fpb | "Conservatives"

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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

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

From:

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?

From:

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.

From:

sabethea.livejournal.com

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.

Call it Civil Union. *shrug* There's no such thing as gay marriage in this country, so it would merely be following the same path.

From:

fpb.livejournal.com

Sorry to have to invoke ethnic cliches, but that is a typical piece of English humbug. There is nothing that the law actually calls gay marriage in this country, but the press keeps talking of Elton John's marriage. And if civil unions are not gay marriage, why are they limited to two people, and why is there a prohibition on close relatives marrying?

From:

sabethea.livejournal.com

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.

I quote this back to you again. The way to sort this out is to have "legal partnerships/civil unions" which would not in law be called marriage but in practice would work in the same way; and leave the official word 'marriage' to the religions.

From:

fpb.livejournal.com

And I remind you that that is not what our Tory friend was proposing. What he was proposing is that the Churches should be forbidden from holding marriage ceremonies, until and unless they swallowed "gay marriage"; the implication being that the first church who dared hold anything like one after our Tory friend's proposals have been accepted would see the police march in and arrest the priest at the altar. And if you think I am exaggerating, that is simply what the State has always done when challenged.

From:

sabethea.livejournal.com

Churches should be forbidden from holding marriage ceremonies

Um... unofficial 'marriage blessings' would not be covered by this law, however.

From:

fpb.livejournal.com

Please tell me that you haven't really written that. You imagine for a minute that it would be tolerable for any church to be forbidden from performing a sacrament, let alone replace it with "informal blessings"??

From:

sabethea.livejournal.com

No, they would be able to perform a non-legal sacrament. As we have already both agreed that State legality and religious ceremonies should be separate, it is surely irrelevant whether the government acknowledges or does not acknowledge the State legal status of a religious service.

If the government said that the taking of communion did not have legal statue - which it doesn't [there's no suggestion that in law the consumption of the blood and body of Christ gives specific legal benefits] it does not make communion itself any less valid. It just does not give it legal status. I am arguing that the same should be true for marriage.

From:

fpb.livejournal.com

That is nonsense. If I perform a non-legal sacrament I go to jail, just as I would if I granted non-legal driving licences or sold non-legal drugs. That is what non-legal means. And if you think that the State would ignore that, you are assuming that the State would behave as no State in history, unless profoundly corrupt and practically helpless, ever has.

From:

fpb.livejournal.com

I would also remind you that these so-called civil unions are barred to close kin and to third parties, which make them, not just imitations of marriages, but imitation of traditional English marriages. If they were merely the neutral way of registering religious weddings as you claim, they would have space for polygamous and incestuous weddings.

From:

sabethea.livejournal.com

not just imitations of marriages, but imitation of traditional English marriages.

See, I disagree here, because at the moment churches are FORBIDDEN BY LAW legally to perform same-sex partnerships. It's not that churches are currently not forced to accept and perform same-sex marriages, it is that they are not ALLOWED LEGALLY to do so.

If civil partnerships were literally 'marriage without calling it that', then the same rights should be open to homosexual couples as there is to heterosexual couples - which there isn't. (There are churches which accept and welcome GBLT couples, but are not allowed to perform their union: they have, at present, to perform a non-legal 'blessing' afterwards.)

If they were merely the neutral way of registering religious weddings as you claim, they would have space for polygamous and incestuous weddings.

There are laws against incest and against underage sex. According (as far as I know - and I am perfectly prepared to be corrected: I've read the entire bible, but not for MANY MANY years) to biblical rules, there is no 'lower age' of marriage and there's a fair amount of incest; however, even in a church it is not allowable to marry a 15 year old to someone, nor is incest legal, no matter the religious acceptance of that process.

As to polygamy; the legal problem with that is that benefits given to two people then become given to three or more, which causes legal issues on the original areas of State intervention into marriage - property and money. Therefore, that should be MORE acceptable within religions (for example, Muslims should be able to have their second wives 'blessed' by Islam) than outside it.

From:

fpb.livejournal.com

I thought I had made my meaning clear, but evidently I hadn't, or else you would not have wasted all these paragraphs on red herrings. Let's see if I can be clearer now.

"Civil partnerships" as they exist in English law are nothing to do with validating any religious ceremony. They are State-owned imitations of traditional English wedding mores for the use of homosexual couples. That is a fact and I can't imagine how you can fail to see it.

As for using the literal reading of isolated Bible passages to justify this or that sin, Christians, and certainly Catholics, are not bound by the Old Testament. It is not sacred to us in that sense. For that matter, not even the Jews are - try to argue with a rabbi that the example of Judah and Levi validates mass murder, see where it gets you.

From:

sabethea.livejournal.com

"Civil partnerships" as they exist in English law are nothing to do with validating any religious ceremony. They are State-owned imitations of traditional English wedding mores for the use of homosexual couples. That is a fact and I can't imagine how you can fail to see it.

They are not validating religious ceremonies, no. But as you say, 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. I am suggesting that the legal status should work for people who do not claim any sort of religious belonging, but wish to be married.

From:

fpb.livejournal.com

But that is not what they are for! Try to go to your local registrar with a member of the opposite sex; tell them - I belong to no religious group, so I want a civil partnership. They would tell you: you can't have a civil partnership, that is not what it's for. You can have a civil marriage, which is not the same thing. And if you insisted on the civil partnership, they'd have you thrown out as a weirdo and a troublemaker. So the civil partnership simply does not do what you claim it should do. It does do what I claim it does.

From:

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?

From:

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?

From:

fellmama.livejournal.com

Marriage was most definitely a religious institution in Rome (and the empire as well), but it was equally a wholly secular institution policed by both the state and social, non-religious norms. I'll certainly give you state registration as a recent innovation, but state acknowledgement and definition, hardly.

Or in other words, the religious rite that resulted in marriage in Rome was completely distinct from the legal status of being married.

From:

fpb.livejournal.com

Of course. Rome invented bureaucracy. And used it in the Decian persecution to try and uproot the Church from the face of the earth, using the resources of its census to force every single person in the empire to sacrifice or be executed. But the fact that bureaucracy could be used to support religious goals (such as the extermination of the impious Christians) does not mean that the bureaucracy was itself independent of religion. Quite the opposite. Rome knew no separation of Church and State. The priests were as much state functionaries as the consuls, the Senate had religious duties such as validating new cults, and the Emperor was both Supreme Pontiff and Tribune of the People.

From:

fellmama.livejournal.com

Perhaps you are unaware that I have an MA in Roman history? I mention this not because "ur rong" but so that you may assume a certain basic level of understanding and knowledge on my part.

Anyway, I meant nothing about the separation of church and state, a wholly modern invention indeed. My point was simply that marriage could be and often was not religious in the Roman state, and thus that your characterization of marriage as always and ever religious is flawed.

What I find interesting about this, incidentally, is that a religious aspect to a particular marriage was frequently used as subsequent justification OF the legal status of the union--something today's jurists would find backwards, no?

From:

fpb.livejournal.com

It depends on what you mean by religious. If you read Dumezils' "Marriages Indoeuropeens" you will find that the threefold classification of Roman marriages had a wholly religious base, even though only the highest-ranking one - confarreatio - actually involved priests. The act as such changed the status of an individual in society in a way that reflected on their religious status - for instance, certain sacrifices could only be carried out by young people who were patrimi matrimi, having a set of married and living parents. (That must have caused a good deal of problems in the late Republic, when divorce was virtually universal among the upper classes, and explains why someone could be made flamen Dialis at seventeen, like the young Caesar - a few years more and you would find nobody with the necessary requirements. No, I was not aware that your specialization was in Roman studies, but I was perfectly well aware that you are a fellow historian, and had absolutely no intention to patronize. It's nice to be able to speak to someone who can be assumed to have actual knowledge rather than the frequent and dreadful synthetic assembly of factoids motivated by ill-digested ideology that one has most often to deal with - people who are ignorant but think, because they read the wrong books, that they are educated.