Election Thread

[kandrathe]

Be that as it may, it still has no business in an institution that is designed to promote freedom and equality for all. Keep your rituals inside of your churches and stop trying to foist them out onto those who have the audacity to not agree with your personal beliefs. I didn't say you couldn't or shouldn't have them, but the specific ritual has no place in a system where all religions and beliefs should be respected equally.

So the state should not be able to hijack the religious sacrament of marriage, anymore than it should be able to co-opt any other religious dogma. If the state wants to rewrite the definitions of things to include groups which religions oppose, then they should make up their own word for marriage.

[rant]
On a side note: This is the very kind of inwardly focused BS that brought down the Roman Empire. I'd suggest we look outward at the neo-barbarians at the gates who want to destroy us for the very perceived moral depravity we are discussing. In the global world of troubles, we might want to spend some effort attempting to convince islamacists not to impose 12th century tribal justice on homosexuals without trials, rather than worsen our standing with them by rewriting even more social contracts to make them more permissive. We may not like Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell, but at least they don't hate us and urge their followers to make bombs to kill us. It boggles my mind that in the USA we are arguing the nuances of acceptable interrogation techniques and the rights of non-citizens to Constitutional protections, while the pan-islamic world is engineering the means to make nuclear weapons with which to destroy us. I'm not saying that those nuances of what is or is not torture, or what constitutes a fair trial are not important, but some people need to get their heads from betwixt their buttocks and wake up to that guy pointing the gun to your head. Nero fiddled... We listen to Ipods...
[/rant]