Supreme Court extends same-sex marriage nationwide

originally posted by: markosity1973


I'd be a regular at church if it weren't for the fact I am expected to live a miserable life of self hatred and celibacy because of something that is not my own fault.

Understood. If it's not my way, it's the highway.

Compare your brief life here, with eternal life, and it may become clearer. I do understand that it is a burden, but we ALL have burdens. It is not an excuse for throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

originally posted by: markosity1973

Christianity has painted itself into a corner it can't get out of with this issue. It HAS to uphold what the bible says, or it's central scriptures will start to be questioned by everyone.

Common sense on the other hand says that gay marriage harms nobody. Why after all should I be sorry for something that God allowed to happen to me and why should I have to live a life of loneliness and self hatred because a dusty old book says so? We were taught in Sunday school that only one sin was unforgivable and it was not Gay marriage.

The Church has not changed in 2000 years - who has painted themselves into a corner? Those who demand acceptance of sin.

The position of the Church is that homosexual behavior is gravely sinful, and is therefore harmful.

Faux marriage is harmful because it continues and promotes unrepentant sin.

You are not called to be 'sorry' for your attractions, you are called to repent of your actions on those attractions.

MANY like you have done so, and live happy, fulfilled, sacrificial lives.

Many single and married men and women also live happy, fulfilled sacrificial lives that do not revolve around sex.


And exactly how is sin forgivable without repentance and reconciliation? Jesus did his part, but we have to do ours as well. It is a condition for forgiveness.

a reply to: Seamrog

The RC church has HUMAN given authority. To be exact, it was only after the conversion of Constantine that it became possible to openly say you were a Christian. One of the main reasons for Constantine to applaude Christianity is that he saw it as a means to unite the Roman Empire again, as it started to crumble in those days. To make it acceptable to the mostly pagan Romans, the early Roman church allowed - even promoted - pagan beliefs to be made part of the Christian religion.

Such pagan beliefs can be made out easily, even if you only accept the Bible as your source of truth. We find no mention of papacy, worshipping Mary, the perpetual virginity of Mary, confession of sin to a priest, purgatory and many other Catholic teachings in the Bible. Like the Bible itself, it was simply made up by humans.. Christ would probably have shaken his head in disbelief had he known this.

The much older belief systems - the ones popular before Christianity - are still part of RC and other Christian and even Muslim and Jewish religions. There are way too many similarities between Isis and Mary, for example, to be coincidental. The old Mithraistic Roman belief included eating of flesh to be purged of sin - likewise, Catholics eat the body and flesh of Jesus and drink his blood (wine). This ritual is never described in the Bible in as far as I know, its a pagan habit. Christmas was never a Christian holiday either - but as it proved hard to convince the population to give up their believes and ceremonies the Church - HUMANS - simply poured some Christian sauce over old pagan rituals. Hollow e'en is still celebrated today - the old pagan ritual to express fear of the sun not returning, of death and hunger. Christmas originally was the celebration held after the people concluded that the Sun DID come back, and it was celebrated long before Christ was even born.

You are at best deluded, but if you are such a keen scholar, you should have studied the inconvenient parts too.

About ad hominem attacks: if I insulted you I apologize. But note that taking part in any discussion implies the risk of hearing things you do not like. That's the entire point of any discussion.

originally posted by: mOjOm
a reply to: grandmakdw

Then why in that post did you make so many references to Christianity in decline and Muslims taking over and stuff like that???

To say that those things don't play a part in your reasoning seems dishonest to me. You many not realize the impact of those thoughts on your reasoning but to someone on the outside listening to your arguments throughout this thread it does seem quite obvious that they are influencing you to some degree.

But I suppose maybe I'm reading something in to what you're saying as well. Can anyone else verify what I'm saying as true or not??

That had nothing to do with religion per se.

It has to do with changing popular culture.

Christianity used to be part of popular culture prior to 1970 and greatly influenced all of popular culture.
But it's influence has waned and is now disappearing altogether as part of popular culture.

Look at fashion as an expression of popular culture,
one can see decade by decade the change in popular culture through fashion.
Fashion, is a reflection of the larger culture.
My office in the University was beside the fashion professors, my friends, who talked about this in their classes.

As a stark example:
Look at the fashions of the 1920's, mini skirts, free flowing, loose dresses (things were good and pop culture was free and easy)
Look at the dramatic shift in fashion to lower skirts and tighter fitting clothes, during the depression (when things were bad in pop culture)
Then look at the sombre colors and noir of the 1940's during the WW.
Come the 1950's when things were booming, we see bright colors and full flowing skirts.
Then the 1960's when things were quite good in pop culture, we see very short skirts and a return to 1920's type fashion;
Come the late 60's - early 70's when war returned (vietnam) and protesting was de rigueur culture; we see long out of control hair as the fashion, a return to floor length skirts; torn and worn clothing as a protest of the culture of the 50's and early 60's;
I could go on and on

Popular Culture changes like the wind.
Fashion is simply a reflection of popular culture, but through it one can see how fast popular culture and ideas and ideas of what is right and what is wrong; and what is acceptable and what is not acceptable can change.

There is a high probability (which is what I was getting at) that Muslim culture will predominate in the US in the not too distant future, approx. 30 years is my guess.

If popular culture is now the basis of decisions
for SCOTUS on the laws of the land,
what do you think will happen when
Muslim culture predominates?

Say it can't or won't happen,
ask someone who was an adult
30 years ago if they at that time
would ever have thought
Gay marriage would be the law
of the land.

(Again, I have to say this every time: I do NOT oppose gay marriage)

a reply to: ForteanOrg

Suffice it to say that you are wrong on almost every point you make above. They are typical anti-Catholic talking points that have been put to bed by the Church and her apologists many times. It does not bear repeating in this thread.

One either believes Jesus, or one rejects him. It is that simple.

Peter was not deluded when Christ gave him the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven, nor was he deluded when Jesus told him that it was upon him, that his Church would be built.

originally posted by: mOjOm
a reply to: grandmakdw

Couldn't you just as easily say that they shouldn't be basing laws of Christianity being the Popular Culture too???

It seems that is no different as far as your argument goes except that it's not your chosen type of popular culture this time. It would seem that as long as the Supreme Court sides with Christian Culture everything is just roses and sunshine but change who the law caters to and then there is a problem.

Why are you trying to mind read me and place me as a peg in the hole you are making for me?

I said before that the Constitution should be the guiding force for decision making by the supreme court.

Also the court in the past has looked at past decisions and decisions by lower courts and some international law to make legal decisions. I object to looking at popular culture as the basis for making decisions.

You still don't get it, I DON'T OBJECT TO GAY MARRIAGE, I THINK PEOPLE SHOULD BE ALLOWED TO LIVE AND LET LIVE, I DON'T CARE IF SOMEONE IS GAY OR NOT

My objection is the basis for the decision, not the outcome of the decision. This is separate and apart from religion.

My religious examples are because I think that within 30 years Muslim culture will be the popular culture of the times, due to the reasons I cited over and over. Look at Iran, when the Shah was in power it was the most progressive and modernized country in the middle east, nothing at all like it is today, the culture was much like US culture at the time. Look at Iranian culture and laws today now that Islam is the popular culture of the day. That is what happens when we allow popular culture to form the basis of laws.

SCOTUS needed to find a reason other than popular culture to base their decision on, or left it to the states as they were changing anyway. But it is very very dangerous to a society to base laws on popular culture.

a reply to: Seamrog

"Suffice it to say that you're wrong". Oh, perhaps I am, let's see: let's simply take one point out of my list: where exactly in the Bible is it stated that, as the RC teaches, the Pope is the placeholder of God on Earth?

BTW: you had noticed, I hope, that even the RC Church nowadays - yay Francis! - believes in evolution too?

originally posted by: grandmakdw
I said before that the Constitution should be the guiding force for decision making by the supreme court.

That's exactly what happened.

My objection is the basis for the decision, not the outcome of the decision.
...
SCOTUS needed to find a reason other than popular culture to base their decision on, or left it to the states as they were changing anyway. But it is very very dangerous to a society to base laws on popular culture.

They didn't base their DECISION (there were no laws made) on popular culture. They based in on the 14th amendment, which is VERY clear:

If a state has a legal construct called "marriage", that law must be applied equally to all citizens. I don't know where you got the idea that popular culture had anything to do with their decision.

a reply to: Benevolent Heretic

I can't help but wonder if that decision would have been the same though if there wasn't so many state sponsored along with just society based benefits and services that are so deeply entwined with marriage.
many of which, quite frankly kind of trampled on our basic rights to begin with.

a reply to: dawnstar

I've been wondering about that for YEARS. I remember talking about how the ban on legal marriage for some people violates the 14th amendment forever.

The fact that so many states have seen how discriminatory the bans are and the fact that society has realized that gay people are just like anyone else may have made their decision easier. But if gay marriage bans had ever made it to the SC before, I don't see how they could have made a different decision. Legally. It's SO obvious!

a reply to: Benevolent Heretic

considering just how many of those benefits were established to encourage the traditional marriage and well, negate the bad effects of that type of marriage when things go astray, I am almost tempted to say that well, it's just the past coming back to bite some in the tail now.

a reply to: Seamrog

But they are not Faux Marriages, they are Legal recognized Marriages!

Harmful to who though?

originally posted by: Benevolent Heretic
a reply to: dawnstar

The fact that so many states have seen how discriminatory the bans are and the fact that society has realized that gay people are just like anyone else may have made their decision easier. But if gay marriage bans had ever made it to the SC before, I don't see how they could have made a different decision. Legally. It's SO obvious!

I've noticed how the SC has a history of waiting until they see how the population overall will handle something before they agree to rule on it. It's not that what the popular opinion is influences the court in any way, it's that they won't rule on it until they know the general population is ready for it.

Yeah, I agree that they really had no other choice but to rule the way they did. If they said leave it up to the states, then we'd have to go back and leave things like Jim Crow laws up to the states, and the South could go back to stuff like not allowing blacks to vote. The 14th amendment is pretty clear on things like this.

a reply to: xuenchen

Good job, Xuenchen, S&F. 51 pages now!

a reply to: kaylaluv

Many states still have the right to discriminate against GLBTQ, we can get fired and denied services among other things just for being GLBTQ.. that i believe should be the next step, Equal protections

originally posted by: mOjOm
a reply to: grandmakdw
...
There is a high probability (which is what I was getting at) that Muslim culture will predominate in the US in the not too distant future, approx. 30 years is my guess.

If popular culture is now the basis of decisions
for SCOTUS on the laws of the land,
what do you think will happen when
Muslim culture predominates?

Say it can't or won't happen,
ask someone who was an adult
30 years ago if they at that time
would ever have thought
Gay marriage would be the law
of the land.

(Again, I have to say this every time: I do NOT oppose gay marriage)

If the Muslims dominate in 30 years, the Gays will be in deep *&^%

Is anyone is in New York celebrating pride?

Today is the anniversary of Stonewall.. where us Drag Queens and street kids pushed to the front of Civil Rights and Equality!

originally posted by: Darth_Prime
a reply to: kaylaluv

Many states still have the right to discriminate against GLBTQ, we can get fired and denied services among other things just for being GLBTQ.. that i believe should be the next step, Equal protections

Yes. Aren't there organized efforts to add LGBTQ to Federal non-discrimination.

originally posted by: Darth_Prime
a reply to: kaylaluv

Many states still have the right to discriminate against GLBTQ, we can get fired and denied services among other things just for being GLBTQ.. that i believe should be the next step, Equal protections

Are there any pending legal challenges ?

Maybe the 14th applies?

youtu.be...

a reply to: Annee

I hope we can get this taken care of sooner than later, i think and fear states will go this way since the ruling