DarthFerret said:
You may find this strange, but I agree with the seperation of Church and State up to a point. However, I was merely pointing out the often misquote I hear from a ton of people that "The law guarantees us a seperation of church and state." There is no law that says that. It says that Government shall make no law concerning the establishment of a religion (paraphrasing because I am not a Constitution expert, and cannot quote exact wording).
That's what separation of church and state means. This what people almost always mean when they say it.
This is to say, that I do not think the church should run the government, and I do not think that the government should run the church. It is a historically proven fact that over 90% of the founders of the original 13 colonies were believers in some sort of Christ-based religion (not sure what, if any, denomination). It was with this concensus that our Pledge of Allegiance was written with the words "under God" in it. Also that our monetary bills and coins were printed with the words "In God we Trust". The Declaration of Independence...And it was ratified by every representative of each State at the time being.
This is relevant because it is the birth of our Government and shows the basis on which it was formed.
I really don't know the exact percentage of founders that were Christian, but I'm skeptical because you got two of your other claims in this paragraph wrong...
You imply that the Pledge of Allegiance was written based on a consensus between the founders. It was actually written long after all of them were dead and DID NOT include "under God" anywhere, despite being penned by a religious leader. That little clause was forced in during the 1950's thanks to a push from religious groups, with the rationale that we needed to distance our country from the "godless communism" of the Soviets.
Likewise, money wasn't printed with "In God We Trust" until the Civil War. The argument is actually that it doesn't specify anything about a church and that "God" could mean anything, so it doesn't violate the First Amendment. Whether you think that argument is valid or not is up to you, but that's not the point. If this one goes to a federal court, the line will either be upheld or ruled unconstitutional based on whether or not it actually violates the separation of church and state, not whether or not such a concept is in the constitution at all. It's right there in the First Amendment.
As for the Declaration of Independence, it was not ratified by ANY states. It isn't and has never been a legal document in this country. It was a propaganda tool anyway. A nice piece of work, but it was intended to call for support in the revolution, not to clarify the relationship between government and religion. Also, the guy who wrote it was a deist. Several of the founders were, actually. But they were also secularists. They didn't want to create a deist nation. They wanted to create a nation in which people were free to practice their religions without government interference. And that was the basis for part of the First Amendment.
Everyone has a right to choose a religion (even no religion) for themselves. Every person should have the right to vote on a major issue. Majority should rule. If a person does not like the majority in the region in which he/she lives, they have the right to relocate.
The founders expressed a concern that I happen to share about the "tyranny of the majority." The idea is not that whatever the majority thinks goes. I also detest the whole "if you don't like the way we run things, you can leave" attitude. Regimes that actually go out and say that seem to progress to "No one can question our authority OR leave without permission" if they aren't stopped.
The First Amendment actually covers this too: there's a bit about the right of the people to peaceably assemble and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
The only reason I brought up Obama, is because the media (both left and right) have been using his religious pastors against him in a political forum. If there was truly a seperation of church and state, this would not be allowed.
Again, it's separation of church and state. Not separation of churchgoers and state.
It is actually quite funny. As a leader in my church, I am not allowed by the government or by the church to talk about anything that would be deemed to support any political candidate while acting in that capacity. If any leader of the church were found to be doing so, the church would lose its tax-exempt status and would face legal reprecussions (they did not tell us what those were...just said they were there).
False. The government cannot revoke church status from a church just because its leader advocates a particular political view.
EricBess said:
The "topic" is a moral topic. Strictly speaking from a legal standpoint, government should have nothing to do with "marriage", but they do, so morality is going to be part of this discussion and to not allow it is like trying to win a game by not letting anyone else play.
Now, I agree with you that government shouldn't sanction marriage, but I'm unaware of any legal justification for this. It's simply my opinion based on my feeling that marriage as it is in this country is unfair to single people and wastes time.
The Bible gives an example or two with Sodom and Gomorrah (sp?)
Oh no, I'm so scared! Please don't let the the big fire-slinger in the sky get me!
Tell you what, I can't speak for Turgy, but if it ever RAINS FIRE on San Francisco, I'll just shut up about gay marriage forever and if anyone asks for my views, I'll refer them to you.
Yes, it is happening. There have been attempts to pass laws in California requiring grade schools to read certain books as part of their corriculum, including one titled something to the effect of (I don't remember the exact title) "Johnny has two Mommies".
You're talking about "Heather has Two Mommies." Right? I haven't been able to find this legislation yet, but that's because the topic of this thread has caused a lot of stupid journalists to make "Heather has Two Mommies" jokes about this decision and they have flooded the Google search results.
Also, you say "attempts." There is a lot of unsuccessfully attempted legislation that can get pretty stupid. Please, let's only talk about legislation that's actually passed or has some chance of passing in near future.
Oversoul - you bring up a specific genetic mutation and yes, that is an unfortunate case with a lot of implications that no one truely understands. However, to use that as an argument that there are "shades of gray in sexual identity" isn't truely a valid argument. My understanding is that specific mutation is what it is and there aren't degrees.
You put people into two categories. XX and therefore female and XY and therefore male. The case I mentioned does violate your categories, but like I already said, there are more serious conditions, some involving people with mixed genitalia that is impossible to classify as being either male or female.
I don't even understand what you mean about "degrees" but, how do these examples not violate your narrow categories?
(Sorry for going off topic on this) Just my opinion, but I think many so-called "athiests" are actually closer to being "agnostic" in that they really don't care or don't think it affects them if there is a God. That largely boils down to laziness. A true athiest believes that there is no God and I think there is simply too much evidence of intelligence of design for people to be truely convinced of that.
Who died and made you arbiter of definitions (of words you can't even spell, for that matter)? People who claim to be atheists would disagree with your definition. Why do you get to reclassify them? Do they get the same privilege regarding YOUR classification? Maybe they think you're actually a Muslim...
I don't even claim to be an atheist, for my own reasons. But I can certainly say that there is NO biological evidence for "intelligence of design." Feel free to post as many examples of such evidence as you like if there really is oh so much evidence out there.
turgy22 said:
I don't want to start a new debate about what the "topic" is. When I read this thread, I felt it was intended to be a discussion of legality and equal rights. I really don't feel like there's any point in discussing whether or not being gay equates to being immoral. It's an issue where people have strong feelings and won't be swayed by anything written on a message board. Confining the topic to a legal issue helps keep the discussion based on fact rather than emotion or upbringing. To introduce my own convoluted metaphor, it's like trying to win a game by creating rules that dictate how the game should be played.
Of course, I'm not the king of the thread, so I can't make the rules, but I will say that if one person is presenting their argument from a moral standpoint and another is presenting theirs from a legal standpoint, the discussion will go nowhere, since both people aren't talking about the same thing.
Yeah, I fully agree. But I think I understand exactly why, in a thread like this, it's almost inevitable that moral arguments will come up. When it comes to this topic, opponents of gay marriage seem to have a very limited set of arguments...
Marriage is for procreation: falls flat on its face--clearly we allow infertile people to get married. And we don't force married couples to have children. It just becomes silly. And most people won't buy it.
Argument from tradition: on the surface it works, but then when the actual history of marriage comes up (polygyny, anti-miscegeny laws, arranged marriages, etc.), it becomes clear that maybe tradition isn't all that great of a guide in this case.
Marriage will be bad for society: it works, but in order to pull it off, the speaker has to fabricate evidence because there isn't any (or they can reference Sodom and Gomorrah, I guess).
Marriage is a means for women to domesticate men: I've only seen it once and even if people bought the premise, gay marriage doesn't really factor into this.
Gay marriage is wrong because homosexuality is wrong: well, it's all that's left. And it's the actual reason people tend to have for opposing gay marriage. People who do not have a religious taboo against homosexuality tend not to oppose gay marriage all that much. So at least they're being honest here. It's frustrating because then they have to keep shifting the argument from a legal/social one to a religious/moral one. But I suppose it's better than misrepresenting facts (or contriving false ones) in order to demonstrate the negative effects that gay marriage will have on all of us.
