** SO WE'RE NOT HOMOPHOBES

I kid.
Seriously, once them queers try to marry us straight folk, ****'s over.

HAW HAW AMERICA LAND OF TOLERANCE

*shoots guns into the air*

*santa falls to the ground*

*teabags*

Girl on girl is okay, but guy on guy is just plain gay.

The Bible says Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve. Then again, that rhymes and poetry is totally gay, so nevermind.

[quote=Orson Scott Card]It's about giving the left the power to force anti-religious values on our children. Once they legalize gay marriage, it will be the bludgeon they use to make sure that it becomes illegal to teach traditional values in the schools.

Our children will be barraged with the deceptions of the left. Parents will be forbidden to remove their children from the propaganda.

Any child with any gender or sexual confusion will be pushed inexorably away from the decision to establish a traditional family. They'll be told, again and again, that any sign of effeminacy or gender confusion or same-sex attraction is an irrevocable, lifelong compulsion and they might as well shape their lives accordingly.[/quote]

Presented without comment.

Marriage comes with many legal rights that are completely separate from the religious aspect. Married couples have hospital visitation rights, inheritance, medical, and many other rights that a simple "significant other" doesn't get.

I'm also approaching the opinion that "civil unions" should be the only status granted by a government entity (and granted to both gay or straight couples). If you want to call yourself married then you can go find a church that will grant you that status separately.

Traditional family...how can one consider the traditional family a success...divorce rates indicate you have over a 50% chance of being divorced last time I heard, obviously heterosexuals aren't doing something right

gay marriage has nothing to do with marriage and everything to do with couple rights

Agreed here. Masturbation is one of those things that's taboo and animalistic, and so Christians at some point decided it was bad, despite there being no biblical backing. I'm glad you brought up the Genesis passage, as it's always bugged me when people use that to justify the masturbation=bad argument. BUT, keep in mind that some of the things that go along with masturbation ARE sins (lust and adultery). So unless you're sitting there thinking about BMW's or video games, you're committing sin. This is true, but it can also be said of the people on the other side of the coin. Would you argue with me if I said "Many Americans are functionally illiterate and intellectually lazy, and have never studied the Constitution in any depth or with any degree of comprehension." Plug in any group of people, and any thing they ought to be studying, and you can make that sentence work. This is a truth about humanity. Not a truth about Christians. Christians (along with other religious people, or even non-religious people who choose to live by a moral code beyond basic "fitting into society") are (or at least should be) trying to rise ABOVE their humanly short comings. A lot of them fail, and provide us with the knee-jerk topic of the week, but some of them do great things and are remembered in history for their achievements. (more) (This is not to say that non-Christians can't do inspiring things. Obviously, they can and do, just trying to demonstrate the dynamic whereby a movement is branded by their weakest links. Since Christianity has been around a long time, it has a lot of weak links. But it has a lot of strong ones too.)

This is the post I was going to make, in general. The Bible can only be said to oppose gay marriage insofar as to say that a particularly large group of people who call themselves Christians have decided that a part of the bible is decrying homosexuality. Really it's just a few lines about an oversexed irreligious city being damned in order to tell a story about a particularly pious guy who is saved (and goes on to commit acts of incest). To say Christianity itself is about homophobia is letting a particular group of people define the meaning of a general term describing anyone who follows the words of a book.

I would think conservatives would be less apt to suggest a particular religious tenant apply to the lives of everyone, and I'd think many more churches and homosexuals would be arguing that marriage laws are discriminatory on the grounds that churches who believe in gay marriage are unaddressed by laws.

By the way, the best argument that I've found many conservatives that feel we should deny gay people marriage can't speak to, is the fact that marriage laws are there to handle real world problems that happen. Married people are in relationships and share money/property and sometimes break up, get sick, or die. Laws aren't there to validate or deny people's beliefs, but manage the conflicts and questions that come up in the interactions of adults. It isn't just about equal rights, but about being addressed by the law and having legal grounds to file legitimate claims regarding spouses and relationships. Their only response is that these people could have "civil unions," but then you have to remind them why separate but equal is ripe for prejudice laws. Even the fact that civil unions would have to be explicitly mentioned in any law pertaining to marriage alone means that there would be inconsistencies between the two titles.

None of those three people you mentioned ever 'rose above humanity.' They all had their shortcomings.