The state and marriage
I've gotten quite a bit of feedback from yesterday's post about the (hopefully) upcoming constitutional amendment that the ACLU is trying to stop us from voting on. A note to Terry Frank: Your comment intreagued me so much that it will get a post devoted to it tomorrow when I have a few more minutes to spend discussing it in-depth. I'm glad you enjoy my piddling little work here enough to comment on it-it does my heart good to know that good people are reading.Right now, I want to reply to the anonymous commenter who asked bluntly:
Is your belief that gays shouldn't marry based on your religious beliefs?
To that I respond that it would be imposible for me, as a Christian, to compartmentalize my faith life in such a way that my faith does not affect my politics. If it did not, it would be a hollow faith, as it affects everything else I do.
However, my religious faith is not the only reason I oppose the notion that gays should marry. Government has managed to turn marriage into a civil contract that can be made and broken. Marriage is no more a civil contract than I am a liberal. Marriage is itself a religious institution into which the government has no business interfering. All of the major religious faiths of our society agree that marriage exists between one man and one woman. Since marriage is a sacramental, and not a civil institution, just who is the State to tell the Church that marriage is something other than the union of one man and woman, excluding all others?
posted by Deacon David Oatney @ 8:43 PM
5 Comments:
In states where there have been homosexual marriages allowed, we are already seeing inroads being made by polygamists. So, I ask... where is this to stop? If one man can marry another, and eventually one man or woman can marry multiple other partners, shall we allow bestiality to become a legal form of marriage? What about incestuous marriage? Simply that one opposes homosexual marriage does not mean one is aiming for a theocratic state, or to outlaw everything their faith deems "immoral."
A link to peruse for those interested:
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/002/938xpsxy.asp
Chuck;
Ahh, but people like SC are not interested in reality (I don't know for sure, but I suspect the guy works in some capacity for MetroPulse, which would explain his warped notion that we all advocate a theocracy.
SC and his friends advocate an atheocracy, and America (especially the South) does not agree with that vision of society, and the Left just can't seem to live that down.
The difference between the men who wrote our Constitution and the kind of society you are advocating is this: The men who wrote those words believed in and feared God, and would never have dreamed of allowing homosexual "marriage" in the State of Tennessee. If that is what you want, why not go live in one of those blue states where they like that sort of thing?
You are a liberal is what you are...
Anyone who would think that the religious protections afforded in the Tennessee Constitution somehow says that Holy Matrimony is anything other than between a man and a woman (when it does not discuss the question) is trying to read things into the law that are not there.
The reason the ACLU and these others do not want the issue brought to a vote is because the amendment will pass in a landslide. You know this, I know this, the ACLU knows it, as do the people at-large of Tennessee
"Progressive civil libertarian" is an oxymoron, despite what your friends at the ACLU may tell you.
People have the right to marry the HUSBAND or WIFE they choose, or simply not to marry at all.
Your family history is intreaguing. Were members of your family in league with Parson Brownlow and his abolitionist crusades? Ah yes, fine example of toleration those people were...
My impression of you is that you are a decent, though misguided human being.
You are also in the minority on this issue, and I think you know that. That is precisely why you don't want this to come to a vote.
You can think whatever you like, but denying others the right to enact this amendment is to spit on the very fundamental values that a majority of Tennesseans hold dear. You are a blue-state thinker in a red state. You have that right, but you do not have the right to stifle the will of the majority.
I gather that you think I am a "fundamentalist." I am a whisky-drinking Catholic, thank you-the kind your family's abolitionist friends loved to hate. Our families, it would seem, fought on opposite sides in the Late Unpleasantness also.
One state, two state, red state, blue state...
Nonetheless-you are fun to spar with Scott-I'd like to buy you a drink sometime.
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