"Conservatives"

[fpb]

http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/british-mp-urges-government-to-force-churches-into-same-sex-unions?utm_source=LifeSiteNews.com+Daily+Newsletter&utm_campaign=4aa5467bd0-LifeSiteNews_com_Intl_Headlines09_08_2011&utm_medium=email

What is breathtaking is that no British news medium seems to have given this any attention.

Comments

[shezan.livejournal.com]

t that would allow churches and other religious venues to perform same-sex unions if they choose.

Operative words, IF THEY CHOOSE.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Wrong three times over. First, to the British ruling class choice means the exact opposite of its dictionary meaning. Second, the Churches cannot choose to change the meaning of a sacrament. Third, when a lawmaker speaks of law he implies the threat of punishment. Please come down from your clouds.

[shezan.livejournal.com]

Well, I don't think any Catholic can condone gay marriage, so cannot imagine it ever being performed in a Church, and surely the government can't force them? What would even be the point?

[fpb.livejournal.com]

"Surely the government can't force them"????????????????

Earth calling shezan. Earth calling shezan. Please make a route for home, you are in danger of drifting beyond touch. Kindly study the history of your own country if you want to see how a government can't force the Catholic Church.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

By the way, this is not about the Catholic Church alone. Watch what happens with the Evangelical majority in the Church of England if and when the Government lickspittles start on what they are now already clearly contemplating.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Actually, I should not have allowed you to set the position. The operative fact is that someone who dares call himself a conservative should have set out such a proposal. That is a display of repulsive intellectual dishonesty such as I cannot countenance under any guise. This man is the rankest kind of progressive moron, with no understanding of what he wants to dismantle, driven by prejudices in place of thought, incapable of moral courage but eager to be "in the van of progress". The notion that such creatures can be found in a party that claims a conservative identity should be simply bewildering to any mind in touch with reality. I have been very rude to Peter Hitchens of late, but where the Tories are concerned he is one of the few people who call things as they are.

[shezan.livejournal.com]

Oh, my objection to Dave is that he's not a true Tory, and I still mourn the Days Of The Blessed Margaret...

[sabethea.livejournal.com]

would end up forcing religious believers to first of all have a legal civil marriage ceremony followed by a non legal religious ceremony,”

My personal feeling is that this is what should happen anyway. It does with some religions already (I should know, it includes mine!) and it seems strange that in a basically secular country, certain religious institutions can hold legal weddings whereas humanists and Pagans can't.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

The amount of intellectual and logical mistakes in these few sentences is breathtaking.

1) "My personal feeling" is wholly irrelevant. "My personal feeling" is that certain people should be exposed in the stocks and pelted with rotten fruit. So what? I indulge the fantasy when I am particularly angry, then go away and deal with the world as it is.

2) "It does with some religions" - So does jihad. So does incest. So does urine-drinking. There is no worse argument on Earth than "many people think" or "many groups do". Rick Perry bragged, in a presidential election debate mind you, of having signed 234 death warrants. That was part of his claim to be the right kind of person to be made President; and "many people" in America would agree with him. Does this make the death penalty respectable or tolerable? Not to me it does not. But if you argue that the fact that "some religions" include practices that are at odds with morality, then you must, in consistency with your own position, accept Thugee and Aztec mass human sacrifice. Luckily, I don't have to deal with that little bit of necessary consistency. The fact that something that calls itself a religion demands that you should screw your sister and even calls it the highest kind of marriage under Heaven and a certain destroyer of demons (and Zoroastrianism does exactly that) no more inclines me to sympathy for incest than the fact that an artificial and modern "religion" has artificially and recently decided to follow a different but equally absurd faddish definition of marriage.

3) "already". This means a certain prediction that in the future everyone will do as you do. Who died and made you a prophet? In actual fact, "paganism" and the other fad-religions of post-protestant Europe and America are not only numerically exiguous (the Pope can call to Madrid more young people than there are "pagans" in the whole western world) but receding. Islam, Catholicism, and Evangelical Christianity are the three religions that are advancing across the world. Current trends, at least, make your prophecies sound quite dubious.
(There is, besides, the whole issue of historicism being a piece of logical nonsense. I suggest you read some Karl Popper.)

4) The appalling provinciality that assumes that what is faddish - I won't say popular, because you have to demonstrate to me that any large group of the British population has any interest in it - among the British upper and middle classes should therefore prevail seems to neglect the small matter of Britons being less than one hundredth of the world's population. Most religious groups in Britain are local emanations of transnational bodies, and except for a few parishes on whom even their local Bishops have given up, it is wholly unimaginable that Catholics, Anglicans, Baptists, Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs or Buddhists would ever accept such an imposition in such a small and irrelevant part of their field of action. Yes, I include the Anglicans. The old Anglican church, based on squire-run villages, is dying; the few congregations left are in their seventies, and village church after village church is being closed or reduced to a plurality. But there is a new Anglican Church that is growing: the immigrants, mostly black and Indian, in the cities, evangelized at home by Evangelical missionaries and closer to Baptists and Pentecostals than to Oxbridge bishops in their thinking. Already an African Anglican is the second man in England; as for the worldwide Anglican communion, it is absolutely dominated by Africa. These people are going to laugh in your face if you tell them that the future belongs to gay marriage. The future, so far as the Anglican communion is concerned, belongs to them.

[sabethea.livejournal.com]

"My personal feeling" is wholly irrelevant.
No it isn't - certainly not in my case: my personal feelings about issues of legality affect my behaviour. For example, my personal feeling about the terrible 'Criminal Justice Bill' in this country ended with me going on protest marches to complain about it. It is the vocalising of personal feelings which are imperative towards persuading laws to be changed - or at any rate, it is to a small degree and should be far more important.

"some religions" include practices that are at odds with morality,
WHOSE morality? My morality, and that of millions of people, say that refusing to give homosexuals equal rights is immoral. But you're arguing in favour of that.

this means a certain prediction that in the future everyone will do as you do
Actually, I think it is likely that things will change and Pagans will get the chance of being married legally in their religion. But my point was that given that it is NOT a 'legal right' for all religions to be able to carry out marriages, there's no particularly good reason why it should be legal for some and not others.

post-protestant Europe and America are not only numerically exiguous (the Pope can call to Madrid more young people than there are "pagans" in the whole western world) but receding.
You are good with facts, as we agreed on my LJ - I am not, therefore, arguing this but I would like very much to see where you have got these statistics from, please.

seems to neglect the small matter of Britons being less than one hundredth of the world's population.
Um, very much NO! You are dealing with a BRITISH law, not a law which is going to be worldwide. Therefore, the point of the matter is not to do with the effect on the world population, but on the people in the country for whom this law is going to apply.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Morality is only a matter of feelings when the whole notion of making sense of it has been driven out. If feelings were in any way a reliable guide to morality, the vast majority of mankind's "yuck!" reaction to homosexual acts would totally overshadow the small minority who don't suffer from such instinctive reactions. The only thing that kept the whole gay movement from being squashed and silenced with little effort is that people silenced their own feelings and listened to argument. Feelings are irrational and dangerous.

[sabethea.livejournal.com]

vast majority of mankind's "yuck!" reaction to homosexual acts

Again, I am not denying that this may be true, but this is such a wide statement that I'd appreciate evidence of it. (It is ridiculously far from anything I've ever thought myself, but then humans do a lot of things which are far from anything I could contemplate, so I certainly wouldn't take my own experiences as 'truth'.)

listened to argument

And again, I am opening a can of worms which I should have more sense than to open... but what are the rational, scientific arguments for religion; and particularly for Catholicism being the 'correct' religious view?

[fpb.livejournal.com]

No, you are dealing with a British attempt to force worldwide bodies to accept a British fad for British reasons. The notion that a Baptist or Hindu body, not to say a Catholic one, could imagine having one definition of marriage in most of the world and a quite different one in Britain is utter rubbish. Besides, there is an international dimension to this: the campaign to force the religions to change their definition of marriage would not stop in Britain.

[sabethea.livejournal.com]

On the one hand, Brits are such a tiny population that our views should not count; on the other hand, we will affect the entire world's opinion on marriage?

[sabethea.livejournal.com]

The reason, incidentally, that I suspect that some disagreements you've had in the past have turned into flame wars, may be something to do with the fact that you add personal insult to your point of view.

I have no problem with almost everything you've written here (apart from that I think you're wrong, but I have no problem with differences of opinion between people: there are vehemently child-free people on my flist, and I am obviously not in sympathy with their POV, but we co-exist quite happily).

But... Who died and made you a prophet? is actually entirely unnecessary for your argument, which is based on a number of other, very well expressed, explanations. It seems a pity, when you can argue so well, that you should get into childish name calling.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Actually, I did not think that was insulting. I am sorry you felt insulted, but it was merely an (admittedly aggressive) attempt to draw out what your statement really said - whatever you wanted it to say. You said: "already" some bodies which claim a religious identity practice these things. That "already", in that position, only means one thing: that in a coming future, either all or a vast majority of the rest of religious bodies will follow them; in fact, that the fact that the rest of religious bodies will follow them is a predictable and "already" certain fact. That is the only meaning that "already" in that position can possibly have in English. When a sportscaster says that "three athletes have already crossed the line", s/he only ever means that the rest of the field will soon follow them; s/he does certainly not mean that a few more may, if they feel like it, and if they don't get distracted along the road by clumps of flowers or pretty girls. So what you said - I am making no inquiries into what you meant - is that the Catholic Church, among others, was certainly going to accept gay marriage. And the only way you could possibly be making such a risky prediction, and making it it in the "already" form, is if you were given prophetic knowledge of the future. Elisha became a prophet after Elijah passed away; who did the same for you? This is the reductio ad absurdum intended here, for, even though I don't intend to read your mind, I feel certain that you did not intend anything so arrogant or so ridiculous.

[sabethea.livejournal.com]

three athletes have already crossed the line", s/he only ever means that the rest of the field will soon follow them

Not necessarily; it might be followed by "and five others have dropped out, leaving six still to finish".

Indeed, if we take what I said: "It does with some religions already"... that actual sentence could finish "and it looks like three more religions are going that way as well, which might mean that Christianity became left as the only religion who could perform legal marriages".

Or, indeed "It does with some religions already; however, that may be subject to change in the near future".

Either of these are potential meanings, and neither end up with your version of events :) It suggests that things are subject to change - but it doesn't specifically make any predictions of the direction in which that change might happen.

ETA
Also, though - why be aggressive? If you acknowledge that it's an aggressive comment - why make it? The argument didn't need it.

continued...

[fpb.livejournal.com]

5) Marriage is and has always been a religious institution. The registration of marriage by the State is a recent innovation, originally intended only to deal with issues of property and inheritance. To make marriage of all things a power of the State is not only a piece of ignorant cultural imperialism of the umpeenth degree, it is an open invitation to the State to appropriate anything it feels like. If one day the State were to decide that pagan practices are noxious to it, you would have no intellectual defence against it; after all, you have already recognized it the right to appropriate and rule over another religious institutions.

6) Christian marriage is a sacrament. A sacrament is the presence of God on Earth. We can no more dictate to God how He wills to be present than we can order Mount Everest to increase its height by exacty 1947.25 metres. It is absurd. It is foolish. It is grotesque arrogance built on howling ignorance.


Further reading:
http://fpb.livejournal.com/84324.html
http://fpb.livejournal.com/128426.html

Re: continued...

[sabethea.livejournal.com]

Marriage is and has always been a religious institution

You know what, you're right on this one, and I will happily acknowledge it.

The registration of marriage by the State is a recent innovation, originally intended only to deal with issues of property and inheritance.

Yes. So, in fact, what I really mean to say is that I think that marriage should have nothing to do with the State at all, and we should return to having marriage only as a sacrament to do with religion.

To deal with issues of property and inheritance, there should be Civil Unions. This would cover the legal side of matters, and would involve registration of a partnership - as it does for same-sex couples.

Which uses different words, and allows you to keep 'marriage' for religious insitutions, but which would in practical terms end up in exactly the same place as I'm arguing for: that the legal side of unions should be kept separate from the religious side.

Given that you seem to imply strongly that the 'taking over' of marriage by the State is wrong, surely you should agree with me here?

Re: continued...

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Of course. But that villainous Tory whose abominable letter started this simply wants to force Christian churches to carry out homosexual marriage in church. I am very happy indeed to confront other religions (including atheism) on an equal ground; I feel certain that if that were allowed, then both gay marriage and the religious bodies that endorse it would remain, as they are, a small and strange minority. But even if they didn't, that would not affect my view of reality.

The only problem with limiting marriage to religious bodies is that in the modern world there are quite a few people who do not claim any sort of religious belonging. A way should be sought to allow these people to marry as and how they will. But other than that, the further the State's snout is kept from God's business, the better for everyone.

Re: continued...

[fellmama.livejournal.com]

Marriage is and has always been a religious institution. The registration of marriage by the State is a recent innovation . . .

Roman marriage?

Re: continued...

[fpb.livejournal.com]

ON what grounds do you suggest that Roman marriage (by which I take it you mean marriage in the city of Rome in republican and imperial times) was not a religious institution?

P.S:

[fpb.livejournal.com]

If you are surprised at the force of my reaction, you may want to consider that to me - and to hundreds of millions of Catholics across the world, let alone the other religions - this is a matter of freedom of religion. It would be nothing but mockery and insult, if you, in a position of political power, were to dictate to me: "you are wholly free to think of marriage as you wish, but you are not allowed to argue for it, and you are certainly not allowed to practice it."

Re: P.S:

[sabethea.livejournal.com]

Um. Given that argument, surely it is completely outrageous that Muslims in the UK and many other countries are not allowed legally to have more than one wife: they may be wholly free to think of that as they will, but are not allowed to argue for it or practice it.

Re: P.S:

[fpb.livejournal.com]

They are not allowed to register more than one wife legally. That has nothing to do with what they actually do in their own home, and in fact it is getting chipped round the edges (a recent regulation, for instance, ordered that all marriages legitimately concluded abroad, including polygamous ones, are to be recognized).