How exactly will Gay Marriage harm Marriage as an Institution?

lol aren't they the same?

 

I'm not sure if they are the same....wait they can't be, right?!

God gave his only son...why didn't god have more kids?! It seemed rather effortless on his part to have the first one!

anyway, Bush sure glided over the gay marriage issue last night, don't you think?

 

no, it's cool but you know how's it's hard no to have a knee-jerk reaction to shit people say, when, if you think something out to it's conclusion, there's nothing at all to be offended about. so i just see the phrase "christians are" or "christians think" and i just skip it. because most of the time it's from people that i know rather well and i know they're dealing with an entirely different concept. hence the at the end of my comment.

 

I agree that this is not solely a religious issue. Note that the condemnation of homosexuality is hardly unique to Christianity. My point is that we can't rely only on feelings to determine what's "natural" or right. As I said before, nature itself strongly indicates that homosexuality is an aberration.

As the Schmidt article I cited clearly shows, homosexuality is much more likely influenced by environmental than genetic factors. Regardless, the "rightness" of a desire can't be determined by how "natural" it feels.

The Bible is hardly silent or inconclusive on the matter.

 

Quote: The Bible is hardly silent or inconclusive on the matter.

i was talking about jesus, not that man made book.

So what do you think huck, wanna suck each others dicks?

I'll pretend I am an apostle, or a preist.

PS that was a joke, lighten up.

 

so....animals in overly populated regions go gay because....they were abused by their mothers or raped by their fathers?

 

Why do so many people ignore the fact that this is a CIVIL RIGHTS ISSUE!

This is not a religious issue. Religion can have its own view. That is fine. I still deserve the same rights and protections under the law as everyone else!
Not only do we have separation of church and state, but we also have freedom of religion!

 

I beat up my parents dog the other night, hey its ok, he's a faggot.

Photogra, because a wave of primitive christian fundamentalism is sweeping the nation.

 

Lovely...

Can I get an AMEN...? (or 2men?)

 

Did you read the Coolidge essay I cited recently?

 

no, it is a bad URL

http://www.esa-online.org/crossroad...s/coolidge.html

 

oh, that was the one you sent to me, I just found the one you posted.

http://www.esa-online.org/crossroads/monographs/coolidge.html

I have not read it, but I will.

 

seamonster, photo you guys are cracking me up (2MEN. LOL!!!!)

Pedophilia is NEVER consensual, which makes it wholely different than homosexuality. Pedophilia is always forced, intimidating and mantipulative. THAT is the difference. (Well one of the differences. I really HATE when people still try to compare homosexuality to bestiality or pedophilism. It is just SO ignorant of human psychology.) Thing is being gay IS inborn, nothing proves or even points to the idea that pedophiles are.

As for the Bible, Jesus said there are NO commandments other than "honor the Lord thy God, and love others the way you love yourself." He basically invalidates the Old Test. Do you wanna get into Old Test philosophy and what is really considered a "abomination?" First. do YOU have a bathroom within several yards of your sleeping and eating places? Do you do a daily Cereal Offering (Lev 6:7) Do you eat any fat of oxen sheep or goats? (Lev 7:22.) Do you keep a Kosher Kitchen? Have you ever had a burn or sore that turned reddish white or white? (Lev 13:24) You are unclean, and an abomination.

Shall we get into who is and who is not allows to be your slave?

 

EXACTLY! Couldn't have said it better myself. Thank You!

 

Fundamentalists have stolen the true, historical meaning of Christianity, as the minister of my church (Unitarian Universalist) outlined in one of his recent sermons. Fundamentalists have "stolen Jesus." Huck, this ones for you:
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
by Dr. Edward Frost
Atlanta, Georgia

One of the reasons reasonable, thoughtful, religious people of Christian heritage are so reluctant to admit to being "Christians" these days is that they know that, if they say they are Christians, most people will assume they are intolerant, arrogant, judgmental, unable to see beyond the narrow confines of their own faith. The Christian fundamentalist have stolen the term "Christian." And they have stolen Jesus and imprisoned him in their tightly-shuttered house.

When I say that the fundamentalists have "stolen Jesus," I mean that, these days, when most people hear the word "Christian," they think of Pat Robertson, the Christian Coalition, Jimmy Swaggart, Jim Bakker, Jerry Falwell and others. Probably most people in America today are not aware that there are, in fact, many ways to be Christian or that there are many ways to think about Jesus. The sad fact is that I’m often reluctant to let it be known "out in public" that I’m a minister because of the assumptions that would be made about me once I’m identified as a minister. It will be generally assumed that I am a Christian minister and it will be generally assumed that my view of the world has to do with being born again, being saved, going to heaven, and sending homosexuals and secular humanists to hell.

It was not ever thus.

What have the thieves gotten away with? What has been lost? What is lost is an understanding of the truly essential Christian message as having to do with the primacy of love, with reverence for reason and freedom of thought and with compassion, toleration and justice.

The Jesus associated with those principles, the Jesus of liberal Christianity, has been successfully supplanted in the minds of Americans with a religion of dogma, legalism, hatred, exclusivity, division, and intolerance. Those who have bumper stickers on their cars that say, "Jesus Loves You," have an unstated proviso, "As long as you think like me."


And how does the fundamentalist think? What does captured Christianity look like in fundamentalist garb?
Unlike the liberal religious message of love, toleration, justice and inclusivity as the supreme guide to human life and relationship, fundamentalist Christianity is essentially legalistic, bound to rules that must be obeyed, with a laundry-list of inviolate beliefs.

Legaistic Christianity, then, has a lot of "thou shalt nots" to it, condemnations, threats, the laying down of the laws, moral judgments, passing by on the other side to avoid contamination. As the religious educator, Sophia Fahs, put it, "Some beliefs are divisive, separating the saved from the unsaved." Legalistic or fundamentalist Christianity draws the lines: the saved over here, the damned over there -- and, of course, the saved and the damned are divided according to their judgments.

Fundamentalist Christianity is essentially anti-intellectual. It teaches people not to trust their own reason, not to trust their own intuition, and to be suspicious of science and "secular knowledge." In fundamentalist Christianity, "truth" is established by reference to the Bible, a collection of material which, despite its errors and contradictions, must be held to be literally true in every detail. Fundamentalist Christians believe scholarly interpretations of the many forms of biblical literature to be the work of Satan-- and Satan is held to be--not a metaphor for evil-- but a real being from whom true believers are protected but who blinds all others to the truth and leads them to the literal, eternal fires of hell.
In a nutshell, then, Fundamentalist Christianity is based on a literal interpretation of every detail of the Bible, on a distrust -- even a disdain -- of reason and intellect, a belief in a real devil, responsible for evil in the world, and a plethora of moral judgments which separate "true Christians" from heretics and sinners.

Fundamentalist Christianity also insists that the mission of Jesus was to atone, as God-become-man, for the sins of humankind by his death and that believers are saved from sin and eternal hellfire by accepting his perfect sacrifice. All of that -- and nothing less than all of that -- is what fundamentalist Christians mean by "Christian."

And our culture has come to accept, for the most part, that that is indeed what "Christian" means. Even the media has fallen for the stolen definition. News stories often refer to "Christian influence on school boards," "Christian media," "Christian magazines," "Christian music." The "Christians" in the news stories are fundamentalist Christians but they are not identified as such primarily because those doing the reporting are not aware that there is any other kind. All Christians have come to be painted with the same broad brush.

One Episcopal minister speaks of cringing when, at a social event, he met someone who, meeting a minister, immediately identified himself as a Christian. The minister said that what immediately went through his mind when he heard the word "Christian" were several other words, such as mean-spirited, bigot, arrogant, mindless, intolerant, and rigid.

In a recent address, the Secretary General of the Anglican Council said,

"...in certain parts of the world, the word Christian has become an embarrassment because it has been aligned with movements which are contrary to the loving Christ that is at the heart of the [Christian] message. "I hold my head in shame," he continued, "to hear Jesus’ name being affiliated with political movements that isolate, inhibit, and breed hate and discontentment among human beings."

​

In a talk given by the Buddhist Master, Thich Nhat Hanh, he speculates about what Jesus and the Buddha might say to each other if they returned today. He decides that they would discuss how much harder their work has become and would say to each other: "Brother, how can I help you?"


My message today is that, if we allow Christian fundamentalism to steal Jesus -- an incarnation of transcending love and justice -- and if we allow fundamentalism to steal the word "Christian," which has identified millions who have served sacrificially the homeless, the hungry and the despised, then we lose those good people of religion whose company we need to keep in the continuing struggle against all that divides humankind, diminishes us, and destroys body and spirit.
Whether you consider yourself Jewish, pagan, humanist, atheist or seeker without sign or label, I urge you not to allow the thieves to separate you from those honored allies, those forebears from whose house we ventured, those followers of one of many lightbearers in times of darkness, those good people called Christians. .



..

 

BRAVO! i like that quite a lot.

 

Good post! It reminds me of what muslim extremists are doing to the more moderate ones.....lets just hope the tide turns, it seems there are a lot of younger kids that are sucked into it.

 

yeah, i don't know why people take the fundie stance when they're scared. i guess it becomes a way to hold onto some perceived power which ends up polluting and eventually destroying the entire concept.

 

First, there is scant evidence that homosexuality is inborn. Second, even if it were, that would prove nothing of its "rightness." (By the way, to my knowledge, pedophiles are much more resistant to reparative therapy than many homosexuals.)

Do you really want to try to argue that the New Testamant condones homosexual relations? See http://www.cornerstonemag.com/pages/show_page.asp?151.

 

Well we aren't living in the New Testament. We are living in America. Religion has no place in this as a political issue. If your religion commands that homosexuality is wrong then fine, don't be a homosexual.
Good thing about America is, no one has to live up to a religous standard because we have seperation of church and state.

Raise your kids how you want, but keep it in the family. Not everyone is going to have your same beliefs, values, or morals. Its all relative.

Don't oppress people because they aren't like you. Denying a person's right's is oppression. We don't need it here. One reason our country was formed was because we wanted to escape oppression. Lets not repeat the cycle.