From The Gallup Organization:
May 15, 2003
Six Out of 10 Americans Say Homosexual Relations Should Be Recognized as Legal
But Americans are evenly divided on issue of legal civil unions between homosexuals giving them the legal rights of married couples.
The Gallup site includes a detailed breakdown of the demographics.
But my guess is that the slight majority opposing the legality of civil unions feels far more strongly about the subject than those who are in favor. Meaning they vote out of proportion to their prevalence in the population.
Marriage has been a religious institution since it’s beginning. Whether you believe in God or not, marriage has always been seen as the sanctification of the union of a man and a woman by God.
God cannot sanctify sin. Every major religion sees homosexuality as a sin. Therefore God cannot sanctify homosexuality nor a union between homosexuals.
Legal contractual unions that do not involve the religious sanctification of a homosexual union might very well be tolerated by many Americans BUT your article is misleading…THE GREAT MAJORITY OF AMERICANS DO NOT WANT HOMOSEXUAL MARRIAGES THAT ARE SEEN AS MARRIAGES.
Legal unions between homosexuals….yes. Homosexual marriages…no.
Not quite sure where that qualifies as your business, Greg.
I don’t particularly agree with Jehova’s Witnesses but I’m not going to interfere with their interpret God.
You may not like the MCC very much but legally you can’t interfere with their religious rituals concerning gay marriage.
The government cannot interfere with either.
“Marriage has been a religious institution since it’s beginning. Whether you believe in God or not, marriage has always been seen as the sanctification of the union of a man and a woman by God.”
This seems a bit misleading. If this were true, then the state should have nothing to do with marriage. Or maybe only those believing in God should be able to be married.
“Marriage has always been…” is a pretty common argument I see from lots of folks. From the inception of America until the 1950s and 1960s (and in one state until as late as the 1980s officially, but not enforced for many years prior) Marriage had always been between members of the same race.
In many cultures in the past and in many current cultures, marriage has always been about money, power, familial unity, and many other things that had nothing to do with love or romance.
The problem is that marriage has changed over the years, and until people realize and admit that, they will be doing nothing more than spreading false truths to the public. And here I thought God was all about telling the truth.
Quite right. Christians need to come up with a different word for what they now call marriage, to finally end this stupid confusion between Christian “marriage”, state “marriage” and anyone else’s “marriage”. You can get a state “marriage”, just for the tax cuts, but then have a Christian “marriage” that really means something to you.
Greg says:
Every major religion sees homosexuality as a sin.
Untrue. Buddhism, Shinto and Hinduism do not take this view. In the US neither Native American nor Wicca accept such an idea. Actually, the idea of ‘sin’ is a very specific Abrahamic concept.
Greg said, “…marriage has always been seen as the sanctification of the union of a man and a woman by God.”
As Cynthia Tucker so aptly pointed out in her editorial this week, marriage has NOT always been the union of a man and a woman, but the union of a man and as many women as he could afford! The whole piece is excellent;
Read it here
Yes, the idea of “sin” was an invention in order to create a “need” for a judgmental god; an excellent job of salesmanship! Create a need, or even the perception of need, and you can sell just about any bill of goods; religion is no exception. Nobody would even think of getting “saved” until some salesman (preacher) invents the perception that the person is not already just fine without whatever the salesman is pitching. “Get yourself saved, then go out and convince others what sinners they are so they want to get saved too!” The ultimate multi-level marketing scam.
ray,
Millions dying of a treatable disease because no one sell them treatment they can afford;
thousands of innocents getting murdered on the streets;
hundreds of thousands told they’re not pretty enough, skinny enough, strong enough;
a planet that we’ve been highly successful in tearing apart.
I think anyone with a sense of care should be able to get the impression that we’re not “just fine”, either individually or collectively, whether God exists or not. Such a statement of denial could only come out of our mindbogglingly self-centred Western culture.
>Yes, the idea of “sin” was an invention in order to create a “need” for a judgmental god; an excellent job of salesmanship
Actually, not. The idea of sin and a judgemental god were both created for the purpose of social control by a chosen elite.
Trevize: I was aiming that “just fine” remark at the doctrine that we’re all just sinners in need of a savior; specifically, at the notion that being gay is a sin and we must be delivered from that sin. A god that doesn’t exist won’t solve problems that do (being gay isn’t one of them). It takes real people in a real world addressing real problems, such as the ones you listed and a whole lot more. My role in Public Health makes it very clear to me just how big our problems are, in a local way; just reading the newspaper makes the global problems fairly clear as well. I apologize if I gave the impression that I thought such problems didn’t exist. I’m too close to the problem to be in denial.
Raj: yes, that too. 🙂 Either way, it was a sales job on a mass population lacking insight or education to see through it; perhaps in another day and age, such superstitious means may have been necessary for social control. Today, such means aren’t necessary, imo.
Either way, it was a sales job on a mass population lacking insight or education to see through it; perhaps in another day and age, such superstitious means may have been necessary for social control.
Man, you guys accuse “ex-gays” and christians of sexual bigotry, and then you come out with such blatant cultural bigotry it astounds me.
Maybe if you get to know someone from a culture outside of 19th century modernist Western ideals (eg. a native American, a Buddhist monk, or an Australian aborigine) you might see that ideas of morality sometimes have a lot more significance than “control by a chosen elite”. Spiritual ideas, including the existence, or not, of God, also run a lot deeper, to the questions of our consciousness and state, the universe’s nature and its apparent beginning and end. Looking at social forces alone is fun, but I think you’re selling yourself short if that’s all you look at.
There’s also the fact that many people don’t see how a humanist outlook can possibly be anything other than absurd inside an atheist worldview.
“Cultural bigotry” ? Hmmmm…. I guess I’m not communicating clearly, or perhaps you’re reading more into my responses than what I’m actually saying. Either way, it seems I’ve somehow offended you and for that I apologize. I see spirituality and morality in a very different realm from the Western patriarchal religions, and all the negative history that comes with it. If I’m bigoted at all, it would be against what passes for Christianity in the U.S. today, although I wouldn’t call it bigotry, but rather an conscious and educated bias. 🙂
Ray,
Sorry if I misunderstood you. It’s just that you said this:
If I’m bigoted at all, it would be against what passes for Christianity in the U.S. today
a statement with which I heartily agree,
but after saying this:
such superstitious means may have been necessary for social control
which implies to me that the very concepts of God, moral error (sin) and a divine source for morality are primitive “superstitions” in your mind. These concepts are part of a number of faiths, not just the “Abrahamic” ones (Karma might be an example).
I’d also like to say that I don’t see how you could so simplistically describe Judaism, Christianity or Islam as Western Patriarchal religions. First, they’re not ultimately Western (each had most core developments in Asia), and it is questionable how they might be ascribed to any particular culture given their often universal scope. Second, a quick look at the world says to me that “patriarchy” has more to do with the culture rather than the faith. You might be surprised how much control a Hindu father in India has over his wife and children, or a Buddhist man from Japan over his family. To attribute familial father-RULE as a basic tenet of Christianity would be greatly misplaced, in my mind.