I bet George W. wishes he'd thought to say that after ducking.

@MINK
wow. my eyes have been opened! all i need was you to claim that those two verses are contradictory without explanation, and i'm convinced! well done, mate, well done.

@MINK
I see your Matthew 6:5-6 and i'll raise you a Matt. 5:16

"In the same way, let your light shine before people in such a way that they will see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven."

Now, was i praying in public for show or was i letting people see some of the good works that God has inspired me to do?

And again, you like so many christians and non-christians, fundamentally misread the Bible by thinking that the external action is the point. No, the external actions are merely inconclusive evidence of internal motivations. This is why God alone is judge, we can only see the surface, but God sees the heart. Jesus was not criticizing public prayer; he was criticizing those who prayed publicly from selfish, prideful motivations.

@chilaxe
I also despise it when christians try to legislate based on de-contextualized scripture as well. Actually, i don't particularly like it when they try to legislate based on scripture at all. Legislation can only deal with surface actions, not the heart of people. As such, it is ABSOLUTELY AND COMPLETELY IMPOSSIBLE TO PROPERLY LEGISLATE ANY MORALITY. Attempts to do so are inefficient, idiotic, and counter-productive. Such things just encourage people to stay on the surface level and ignore the needed change of heart.

I d>> ^HollywoodBob:
^ There's a lot of us that think that's the best solution. Just get rid of marriage as a legal construct, and you solve the "problem". Oh except for that pesky little fact that semantics are just a smokescreen for the underlying bigotry that is the root of the entire debate.


True, but arguing about how the government should define marriage seems unlikely to root out the bigotry or speed the process of getting homosexual couples the civil rights afforded by civil unions. In fact, it feels to me like it's slowing that process down and wasting a lot of energy.

Yeah, i really thought i wouldn't like that at all. But i did.

I'm a Christian who celebrates Advent. I worship Jesus in the Advent season by giving extra to those needier than i (most going to http://water.cc, but some also to feed Rwandan kids and some to a local single mother of 5 through the Something Wonderful program), by reading and meditating about Christ's coming to earth as a man, and by doing these things communally with my friends and family. I think those are very much the kind of ways God wants to be worshipped.

I also happen to be an American who celebrates christmas. I buy and decorate a tree, put lights on my house, and enjoy stories of Rudolph, Frosty, Santa, and Mr. Hanky the christmas poo. I do not do these things as worship to my God; i do them as fun family traditions that brighten up some of the darkest and coldest weeks of the year. God doesn't want us to worship him as pagans worshipped their gods, but that doesn't mean we can't do those same things for other reasons.

Meditate on Matthew 5 and Romans 13 for some better explanations of this than mine. Just please don't go around picking out de-contextualized Old Testament verses and thinking you know more about it, it's hard enough to listen to the Christians that do this. I don't need athiests doing it too, thanks.

http://adventconspiracy.org
http://rethinkingchristmas.com

>> ^Grimm:
>> ^nadabu:
You didn't quite get it. Definitions can only be "exclusive" when they are laid down by an authority over people being included and excluded. Again, this only matters because the government is defining this. Otherwise, we can all just keep our own definitions.


...
I get the feeling you are like many people who oppose gay marriage. As long as the govt defined it and enforced it the way you agree with you didn't have a problem with it. But your starting to see the writing on the wall. That it's a matter of time before things get reversed and the govt defines it and enforces it in a way you do not agree with. So now is the time to get govt out of the "marriage" business...you'll even say "it never should have been involved in it" yet people like you never really had a problem with the way it used to be...it's only what you see coming that truly bothers you.
So now you want to dump over the game board and go home. Let's get govt out of it and leave "marriage" to it's rightful owner...religion.


Wrong. I started getting pissy about the government's involvement in defining marriage and Christian capitulation to that when my friend's pastor wouldn't marry him until he got the legal papers in order. That was the year 2000. Long before Prop 8 or even Oregon's version of it 4 years ago. I was 20 then, and only just beginning to have friends get married at all and learn about such things. Pretty damn unlikely that i'd have gotten pissy about it any earlier. So, no, gay marriage was not at all what prompted this thinking.

And even if you were right about the cause of this thinking, i still don't feel you're acknowledging the core of it. It is that the government doesn't have any business defining or officiating marriage. So long as the government does, then people are not really free to define it themselves, religious or otherwise. And no, religion does not own the word "marriage". Don't be stupid.

You ARE great! You ARE amazing! You ARE loved! Rock on.

>> ^Psychologic:
So it's a choice between equal rights and changing the meaning of a word. Hmm, equal rights vs a word... hmmm... yea, that's a tough one...


Uh... you don't get it either. It's also a violation of rights to go around forcing religious people to change their definition of marriage, which is sacred to them. This is why the government has no right and no business defining or officiating marriage in the first place.

@entr0py
What Salt Lake City is doing sounds like the perfect start! That's the way it should be done. Leave marriage to those who care about the word, and have the government focus on the *practical* aspects.

>> ^Grimm:
>> ^nadabu:
I'd still love it if someone could just lay out for me a good reason why marriage is or ever should be the government's business.

I agree with you on this point....but can you also lay out for me a good reason why the word marriage should be exclusively defined for all people by religion?
It just seems silly that it has all come down to an argument of semantics. The gays can have the same rights as a married couple just as long as they don't use the word "married". That by letting them use the same word it somehow gives them power over others and their own beliefs of what marriage is.


You didn't quite get it. Definitions can only be "exclusive" when they are laid down by an authority over people being included and excluded. Again, this only matters because the government is defining this. Otherwise, we can all just keep our own definitions.

I'd still love it if someone could just lay out for me a good reason why marriage is or ever should be the government's business. I'm not about to get into an argument of what the government should define as marriage until i'm convinced that the government should be defining marriage. I see all these people getting pissy (and often downright immature) about what the government's definition of marriage is, as if everyone assumes it is a natural function of government. I don't share that assumption, sorry.

For us Bible-believing folks, God set up marriage long before any government was around, why do we tolerate the government claiming any authority over it? I have a friend whose pastor refused to marry them until they got their legal papers in order. WTF? Who was that guy really worshipping when he did that?

For those who don't dig the Bible, why do you care what the government calls this or that relationship? Why get pissy about the word "marriage"? Fight for your civil liberties. Fight for tax equality and visitation rights and all those practical deals. Aren't those what really matters? Why create so much heat and noise about a freaking religious label? Are you just trying to get a rise out of the people like my friend's pastor? What's the point?

Seriously, i'm all for kicking the government's ass out of the marriage business. If they want to recognize/register/whatever domestic partnerships for financial/legal purposes, then that's all they should do. It is not "the man's" business to assign the label marriage, and it never was.

That was awesome!!

I've seen these. I think most are already on the sift, just with different music.

We're not worthy! We're not worthy!

Just say no.