madfrog wrote:dianaiad wrote:What I do NOT like is the idea that religions are going to be forced to change their doctrines and faith regarding the divine meaning of marriage to go along with government definitions of it.
I think that as long as religious people are respectful of me when I'm in their presence, I don't care if they think I'm going to burn in Hell. I even have friends who openly admit that they do indeed think that I will go to Hell. I don't expect religious doctrine to change just because the law does just as I don't expect churches to endorse every president or court decision.
dianaiad wrote:Personally, I think that the best option would be to take the word 'marriage' completely out of the legal vocabulary. Make 'marriage' a completely religious term. We should all get civil unions. Then, after doing that, if we wish to marry, fine; find a church that agrees with our definition of the word and get married. Or, if one is not religious, go find a beach and a romantic sunset (sunrise, depending on what coast you happen to be on) and trade vows. Voila, you are married...gay or straight.
Legal rights belong to the civil union. Religious rights belong to "marriage," and no religion is going to have to change it's opinion or be in danger of tax problems if their idea of 'marriage' isn't the same as yours.
I've heard this argument before and endorse it wholeheartedly. However, from the perspective of political prudence, I think it would be a lot easier to legalize gay marriage than to overturn straight marriage.
The real thing that most people in the queer community, including myself, want is legal equality, no matter what that encompasses. If a civil union really is the same thing as marriage, then why not just let us get married? I understand that churches want to protect themselves from lawsuits and such but it seems that there are ways to protect them from having to worry about that while still allowing legal equality. As long as there are two classes of partnership, our society is showing people that gays are inferior, even if we were to technically have the same legal benefits under different terms.
Also, it is important to acknowledge that we actually don't have the same legal benefits, even in states that do allow gay marriage. Don't Ask Don't Tell and the Defense of Marriage Act ban gays from the military and deny us federal tax benefits, respectively. There are also 32 states that don't grant any marriage/civil union rights to gays.*
*
http://www.ncsl.org/default.aspx?tabid=16430
The problem is this: in California gays with civil unions DO have precisely the same legal rights that married people do. Exactly the same. Not 'same but different,' not 'separate but equal,' exactly
the same rights. The only reason that gays want to marry in California is for cultural and religious approval..FORCED cultural and religious approval--forced by legal fiat. The fact is, the lawsuits WILL come; they will be expensive to defend, and they WILL result, eventually, in a very real abrogation of the freedom of religion.
Trust me. I'm a Mormon. I know exactly what happens when the government decides to redefine/legislate religious ideas, especially in marriage. As the great granddaughter of three polygamous households, I have a very clear idea of what happens.
So..that's why 'allowing gays to marry" is a lousy idea. Not that I don't think that gay relationships deserve the same rights as married couples; after all, why should any person who doesn't agree with my belief system be forced to abide by it?
..............and that's the point. I don't believe that you should be denied the same civil rights with your partner that I had with my husband; it's none of my business anyway. I only wish to prevent YOU from messing with MY rights. That's why I proposed what I did. For gays it is obvious (at least here in California) that it's not about civil rights at all. After all, they won that one already. It's about forcing ME to approve of them.
I'm sorry, but again, as a Mormon, family and marriage is too fundamental to our doctrine, and same sex marriages simply do not work within it. non-Mormon Christians can, I think, eventually figure out how to encompass gay relationships; many already do.
We can't, not without fundamentally changing at a level so basic as to destroy our entire basic dogma regarding what salvation actually is. If you want to be LDS, you can't have sex outside marriage, no matter who with, and given what we think marriage is all about, it MUST be between a man and a woman. There is no logic that can get us around it.
..........but, since you are not LDS, I don't see how what we believe affects you one way or another. The problem is what allowing gay
marriage rather than civil unions that reflect legal contracts between partners, does to us.
IT's the 'your freedom ends where my nose begins' thing. The corollary of that, of course, is 'my freedom to object to your actions ends where my skin does,' In this case, given the situation of California, it's pretty obvious to me which side is advocating for more freedom than they are entitled to, and I foresee a rather sore nose in my future.