| theprof00 said: Wonderfully written post. Well done. I see I let my environment get in the way. I'm American. Over here, as I can probably safely assume, a very vocal group of the religious persecute the nonreligious, while siultaneously claiming to be persecuted. I don't blame religions in general, I have only really been commenting on my own environment. I'm sorry if there was some confusion.
And you're right. Out of all the Abrahamic religions, Catholicism is probably the most understanding and modern. To address your point on matrimony, the current state laws provide for benefits to marriages. However, the the vocal religious have taken up ownership of the word marriage. Gay peoples don't want to impose on the sacrament of marriage. They only want to be defined as the secular version of the word marriage, as legally married. The state doesn't actually recognize the sacrament, afterall. People who get married in a church still need to file a marriage certificate at a court, otherwise the state won't recognize it. Hell, they don't even care if your priest is a horse with wooden legs. I don't know if you udnerstand my point or not, so allow me to reiterate. Religious marriage is simply not the same word as state marriage, yet the religious claim that gay marriage (state) intrudes upon religious marriage. And when we look at it, hey, cmon, we know the religious aren't stupid. They can understand that it's a word with multiple meanings... so instead, we regard it as hate. |
I`m not from the states so i don´t know the reality of that part of the world. But i believe you and understand you.
I do understand the difference between state marriage and religious marriage. I too believe that in their essence they are different. Speaking for myself, i would skip the civil marriage as i see no "real" value of it.
The reason why religion have taken ownership of the word marriage is because how they see what that word stands for, or in other words what`s a good marriage and a bad (sin) marriage.
The church knows that marriage exists for a long time, even before Christianism. The thing is, the Church has a view on what conditions should marriage, unions, relationships, should exist: between man and a woman.
In other words, whatever the love relationship is, or what form it should take, for the Church and other religions, it will only, in a not sinful way, apply to man-woman.
I know that this isn`t what many gay people want to hear, but, at least know that it`s nothing personnal.
