The Silencing Of Christians On The Matter Of Homosexuality

[stevil]

[quote name='Anomaly' timestamp='1341794527' post='2453667']
In that perspective, redifining a family as the temp union of two or a few aduts and denying the humanity at conception that we have witnessed and fully understand, is a step backwards in the evolution of humanity.
[/quote]
How does two gay people getting married and living together as a family unit erode humanity?

Why would society be better off denying these two people the happy loving relationship that they desire? What do they do with themselves otherwise? Buy a house each and live separately? How does this benefit society?

[Anomaly]

[quote name='stevil' timestamp='1341795273' post='2453669']
How does two gay people getting married and living together as a family unit erode humanity?

Why would society be better off denying these two people the happy loving relationship that they desire? What do they do with themselves otherwise? Buy a house each and live separately? How does this benefit society?
[/quote]Great question and difficult to answer.
I believe that people should be able to establish a household as they desire. Whether it's two guys, seven women and 1 guy, or whatever. I don't see society tolerating that as a negative. However, I do see protecting and promoting it as an equal alternative to the natural family a long term negative to soicety.

[stevil]

With regards to promotions, are you concerned that non-gay people may want to give it a try?

[Ice_nine]

Who let stevil hi-jack the thread? That's silly.

[Luigi]

[quote name='stevil' timestamp='1341792123' post='2453657']
This is a religious definition. In some countries supported by government. [i]In almost every country in almost every age in the history of humanity. Yes, there have been exceptions. Anyone who's taken Anthro 101 knows that. But the very broad and very deep pattern of humanity over the vast range of time has been one-man-one-woman. That's well beyond a religious definition. [/i]

I think of marriage as a commitment by consenting adults to share their lives with each other, to live together, to share financial security and risk, to share certain special legal privileges.
I understand this is a very different definition to the religious one. [i]I had two sets of 'maiden aunts' as they used to be called who lived this kind of arrangement. They shared a lot of finances, they spent a lot of time together, they engaged in a lot of the same activities, they loved each other for a lifetime. But they weren't married. They didn't need to be, because there was no danger one would abandon the other, leaving with her all the children. [/i]


I'm not concerned with the specifics of what happens inside a marriage, especially when it comes to sexual activities or procreation. With regards to law, I am only concerned with whether it is dangerous for society, does law need to prevent it?
[/quote] [i]And therein lies part of the problem. If a marriage is nothing but a closed-membership sex club with state-recognized tax status, then it doesn't matter who marries whom. And the gay marriage movement wants the rest of us to accept marriage as just a closed-membership sex club with state-recognized tax status.[/i]

[i]But marriage is - and always has been - a social institution because the effects of a marriage have consequences in the broader society. So marriage has always been regulated by the state, and in the US it's been regulated by the individual states. Those regulations prevent cousins from marrying each other, prevent minors from marrying, prevent people with certain diseases from marrying (or at least they used to - a lot of states have dropped the blood tests), prevent people from marrying under certain kinds of duress. And they have ALWAYS, in the history of this country, prevented two persons of the same gender from marrying. [/i]

[i]That prohibition isn't even mentioned in the Constitution for two reasons: Marriage is regulated at the state level, not the national level; marriage was so deeply ingrained as a social institution (at the time) that the Founders could never have thought it necessary to define/explain what marriage was/is supposed to be. The gay marriage movement has not been able to change the social institution of marriage through social means, so they've sought the change through legal channels, thus converting marriage from a social institution to a strictly legal matter. [/i]

[i]And if the judges in federal courts had any legal ethics at all, they'd throw those cases out as outside of their jurisdiction, because marriage has always been regulated by the individual states. [/i]

[stevil]

[quote name='Luigi' timestamp='1341806719' post='2453805']
[i]And therein lies part of the problem. If a marriage is nothing but a closed-membership sex club with state-recognized tax status[/i][/quote]
Marriage is not a license to have sex, so I am not sure what the "[i]closed-membership sex club" comment refers to.[/i]

[stevil]

[quote name='Anomaly' timestamp='1341794527' post='2453667']
The point is societal expectation of life long commitment to your family, parents, and children.[/quote]
I'm trying to understand your concerns.
I think you are saying that you view marriage as a special life long bond, a commitment that forms the foundation of family.
So you see divorce as a threat to that. I can understand that.

I am unsure how gay people being married is a threat to that though.
I assume gay people can be married for a life long commitment as a family unit.

[cmotherofpirl]

As a christian, I can't even refer to same sex liaisons as marriage, because marriage is a combination of two different items i.e. ying and yang, not ying and ying, two different but complementary natures becoming something new. Two males or two females are can't be combined since they have essentially the same natures ( albeit with different personalities), there is no real union possible.

[sixpence]

[quote name='havok579257' timestamp='1341717594' post='2453330']
just following your arguement, abortion does threaten the stability of society in the united states. its slowly eradicating a race of people from american society. so america will lose some of its multi culturalism. cause right now black babies are being aborted at a rate higher than live births in america. given a certain amount of time, the black race will be eradicated from america. thus losing the culture of the black person. i would say this would affect society.
[/quote]

Sorry this is from a while back in the thread, but I am really curious about this. I don't want to go around telling people this if it is false. The fact that there are more abortions than births does not necessarily mean a population is not reproducing at a stable rate. As long as the average fecundity is a bit over 2/female the population should be pretty stable.

PLEASE note that I am NOT saying this makes abortion ok or anything like that!!! I am just trying to figure out if these are good facts that I could use in an argument. Just the fact that abortions out number births is disturbing enough, even if the conclusions might be a little off.

[Annie12]

Well Stevil, weather you realize it or not, you do believe in a "god". The way you describe your positions on things makes me believe you think individuals are the "god" of their own life. I want you to read these quote for food for thought:

[quote]My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust? If the whole show was bad and senseless from A to Z, so to speak, why did I, who was supposed to be part of the show, find myself in such a violent reaction against it?... Of course I could have given up my idea of justice by saying it was nothing but a private idea of my own. But if i did that, then my argument against God collapsed too--for the argument depended on saying the world was really unjust, not simply that it did not happen to please my fancies. Thus, in the very act of trying to prove that God did not exist - in other words, that the whole of reality was senseless - I found I was forced to assume that one part of reality - namely my idea of justice - was full of sense. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never have known it was dark. Dark would be without meaning.
C.S. Lewis[/quote]

[quote]If there is no God, then all that exists is time and chance acting on matter. If this is true then the difference between your thoughts and mine correspond to the difference between shaking up a bottle of Mountain Dew and a bottle of Dr. Pepper. You simply fizz atheistically and I fizz theistically. This means that you do not hold to atheism because it is true , but rather because of a series of chemical reactions… … Morality, tragedy, and sorrow are equally evanescent. They are all empty sensations created by the chemical reactions of the brain, in turn created by too much pizza the night before. If there is no God, then all abstractions are chemical epiphenomena, like swamp gas over fetid water. This means that we have no reason for assigning truth and falsity to the chemical fizz we call reasoning or right and wrong to the irrational reaction we call morality. If no God, mankind is a set of bi-pedal carbon units of mostly water. And nothing else.

Douglas Wilson[/quote]
[quote]The traditional form of arguing for God's existence allows for the participants in the debate to stand on the sidelines, like two opposing coaches, in order to look at how their respective teams are doing out on the field. A distinction is maintained at all times between the participants on the field and the spectators along the sidelines. But a transcendental argument, on the other hand, is all-inclusive. A common mistake among those not familiar with this form of argumentation is to assume that it is the same kind of argument as one of the more traditional arguments. This in turn leads to misunderstandings and loud complaints when the transcendental players proceed to tackle the coach, water boy, trainer, and ESPN cameramen.
Douglas Wilson[/quote]

[quote]I believe in Christianity as I believe that the Sun has risen, not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.
C.S. Lewis[/quote]

[quote]A silly idea is current that good people do not know what temptation means. This is an obvious lie. Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is... A man who gives in to temptation after five minutes simply does not know what it would have been like an hour later. That is why bad people, in one sense, know very little about badness. They have lived a sheltered life by always giving in.
C. S. Lewis[/quote]
I think these quotes can apply to everything we have been discussing here.

Edited July 9, 2012 by Annie12

[stevil]

[quote name='cmotherofpirl' timestamp='1341846252' post='2453899']
As a christian, I can't even refer to same sex liaisons as marriage, because marriage is a combination of two different items i.e. ying and yang, not ying and ying, two different but complementary natures becoming something new. Two males or two females are can't be combined since they have essentially the same natures ( albeit with different personalities), there is no real union possible.
[/quote]
And to support your own stance you want law to force this onto gay people, to keep them separate, regardless if this makes them miserable, because this makes you happy?

[ThePenciledOne]

[quote name='stevil' timestamp='1341862458' post='2454026']
And to support your own stance you want law to force this onto gay people, to keep them separate, regardless if this makes them miserable, because this makes you happy?
[/quote]

Law isn't based on what makes people happy, sad, or mad.....

Entire premise is invalid here.

[stevil]

[quote name='ThePenciledOne' timestamp='1341862577' post='2454027']
Law isn't based on what makes people happy, sad, or mad.....

Entire premise is invalid here.
[/quote]
I'm not seeing the threat to society of having gay people being happily married, thus I presume the fight against it is based on what makes the fighter happy.

[Papist]

[quote name='Annie12' timestamp='1341790107' post='2453648']
[font=arial, helvetica, sans-serif]You see this thinking comes from Hobbes who thought we all do everything because we want good feelings. However the only people who would believe that are people who don't know how to love selflessly. In my opinion it's absurd to think that humans are nothing more than selfish animals. It's not a coincidence that science can not tell how the big bang happened or create a laboratory human or even understand (what many believe to be) the miraculous image of our lady of Guadalupe. It's because God exists! He created a natural law. Science is just the understanding of what God has created and can never explain the spiritual because God does that for us. And going back to the selfish thing. When you look at many people through out history there have been many people who have been compleately selfless. The most famous one is Jesus Christ in dying on the cross after being beaten and abused. But Any Martyr will show a selfless love for God that they would give up their own life for God. A line has to been drawn in the sand between what is selfish and what is not.Here is the definition.[/font]


On a daily basis people all over the world do things for the benefit of others. If they feel prideful about it than that is not good. Christianity teaches to eliminate all feelings/acts that would prevent us from knowing God and loving him. Basically Christianity teaches that to be with God and to be truly happy we must submit ourselves to God's will. Basically in our weakness we find our strength. We acknowledge that we need God and we strive for humility, charity, and Love. If we mess up we have a loving and merciful God who will give us another chance. This video might have a clearer way of saying the same thing.
[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5DOeokjHlU[/media]

Now, you say life goes on for the rest of us even though abortion is legal and prevalent in many places in the world. I would counter this by saying slavery could fit into the same category or even some one who is being sexually abused. Life goes on in the world but it doesn't mean that sexually abusing someone isn't wrong or slavery isn't wrong. There is right and wrong. Black and white and there is no such thing as grey area.
Here is a pro life atheists website :[url="http://www.godlessprolifers.org/home.html"]http://www.godlesspr...s.org/home.html[/url]

Back to the Homosexual thing, Christians are being taken away their freedom of speech because the government is saying if you don't agree with "marriage equality" you are guilty of hate speech. This is very disturbing to me. Not only is the Government takings side on this matter but it is depriving Americans of their constitutional right to freedom of speech.

essentially "Marriage equality" is trying to create another "right' which has never existed in the entirety of human history. We all have the same rights here in the US as far as marriage goes. We all can get married!!! Now they want to stretch the boundaries and make it legal to marry the same gender. it seems to me that the same reasoning would make it fine to have as many wives or husbands as you want o marry at whatever age you want. Just like a good research paper has a structure to it, a good society does also. if we allow all these proposed things to take place, it effect our society in a very negative way, the results of which we have already began to see.
[/quote]

That's incredible. I can't believe GM sold over 400,000 Cruzes.

[ThePenciledOne]

[quote name='stevil' timestamp='1341863884' post='2454036']
I'm not seeing the threat to society of having gay people being happily married, thus I presume the fight against it is based on what makes the fighter happy.
[/quote]

Ok, so number 1 basis is that from your perspective you do not have a quandary with homosexual marriage. (happily is debatable, considering hetero&homo sexual marriage is fraught with divorce etc). My question is: Have you tried to see the issue with homosexual marriage at least possibly? I am not saying that you have to find a problem with it, but think critically about it. I won't even go into reasons on why it seems to be incorrect in the natural order.

Number 2, based on what you 'think' you go on and assume what the other party believes/feels toward the issue. Good job.

Aside from all of that did you even read the OP you were responding too? Your retort was entirely off-topic and did not even address the OP. Come on, now...

Edited July 9, 2012 by ThePenciledOne