"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

Re: continued...

[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.

Re: continued...

[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.

Re: continued...

[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.

Re: continued...

[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.

Re: continued...

[sabethea.livejournal.com]

But that's the point. I'm not saying it DOES what I claim it should do. I'm saying it SHOULD do what I claim it should do - and that 'marriage' in a church/synagogue/other religious place should be a non-legal (non-legal is different from 'illegal', incidentally: I have a non-legal humanist wedding to my name, and whilst the law does not acknowledge it, it can't imprison me for it because I did not break the law) event.

Re: continued...

[fpb.livejournal.com]

And because you in your niceness claim that it ought to do so and so, we should treat the reality of what the British state has actually done, here and now, as if it did not exist? Sorry, I am a rationalist and I deal with things as they are.

Re: continued...

[sabethea.livejournal.com]

The British state has not done anything. It has suggested something which you can critique. You critique it saying "this is outrageous and should not happen". I critique it saying "If you're arguing this, then the logical outcome should be x".

Re: continued...

[fpb.livejournal.com]

My dear young lady, perhaps you are not familiar with the way the British Ruling Class does things. In that case, may I inform you that this man's villainous suggestion follows a pattern. If you don't know the pattern, study the history of Britain in the last hundred years or so.

Re: continued...

[sabethea.livejournal.com]

My dear old man, I am aware. But your argument that the state has already DONE something is inaccurate.

Re: continued...

[fpb.livejournal.com]

When you see a pattern beginning to take place, you have a reasonable expectation that it will take place. When you see Usain Bolt starting to pull away from other runners, you have a reasonable expectation that he will finish first and probably pulling up. When you see a known mafioso coming out of the premises of a business, you can assume that he was there to get protection money. When you see two rows of eleven players enter a rectangular field, you may have a reasonable expectation that a game of soccer is going to be played. And when you see certain suggestions begin to be bruited about the periphery of a certain group of people, you can reasonably expect them to follow it through.

Re: continued...

[sabethea.livejournal.com]

...and in the case of Usain Bolt, you'd be wrong, in the most recent circumstance.

Re: continued...

[fpb.livejournal.com]

"The most recent circumstance"? You mean when he won the 200mts world championship? Well, he did not pull up, I suppose. Or when he led the sublime Jamaican quartet to shatter the world record on their way to another World Championship? Well, again, he did not pull up.

Re: continued...

[sabethea.livejournal.com]

Exactly.

He did not, in any sense, pull up on either occasion (nor could he have done).

Damn, edits. He could've done, but he wouldn't have won in such circs. Or his team wouldn't, in the second one.

Re: continued...

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Which is why I said "probably".

This is nothing to do with anything, but I have wanted to say it for a while and I will. Athletics is my favourite sport, and of course nobody could possibly love athletics and not admire Bolt to bits. But I have to say that I have long suspected that behind all the clowning and showboating there was a strong, focused and intelligent personality, and now I am certain of it. When he got his start wrong in the 100mts, he blamed nobody but himself and did not even try to get himself reinstated. Sure, he was visibly angry and frustrated, but that was on the instant. When, the next day, journalists interviewed him, clearly expecting to find an angry nervous wreck, they found a calm, quiet-spoken man who just said that these things happen and that what matters is to deal with it and move on. And he did - spectacularly. That is a man who deserves admiration, not just as a supremely gifted athlete, but as a human being.