Will Christians be protected from Gay social goals?

[Mere_Christian]

Once gay marriage is legalized in most states and forced on those that will not legalize it by the power of Democrat majority in Congress, how will Christians be protected from Gay Activists desiring to force Gay Culture and gay sex on every aspect of Christian life?

[micatala]

PS.

Just as a follow up, I will recall that in the Iowas Decision thread, the Des Moines Register article cited indicated there were an estimated 5800 gay couples in Iowa.

There are an estimated three million people in Iowa.


Now, as just a back of the envelope calculation, let's say 1.5% of Iowans are gay. This would be about 45,000 people. WIth over 11,000 of them as members of gay couples, this means about 25% of Iowa gays are part of a gay couple. This is before any official legal sanction for marriage is available.

According to this article, about 60% of U.S. adults are married, and these adults are healthier than the average adult.


This suggest increasing the percentage of gays who are married might have beneficial effects, at least for gays. It would certainly seem that having more gays married would decrease the promiscuity that we all seem to agree increases a variety of health risks. Conversely, it would seem that banning gay marriage could reasonably be seen as having deleterious effects on the health of gays.


Here are a few more figures (from http://www.divorcemag.com/statistics/statsUS.shtml).

About 8.1% of coupled households consist of unmarried heterosexual couples. Again, compare this to 30% of households that are led by single parents.
[paragraph edited to correct erroneous information, and to add the following]

8.1% of coupled households consist of unmarried heterosexual partners, according to The State of Our Unions 2005, a report issued by the National Marriage Project at Rutgers University. The same study said that only 63% of American children grow up with both biological parents -- the lowest figure in the Western world.

There are roughly 800,000 divorces annually (if my mental math was right) and around 2,200,000 marriages annually. Roughly speaking, for every 3 marriages there is one divorce.

Should we enact new laws to address the fact that 37% of children do not grow up with both of their biological parents? Should we enact new laws to do something about the 22 million children being raised in single parent households?



Also,

As of 2003, 43.7% of custodial mothers and 56.2% of custodial fathers were either separated or divorced. And in 2002, 7.8 million Americans paid about $40 billion in child and/or spousal support (84% of the payers were male).

Now, since only 30% of households are single parent led, this clearly means (as we would expect) that a lot of the 60% of U.S. adults who are now married are not in their first marriage.


I point all of this out simply to note that, while it may be (and we have yet to see good hard data on this) that gays are less monogamous than heterosexuals, it is clear that significant percentages of heterosexuals are not monogamous, or have had multiple sexual partners.




I will leave the ball in East of Eden's court for the next volley. Let's see some data on the adverse effects of gay marriage.

[DirtDon'tLie]

If gay marriage is legalized, straight marriage becomes illegalized. That's my understanding.

I would be interested in knowing how you came to this understanding.

You might consider that when it became legal for women to vote in the U.S., it did not become illegal for men to vote.

I forgot to type in the sarcasm.

[micatala]

If gay marriage is legalized, straight marriage becomes illegalized. That's my understanding.

I would be interested in knowing how you came to this understanding.

You might consider that when it became legal for women to vote in the U.S., it did not become illegal for men to vote.

I forgot to type in the sarcasm.

Sorry! My bad.

[McCulloch]

Monogamy is fairly non-existent in the gay culture.

Two problems

1. The gay couple who live near me have been together for as long as I have known them. There are many gay couples who maintain monogamous long term relationships.
2. Young adults, let's say from 18 to 30 years old, are most likely to be statistically less monogamous than those of us beyond the 30 year mark. By your reasoning, we should therefore withhold the recognition of marriage for that group of people too, right?

[micatala]

Opened up provided some information relevant to this thread in the Is traditional marriage threatened by gay marriage thread.

http://www.law.yale.edu/news/2717.htm

Although this does not relate directly to children of gay couples, it does discuss evidence from Scandanavia that strongly suggest allowing gay marriage does not undermine traditional marriage. To the extent that gay marriage is a "gay social goal", it does not seem that Christians need to be protected from its affects on traditional marriage.

Will gay marriage undermine marriage? No. As proof, we look at the long history of same-sex marriage (as registered partnerships) in Scandinavia. Denmark has been registering same-sex partners since 1989, Norway since 1993 and Sweden since 1995. Marriage Protection Amendment supporters claim that marriage has eroded in these countries as a result of their experiment with same-sex marriage. Our book reports the actual evidence from these countries.

Before Denmark recognized same-sex couples in 1989, the Danish marriage rate was falling, and the divorce and non-marital childbirth rates soared. If the president was right that gay marriage harms the institution, one would expect these trends to accelerate after that country recognized lesbian and gay partnerships.

Yet the opposite occurred: After 1989, the marriage rate increased, the divorce rate fell and the rate of childbirths outside of marriage declined for the first time in decades. Similar but less dramatic trends occurred in the other Scandinavian countries.

State recognition of lesbian and gay unions does not harm the institution of marriage.

In addition, gay marriage seems to be associated with other positive social goals, including some of the ones that conservatives often tout like reduction of STDs, reduced promiscuity, etc.

Moreover, allowing same-sex couples to marry has a number of positive benefits. We interviewed a wide variety of Danish couples who had registered as partners. They told us how their legal unions deepened their commitment to each other, helped legally protect the children they were raising, enriched their relationships with family members and co-workers, and helped educate the community. One couple even reported that their enthusiasm for marriage inspired their heterosexual friends to formalize their own union in marriage.

Our book documents the numerous social and community benefits from Scandinavian recognition of lesbian and gay partnerships. Because marriage and partnership serve private social welfare functions, legal recognition stands to save the state money. Recognition helps integrate lesbian and gay families into the larger society and helps attract productive workers to the country.

We also found that partnership recognition contributed to the success of Scandinavian programs to prevent AIDS and sexually transmitted diseases.

The Nordic nations have had marriage-like partnerships for 17 years now, and the sky did not fall on marriage. This suggests that the defense-of-marriage argument for the Marriage Protection Amendment is a lavender herring.

[weingro2]

Once gay marriage is legalized in most states and forced on those that will not legalize it by the power of Democrat majority in Congress, how will Christians be protected from Gay Activists desiring to force Gay Culture and gay sex on every aspect of Christian life?

This question in itself displays the prejudice and false superior mindset of christians. I do not know of one other religion or lifestyle that forces it's views on people as much as christianity, so the fact that you are threatened by the fact that gay marriage is going to infringe on your so called "rights" is absurd. What about their rights? Do you see them standing in front of chruches with signs screaming about how chrsitianity is wrong even though technically they have the right to? no you dont, because they have something called compassion and respect. Maybe if you "christians" get a little taste of your own medicine it will help fill your hearts with a little compassion.

[micatala]

Once gay marriage is legalized in most states and forced on those that will not legalize it by the power of Democrat majority in Congress, how will Christians be protected from Gay Activists desiring to force Gay Culture and gay sex on every aspect of Christian life?

This question in itself displays the prejudice and false superior mindset of christians. I do not know of one other religion or lifestyle that forces it's views on people as much as christianity, so the fact that you are threatened by the fact that gay marriage is going to infringe on your so called "rights" is absurd. What about their rights? Do you see them standing in front of chruches with signs screaming about how chrsitianity is wrong even though technically they have the right to? no you dont, because they have something called compassion and respect. Maybe if you "christians" get a little taste of your own medicine it will help fill your hearts with a little compassion.

Hello weingro2 and welcome to the forum. Hope you find it enjoyable and educational.


I agree with your statement above. I would note that many of us who are Christians oppose bans on same-sex marriage. Mere-Christian (who you might note has been banned from the forum for incivility), is not representative of the faith at large.

I believe you can make a case based on larger biblical principles that, from a moral or religious standpoint, Christians should allow gays to decide for themselves what constitutes sin.

From a legal standpoint, there is really very little if anything in the bible to justify legal discrimination against gays. The bible does not give license to Christians to impose their notion of sin on everyone through the civil authorities.

[weingro2]

Once gay marriage is legalized in most states and forced on those that will not legalize it by the power of Democrat majority in Congress, how will Christians be protected from Gay Activists desiring to force Gay Culture and gay sex on every aspect of Christian life?

This question in itself displays the prejudice and false superior mindset of christians. I do not know of one other religion or lifestyle that forces it's views on people as much as christianity, so the fact that you are threatened by the fact that gay marriage is going to infringe on your so called "rights" is absurd. What about their rights? Do you see them standing in front of chruches with signs screaming about how chrsitianity is wrong even though technically they have the right to? no you dont, because they have something called compassion and respect. Maybe if you "christians" get a little taste of your own medicine it will help fill your hearts with a little compassion.

Hello weingro2 and welcome to the forum. Hope you find it enjoyable and educational.


I agree with your statement above. I would note that many of us who are Christians oppose bans on same-sex marriage. Mere-Christian (who you might note has been banned from the forum for incivility), is not representative of the faith at large.

I believe you can make a case based on larger biblical principles that, from a moral or religious standpoint, Christians should allow gays to decide for themselves what constitutes sin.

From a legal standpoint, there is really very little if anything in the bible to justify legal discrimination against gays. The bible does not give license to Christians to impose their notion of sin on everyone through the civil authorities.

Thank you for that. I try as hard as I can to not lump every christian in together but for the sake of an argument I must speak about the actions of the majority of christians that I know. I am really glad that there are people out there like you, I truly believe that religion can be a good thing when used to create more love in this world. I look forward to talking with you more.

[East of Eden]

Once gay marriage is legalized in most states and forced on those that will not legalize it by the power of Democrat majority in Congress, how will Christians be protected from Gay Activists desiring to force Gay Culture and gay sex on every aspect of Christian life?

This question in itself displays the prejudice and false superior mindset of christians. I do not know of one other religion or lifestyle that forces it's views on people as much as christianity, so the fact that you are threatened by the fact that gay marriage is going to infringe on your so called "rights" is absurd. What about their rights? Do you see them standing in front of chruches with signs screaming about how chrsitianity is wrong even though technically they have the right to? no you dont, because they have something called compassion and respect. Maybe if you "christians" get a little taste of your own medicine it will help fill your hearts with a little compassion.

Hello weingro2 and welcome to the forum. Hope you find it enjoyable and educational.


I agree with your statement above. I would note that many of us who are Christians oppose bans on same-sex marriage. Mere-Christian (who you might note has been banned from the forum for incivility), is not representative of the faith at large.

I believe you can make a case based on larger biblical principles that, from a moral or religious standpoint, Christians should allow gays to decide for themselves what constitutes sin.

From a legal standpoint, there is really very little if anything in the bible to justify legal discrimination against gays. The bible does not give license to Christians to impose their notion of sin on everyone through the civil authorities.

Sorry, Christians have the same right to participate in our democracy as anyone else.

While individual Christians may disregard the Bible's commandments about homosexual activity, or sexual sin in general, the overwhelming majority of Christian denominations do not.

[cnorman18]

Once gay marriage is legalized in most states and forced on those that will not legalize it by the power of Democrat majority in Congress, how will Christians be protected from Gay Activists desiring to force Gay Culture and gay sex on every aspect of Christian life?

This question in itself displays the prejudice and false superior mindset of christians. I do not know of one other religion or lifestyle that forces it's views on people as much as christianity, so the fact that you are threatened by the fact that gay marriage is going to infringe on your so called "rights" is absurd. What about their rights? Do you see them standing in front of churches with signs screaming about how christianity is wrong even though technically they have the right to? no you dont, because they have something called compassion and respect. Maybe if you "christians" get a little taste of your own medicine it will help fill your hearts with a little compassion.

Hello weingro2 and welcome to the forum. Hope you find it enjoyable and educational.


I agree with your statement above. I would note that many of us who are Christians oppose bans on same-sex marriage. Mere-Christian (who you might note has been banned from the forum for incivility), is not representative of the faith at large.

I believe you can make a case based on larger biblical principles that, from a moral or religious standpoint, Christians should allow gays to decide for themselves what constitutes sin.

From a legal standpoint, there is really very little if anything in the bible to justify legal discrimination against gays. The bible does not give license to Christians to impose their notion of sin on everyone through the civil authorities.

Sorry, Christians have the same right to participate in our democracy as anyone else.

No one said that Christians do not have the right to "participate in our democracy". What Micatala said was that Christians do not have the right to "impose their notion of sin on everyone through the civil authorities," and that is a matter of Constitutional law, i.e., the supreme law of the United States.

While individual Christians may disregard the Bible's commandments about homosexual activity, or sexual sin in general, the overwhelming majority of Christian denominations do not.

Can you document that from an unbiased source?

In any case, Christians who do not oppose gay marriage and do oppose discrimination against gays do not necessarily "disregard the Bible's commandments about homosexual activity, or sexual sin in general"; it is much more likely that they do not think religious beliefs and/or practices ought to be mandated and enforced by secular law.