www.byzcath.org Forums News & Events Church News Bush Wants Homosexuals Out of Marriage

The part about the animals is silly but the rest is not.

On what basis do you believe that a child cannot consent to engaging in sexual activity? Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is on record stating that she believes that the age of consent for sexual activity should be 12 (specifically stating that people 12 and older are mature enough to decide to engage in sexual activity). Should her opinion prevail there would be no legal prohibition against adult/child sexual activities. Such activity would become a constitutional right. This is no longer a hypothetical discussion.

On what basis do you believe that parent/child sexual activity or other forms of incest should be prohibited? The recent Supreme Court decision to use the right of privacy to create a right to homosexual sexual activity also lays the foundation for a right to any type of sexual behavior within the privacy of one�s home. Groups are already lining up with cases to take before the Supreme Court to secure their rights to engage in their form of deviant behavior.

Further, if one extends marriage to homosexuals then one cannot legally or logically deny it to any two or more individuals of whatever sexual orientations who wish to enter into any type of formal relationship they wish to call marriage.

Dear Admin:

Although I think by subsequent post to Justin probably set forth a reply to you as well, allow meto say once and for all that of course, we as Christians, are free to argue that the moral teachings of our Churches are also good social policy.

The thing is, the argument, under our consitution must be based upon social policy rather than a "it is so becasue God said so."

One, such an argument is ineffective to a lot of people.

Two, it indeed runs the risk of running afowl of the careful framework left to us by the Founding Fathers.

I think I have said enough on this.

Yours,

kl

What I find sad about Bush's statement is the number of people who didn't know that the phrase "take the speck out of your eye..." is a Biblical quote, or what it means.

Dear David:

Your post reminded me of something Peter Yarrow said last night at the Peter, Paul & Mary concert at the Ravinia Festival last night.

He said that we hope that the "American" culture of Jenny Jones and Jerry Springer does not continue to prevail and that the culture of love and understanding does.

Sadly, the fact is indeed that most Americans can't tell a biblical passage from a baseball scorecard. WHEW! Talk about an issue for a WHOLE other thread.

Yours,

kl

KL,

Thank you for this discussion.

I agree.

People who call themselves Christian should know and follow God�s law. When they wander it is appropriate for other Christians to remind them of God�s laws.

Christians in society know what God�s law is and know that it is the best foundation of moral law in society. But because we share a country (and a world) with peoples of differing faiths (and of no faith) it is imperative that we convince them to follow Judeo-Christian morality because it provides the best method to create and maintain a healthy society. The issue of basing everything on social policy has become very complex. The Founding Fathers held a fairly uniform understanding of morality, one that was certainly rooted in religious faith. This made for a fairly uniform approach to social policy. Now, however, we no longer have people with a common approach to social policy. We are no longer reasonable uniform in our understanding of right and wrong. It will be very difficult in the future to create any social policy that violates the morality of personal choice.

In one of the threads someone mentioned the current issues with Moslems demanding equality for Islamic law. Someone who is totally secular could ask who are we to tell a Moslem not to execute another Moslem who has rejected Islam and embraced Christ as God and Savior. We would argue that killing someone for apostasy is not acceptable. Some Moslems radically reject this and consider killing those who apostatize from Islam as an inherently good and necessary thing to do. Moslems have a vastly different understanding of natural law. Some are already asking who we are to stuff our Judeo-Christian understanding of morality down their throats. Granted, most Moslems are not that radical (certainly the ones I am friend with are not like that). But there are those demanding such rights.

The future will certainly be challenging.

Admin

David,

You make an excellent observation. Even Christians don�t understanding the meaning of the quote. If one continues another verse a more complete understanding is that Christ tells us to remove the plank in our own eye and then we will clearly see how to help our brother to remove the speck form his eye. Too many people jump to the conclusion that Christians cannot judge one other. What is condemned is judgmentalism.

Admin

Lemko:

Glory to Jesus Christ!

"...but a dog cannot legally consent to such a thing, nor can a minor child, nor can an inanimate object, so comparing these hypothetical horror stories to what consenting adults would like to do is patently ridiculous. Please, at least keep the discussion in the bounds of rational discourse."

Ah, so we come to the crux of the matter -- consent. Please explain to me why marriage is fundamentally about consent or "what two adults choose to do."

You've proven my point: we no longer really understand what marriage is.

In Christ,
Theophilos

I believe the age of consent for legal sexual activity and the age of consent for marriage are different. But not being from West Virginia, I'm not sure of what the laws are on this. Still, I'm still guessing that should 12 become the age of consent for sexual activity (an idea I find ridiculous, FYI), a 12-year-old would still need his/her parent's consent to legally contract marriage.

Nonsense. Don't make such snide insinuations. It is a simple historical fact showing where HE is coming from. Even his fans recognized how much his homosexuality coloured--indeed distorted--his supposed scholarship.

Suppose in a remote spot in the wilderness, in the middle of thousands of privately owned acreage, some sick individual is burning cats and dogs alive. There is no other human being within miles of this activity, and hence no hint of this behavior can be perceived by anyone other than the participant. Nevertheless, the fact that this individual is burning animals somehow becomes known.

Under the Krylos Leader legal system, can the state do anything to prevent this behavior? What is the legitimate state interest in preventing the killing of animals? Food processing businesses do it. Hunters do it, even if just for sport and not for food. Animals technically have no legal rights. No one has to endure seeing/hearing the behavior in question.

Ultimately, the only compelling state interest is the collective sense of outrage and the common belief that torturing animals is immoral. Most everyone would agree that this collective sense is sufficient to make the practice illegal and to prosecute the sick individual involved.

Other than the behavior being discussed, how is this situation fundamentally any difference than the state, acting on the collective sense of morality and outrage of its citizenry, criminalizing homosexual behavior taking place in the privacy of a bedroom? You or I may not have to witness it, but that does not diminish our right to demand that it be procsribed by legislation.

As our Administrator so aptly pointed out, "All law is legislated morality."

I agree that Christians need to be more vocal, but do not really think that I want moral instruction from the White House. I am much happier to hear on tonight's news, that our Holy Father has restated the traditional Christian position.

From our legislators, we need laws that reflect the good of the society, and that will withstand attack from the un-elected Supreme Court.

As Andrew Sullivan (a practicing Catholic, by the way) has recently observed, the ultra-right-wing who are promoting the idea of a constitutional amendment intend to take this as far as it will go to deny as many rights as possible to homosexual persons:

(www.andrewsullivan.com [andrewsullivan.com], July 14, 2003)

So homosexuality = AIDS?

I wouldn't fault you for honestly saying "yes", if that is indeed what you believe.

Dear EJKlages:

I really don't care for your sarcasm. "Krylos Leader legal system?" Give me a break.

Usually I would stop right there and not give the likes of you the satisfaction of a reply, but your argument is so full of holes I might as well go ahead.

Your post assumes no legitimate state interest in regulating of the killing of animals. BUZZ! Thank you for playing! It's called sanitation.

There is a bucketload of regulations that control how food processors and hunters go about doing what they do. By doing what this admittedly sick individual is doing, there is nothing to say that he is making sure that his person does not spread any disease.

kl

Lemko,

You are a 1,000 times more likely to get AIDS from "gay" sex then from straight" sex. The intestines are paper thin while a women�s skin is as thick as the skin on your hand. As a result disease, cancer, and everything else bad is exponentially more likely in �gay� sex.

One note suicide is much more likely with homosexual�s then straight people. The same statistics hold true where gay marriage is legal (i.e. Netherlands).

In a nutshell, if you�re gay and are practicing homosexual (even married gay) then statistically you are going to live a much SHORTER life then a happily married straight person.

Umm, think God is trying to tell us something?