*swoon*

[jazzfish]

Dr rivka FTW. Twice, even.

I think it's entirely reasonable for religious organizations to be able to declare that gay marriage isn't marriage by their definition - that they won't perform those marriages in their churches, and won't recognize those couples as being married in the eyes of the church. I don't agree with that point of view, but I consider it to be up to the members of those denominations.

What is not reasonable, in my mind, is for religious denominations to say that it would somehow be injurious to their faith if my friends Charles and Glen, who have been together for nearly thirty years, could share health benefits and have widowers' rights to each other's Social Security benefits. When you claim that your religious rights are infringed upon unless rights are withheld from other people, that's where you've lost me.

Comments

[laughin.livejournal.com]

THAT is about right!

[jazzfish]

Care to reconcile that with your support of your family's vote for the Hate Amendment as "just their belief" ?

[merseine0613.livejournal.com]

I particularly like this bit from the second post:

The religious freedom issue is significant. For example: what would be wrong with a federal law that prohibited the ordination of women? Many religions, including Catholicism, the Southern Baptist Convention, and most conservative evangelical denominations, believe that ordination is a sacred status that pertains only to men. [snip]...If that seems like an obvious example of the federal government infringing on some people's religious rights in order to enforce other people's religious rights - and I hope that it does - you are left with the need to explain why some religious denominations' opposition to gay marriage trumps other denominations' support.

I had never put these to issues in the same bucket - but they belong together. Women cannot be discriminated against: they must be allowed to hold the same jobs, get the same pay as men - except in the church. Churches cannot tell the government to keep women out of certain jobs, and the government can't tell churches to allow women in other jobs.

Same with gay marriage. Churches should not be able to tell the government the definition of what legal marriage is, and the government should not be able to tell churches what the definition of sacred marriage is.

I was totally on board, but it's never been quite so well defined for me before. Thank you for this link.

[selki.livejournal.com]

Yeah, her analogy you quoted is excellent!

Nice icon, btw.

[merseine0613.livejournal.com]

I found it (and a bunch more) here (http://community.livejournal.com/episcopal/461678.html) You're welcome to them. :)

[heptadecagram.livejournal.com]

It's great. I love her words. They're crystal clear. But the problem is that a surprisingly large number of the population opposing gay marriages come from the same denominations that oppose women ordination. You'd have to approach it just right, probably getting them to admit that (1) The ordination of women is a moral issue, and (2) even though it is a moral issue, it should not be a law, and (3) homosexual marriage is a moral issue, so it should not be a law. You could trap the person in this way, but that's still not likely to change their mind: gays are Wrong and Bad the same way murder is Wrong and Bad. Soddom and Gommorah were destroyed because they tolerated gay people, not because they were inhospitable and suspicious. The only thing that really changes them is for them to meet gay people who are willing to be their friends.

[jazzfish]

You're most welcome.

Dr Rivka is made of awesome. She kept a blog for awhile at Respectful of Otters ("Psychologists have a duty to be fair and respectful of otters"), but working a full-time job and being a full-time mom meant something had to go, and it was the blog. I'm glad she's kept up with the LJ.

You may be interested in reading about her skirmishes with her church's budget board.

[mrstickman.livejournal.com]

Hey, she's got even more (http://rivka.livejournal.com/358562.html) up now! Good on her!

on coveting another man's ass

[jonny-law.livejournal.com]

If I may play the God's Advocate for a moment, the issue is not religious freedom but separation of church and state. Unless it's buried in the Federal Code there is no formal "separation of church and state" at the federal level, which means Christian religion and US government exist in a strained balance. America was created by people belonging to the Christian tradition, which has shaped its laws and Constitution even if Christianity cannot be established as the state religion.

Some Christian tenets form the basis of laws, such as it being illegal to commit murder or perjury. For other religious tenets it is tolerable for either moral acts not to be illegal or immoral acts not to be legal. For instance, it is tolerable that it is not illegal to blaspheme or dishonor your parents, as long as these acts are not specifically protected by law. However, it is not tolerable when either moral acts are made illegal or immoral acts are made legal. At that point America becomes an apostate nation, and the faithful must enact changes in the government. This is why it is valuable to define a fetus as a baby, because then protecting a woman's right to choose to have an abortion is the apostate government endorsing the commission of murder.

If "homosexual acts" are a sin then the government recognizing gay marriage or, gay unions that convey all the rights of marriage, is the same as government endorsing that sin. For some it might be made worse that the government it conveying all the legal protections accorded to the sacrament of marriage to a sinful act.

In summary, the issue of gay marriage is about creating a separation of church and state. If America passes laws that make acts that are moral according to Christian tenets illegal, or laws that protect immoral acts, then America has become an apostate nation. Therefore, legally recognizing gay marriage is about rejecting the current co-mingling of government and religion, not about protecting anyone's 1st amendment religious freedoms.

[meghatronn.livejournal.com]

Thank you for this post, this is very well-worded.

What helps me to separate the church/state issues of gay marriage is that the crucial issue of what is considered morally wrong with gay marriage (at least in my Catholic tradition) is sex. Health benefits and Social Security, etc. don't have anything to do with whether Glenn or me or anyone else share a bed at the end of the day.

Unfortunately, our country, in many ways, is coming apart in terms of the way family takes care of each other. So we have had to create new family systems in order to afford to live. And while morally I cannot support homosexual sex, I definitely support giving Power of Attorney and health insurance to people that you love and trust--whether or not you're in a legally committed relationship.