I feel that this issue of getting Gay people the same rights everyone is entitled to in the US is a symptom of the wider issue of religion. I really believe religion vs rational is finally coming to a head all over the world and is particularly interesting in America which has had the number of Atheists dramatically rising in recent times.

Promote rational thought and you kill so many birds with that stone.

Ultimately, I think that the rights of the individual trump the rights of the church. An individual may choose to follow the teachings of a particular religion, but no religion should impose their views on others.

By concessions, I mainly meant treating a married (civil union-style) gay couple as a single family unit. This would probably only really matter for mundane issues such as dues payment (paying a family rate instead of two single rates).

Oh, and my last post should have read: “If you keep the word Marriage strictly for religions….”

Upon looking over my last post, I think we really need some neutral word to differentiate between state-level marriage and religious-level marriage. Civil Unions work for state-level marriage, but I wouldn’t want to reserve “marriage” for religious-level marriage. As I stated previously, this would leave atheist couples “unmarried.

Perhaps we could use “holy matrimony” for religious-level marriage. (I don’t think any atheist couple will desire “holy matrimony.”) So you could have a gay couple, atheist couple, Christian couple, and Jewish couple all of whom are married. The first two are married via civil union. The last two are married via holy matrimony.

Churches would need to recognize that the married via civil union couples are indeed married, but they don’t have to grant a married via holy matrimony status on them. (Churches would even be free to regard another religion’s holy matrimony as inferior in status to their own. They might not want to state this too publicly though.)

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If you keep the work Marriage strictly for religions, would that mean that an atheist couple (even if it was a man and a woman) would be unable to get “married?” Also, would there be any limits on which religions were allowed to use the term Marriage? Could two people from the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster ( http://www.venganza.org/ ) get married or would they need civil unions?

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I guess my only follow-up comment/question is why should churches be the ones to have to make a concession? Churches have rights too. I guess the question that prompts is whose rights are more important? The rights of the individual or the rights of the church?

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I think it would make matters clearer if the government aspects of marriage were called one thing (”civil union” perhaps) and the religious aspects were called another. So any two consenting, unmarried, unrelated (no brothers-sisters) adults could walk into the town clerk’s office and get a civil union. They could even call it a marriage. (If the term “marriage” was strictly for the religious, what would an atheist couple be?) In some small sense, churches would need to regard these people as being married (possibly only being limited to dues collection), however, no church would be legally obligated to host the wedding.

Yes, this would make churches need to make some concessions and it would mean government making laws that affect religion. While I’m usually reluctant to have government interfering in religious affairs (and vice versa), I would have no problem with this so long as the rules weren’t targeted towards or against a specific religion. (i.e. No, “all marriages are valid so long as they acknowledge Jesus as the savior” type laws.)

If gay couples were given legal civil union rights on par with straight couples, I think that inevitably, some churches/temples would accept them and some would reject them. Over time, people would cease to regard this as an issue (similar to marriage between people of differing races) and the churches/temples would adjust accordingly. Eventually, you would be hard pressed to find any that thought of gay civil unions as a big deal at all.

John Frum earlier had said the basis of support for sole heterosexual marriage is for those 50 and above. I disagree I’m strongly for Prop 8 under it’s current standing.

This is what I’d like keep marriage (or at least the word) exclusively for religions. Gay people aren’t going to change the Christian church, it’ll seriously be a cold day in hell (figuratively and literally). The word Civil Union should be extended to anyone (gay or straight) and that way you get to get married have all the same rights etc. The Church doesn’t get scared about their rights being intruded upon.

As for the comment I made about the Churches definition of marriage, I was just relating your comment back to the original post. (and BTW, adultery comes into the picture when you are talking about rights with power of attorney. Even though adultery and homsexuality are not similar in social definition, in the context of power of attorney they are identical).

“Either way like I said im speaking from a logical legal/ financial angle here. Call me whatever you want. In my heart im married. Isn’ that whats really important?”

If it’s your own personal opinion that you are seeking, then Yes, that is all that is important. However, if you are, as you are desiring, to have the legal right to a tax-free inheritance for your partner, your opinion means a lot less than the legal definition of “marriage” and “civil union.” So in the context in which you are rationally arguing, the government’s opinion holds more weight. Just because you are married “in [your] heart” does not mean that you can have the same rights as legally married couples. (I am speaking of generalities because I know nothing of your specific situation). I have known a lot of people who are married “in [their] heart” but since their marriage is not recognized by their country’s government, they have no rights other than what a non-blood related friend would have.

“Marriage should have been called civil unions in the first place. By allowing this no one is hurt. Your marriage remains protected and my rights remain protected. All in all I blame the government for making this horrible mistake in the first place. Because church and state were always meant to be seperate.”

You can’t have it both ways. You can’t have marriage and civil unions be the same thing while crying that church and state must be separate. If you combine the definition of civil union and marriage then you are combining the role of the church and the state. What can the church do to promote marriage within the ranks of their membership if they are forced (by the state–meaning government) to recognize all civil unions? If the possibility of marriage is taken away from churches and replaced with civil unions, what’s to stop the government from interfering with that church’s right to prescribe marriage according to their own doctrine? The churches have every right to preserve their ability to practice their religion as they see fit. If you read the Bill of Rights and the Constitution, there is nothing in there prohibiting religion from interfering with government, but only from government interfering with religion.

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If I wanted to go ahead and do my research and find myself a church that would be willing to marry my partner and I, I doubt that I would have a problem. Calling myself married is a spiritual belief, an oath that I take in the eyes of god, not through the eyes of men like you. I do not require you or anyone else to determine if I am actually married or not. The legal standpoint im trying to point out is how my property, insurance, savings, and work that I have put into building my family can be wiped away with taxes and such. I am quite sure you would see my point if you and your wife were unable to get “married” or “civil unioned”. Either way like I said im speaking from a logical legal/ financial angle here. Call me whatever you want. In my heart im married. Isn’ that whats really important?

I do see your point that once the can is opened that will give way to completly changing whats important to a majority of christians. However, I dont think marriage should have been called marriage in the eyes of the law anyhow. Like I said in my previouse post, marriage is not a legal thing its a ceremony where civil unions are a legal document allowing extended rights. Marriage should have been called civil unions in the first place. By allowing this no one is hurt. Your marriage remains protected and my rights remain protected. All in all I blame the government for making this horrible mistake in the first place. Because church and state were always meant to be seperate.

You are right that power of attorney does not grant the same rights as a marriage and/or civil union (for purposes of this post, we’ll consider marriage & civil union separately). Power of attorney basically only gives decision-making power to another person that is not legally the next-in-line. Given that the government has not recognized same-sex unions in the same way as marriages or civil unions, it is obvious why you wouldn’t have the same rights. It’s the same situation as a man having an extra-marital affair with another woman and then leaving all of his inheritance to his lover and not his wife. I agree that that puts people on separate grounds.

The LDS Church opposes this campaign precisely because it is a question of separation of church and state. If the government is given the ability to define marriage as something different than one woman and one man, then eventually, churches will be forced to comply with the government’s definition of marriage based on discrimination. Judicial precedence sides with anti-discrimination laws about virtually every time. Churches are fighting against a future threat to their right that “congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof” (that’s paraphrased, but the meaning is there).

Civil unions, which the LDS Church supports bytheway (I don’t know about the other religious institutions that campaigned against Prop 8), provide a way around that legal obstacle of “next-of-kin.” They offer couples the legal justification to be considered a “married” couple. A lot of cities already recognize civil unions (and in my opinion, that’s the way that the gay rights movement will be heading). Marriage, if it is indeed just a spiritual ceremony, then why shouldn’t churches have the right to determine how that is defined? If state should truly separate from church, then government needs to affirm churches’ rights to define “marriage” as a spiritual committment and maintain “civil union” as the legal binding between two people that want to be married.

The problem is that from what I can see, the gay rights movement will not stop at only civil unions. They are the ones that want to either: 1) force churches to accept civil unions in their marriage ceremonies, or 2) combine the meaning of civil union and marriage and move marrige from a spiritual ceremony to a legal definition. The legal committment that civil unions bring allows for the type of shared rights that a marriage committment brings. The problem is that this creates a “separate but equal” argument for proponents of the gays rights movement, thus bringing anti-discrimination into the fray.

Any way you look at it, it’s a complicated matter and the way things are going, either side is not going to settle for anything less than a full victory.

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