Is it fair..?

[gengwall]

This co-opting of the civil rights rhetoric by homosexual activists is a travesty of all that African-American have struggled for.

It is not a choice to be black. It is not a sin for a black man and woman to engage in sexual intercourse within marriage. It is not a choice to be white or black, nor is it a sin for a white person and a black person to engage in sexual intercourse within marriage.

Engaging in homosexual sex acts are a sin. Period. There is no such thing as "gay marriage". Marriage is one man, of any race, and one woman, of any race.

As much as the homosexual activist would like to couch this demand in terms of "civil rights", it is a deception.

Well, I am no homosexual activist, but I can see you are looking at this all wrong. You can't legislate against everything you think is sinful. Especially if it involves equal protection. And again, sex is irrelevant in the conversation. If you really want to discuss outlawing sexual sin, you will need to build a lot more jails and most likely 90% of the people on this forum, Christian or otherwise, will need to do some time.

 

[Spinrad]

Listen, if people got together and voted to call a square a circle it still would not be a circle.

It would if they voted to change the terminology relating to it. Circle and Square are, after all, just words.

 

[Argent]

Who said anything about sex????

HomoSEXual.

Are you implying you would endorse homosexual marriage if the couple pledged celibecy?

Don't be silly.

I certainly think not.

To your credit.

The sex is irrelevant.

How so? (can't wait for the answer to this one!)

What is being discussed is a civil union and who can enter into it.

No. What were hearing from homosexual activists is "gay marriage" (homosexual marriage). A "civil union" is the same thing, but using the term is just an attempt to deflect the focus what from what is really being done: The "redefining" or "broadening" of my definiton of marriage, as "Chalice-Thunder" has told me is the intention of homosexuals.

If we really are to have equal protection, shouldn't all citizens be able to enter into the same civil contracts and have the same civil rights?

You have equal protection now. You may enter into marriage the same as I or anyone else can. There is no "discrimination" against you. What you want are SPECIAL rights and protections.

Moral, traditional Americans see thing very differently.

 

[gengwall]

Listen, if people got together and voted to call a square a circle it still would not be a circle.

OK - show me how all the legally obtained and protected homosexual marriages in the world today are actually illegal and outside government protection.

We live in a world of four sided figures. Your square is indeed a square. But in your context, rectangles don't exist. And a homosexual married couple is a rectangle. Both are four sided figures that we apply the word "marriage" to. They both can be the exact thing they are within the context that recognizes those individual forms, and still fit the more generic patern of "four-sided figure".

 

[Argent]

Well, I am no homosexual activist, but I can see you are looking at this all wrong.

Oh? Really?

You can't legislate against everything you think is sinful.

Please show where I have said that I want legislation agains sin.

Especially if it involves equal protection.

We already have equal protection. Any who is of age and not already married can marry. Marriage is one woman and one man. No other form of marriage exists.

And again, sex is irrelevant in the conversation.

Sex is hardly irrelevant. Marriage is based upon the complementarian sexual differences between man and woman. Sex is very, very relevant.

If you really want to discuss outlawing sexual sin, you will need to build a lot more jails and most likely 90% of the people on this forum, Christian or otherwise, will need to do some time.

Again, where have I said anything about outlawing sexual sin? Now, if you are try to be clever and deflect the focus of this debate from marriage to outlawing sexual sins, then I will ignore you from now on, as I do another dishonest poster.

You are the one looking at this all wrong.

 

[gengwall]

Who said anything about sex????

HomoSEXual.

Sex is irrelevant

How so? (can't wait for the answer to this one!)

The word "sex" isn't in the word "gay". Are you saying that you would be supportive if the only term used was "gay marriage"?

The "sex" in homoSEXual refers to orientation, not activity. It simply means they are oriented toward the same sex. We could just as easily have created the word homoGENDERal, but that just sounds silly. Why do you think we refer to sex between homosexuals as "homosexual SEX"?

Moral, traditional Americans see thing very differently.

Well, I am a moral traditional fundimentalist Christian and I agree with you from a religious perspective. But the founders were very clear that our country's laws not be foudned on any particular religious perspective. Sorry, you don't get to make the rules all by yourself.

 

[gengwall]

You are the one looking at this all wrong.

Well, maybe we should clarify terms. Gender is certainly relevant. Intercourse and other sexual activity is irrelevant. You brought up inter-racial sexual activity and homosexual sexual activity. I pressumed you were talking about sexual activity. If you are simply refering to gender, then I guess I should have ignored all your talking about "sex".

 

[Argent]

The word "sex" isn't in the word "gay". Are you saying that you would be supportive if the only term used was "gay marriage"?

You know better, if you'll be honest about what I've said.

The "sex" in homoSEXual refers to orientation, not activity. It simply means they are oriented toward the same sex. We could just as easily have created the word homoGENDERal, but that just sounds silly. Why do you think we refer to sex between homosexuals as "homosexual SEX"?

You're playing around with words. None of this changes anything. It's not even very clever.

Well, I am a moral traditional fundimentalist Christian and I agree with you from a religious perspective. But the founders were very clear that our country's laws not be foudned on any particular religious perspective. Sorry, you don't get to make the rules all by yourself.

If you say so.

My brother, perhaps you are willing to have homosexuals given special status so that our children can be indoctrinated in public schools, school we pay for, that homosexual sex is an acceptable thing to do with their bodies. Maybe it's acceptable to you that someday it will be considered "hate speech" for a pastor to say "homosexual sex is sin" in a sermon on sunday morning. Is all this acceptable to you? It ins't to me.

I live in Chelsea, in Manhattan in NYC, arguably the "gayist" neighborhood in the world. I could not care less what other people do in their bedrooms, or that drag queens prance down 8th Ave. Just don't ask me to agree to institutionalizing it in law. I won't.

 

[gengwall]

My brother, perhaps you are willing to have homosexuals given special status so that our children can be indoctrinated in public schools, school we pay for, that homosexual sex is an acceptable thing to do with their bodies.

Not special status, equal status. This is still the land of the free.

Maybe it's acceptable to you that someday it will be considered "hate speech" for a pastor to say "homosexual sex is sin" in a sermon on sunday morning. Is all this acceptable to you? It ins't to me.

I'm not too worried about it.

I live in Chelsea, in Manhattan in NYC, arguably the "gayist" neighborhood in the world. I could not care less what other people do in their bedrooms, or that drag queens prance down 8th Ave. Just don't ask me to agree to institutionalizing it in law. I won't.

What they do in their bedrooms is, as you have just pointed out, irrelevant. Institutionalizing marriage between two people of the same sex is not about what they do in the bedroom. It is about how they split up property and how they file their taxes and how they make major purchases and how they are insured. No one is asking for a law that allows homosexuals to have sex because there is no need for such a law. They can go at it as much as they want. As for the drag queens, we are all allowed freedom of expression. Banning the drag queens is just as illegal as banning the pastor's sermon, which, frankly, is why I'm not worried about either.

 

[Brennin]

OK - show me how all the legally obtained and protected homosexual marriages in the world today are actually illegal and outside government protection.

Governments have granted homosexual couples the same rights, privileges, etc. as married heterosexual couples but those homosexuals unions still do not meet the definition of marriage (more like a parody thereof).

We live in a world of four sided figures. Your square is indeed a square. But in your context, rectangles don't exist. And a homosexual married couple is a rectangle. Both are four sided figures that we apply the word "marriage" to. They both can be the exact thing they are within the context that recognizes those individual forms, and still fit the more generic patern of "four-sided figure".

Many-sided, actually. In any event, gay unions are antithetical to marriage, just as squares are to circles.

 

[Brennin]

Well, I am a moral traditional fundimentalist Christian and I agree with you from a religious perspective. But the founders were very clear that our country's laws not be foudned on any particular religious perspective. Sorry, you don't get to make the rules all by yourself.

Actually, the "founders" were not of one voice on that issue. In any event, anti-sodomy laws were on the books before, during and after the Constitution was ratified. Thus, refusing to recognize gay "marriages" is perfectly constitutional.

 

[gengwall]

Governments have granted homosexual couples the same rights, privileges, etc. as married heterosexual couples but those homosexuals unions still do not meet the definition of marriage (more like a parody thereof).

Who's definition? We define terms in the law that apply to the law. If a law defines marriage as any two adults in a legally recognized union with each other, then that is the definition that applies. I really don't get how anyone presumes to impose their definition of anything on society as a whole. I understand that homosexual unions don't fit your definition of marriage but they certainly fit someone's. Yours has no greater value to society than anyone elses. (although it certainly has significant, universal value to the subset of society that adheres to a traditional Christian morality.)

 

[gengwall]

Actually, the "founders" were not of one voice on that issue. In any event, anti-sodomy laws were on the books before, during and after the Constitution was ratified. Thus, refusing to recognize gay "marriages" is perfectly constitutional.

I think you made my point on the one-voice thing.[EDIT - strike that. LOL. I got confused with another thread where I actually was making a "one voice" argument]

What makes you think that anti-sodomy laws are universally directed at gays? Or universally about anal sex? And were you out of the country when Lawrence v. Texas was decided?

What ever happened in the past is past. The courts have made it clear, and I agree it follows the founders vision for a free society, that what happens in the bedroom (with certain exceptions) is your business, not the governments. There is no constitutional basis for generically banning gays from having sexual relations.

 

[outlaw]

You can't compare it to interracial marriages. Interracial marriages were made a felony under the Wilson administration, which adamantly opposed women's suffrage until they had no hope (they being the Democrats). Comparing interracial laws made less than a hundred years ago and abolished more than half a century ago is nothig like homosexuality, which was prominent in both Greek and Roman culture, the classics of western culture.


And as far as your link goes, I was mostly thinking in western culture. I know only the basic need-to-knows about other cultures. I'm still trying to understand my own lol

Yeah you can compare them. Both involve the denial of rights based on an intrinsic factor rather than on merit, or more simply both are based on discrimination and prejudice.

 

[outlaw]

Race is not a choice, nor a sin. Homosexual sex acts are a choice and a sin.

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?

 

[outlaw]

This co-opting of the civil rights rhetoric by homosexual activists is a travesty of all that African-American have struggled for.

It is not a choice to be black. It is not a sin for a black man and woman to engage in sexual intercourse within marriage. It is not a choice to be white or black, nor is it a sin for a white person and a black person to engage in sexual intercourse within marriage.

Engaging in homosexual sex acts are a sin. Period. There is no such thing as "gay marriage". Marriage is one man, of any race, and one woman, of any race.

As much as the homosexual activist would like to couch this demand in terms of "civil rights", it is a deception.

"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

 

[outlaw]

I see no reason why society should be compelled to recognize gay partnerships.

I see no reason why society should be forced to accept discrimination.

 

[outlaw]

Actually, the "founders" were not of one voice on that issue. In any event, anti-sodomy laws were on the books before, during and after the Constitution was ratified. Thus, refusing to recognize gay "marriages" is perfectly constitutional.

Slavery was also “on the books before during and after the constitution was ratified.”

 

[knightlight72]

Yeah you can compare them. Both involve the denial of rights based on an intrinsic factor rather than on merit, or more simply both are based on discrimination and prejudice.

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.

An example, you do not give out your hard earned dollars to just anybody. You use discrimination in a reasonable manner. Certain expectations need be met first.

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.

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.

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

Consider two men, one rich and one poor, seeking to withdraw money from their bank. The rich man is denied because his account is empty. However, on closer inspection, a clerk discovers an error, corrects it, and releases the cash. Next in line, the poor man is denied for the same reason: insufficient
funds. “That’s the same thing you said about the last guy,“ he snaps. “Yes,” the clerk replies. “We made a mistake with his account, but not with yours. You’re broke.”

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.

 

[Brennin]

What makes you think that anti-sodomy laws are universally directed at gays? Or universally about anal sex?

I don't.

And were you out of the country when Lawrence v. Texas was decided?

No. It should be clear that I think Lawrence v. Texas was a bogus decision.

In any event, an "emerging awareness" is by definition not "deeply rooted in this Nation's history and tradition," as we have said "fundamental right" status requires. Constitutional entitlements do not spring into existence because some States choose to lessen or eliminate criminal sanctions on certain behavior. Much less do they spring into existence, as the Court seems to believe, because foreign nations decriminalize conduct. The Bowers majority opinion never relied on "values we share with a wider civilization," ante, at 16, but rather rejected the claimed right to sodomy on the ground that such a right was not " 'deeply rooted in this Nation's history and tradition,' " 478 U. S., at 193-194 (emphasis added). Bowers' rational-basis holding is likewise devoid of any reliance on the views of a "wider civilization," see id., at 196. The Court's discussion of these foreign views (ignoring, of course, the many countries that have retained criminal prohibitions on sodomy) is therefore meaningless dicta. Dangerous dicta, however, since "this Court ... should not impose foreign moods, fads, or fashions on Americans." Foster v. Florida, 537 U. S. 990, n. (2002) (Thomas, J., concurring in denial of certiorari).

...

What Texas has chosen to do is well within the range of traditional democratic action, and its hand should not be stayed through the invention of a brand-new "constitutional right" by a Court that is impatient of democratic change.

...

The matters appropriate for this Court's resolution are only three: Texas's prohibition of sodomy neither infringes a "fundamental right" (which the Court does not dispute), nor is unsupported by a rational relation to what the Constitution considers a legitimate state interest, nor denies the equal protection of the laws. I dissent.

What ever happened in the past is past. The courts have made it clear, and I agree it follows the founders vision for a free society, that what happens in the bedroom (with certain exceptions) is your business, not the governments. There is no constitutional basis for generically banning gays from having sexual relations.

...[T]o claim that a right to engage in [sodomy] is "deeply rooted in this Nation's history and tradition" or "implicit in the concept of ordered liberty" is, at best, facetious.