Is it fair..?

[kopilo]

Just as a reminder, this thread is about the fairness of using the "traditional meaning of a wedding" argument against the allowance of homosexual marrieges.

 

[Argent]

Sadly the only place the bible clearly states that homosexuality is a sin in the same book that clearly states that eating shellfish is a sin.

Are you claiming that sexual orientation is a choice?

This is false. The NT clearly states, to anyone who's honest, that homosexual sex acts are sin. You know the places in the NT.

Some people have trouble with honesty.

LOL!!! AGAIN, "The Shrimp Defense of Homosexual Sex Acts". Like someone eating a shrimp scampi entitles you to oral and anal sodomy.

Engaging in homosexual sex acts is a sin before Almighty God. Come to Jesus and repent while there is still time.

 

[Argent]

"I still hear people say that I should not be talking about the rights of lesbian and gay people and I should stick to the issue of racial justice, But I hasten to remind them that Martin Luther King Jr. said, 'Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.' I appeal to everyone who believes in Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream to make room at the table of brother- and sisterhood for lesbian and gay people,"
Coretta Scott King

“Discrimination is discrimination, no matter who the victim is, and it is always wrong. There are no ‘special rights’ in America, despite the attempts by many to divide blacks and the gay community with the argument that the latter are seeking some imaginary ‘special rights’ at the expense of blacks.”
Julian Bond – Chair of the NAACP


"I believe this is a civil rights issue…My aunt, married a white man in the 1950s when their marriage was illegal in half the states of this country. Indeed, my uncle, had he taken his wife across the wrong state line, would have been guilty of a criminal violation.
It seems to me that if people want to marry a person of a different race that's no different than somebody wanting to marry someone of the same sex."
Carol Moseley Braun

"It is time to say forthrightly that the government's exclusion of our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters from civil marriage officially degrades them and their families. It denies them the basic human right to marry the person they love. It denies them numerous legal protections for their families. This discrimination is wrong. We cannot keep turning our backs on gay and lesbian Americans. I have fought too hard and too long against discrimination based on race and color not to stand up against discrimination based on sexual orientation. I've heard the reasons for opposing civil marriage for same-sex couples. Cut through the distractions, and they stink of the same fear, hatred, and intolerance I have known in racism and in bigotry."
Rep. John Lewis (Democrat-GA)


To the extent that we want to be bound by the history and cultural traditions of this country, we could say that interracial marriage shouldn't be allowed, or that blacks shouldn't be allowed to marry, or that women are property. Let's face it — marriage is a legal fiction created by government. We're just saying that the government has to treat people equally it doesn't matter which group is oppressed. What matters is that no group is oppressed. …the same arguments get recycled from one group to another to another. The same arguments get used against blacks, gays and women.
Keith Boykinpresident of the National Black Justice Coalition

Blacks insist that there's absolutely no way you can compare a state barring same-sex marriage to the centuries of slavery and the near century of relentless racial violence and apartheid like discrimination laws they've suffered. But this is a terribly, lop-sided, and self-serving read of history. It also ignores or denies the fact that gays have been murdered, socially stigmatized, and have suffered gender Jim Crow like discrimination in America and countless other countries. In creating a pecking order of oppression, a kind of my oppression is worse than yours, blacks can then pick and choose when and where they will fight discrimination, or worse, to denigrate another group deemed less worthy of support their battle against in discrimination. This is foolhardy, and irresponsible.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson

Granted, the comparison between the black struggle and the gay one is inexact. But here's the thing: Every freedom movement from Poland's labor uprising to America's feminism to China's Tiananmen Square protests has been compared to the civil rights movement. When Czechoslovakians threw off communist rule in 1989, they sang We Shall Overcome. Yet no one bothered to point out that the Czechs were never slighted in the U.S. Constitution, much less to accuse Poles of ''pimping'' the civil rights movement. What's that tell you? It tells me this stinginess about the movement arises only when gays seek to embrace it. And that black people -- some of us, at least -- ought to be ashamed.
Leonard Pitts Jr.



"Sometimes this question is phrased in a way that plays into the hands of bigots by asking people to rank oppression . . . asking people "Who has it worse?' " Smith said. "I've experienced racism, sexism and homophobia. And the worst one is whatever one you're dealing with right now."
Nadine Smith executive director Equality Florida


Above all, I would have hoped that all of us - no matter our color, gender, religious beliefs or socioeconomic status - would have learned that we cannot treat any of our brethren as second-class citizens. Separate-and-unequal just won't play.
Kecia A. Cunningham


So many parallels exist between what's happening in the gay-rights movement and what occurred in previous civil-rights movements. The same angry and emotional arguments being made against homosexuals who want the right to marry were made against blacks who wanted to attend the same schools, eat in the same restaurants, hold the same kinds of jobs and live in the same neighborhoods as whites, and against women who wanted to vote, serve on juries, attend medical school, and be hired for the same jobs as men: "It's not natural. It will upset the social order, and destroy our way of life. It's against religious teachings."
Sheryl McCarthey

THOSE African-American ministers in Massachusetts who deny any link between the black civil rights movement and the movement toward same-sex marriage are running back into a dank closet of yesteryear. These ministers who want to stuff today's gay and lesbian couples into separate and unequal compartments of commitment have forgotten how the civil rights movement forced Bayard Rustin, one of the movement's greatest theorists, to make himself invisible because he was gay.
Derrick Z. Jackson


"Homophobia is like racism and anti-Semitism and other forms of bigotry in that it seeks to dehumanize a large group of people, to deny their humanity, their dignity and personhood,"
Coretta Scott King

So what?

 

[outlaw]

Discrimination is ok. You do it, I do it, and the government does it on a daily basis, and while there are many people who discriminate in a poor way, there are some forms of discrimination that are done in a reasonable, and justifible way.

You are mistaking discernment, identifying the difference between two like things and discrimination, judging based on something other than individual merit.


People participate in discernment all the time but there is no way to ethically justify discrimination.

The bank discriminates depending on how much money you earn. The bank will not give a loan for a million dollars to everybody, but only select individuals.

And here the back is discerning based on the ability to repay the loan…individual merit, it is not discriminating based on some intrinsic factor say denying or approving loans based on the religion of the applicant.

When it comes to racial discrimination, that is a battle that speaks of putting down someone because of something like skin color. You cannot change your skin color.

Can you show evidence that sexual orientation is chosen?

Religion is chosen…do you think discrimination based on religion is ethically ok?

With homosexuality, while you might speak of the same objection used for interacial marriage, it is not the same circumstances. A good example of this was written by Gregory Koukl

Discrimination is discrimination no matter who it is directed against.

The point is that interacial marriage and homosexual marriage have the same objection, but different circumstances. Interacial marriage has only skin color in differences. Homosexual marriages has the differnce between a man and woman. Being a man is very much different than being a woman.

The circumstance is a huge factor.

Still not an excuse for discrimination and prejudice

 

[outlaw]

This is false. The NT clearly states, to anyone who's honest, that homosexual sex acts are sin. You know the places in the NT.

Some people have trouble with honesty.

No I do not.

There are poorly translated passages in the new testament used to justify prejudice. There are passages taken out of context used to justify discrimination. But no clear denunciation. And anyone who is honest will admit such.

LOL!!! AGAIN, "The Shrimp Defense of Homosexual Sex Acts". Like someone eating a shrimp scampi entitles you to oral and anal sodomy.

The issues brought up with the book of Leviticus highlight the problem of hypocrisy of those trying to use the bible to justify their petty personal prejudices.

Engaging in homosexual sex acts is a sin before Almighty God. Come to Jesus and repent while there is still time.

Prejudice and discrimination is a sin
"A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.” John 13:34
Repent while there is still time

 

[gengwall]

This is false. The NT clearly states, to anyone who's honest, that homosexual sex acts are sin. You know the places in the NT.

Some people have trouble with honesty.

LOL!!! AGAIN, "The Shrimp Defense of Homosexual Sex Acts". Like someone eating a shrimp scampi entitles you to oral and anal sodomy.

Engaging in homosexual sex acts is a sin before Almighty God. Come to Jesus and repent while there is still time.

Again, we need to clarify what we are talking about. Sodomy laws outlaw certain acts, not certain participants. Incidentaly, the bible is the opposite. It never outlaws specific sexual acts, just any sexual acts between certain participants. But we don't live in a society where that kind of discrimination can be applied. You can't pick and choose which adult, consenting partners can and can't have sex. And you also have a hard time demonstrating any government interest in which specific sexual acts they engage in.

But of course, as I have been saying, that is irrelevant in this thread, as kapilo has just pointed out.

Still, in the same vein, you can't discriminate between which consenting adults can and can't get married (in the civil sense). You can in your church, but your church isn't granting them civil rights, so the church has little say in how those rights are granted.

 

[kopilo]

Again, we need to clarify what we are talking about. Sodomy laws outlaw certain acts, not certain participants. Incidentaly, the bible is the opposite. It never outlaws specific sexual acts, just any sexual acts between certain participants. But we don't live in a society where that kind of discrimination can be applied. You can't pick and choose which adult, consenting partners can and can't have sex. And you also have a hard time demonstrating any government interest in which specific sexual acts they engage in.

But of course, as I have been saying, that is irrelevant in this thread, as kapilo has just pointed out.

Still, in the same vein, you can't discriminate between which consenting adults can and can't get married (in the civil sense). You can in your church, but your church isn't granting them civil rights, so the church has little say in how those rights are granted.

Hmm maybe I should use the term civil union instead of marriege? Just because what people seem to be mixing it up with?

 

[gengwall]

Hmm maybe I should use the term civil union instead of marriege? Just because what people seem to be mixing it up with?

You would think that would work, but I doubt it. If we called the legal "thing" a "civil union" they would say - my "marriage" is a marriage, not some secular "civil union". What they miss (really, ignore) is that it is both, and both are decribed with the same term. "marriage" is both a religious term describing a religious covenant and a secular term describing a civil arrangement. The two can and should be viewed seperately, even though the same term is used for both.

I would have no problem terming the religious aspects of my relationship with my wife as "marriage" and the legal aspects of that relationship as a "civil union". But I doubt many of my friends would be so willing.

 

[outlaw]

Hmm maybe I should use the term civil union instead of marriege? Just because what people seem to be mixing it up with?

Calling a marriage a pinto does not change the fact it is still a marriage.

 

[gengwall]

Calling a marriage a pinto does not change the fact it is still a marriage.

LOL.

In reality, it is like calling a GM car a Chevy. Any version of GM car (the equiv of "marriage") may or may not also be a Chevy (the equiv of "civil union"). That is, in fact, how most people deal with cars. Very few people use the generic terms, opting to usually use the specific make when talking about a car.

So, I think the terminology is ok here. A civil union is a type of marriage. To call it as such is not changing the fact it is a kind of marriage. Of course, the proper thing would then be to come up with an alternate term for the biblical marriage - like "one flesh covenant".

Or we could simply always qualify which type of marriage we are talking about. Christian marriage, biblical marriage, muslim marriage, Jewish marriage, etc. on the one hand, and state marriage, civil marriage, societal marriage, cultural marriage, etc. on the other hand. How's that for taking it to the absurd extreem.

OK - that was way more serious of an answer than the comment required or asked for. *climbs down off soap box*

 

[Argent]

No I do not.

There are poorly translated passages in the new testament used to justify prejudice. There are passages taken out of context used to justify discrimination. But no clear denunciation. And anyone who is honest will admit such.



The issues brought up with the book of Leviticus highlight the problem of hypocrisy of those trying to use the bible to justify their petty personal prejudices.


Prejudice and discrimination is a sin
"A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.” John 13:34
Repent while there is still time

Twist and turn. Turn and twist. It will never change the fact that you are a sinner in need of salvation via Jesus and that with that salvation is the requirement of repentance from homosexual sex acts.

Never will anyone be able to justify the demand for institutionalized sin.

Sin is sin. Righteousness is righteous. No one will ever make one the other, no matter how hard he tries to *******ize the Word of God.

Those who try are hellbound.

 

[knightlight72]

You are mistaking discernment, identifying the difference between two like things and discrimination, judging based on something other than individual merit.


People participate in discernment all the time but there is no way to ethically justify discrimination.

Outlaw, I respectfully ask you to look at a dictionary. Discrimination doesn't just mean unfair decisions. Here's some uses of discriminate

1 To perceive the distinguishing features of; recognize as distinct: discriminate right from wrong.
2 To distinguish by noting differences; differentiate: unable to discriminate colors.
3 To make or constitute a distinction in or between: methods that discriminate science from pseudoscience

I think that you may have be under the wrong impression of discrimination in my post, and hopefully this will clear up what I meant. To be clear, you used the wrong meaning in your response. The rest of your post seems to try and use discernment rather than discriminate. With the dictionary usage, the rest of the post you speak of really just uses the discrimination from the dictionary I intended, and you replaced it with a meaning of discernment.

Ideally, this should basically mean you actually agree with my use of discrimination since in fact it is grammatically correct, and done on a daily basis by the government that we have elected.

 

[Brennin]

Outlaw, I respectfully ask you to look at a dictionary. Discrimination doesn't just mean unfair decisions. Here's some uses of discriminate

1 To perceive the distinguishing features of; recognize as distinct: discriminate right from wrong.
2 To distinguish by noting differences; differentiate: unable to discriminate colors.
3 To make or constitute a distinction in or between: methods that discriminate science from pseudoscience

I think that you may have be under the wrong impression of discrimination in my post, and hopefully this will clear up what I meant. To be clear, you used the wrong meaning in your response. The rest of your post seems to try and use discernment rather than discriminate. With the dictionary usage, the rest of the post you speak of really just uses the discrimination from the dictionary I intended, and you replaced it with a meaning of discernment.

Ideally, this should basically mean you actually agree with my use of discrimination since in fact it is grammatically correct, and done on a daily basis by the government that we have elected.

He has been corrected previously concerning this error of his (to no avail, I see).

 

[outlaw]

Outlaw, I respectfully ask you to look at a dictionary. Discrimination doesn't just mean unfair decisions. Here's some uses of discriminate

1 To perceive the distinguishing features of; recognize as distinct: discriminate right from wrong.
2 To distinguish by noting differences; differentiate: unable to discriminate colors.
3 To make or constitute a distinction in or between: methods that discriminate science from pseudoscience

I think that you may have be under the wrong impression of discrimination in my post, and hopefully this will clear up what I meant. To be clear, you used the wrong meaning in your response. The rest of your post seems to try and use discernment rather than discriminate. With the dictionary usage, the rest of the post you speak of really just uses the discrimination from the dictionary I intended, and you replaced it with a meaning of discernment.

Ideally, this should basically mean you actually agree with my use of discrimination since in fact it is grammatically correct, and done on a daily basis by the government that we have elected.

I am conversant with the dictionary and the multiple meanings of discrimination and discernment. However please note you own attempt to justify discrimination (judging based on something other than individual merit) in your post.
You are not perceiving the distinguishing features of homosexuals. You are not noting differences between homosexuals and anything or anyone else nor are you making a distinction between homosexuals. You are justifying prejudiced or prejudicial outlook, action, or treatment of an entire group of people based on an intrinsic factor of that group rather than on individual merit.

I also note you ignored the questions I posed to you:

Can you show evidence that sexual orientation is chosen?

Religion is chosen…do you think discrimination based on religion is ethically ok?

 

[ElijahSK]

This is a highly moral based thread, so please take note of that when responding, as in there may be no incorrect answers...

Given that homosexuality has been looked down upon by society and basically up until recent times has been treated as a disorder, etc.

Is it fair to keep the 'traditional' meaning of a wedding (union of a man and a woman), when the potential for other types of (official) weddings in the past seem to have been somewhat impossible...

As in: is it appropiate to not allow homosexual marrieges because of past tradition?

Homosexuality was not always looked down upon. In fact, homosexuality has been rampant at the fall of most great civilizations.

 

[knightlight72]

I am conversant with the dictionary and the multiple meanings of discrimination and discernment. However please note you own attempt to justify discrimination (judging based on something other than individual merit) in your post.

This suggests if you do know the difference, and understood what discrimination can mean, than you seem to purposely mean to be dishonest.

There is a difference when one is misinformed rather than purposeful intent to deceive.

You are not perceiving the distinguishing features of homosexuals. You are not noting differences between homosexuals and anything or anyone else nor are you making a distinction between homosexuals. You are justifying prejudiced or prejudicial outlook, action, or treatment of an entire group of people based on an intrinsic factor of that group rather than on individual merit.

I think that I am aware of the difference between homosexuality and heterosexaulity.

I also note you ignored the questions I posed to you:

Can you show evidence that sexual orientation is chosen?

Religion is chosen…do you think discrimination based on religion is ethically ok?

I didn't answer the questions, because I thought you didn't understand the meaning of discrimination.
Still, it should be noted that it is a sin to have homosexual relations.

As natural as it may seem to you, I have seen studies that show people can change their sexual choices.

With religion and discrimination, it's very possible to be discriminate, and decide things based on a certain belief. For example, I'm sure a muslim school has every right to not allow jewish studies to be included in the curriculum. Basically, they have discriminated against a whole entire belief.


Discrimination can be ok. The government does it every day. People discriminate every day. you and I discriminate often as well. It doesn't have to mean that people should treat others poorly.

 

[kopilo]

Homosexuality was not always looked down upon. In fact, homosexuality has been rampant at the fall of most great civilizations.

Hence using the argument of keeping the "traditional" meaning of marriege includes homosexuality?

 

[kopilo]

Twist and turn. Turn and twist. It will never change the fact that you are a sinner in need of salvation via Jesus and that with that salvation is the requirement of repentance from homosexual sex acts.

Never will anyone be able to justify the demand for institutionalized sin.

Sin is sin. Righteousness is righteous. No one will ever make one the other, no matter how hard he tries to *******ize the Word of God.

Those who try are hellbound.

The word of God is not the interpertations we read, the word of God is what is stated in the bible. The argument of if homosexuality is a sin or not has been fought over for a rather long time and still continues today.
Please refraim from pushing your view as the word of God.