I saw the healthy 7-year-old son of a friend die of the flu 8 years ago. My family always gets flu shots. I'd have to vote "get the shot"

That's part of my point ;) Really, if your church married you, and you hadn't signed the paper yet, you wouldn't actually be married in the sight of your god? If you get married in a temple, you're not doing it for "religious reasons only?" You can be married anywhere. The temple wedding IS for religious reasons. You would never expect heterosexuals to agree to only religious unions, where their god and community recognize their marriage (and therefore make it licit in their eyes and children "legitimate") but never let them have legal standing. People want the secular benefits of marriage. Which is exactly why gay people want to be married. Sure, a religious blessing is nice, and the LDS temple ceremony is of utmost importance to Mormons, but people want the legal marriage, which is why you sign the papers. A religious marriage does not a legal marriage make, no, you're right, but do religious people necessarily require a "secular authority" to make them truly married? (edited to add: Oh! This surprises me! You said that your Church doesn't recognize your marriage if the state doesn't. Wow! I didn't know this. I know some people who consider themselves married, through handfasting and other religious means, who choose not to be part of the state government. They consider themselves married, but they don't demand legal recognition. So, I suppose you have me there.) In other words, when I said my vows with my husband before God, were we not married, even before we signed the legal papers? We were married religiously, but not legally. Not so in your case? I believed us to be married in my religion before we signed the paper. We were married religiously and then legally. I believed my faith to have primacy over the religious part of my marriage. It's the state that has primacy over your marriage? Your not married religiously until the state says you are? That's interesting! I didn't say that people who got married in a church didn't want it legally recognized, but we could surely divide the two. You get married legally, so you're married in the eyes of the state, then you can have whatever religious ritual you want on top, if you so desire. Ah, and you've hit the nail on the head, the religious folks DO want legal standing, not just their religious standing. That's what gays are asking for. Legal. It should not be denied them as legal US citizens. Let the church stop being an arm of the state in giving legal status to marriage, and there's no confusion. I'm not saying "religious" marriages should give legal standing. Quite the opposite :)

In some Christian cultures, couples could come together, set up home, have sex, start families before the marriage. If a minister could come only several times a year, they were basically assumed married, took on all manner of marital activity, but then eventually, the actual religious magic got there. It wasn't considered sin by the community. . . it was a perfectly Christian thing to do. . . .

I tear up every time I see this image--the first two women to be married to one another in NY. 85 and 77 years old. One is in a wheelchair. They've been together for over 20 years. They're just holding each other outside of the court house. You can see their emotion and how happy they are. They have such joy. http://articles.nydailynews.com/2011-07-24/local/29831328_1_lesbian-couples-marriage-in-new-york-gay-marriage

Yes, it is Christian Scripture too. That's fine. Responding to your comment: I don't see where Eliana said people could only quote from the OT, or that hers was the only correct version. (She said her version was the Jewish version, and other were a more Christian rendering). Can you explain how Eliana sharing her version was argumentative and offensive? It appeared that she was sharing her perspective on her scriptures. I'll go back and look, maybe I missed it. But, if you don't have a problem with a non-LDS Christian pointing out a discrepancy between the Bible and the Book of Mormon on a Mormon inspired thread, I don't see why you have one here.

I don't think Eliana is saying that Christians shouldn't reply, or that it was not addressed to Christians. She's explaining that the original interpretations of HER scriptures differs from what people of a different religion are saying about her scriptures (although they use the same scriptures). If you have to go to another person's religious scriptures to explain your position, it's only fair that the original faith position has a say too, explaining where the two disagree. The Christian version of the Jewish Scriptures shouldn't be the only one that counts, Eliana made it clear that she was Jewish and wasn't trying to pass off her version as Christian.

This is an interesting take:) It reminds me of Lewis's The Great Divorce a bit. It also makes me wonder about the concept of Hell in EO (I know very, very little about EO). I don't actually hate gods. I just don't believe it any of them. I don't hate Jehovah any more than I hate Atik or Elsh. In my background, I'm going to hell. Do atheists not go to hell in EO? After all, I believe in my husband, who I can feel, touch, see, hear, make breakfast for, and who can speak so everyone hears him say the same thing, and who everyone who knows him can identify him clearly, etc, and he says "I love you," to me. For these reasons and others I believe my husband exists. If a god could present itself to me in the same way in and say "I love you!" in that way, I'd believe. Would that get me out of hell? :) Don't mean to hijack, PM me if you like! That just tickled me :)

I really appreciate hearing this. I think I had to hear this about a dozen times before understanding it. I get long here. . . I’m sorry. When I was a Christian, since I believed in the truth of my religion, and I felt that we had the Jewish scripture and that the Jewish teachings and they melded perfectly with my Christian teaching. However, I finally realized what my Jewish friends were saying about me having a different understanding when I put it into my own context. My faith was not the same as theirs. My belief—about their beliefs—were wrong. I’m going to try to make an analogy that I created in my head to help me understand. So, say there’s a new religion in a thousand years. These people have new rituals and different beliefs than Christians, but claimed theirs was actually what Christianity meant and that their religion was the fulfillment of the Christian belief. So, the New Religionists look like this: Maybe they would all sell all of their earthly goods and live communally and say this was the way the true God-worshippers were to live, and that the Church in the Book of Acts showed us that, but we couldn’t recognize it until the right time. Or that original Christians had misunderstood the concept of the Holy Spirit (as the Jews supposedly did the Messiah) and that the Holy Spirit was actually a living physical being from another planet, who has cloned offspring that inside of them and takes over their whole lives and beings, and speaks to them audibly in their heads. Or that the original Christians simply refused to believe the truths revealed by the New Religion because they really didn’t understand their Christian faith. If a New Religionist were to say this, Christians would say—why, this is a completely different religion. This does not come from us. This is not our faith! Here is the one that really got me. According to the prevailing Jewish understanding, of the Messiah, thoughtout history. The Messiah does not die. He is not sacrificed! It is not even possible! Cannot happen. Is not sacrificed. It doesn’t even go with the religion’s understanding of anything. This would be similar to the New Religion saying, “Jesus, who is married to the Whore of Babylon, comes to reign over the world, and makes the non-believers his chosen people because it was only those who doubted who were the only ones truly intellectually faithful. Christians would say, “That’s not Christianity!†That can’t even be! That helped me to understand what my Jewish friends were saying. And. . . what if this New Religions belief became one of the most popular in the world, and had the dominant say about what the Christians (now a stark minority of the population, as Jews are today) actually believed? The New Religions voice was the one who got to say what original Christians actually believed? It was just interesting. It’s not a perfect analogy, and I’m not trying to do anything here except share something about my own experience in recognizing the Christian understanding I had of scripture and Judaism than actual Jewish people had of their own Scriptures and cultural foundations. I didn’t get to remake their entire religion because my religion co-opted it, redefined it, and nearly wiped it off the planet. Eliana, you don’t have to feel obliged to reply, but if you feel my analogy is incorrect, please let me know, and I’ll fix it or remove it. I don’t want to step on toes if I’ve wrongly understood some of the Jewish objections to Christianity, and if I can improve my understanding, I’d love to.

Gotcha! :lol: I'm getting slap-happy. g'night!

Hi, Shawna. I don't know if this was in response to me. If it was, I'm not making my case well. (I'm tired. It's a bad excuse, and I really need to leave this thread. I meant to, but I needed to reply to HistoryMom because I may have invoked her name erroneously. :) IMHO The word "marriage" should be for all legal unions, Christian, Jewish, Atheist (including me), etc. If Christian (I'm sure some other religious people too, but I've only heard from Christians on this point, I believe) people want to distinguish their religious union as different from "a legal union that also includes gays" the onus should be upon them to create their own word, meaningful to their religion--rather than taking the word "marriage" for their own and requiring everyone else to create a new word.

I agree with what you're saying here. I've no beef with this. I may have gotten you mixed up with someone else. Someone was saying that the word "marriage" should be saved for the "Christian" definition of man/woman marriage, and that some other word used for the other unions--because "marriage" meant "God's definition of 'marriage'." (Though I doubt their god spoke in English when it "created" marriage anyway.) It was a side argument it seemed. A semantic one. "What to call it" was the crux of the argument. Not arguing about the unions so much, as about what name they should bear. I was just responding that I thought the word "marriage" should be used for all legal joinings because that's how it's used today, by various English speaking cultures, regardless of the religion, race, or number of people involved, but different religions could choose a word that represented their religious unions, if it were that important to them to make a distinction between a civil union and their religious union--if they didn't want to accept the word "marriage" for both their opposite-sex union and a same-sex union. It made more sense to me than for only Christians to take over the word "marriage" and make everyone else pick a new word. Language just doesn't evolve in that way. Not a big deal. Not at all. Just word choice. And as a half-arsed linguist, one that interested me. :) Sorry if I was unclear. If it was not you, I do excuse myself.

I'd certainly be willing to throw in with you on a "common good" ancient-Greek -style conversation regarding the legitimacy of homosexual marriage. :) (I agree that the government should have a say in who should be married, actually. And for "the common good". But included in my belief on the common good is that this can easily include marriage for homosexuals, which, perhaps, is the only real point where you and I differ.) But. . .later. :)

Ok, thinking through my fingers here. You took Rivka's statement to mean, "2) In the same way, if a minister wants to marry same-sex couples, then the government should accept that as a legal marriage" I can surely see how you took that to be the case as she says it in one of the first paragraphs. However, let's go back to "what the state allows" separate from the women in leadership point (which you find to be a false equivalence). Marriage is a state legitimized status. It is licensed by the state, and both its solution and dissolution are overseen by the legal system. The state is mostly willing to delegate authority for the actual ceremony and signing of the marriage license to a religious/or non-religious authority the couple so chooses. This does not confer primacy on that religion (or non-religious authority), it's just something nice that the state does to save money, and to cater to people's preferences for being married by/in the presence of/under the authority of whatever institution they are happiest with. Regardless of whatever the religious institution does, it cannot, on its own, legally marry or divorce couples with state sanction. It all boils down to the state conferring power onto the church for this act. Thus, to my mind, if a religious organization wants to marry people, wants to recognize marriage in the eyes of their institution, that's fine, but it does not confer legal status upon it. (Which would also work in my civil union/marriage scenario). Now, the issue is that there is a lot of contention about what Should be legitimized as marriage for legal status. The reason that we vote on these things is that it is primarily a legal ie. state matter. Not in churches, for what institutes religious marriage, they can do whatever they want. However, if you want legal recognition by the state you have to have a relationship that fits the definition the state holds. Now, what definition should the state hold? Many people, on the non-gay marriage side have "Steve and Bob can't marry because my religion says so." You really can't argue with these people at the root of this point. Though sometimes there are side additions they use to throw you off that are worth a try. :) "Think of the Children! They will be confused!" "How will we continue to populate the world?" "Oh, no, if we legalize this. . .pedophilia next!" (We already saw that in a previous post.) But, really, much of the protest comes down to religion (God doesn't like it!) and the "ick" factor. (Eek! That's just gross!) Should this control our government? What our state says should be legal marriage? After all, our government has primacy here in the legality of marriage. I think "no." I still think the only way to make it fair is to make it legal (state) for all willing couples, and reserve religious ceremony (church, temple, priest, rabbi, whatever) for the religious. Again, in marriage, the church acts as an agent of the state (unfortunately, for both sides, I think) in helping to marry people The state shouldn't be an agent of the church in deciding who gets to be married. These should be clearly separate. I think I've about exhausted myself on the issue for now. Thanks for a very stimulating discussion. I do hope, some day, my gay couple friends will have safe, happy, environments where they are seen as equal under the law, and worthy by people.

Hmm. If your point is that some religious people see marriage as a religious institution apart from the idea of marriage as a social institution, I agree. If we're talking about my suggestion about legal unions/marriages for all, and religious marriages only for the religious (and devoid of legal standing without the legal union). . .here's my response. People who believe that marriage is merely a religious institution could have a religious marriage. No problem. They don't have to get a legal marriage. It wouldn't confer legal status upon them, that's fine. If they want to have a legal marriage, which grants them legal standing and rights, they can have one of those as well. Gay people can have one too. And, if their religious tradition permits, they can have a religious marriage too. People who believe that religious marriage is the only marriage shouldn't expect the state to uphold that. Look at Rikva's point about women in leadership in the Church. (She's not arguing about women in leadership and marriage both being "legal institutions" You're trying to apply an additional argument to her analogy.) If you're saying that some religious people can't divorce (Hee!) secular marriage from religious marriage. . .well, frankly, that's their problem.

I hadn't seen this before Spy Car commented on it--but this is brilliant! A very fine example and comparison! Wow! :thumbup:

Since the word "marriage" has meant other than the modern Christian definition for thousands of years now--and had many, many different types of marriages that it pertains to, I think it should be the word used to convey the legal sense. Why does it matter what you call it in your religious terms. Is it to easier to judge people. Oh, Peter and Sally got married, but Margaret and Paul got "Religious married"? Let's take the LDS example again. Mormons say they were "married in the temple" that conveys their religious sense they want. I think each religion could use it's own word or terminology. Maybe Christians can use the Greek or Aramaic or Hebrew, or whichever the prefer. Maybe they can come up with their own word that pertains to their denomination. "Marriage" doesn't mean what you're saying it means. There is no strictly religious term for marriage in Christian parlance, that I'm aware of. What we have now, as you mentioned, is a conflation of the legal and the religious. And what has been accepted as "marriage" has had dozens of incarnations throughout history. I think you'll have a hard time proving that "marriage" means only the Christian concept of "spiritual joining". Surely, if you are HistoryMom, you know that :) Marriage, in modern parlance, is primarily a legal term. Do you object Muslims being "married" since they're not Christian and don't have a Christian "marriage"? (If you insist "marriage" is only as your god meant it?) But this is a semantics issue. I don't think gays will give a carp what anyone calls it, so long as it's equal in the eyes of the law. But, if I were pressed on the issue, I'd say, let's keep the word "marriage" for legal examples, and let each religion come up with it's own word for their religious joining.

\ Exactly. It's none of the government's business if a religion won't do a RELIGIOUS ceremony for certain people. Separation of church and state. Ever hear of anyone suing the LDS church for not performing an eternal marriage ceremony for them? No. There's no legal standing for such a thing. You can't sue the Catholic Church for not serving you Communion. You can't sue a synagogue for not letting you blow the shofar. (Granted, maybe some people have tried. . .but there's no legal basis, but some people in the US will sue over anything :) Suffice it to say, it would never get anywhere. You wouldn't be able to sue the S. Baptist church for not giving you a Baptist same-sex marriage because the religious magic is in no way associated with legal rights or standing. It has nothing to do with the law. Giving religious officiants the right to confer legal standing is where it becomes tricky. Do away with that horsepucky, and everyone is safer. :D

I think one of the best ways to handle the marriage/civil union issue (IMHO) is to do as is done in France. The legal union is done at the court house, or town hall, basically. This ensures all legal rights to the couple. This is the joining that matters with regard to the state. Then, if the religious couple wants a religious ceremony, they have one as well, but it does not confer legal standing. It is strictly religious. One does not affect the other, and the religious officient can only recognize the couple as married in the laws of their religion, not the state. Religious people feel they have the only right to "marriage", but happily admit that there's is a god-inspired concept. A religious marriage unites them in the sight of their deity of choice, but does not confer legal rights. So, it's unfair to conflate the two, both for the religious people and for non-religious people. Religious officiants in the US are granted "by the state" the right to confer legal rights. We should stop doing that so as to not blur the line. Here's an example of this in "real time" Thinking about the LDS version of the eternal marriage. Theirs is a special, religious marriage that binds participants for "time and all eternity". This is separate from the legal contract as well. It is a different sort of marriage than most religions recognize, and one different that our laws recognize. I suggest that the only partnership that gives couples legal standing in the US (which is a legal entity) is the civil union. Everyone is entitled to this. For religious people who want a religious "marriage" in addition, they should get one from their religious organization. Voila, problem solved! Church out of state. State out of church! No rights infringed upon!

No more gluttony. Oh, please. :lol: I think I'm agreeing with you, though. In the end, I really don't care what AGMC (anti-gay-marriage-Christians) think about gay marriage, so long as they don't prohibit gays from marrying. The AGMCs surely don't have to like it. :) If that's not your point, I apologize for putting that in your mouth (er, post, whatever)

My apologies. I do not mean to cast all Christians in the same boat--but the greatest opponents, in an organized fashion in this country--are Christians. Not all of them, I know that, but as a quite a large voting block. When I talk about Christians being anti-gay and anti-gay marriage, I'm only referring to the anti-gay-rights Christians. I'm not sure how to make that clearer in my posts without making my fingers more tired than they already are--but I'll do my best. When I see gays trying to prevent heteros from marrying, I'll see both sides behaving badly :)

Fair enough. And after dinner, my mind did get your point about gluttony/homosexuality. You were saying that Christians don't protest gluttony because they don't see it being forced upon the populace as you think homosexuality is. I get that now. As to the "a" issue,--heh, yes. But, I think there's still a point to be made--Do you think gays feel hated because of the voting like this? I do. I darn well do. Now, I'm thinking in particularly about gay marriage here. Gay marriage and the "a" issue are pretty standard "American values" platform of one segment of the voting populace. If the legitimacy of your relationship was cast in such a bad light by a group of people, who typically said you were perverted and a danger to the American culture, could that make you feel hated? If the legitimacy of your relationship was a focal point of a certain block of voters, would you feel singled out? If enormous organizations and small bodies all over the country read out of a book every week that said people in relationships like yours could be killed, but just to be nice simply made sure they voted against you having a recognized relationship, it might make you feel hated. I still think this is part of why gay people feel hated. Gluttony isn't a voting issue. Gay marriage is. The divorce/remarriage issue is a big one in the NT, and one you mentioned as well. If Christians started staging protests around the country claiming that people who were divorced shouldn't be remarried because of potential harm to children and the country. If they claimed that these relationships were sinful and their union perverted, I think there would be room for gays to feel less hated. At least Christians would be spreading around the "all sins are equal in the sight of God" a bit. Maybe the best thing to do is quickly allow gay marriage across the country so Christians can stop protesting! :)

:grouphug: Not fun. I'm sorry.

Yeah, This. gods this makes me sick.

That's fine. I have science. You have anecdotal evidence and "apt to believe". I was a Bible believing Christian for years, 23Peas. I was a missionary for 10 years. I was arguing your POV years ago. I did open my mind. And here's where I am now ;) I accepted your beliefs for years.

Ok. . . Let me try to parse this out. I said I thought homosexuals appeared hated because Christians claim there are lots of sins out there, but homosexuality is the one that gets Christians to the ballot box. Here's the quote "I think homosexuals feel hated because no one goes to the ballot box to try to limit the amount of food gluttons can eat, or how many times a Christian can be divorced and remarried, or any number of other sins." The point was, and still is: There are a lot of sins out there, but Christians like to vote against gay people getting human rights, while they don't get up in arms about any other sin. Gluttony is far more dangerous than consenting homosexual families. And both are considered sins in the Bible. Why aren't Christians protesting something actually dangerous, like gluttony? (I mean, it would be crazy, I get that. . . but back to the point>> homosexuality not dangerous. Gluttony dangerous. Christians trying to prohibit human rights for homosexuals) The only reason I brought gluttony in was to show another example of sin in the Bible. Christians aren't out protesting that. They're out protesting homosexuality. Again, I think this could be one of the reasons gays feel hated by Christians. I don't understand the confusion at all. ThatCyndiGirl, am I making sense?