Gay Marriage should be illegal. [If you are not religious, you have no say]

I see it like this. You can't just pick and choose part of the religion you like and cross out the rules you don't like. If you are Christian, but also gay...how is that fair to all the other Christians? What you are doing is letting everyone else have the same right as you. Which means, if the priest decides to knock off the last two Commandments because it was cutting in his time...then it should be just fine with you, shouldn't it? Because that's exactly what you are doing. Okay, you're gay and you want to get married in a church...that's not fair to the other Christians. You can just bend the rules because that's the way you want it, but if the priest wants to skip a couple of Sundays, that's wrong.
But yeah, you are right. Church is not the only place to get married. You don't even have to get married anywhere actually...you could get it done legally which it doesn't bother me at all.

being a christian means you believe gays will go to Hell. doesn't mean i like it, but that's what i believe in. i can't change that, because THATS NOT FAIR. I did not write the Ten Commandments. They do not belong to me. Therefore, I cannot choose which part I want to follow and which I want to flush down the toilet. Technically, anyone can pick and choose. God gave us the freedom to do that. To choose our own fate. But it's your choice, so choose wisely.

and 1 more thing. don't bring up the thing about christians and slavery. I don't know what Bible you are reading, but I do not go to church having my priest tell me to trade slaves and buy a whip to control them. slavery is wrong and it's not in my Bible, so i don't know what you are talking about... And um, remember the Moses and the Red Sea story? Where Moses was told by God to free the slaves of Egypt? yeah *that* is in the Bible. I clearly remember that...
I guess it doesn't *majorly* affect my life, but it does. Like I'm sorry if I made it a huge deal, but it *does* affect Christian lives.

It would seem obvious, wouldn't it?

I am religious, just not christian. I do not understand why it is so wrong to chritians, and how on earth does someone elses choice to marry another wheither they are the same sex or different sexs effect you? you say that non- christians shouldnt vote because it doesnt effect them... But it doesnt effect christians either.

Oh, some of them held out a little bit of backwards and bigoted time for slavery. They will come around rather quickly but not not right away. They aren't much for admitting mistakes. A number of southern churches were hurt by the end of slavery because they made asses of themselves and most just phased it out.

My point was pretty strictly fitting the second prong of the Lemon test, if the actions of the government primarily seek to help or hinder religion then that action is unconstitutional. If it's a secondary help or hindrance then it is not. Blue laws (no booze on Sunday) are originally a religious ordinance but are acceptable because they have valid secular purposes. Legalizing gay marriage has valuable secular purposes and anything church related is secondary and irrelevant.

Well, if the situation you put forth of churches rejecting slavery is truly corollary to this situation, then the people wouldn't change their minds about gay marriage--the churches would. After slavery ended, you contend, the churches stopped supporting it. By a similar logic, the churches would end their opposition to gay marriage after it was legalized.

But first of all, this would mean that the churches would not be considered backwards or bigoted, once again eliminating the harm of legalizing gay marriage; second of all, I think the situation of slavery is not exactly related to gay marriage, because slavery was a case of outlawing something, whereas gay marriage is a case of allowing something. It is far easier for churches to oppose something recently legalized than to support something recently illegalized.

Thus whether the churches change their opinions or don't, gay marriage would not have any adverse effects on them.

And I didn't actually contend that the government should actively attempt to decrease church membership--I just said that as long as we're attacking Christianity, one could argue that the government should do that. Obviously the argument is flawed under scrutiny. Twas a joke.

It didn't take long after the end of legal slavery to have all the churches pretty well squarely anti-slavery. There was a transition time but regardless what it says in the Bible you'd be hard pressed to find a church which would still condone such a practice even though the Bible does. Few churches still oppose interracial marriage, most of those are in the south and not very open about it.

Actually, if the governments action has the primary purpose of reducing church membership it's a violation of the first amendment. For example if attending church results in a fine. That would certainly reduce church membership however it would not be legal as it clearly would violate the first amendment.

If the primary purpose of something damages or can be seen as an endorsement of religion then it's not acceptable as a government action.

>>For example, if when gay marriage becomes completely legal and acceptable and Snicker's church still doesn't support it they may get a reputation for being bigoted backwards and homophobic and lose members and support.

That is debatable (gee...). Basically, this assumes that when gay marriage is legalized, this is going to change a lot of people's opinions. But law does not act as a tool to change public opinion; it acts as a reaction to conform to public opinion (or in cases such as this, to conform to principle). So the people who opposed gay marriage will still oppose gay marriage, and the people who support it will still support it. Thus the churches who oppose it will not be considered any more or less backward and bigoted than they are now.

But you're right that even if it did adversely affect church membership, the rights still must be prioritized over that.

And as long as we're attacking Christianity, somebody could make the argument that the government should allow and encourage anything that decreases church membership. I'm not gonna, but somebody could.

>>The only way your argument can still function now is if you proved that gays marrying outside the church still had an effect on the church, which I'm sure we'd all be happy to discuss.

I disagree. So long as the primary function of gays marrying is not intended to harm the church it's still acceptable. For example, if when gay marriage becomes completely legal and acceptable and Snicker's church still doesn't support it they may get a reputation for being bigoted backwards and homophobic and lose members and support. Legalizing gay marriage may actually harm her church in a very aroundabout way. However, this still would not suffice to deny people their rights. Likewise, it may actually be true that properly educating children in science harms churches it still doesn't have the primary effect of harming churches.

I think even if she could show a very indirect harm of gay marriage damaging her church in a real way it still wouldn't matter one jot when it comes to rights.

I think Snicker's church is probably backwards and bigoted. Such statements might hurt her church, but the rights come first. And even if indirect harm comes from the use of those rights it doesn't change a thing.

-- Feel free to construed me as attacking Christianity. I happily do so on many of the more baseless claims 'We have a first century zombie Jew who sacrificed himself to himself and if you telepathically communicate your love to him you get to live forever.'

Okay, I've been gone for awhile, but reviewing the posts, I believe I've diagnosed the misunderstanding. Snicker is basing his objection to gay marriage upon the premise that a law legalizing gay marriage involves forcing churches to allow gay couples to marry. I don't know why I should need to iterate this, but it doesn't. You're right--the government has no right to force the church to marry anybody they don't want to. Another assumption implied by Snicker is that churches are the only place you can get married. This has been pointed out to be false.

I know I can't force you to do anything Snicker, but if you do feel inclined to respond to my arguments, try to not only go on tangents about why the statements I make are unfounded or wrong or something, but please point out why you think that your argument still stands without this logic. It just becomes annoying when a tiny part of our posts becomes the brunt of a long explanation about Christianity.

So to sum up, there is no reason to not allow gays to marry because allowing them to do so imposes no requirement on churches, because gays to not need to go to churches to marry. The only way your argument can still function now is if you proved that gays marrying outside the church still had an effect on the church, which I'm sure we'd all be happy to discuss.

And I don't feel compelled to just have the last word. It's not about 'whoever gets the last word wins.' I just feel that the thread had regressed into a debate about the general merit of religion. Please don't construe us as attacking Christianity. I just feel that the real issue had been skirted for too long.

Life doesn't cause death anymore than building a building a watch causes it to break.

Generally when we talk about causality in any real sense we talk about a specific event which leads to a causal end. Certainly everything living dies but that doesn't mean that living leads to death rather it's simply the case that living is a prerequisite of death. A crazy zealot with a weapon however will more than do the trick everytime.