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Leave No Survivors - Anti-Gay-Marriage Article


Yrth

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I think I'm with Peter Griffin of "Family Guy" on this one. He said if gay people want to get married and be miserable like the rest of us, I say let 'em.

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  • 4 weeks later...

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Stupid religious folk think they own the tradmark for marriage. Marrriage is a legal union, not a religious one. With their type of thinking, only the religious could be married. What about free will, according to xtians god gave us free will and we can sin if we want. You want to one up god and impose your will onto others and force people to live by your standards. When churches start paying taxes, I'll listen to what they have to say in political and legal issues.

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CAN I HEAR AN AMEN THERE, BROTHERS AND SISTERS?!?

 

Was reading something about how *some* churches participate in some financial-transparency thing, like 600 or so out of a 300,00ish congregations, and get ratings based on how well they use donations from their members. I've also seen statistics about 96% (not 100%?) will give partial disclosure of the church's finances to members who request it specially. It's pathetic and absolutely infuriating that more churches don't feel the need to disclose exactly where people's money is going. I know exactly why they don't, but the members never seem to question just what happens when they fling their hard-earned money into the dark pit of the offering plate. Maybe we need to be demanding that if they want to wade into legal and political fights, they need to demonstrate that they are holding up their corner of the social blanket first.

 

No taxation without representation, but no representation without taxation, I fuckin say.

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Yeah taxation is the elephant in the church pews, Akheia. Didn't Jesus say to render to Caesar's? So essentially, churches should also pay taxes.

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Hell, if we just forced them to reveal where all those donations go, that'd be something, but you and I both know that if they actually revealed that info, there'd be riots in the streets.

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Hell, if we just forced them to reveal where all those donations go, that'd be something, but you and I both know that if they actually revealed that info, there'd be riots in the streets.

 

You have more faith in humanity than I do.  When priests raped thousands of kids, we get apologetics.  I would expect the same. 

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Well, the Catholic Church is also facing what sounds like unprecedented blowback about the scandal. You can just about hear their leaders' blithering shock when they talk about it. Like they had no idea people might get that upset about them diddling little kids! They've got no clue how to stop the flood. You can almost hear them blubbering in dark rooms about how this is hardly even the worst thing they've ever done--why are people spazzing out so bad about it NOW of all times?!?

 

I feel bad hating the RCC because I have relatives who are in various religious orders and think they're good people, but holy fuck the RCC is evil. I wish I could ask one of these relatives of mine, an aunt who is a nun, about how she feels about this stuff. I'm so heartbroken to think that she might well utterly condemn what her church is doing, yet may feel trapped as she's extremely old and nunning's sort of her entire life at this point.

 

But Protestants aren't quite as obedient or sheep-like as Catholics. Protestants are a fairly fluid bunch; they may switch churches, or they may transfer to another church in the same denom, but overall they don't put up with too much shit before they jet for greener Protestant pastures. By contrast, I've only met a few Catholics who follow the church's teachings completely or are really rabid about the Pope, but the idea of just quitting is as odd as the idea of going and living in the swimming pool for the rest of their lives. You just don't see it even as an option in Catholics' heads. But lately they're not just leaving, they're stampeding to the doors. It's delicious to see the RCC's leadership struggling so much with the real effects of their behavior and subsequent coverup.

 

Catholics would probably just shrug about what the RCC is undoubtedly doing with their money; one rarely hears about Catholic churches pissed off because they had to pay millions to yet another abuse survivor and even more rarely (as in I haven't ever) about Catholics saying "fuck you" and just leaving, or even demanding answers from their leaders about the waste of their hard-earned money. But Protestants... I think Protestants, with their crazy-ass American idealisms about fairness and frugality, would shit bricks if they found out what their churches did with those dollars. And I don't even think churches are by and large dishonest or unscrupulous, just that they're not doing nearly as much charity work as their congregants think they do, that they're not as efficient or as frugral as they seem, that what charity the church does might go to causes that their congregants may deeply disapprove of, and there are probably a lot of financial decisions church leaders make that would shock and dismay the people bankrolling them. Could be anything in those records... wish we could open up the books and take a look. But we see how well that worked for Mitt Romney.

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The issue is not about private choice. It is about societal laws which are public not private.

 

Public laws which infringe upon private choices. So yes, the issue is very much about private choice and why you have no business making those choices for other people.

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Guest ThereIsNoGod

My feeling is that love between people of the same sex is often more real. Thinking back to my early school years, I remember when we  had to do folk dancing. Obviously the boys had to dance with girls. My feeling at that time was that partnering with the opposite sex was something that you just had to do out of tradition, whether you wanted to or not. Though I did have feelings for some girls, I felt they were irrelevant next to the force that was being put on us by teachers and other older people to advance to the stage of "courtship" with the opposite sex. 

I don't think the whole "heterosexuality out of tradition" thing necessarily goes away as you get older. I can recall at High School having crushes, but overall the law of the school yard said that you should aspire to partner with the prettiest, strongest, smartest or most popular people of the opposite sex. Then they would be your conquest or status symbol.

 

People thought that if a boy was genuinely a friend of a girl then he was gay (or that she was a lesbian). So in that way, genuine friendship between boys and girls was discouraged, while tradition boy-girl courtship was forced on us. We were permitted and encouraged to have natural friendship with those of the same sex (so long as we didn't get too close to each other I expect), but friendship with someone of the opposite sex, perfectly natural for some, was thought strange.

 

Possibly kindergarten is where the most natural friendships occur. I think boys and girls more freely associate with one another and it's permitted and encouraged by the elders. Obviously though, kindergarten is a very small portion of one's life.

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I firmly believe that marriage as an institution is completely dead and has been since the second wave of feminism, and has little relevance in a modern society, regardless of who chooses to marry.  Of course this very much depends on your definition of marriage.  If your definition is a legal union for economic and social benefit, love optional, then that is completely obsolete in American culture.  If it's purely love, then that's hardly obsolete, but then you'd have a hard time trying to convince people that states should recognize common-law marriages.  Only four states recognize common-law marriages, where two people live together and call themselves husband and wife without ever legally marrying.  Yes, it is just like "covenant marriages" but without religion involved.  If all states recognized common-law marriages, then any couple would be married in the eyes of the state, homo- or heterosexual.  The government offers benefits to married couples, and since most marriages in the United States are based on love, then it's absurd that straight people can marry based purely on feelings, and gay people cannot.

 

As stated before in this thread, marriage wasn't always about love.  It was about uniting two families to make alliances and ensure the social and financial security of the children.  It was, basically, a business transaction, and eventually it wound up being about getting freeloading daughters out of the house.  Where women are not permitted to be educated or employed, they needed someone to support them and any children they had.  So their parents had to marry them off to men who were financially stable enough to afford a wife and children.  It's reflected in modern American wedding customs; the father gives away his daughter, the bride, handing her over to the groom in a transfer of authority.  Women were expected to submit to their husbands, because they were assumed to be naturally dim and useless, being educated and unemployed. 

 

Over time in certain cultures, marriage was not a legal/civil/social affair, but a romantic one.  Compatibility of the partners became a crucial component of the union.  In cases of marriages that were arranged based on social and economic benefit, love was optional, and supposed to come later.  However, beginning in the 19th century love was a central focus of marriage, though of course women were still infantilized and unable to support themselves and so needed men around to support them.  This paradigm persisted into the middle of the 20th century, when women were expected to give up any jobs and education they had for marriage, though of course they were going to marry someone they loved.  Today, in 2013, it's normal for women to continue to work or go to school after marriage and even after having kids.  Women's lives are no longer centered around domestic "arts," because we as a society recognize that women are every bit as intelligent as men and can find purpose in other things, not just home and family.  

 

Elizabeth Cady Stanton put it this way, in the late 19th century: "Marriage is little more than legalized prostitution." When you try so hard to guard a woman's virginity, and control her sexuality, and try to get some helpless woman-child out of your house at the same time, you're basically prostituting her.  

 

The reason I bring up feminism and women's issues regarding marriage is because I believe they are key to the current debate about same-sex marriage.  It is impossible to be against SSM and be feminist, and vice versa.  If you do not believe that married partners have no prescribed roles, and that marriage is no longer necessary for financial support of women via women working, that marriage is no longer needed to raise children in a stable environment, that marriage is an agreement between two equally intelligent and capable partners, you are automatically for SSM.  The ONLY argument Christians can provide against it, that does not necessarily come from the Bible, has to do with gender roles, assuming that one partner is the submissive one (i.e., "the woman") and the other is dominant (i.e. "the man").  It is not socially acceptable for a man to be "the woman" in a relationship, whether he's in a relationship with another man or an actual woman.  It implies that femininity is shameful (in the context of our male-dominated society).  In regards to lesbians, two "women" cannot be in a relationship, because the two women will have no guidance.  It's pretty fucked up when you think about it-- that Christians believe that marriage is not and cannot be an equal partnership.  

 

So, basically, if you think marriage is based purely on love and partnership and that married partners are equals, you have no issue with same-sex marriage.  If you think marriage is based on prescribed gender roles and spousal duty,  whether it be legal or moral, then you are a sexist, homophobic twat, and should pay a bit more attention to the man behind the curtain. 

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Well said. I've seen gay bloggers like Dan Savage draw some very interesting comparisons between gay rights and women's rights (most importantly reproductive rights). I'm not gay so take the opinion for what it's worth, but it does seem like as the one fight goes, so goes the other.

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Fighting for the rights of one minority naturally causes us to empathize with other minorities fighting for their rights.

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Fighting for the rights of one minority naturally causes us to empathize with other minorities fighting for their rights.

 

Not that I can see.

 

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/human_nature/2008/11/original_skin.html

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