Bert and Ernie agenda

[Hyena Dandy]

To be blunt, yes, yes you are.

No, I don't think she is. She's not a hater, she's simply wrong. Its a common argument in a lot of communities that gay marriage will result in churches being forced to marry homosexuals against the church's will.

This is incorrect, but its not hatred. Its simply foolishness. Churches are allowed to choose to only marry members in good standing of their church, and they are free to determine what constitutes a member in good standing of their own accord.

Interracial marriage is a bad example. Its the more emotional example, the more striking example, and probably, in the grand scheme of things, the more accurate example. But it isn't the best example to use. A better example is that churches can refuse to perform inter-religious marriages. A rabbi is allowed to refuse to conduct a marriage between one of his parishioners and a Christian, and a pastor is allowed to refuse to marry a Christian to a Jew. Nevertheless, a Christian and a Jew can be married to each-other. They don't need to have their marriages downgraded simply because they don't share a religion.

Its equality, not marriage, that is the right. Marriage equality is a part of that. But the point gets confused because many people conflate religious marriage with civil marriage. 'We (the country) must allow homosexuals to marry' is twisted into 'We (the religion) must allow homosexuals to marry'.

PE is not hateful. She has been lied to, repeatedly and loudly, and by charismatic people. She has been persuaded to believe something untrue to be true. If it was true, I would be against gay marriage too. But it isn't, and in the United States, it never can be. In other countries, I don't know, maybe. But it can't be here, and never will be.

[Andara Bledin]

am I, am I really?

Yes. Yes you are.

I'm not saying that apathy isn't bad, it just isn't hate.

^-.-^

[Ginger Tea]

I don't even see religions place in alot of marriages these days, sure alot get married in churches, but howmany are actual church goers and how many just wanted an all the frills wedding?

Some people do get married purely for financial reasons, way back when, you could live in sin for years and not have the same rights as your married friends, yet you could be more devoted to your spouce and see alot of these weddings end in divorce.
Flip side is, you don't end your relationship in a divorce, untill they changed the UK definitian of commonlaw partnerships, you just went your seperate ways, now you can have a divorce like break up involving legaly splitting assets.

Without looking into it, in the UK, commonlaw parnerships between hetrosexual couples (or atleast one man one woman it could be something else too.) are close to a par with legaly recognised marriages, be them performed in a church, gretna green or some registry office with the cleaner as your witness.
Sharing of pensions and all that jazz.

All that people want, is to have the same legal rights that married people get.

[Mikkel]

All that people want, is to have the same legal rights that married people get.

And, I guess, if you ask PepperElf "Would you support that gay people can inherit their partners pension, after some kind of registration?" the answer would be yes.
Forcing churches to perform marriage doesn't make much sense anyway. "We now pronounce you husband and husband - and by the way, you'll burn in hell forever."
Really romantic .

[jackfaire]

Let's look at a different scenario. Let's say this was 1911, how would history judge me if I said "I don't support the right for women to vote... I don't think they are inferior, but church might be forced to recognize women in positions of authority if they are allowed to vote and that violates my religious beliefs, so I'm not going to do anything to help them."
How about saying it's 1961, how would history judge me if I were to say "I don't think negros are inferior, but if there is integration my church might be forced to let negros in our congregation, and that violates my church's rights, so I won't do anything to help them."

That would be your right to believe that and believing your church would be forced to change still has nothing to do with believing those groups are inferior.

And she is half right while the government wont' force the churches to change people will. As gay marriage becomes even more acceptable people in her faith will change.

Not do anything to help someone attain rights that you don't feel you want to support is different than you being out there actively campaigning against the person getting rights.

That will never happen though ( Especially in the US ). So thats not really a valid reason, honestly. I wouldn't say she's a Hater(tm), but her belief is unfounded. I've never seen any gay marriage activist push for forcing churchs to marry them. They simply want the same rights as heterosexual couples.

I know that her belief is one I would consider unfounded and I wasn't endorsing her belief as correct what I was doing was pointing out that she is entitled to her belief and that her belief essentially just leads her to stay out of the whole thing not supporting it but not fighting it either.

[smileyeagle1021]

Yes. Yes you are.

I'm not saying that apathy isn't bad, it just isn't hate.

^-.-^

that's very easy for you to say in liberal California.

Do you know what apathy has accomplished for those of us who live in the interior?
Well, let's see, the punishment for beating a gay man to within an inch of his life, causing long term hospitalization is 18 months in minimum security prison in Utah, if any prison sentence at all is given, if the hospitalization is for less time it is quite possible for the attacker to get no time at all.
There is a disproportionate number of LGBT people who are homeless because in the interior, it is perfectly legal to discriminate against LGBT persons in both housing and employment.
We haven't even bothered writing wills, because in the state of Utah inheritance agreements between gay couples are not binding, we could live together for half a century and have all the proper paperwork and all that needs to be done for it all to be undone when one of us dies is for a family member to say they didn't approve (we have zero probate rights in the interior).

As I've said, and I'll keep saying, we don't have the luxury of not caring anymore. Things are bad enough in the interior that you either are working to making the lives of LGBT persons equal, or you are helping those who are working to make sure we stay unequal...
Of course, I don't expect someone living in California to understand the realities of what life is like for the other half of the country.

Also, I'm a third generation activist, my grandma fought for women's suffrage, my mother fought racial discrimination in workplaces and in government (hell, for 5 years she was the government liaison for the Intertribal Council of Nevada, working to get the tribes what was due to them from the government). I was raised that silence is the same as agreement. If you stay silent against those who persecute, as far as I'm concerned, after being the third generation who has stood up against it, is the same as joining in the persecution. Don't like this painful truth that by your silence YOU have helped to beat gay men and YOU helped the legal system not punish the attackers, and YOU helped a storekeeper fire his gay employee because he was gay, and that YOU helped a landlord to evict a gay couple, then you need to talk to my grandma, because she's the one who taught me how to be a responsible citizen and how to speak out against wrong doing.

[Andara Bledin]

that's very easy for you to say in liberal California.

Anyone can say anything from anywhere. Words are cheap.

But no matter how much evil is allowed to happen because people are too wrapped up in their own problems to realize that human rights issues, even when they don't directly affect them this time, are their own problems, that does not make them haters. Self-absorbed, narcissistic, short-sighted, ignorant, lazy.... There are many things they may be, but hater is not the right label.

^-.-^

[Mongo Skruddgemire]

and of course i forgot... not supporting something means you're trying your damnnest to stop it and there must be something wrong with you... or so that's what i seem to be getting from this... that i must be a bad person because i don't see things the way others do.

I hope that I'm not the one that gave you that impression. When I stated my bit on Marriage I was simply stating that I did not feel that the Government was going to pressure churches to do that which they don't want to do.

Once the right for Marriage to be for any two legal and consenting adults, the churches can make the decision to marry or not to marry as they see fit.

As I stated, I ran afoul of that for being in love with someone who was not a traditional Christian. My church refused us the rite and we had to go elsewhere.

I'm sure that something similar will happen if/when marriage equality becomes universally recognized in the whole of the US. Gays will leave certain churches to find ones more tolerant and the intolerant will find churches more in line with their way of thinking.

am i right? not supporting the agenda means i'm a hater right?

Not in my eyes. I never held truck with the whole "If you ain't with us, you're against us" bullshit. I don't support abortion but I'm still pro-choice. I support gun control, but I still believe that everyone should have the right to carry firearms.

It is possible to believe as you do. I have a friend who comes out and says publicly that he is uncomfortable around homosexuals. That he is openly and freely admits to his homophobia. He really does have a problem with it.

But he has also said that he'll just go out of his way to avoid them. He doesn't support marriage equality, but he admits that it it happens and they aren't getting anything more than a straight couple gets when they get married, he'll just grin and bear it. To his mind it's creepy, it's icky, but it would be fair to all and as such he doesn't want to hear about it but will just put on his blinders and carry on in life.

So it is possible to not like something, to not support something, yet at the same time not be directly opposed and militantly on the front-lines to combat something.

[RecoveringKinkoid]

It's my opinion that there are two different things being debated here, and every time this conversation comes up, that is the case.

The two different things are "church marriages" and "giving gay people the same rights any citizen would have." Gay people, straight people, ANYONE, really, ought to be able to have a domestic contract with whoever they choose. They should be able to go down to the magistrate and get a marriage contract that give them all the good and bad that any married couple would have in order to stabilize their family. And their family should be whoever their family is, if that makes sense.

Now, the churches are a different matter. We can't force them to do anything. If they want to discriminate, fine. Those of us who are not okay with that will find a church that does not discriminate. If enough people do that, the discriminating churches will flounder. But that's not the same thing, in my opinion, as denying citizens their basic civil rights.

Personally, I think what muddies the issue is that church policy is tied up in civil rights, and it should not be. We're still trying to shoehorn law that applies to the entire population into religious beliefs (and narrow ones at that) and that is wrong.

Non Christians get married all the time. Atheists marry. Saying that gays can't marry because it might change the way some churches operate makes no sense to me.

If gay Christians want to marry, and their church insists on treated them like they're inferior, they need to find a church that doesn't. Personally, everyone in that church ought to find another church, but that's just me.

[Ginger Tea]

Non Christians get married all the time. Atheists marry. Saying that gays can't marry because it might change the way some churches operate makes no sense to me.

And some get a nice big church wedding because they want a nice big church wedding, never to set foot in that or any church again for the rest of their lives, barring other weddings.
Some churches are OK with this, others are not. Like I said in another post, I no longer see the two things together, chruch weddings are there for those that want the frills of a big wedding regardless of how deep their religious convictions are, being married in your town hall with the cleaner as your witness doesn't make you marriage any less legal than a full church and a gown that could end world debt.

[Gravekeeper]

And she is half right while the government wont' force the churches to change people will. As gay marriage becomes even more acceptable people in her faith will change.

But that's honestly worse as that would mean actively opposing acceptance instead of simply being apathetic.

[jackfaire]

But that's honestly worse as that would mean actively opposing acceptance instead of simply being apathetic.

Why because she is choosing not to vote yes?

Let's take my earlier example of a sports team wanting to use my tax dollars to build a stadium in my town.

Now I don't want to vote yes for two reasons the first being that it means raising my taxes for something that I have no interest in. The second being that I feel it will make traffic worse in that part of town and it's an area I go a lot.

My refusing to agree to it is not active opposition. It is my actively not supporting it. I am not trying to stop it but I don't want it to succeed.

However if I am at the site protesting then I have become Active Opposition.

Her personal beliefs and feelings on the subject are known to us but she is not out, to the best of my knowledge, at rallys and protests adding her voice to ensuring gay marriage rights are never granted.

Thus she is not actively opposing anything.

[HYHYBT]

...chruch weddings are there for those that want the frills of a big wedding regardless of how deep their religious convictions are...

Not quite on-topic, but I had an interesting experience a couple months ago. "Church wedding" and "big wedding" don't automatically go together. The last time I went to an Episcopal church, for the regular Sunday morning service, I noticed the crowd was bigger than usual and someone had set up a camera in the back. The reason turned out to be that the regular Sunday morning service that day was to include a wedding. No special decorations, no big poofy dress, not even a separate time for it, just thrown right in there between, I think, the sermon and communion, with, I think (though I didn't stay) the regular coffee and such they always have in the parlor after the service serving as a reception.

[RecoveringKinkoid]

Yep, we had one of those a couple weeks ago. It was the lowest key wedding I've ever been to.

And we had coffee after, too.

[Hyena Dandy]

I think, Smiley, Andara and I agree with you that opposing gay marriage is HARMFUL. It is not, however HATEFUL. It is no less damaging, but it doesn't have the same motive.