Then somebody please stop comparing to hetero fornicators.
I believe everyone should have equal rights, even as our founding fathers said: every person is born with certain unalienable rights. If gay marriage were "just" a way to rectify this situation I could agree with it, but it is not this. It works it's way into church sanctity, our general society, and overlapping cultures with some ugly consequences.
Christians accept everyone as a human being in need of God's redemption, and this includes gay people. We do not want anyone to go to a place called hell, because we DO love them. On the otherhand we believe the act of gay sex is morally wrong. What two consenting people do behind closed doors affects all of us. That's why we have an HIV/AIDS epidemic.
I have 3 questions for you:
1) Why does it take marriage to achieve equal protection?
2) Why is marriage left out of the US constitution?
3) Why don't singles have the same civil rights as married people -- aren't we ALL born with the same rights?
As I've already said and agree to -- religion does not hold a monopoly on marriage and neither is it a civil right. There are atheistic countries with no civil rights whatsoever that continue to procreate through marriage.
You have the right to marry someone of the opposite sex. I can't say it's necessairly a civil right, but you do have the right to it. Marriage existed before the US Constitution and it's always worked as a man and a woman. You want to redefine what marriage is, and in the end it will mean nothing just like the countries that already have gay marriage. Marriage is becoming irrelevant in those countries. When marriage includes everything it means nothing, and that's what we are finding.
Who is to say three people can't marry each other? Who is to say a brother and sister can't marry? Who is to say the age of legal consent can't be lowered so adults marry children? This is a slippery slope with a an abysmal bottom.
Who has been comparing gay people to heterosexual "fornicators?" I must have missed this argument. I see no comparison. Being gay is simply who some people are. "Fornication" is what some people do. Being and doing are not the same kinds of categories.
There is no way that same-sex marriage affects what churches do internally unless the churches decide to change what they do. That's entirely up to them. Same-sex marriage may affect what churches can do with public funds in the public arena, but it does not affect what churches do or preach internally unless churches decide to let it affect them.
Not all Christians believe that "gay sex" is morally wrong. You do not speak for all Christians, just a subset of Christians. And while I appreciate your concern for other people's salvation, I simply disagree with you that people will not be saved because they marry someone of the same sex. We'll just have to agree to disagree about this matter, I guess.
To deny gay people the legal right to marry our spouses is likely only to encourage the HIV epidemic. Folks would deny gay people the institution of marriage within which to express intimacy and deep love. To deny gay people the right to marry our spouses does nothing but encourage sex outside of marriage, by putting marriage out of bounds for us. Some Christians tell heterosexuals, "You should not have sexual relations outside of marriage." They tell gay people, "You should not have sex at all, and you cannot get married." The result is that gay people have sex outside marriage, which certainly does not help prevent the spread of STDs.
It's a disingenuous argument to claim that gay people can marry someone of the opposite sex. You yourself have written about marrying for love. Why, then, would you tell gay people that we have the right to marry someone we don't love? Why would you want to promote marriages based not on love, which are sham marriages? That's like my telling you that you can have the right to marry your horse, but not the person you love. The right to marry your horse is no right at all.
The equal right to marry IS equal protection of the laws. Civil marriage in the United States is a legal institution. To be excluded from this legal institution simply because some people don't like whom we love is the denial of the equal protection of the laws. Marriage is not just a means to the equal protection of the laws; because marriage is a legal institution, having the right to marry is itself having the equal protection of the laws.
Marriage is left out of the constitution because marriage, like voting, has traditionally been governed by the states, not by the federal government. This has gradually changed over time to some extent. This is a long discussion involving constitutional law and history, and that discussion is probably not worth having here.
Marriage is a right in the United States because the Supreme Court has declared that it is a right. Marriage is also listed as a human right in the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Heterosexual singles DO have the same rights as married people. Heterosexual singles have the right to get married to the person they love. Gay singles do not have that right in most states. Marriage is not a means to achieving equal rights; marriage as a legal institution is itself a right. And the right to marry is denied to a class of people because of animus against that group of people and because of some people's religious beliefs.
As for the "slippery slope" argument, there is no evidence that legalizing same-sex marriage, any more than legalizing inter-racial marriage or legalizing cousin marriage in some states, has or will lead to marriages between adults and children or will lead to polygamy. Each legal change has to be and will be evaluated on its own merits. There is a compelling state interest in denying adults the chance to marry children; it is for the protection of the children. There is no such compelling interest, nor even a rational basis, for states to prevent consenting adults who happen to be of the same sex from marrying each other. Btw, in some states, first cousins can legally marry.
Marriage will never mean "everything." But the right to marry should extend to everyone who is an adult. The legalization of same-sex marriage in Massachusetts and now in California have not changed the meaning of marriage at all. They have simply extended the right to marry legally to people who were previously excluded without a rational basis for the exclusion.
If marriage is "becoming irrelevant" in some countries, it is not because those countries have made same-sex marriage legal. If marriage has become "irrelevant" in those countries, it started happening long before same-sex couples began to marry. Don't blame gay peolpe for heterosexual marriages becoming "irrelevant," if in fact they are. Gay people will not serve as your scapegoats.
Btw, marriage has not always "worked as a man and a woman." If you read the Bible, you find many examples of polygamy. And the argument that marriage has "worked" is belied by your own argument that in some countries, as you claim, marriage is "becoming irrelevant." If marriage is "becoming irrelevant," then it hasn't "always worked," has it? You seem to be suggesting in your own post that heterosexual marriage no longer works.
It seems to be gay people who believe most strongly in marriage, which is why we are working so hard for the right to get married.
. Did you have a nice time away?
