Redstate

Like you said, Canada is not the US, and we are different both legally and culturally.  For the example of the Mayor being punished, well, that person was elected to uphold the laws and rights of everybody, so I don't see that as injustice.  (S)he could have found another way to empress their personal opinions.  Because this person chose to be mayor, they must represent all people.  I would say the same is true for a justice commissioner, especially if they are unable to uphold the laws because of personal beliefs.

None of those actions remove anyone's individual rights.  The store keeper is another story, but I don't think that would happen here.  Pharmacists are able to refuse to fill prescriptions approved by a doctor, if it is against their beleifs.  So I think that we are safe from scenario.  I am sure that any laws passed in this country will have significantly different wording.

I think that people in this country are allowed to be intolerant, if they want to.  The only time it is unacceptable is when it expressed in a way that is unacceptable.  By that I mean violence.

I hope you don't find me as being intolerant to your idea.  I really don't see how the tolerance of society in general will remove anybody's rights or not allow them to be intolerant of others with which they disagree.

For the example of the Mayor being punished, well, that person was elected to uphold the laws and rights of everybody, so I don't see that as injustice.  (S)he could have found another way to empress their personal opinions.

So on this principle is the mayor obligated to recognize a "pride" day for every group that demands it? The gays groups wanted an extraordinary recognition -- much more than equality. Does tolerance require that she give it to anyone, or just this pressure group?

I I really don't see how the tolerance of society in general will remove anybody's rights . . .

I explained that above. Philosophically, the doctrine of tolerance (in the sense being discussed here) has no principled reason to show any respect or decency and mercy toward what it regards as antithetical to itself, namely, publicly-held and affirmed intolerance. There is nothing to restrain the regime of Tolerance from crushing what it cannot tolerate.

I agree for this simple reason: The scripture says so and, being inspired by God, it is the final authority.

With that said, we must do all to stand because God's grace and wrath falls on the just and the unjust alike. Meaning, we all are blessed when we strive to live God's way and we all suffer consequences when we don't.

The difference is: for some life ends here.

 

Jesus said...    And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. Believest thou this? John 11:26

Death is the great separator...

We are in this together, like it or not.

There has never been a case yet (in the USA) of any church being forced by law to perform its sacraments on someone whom it found unsuitable for those sacraments. No Baptist Church has  been forced to baptize an infant. No Orthodox Church has been forced to ordain a woman to the priesthood. And no Catholic Church has been forced to marry a divorced person. Why not? Well, the First Amendment would never allow it! And as a practical matter a person who wishes to be baptized or ordained or married or whatever and finds that one church will not do this, can always find a church that will. The marketplace works even for religion.

Secondly, people who are convinced that they and they alone know God's will need to get a grip. There are umpteen different interpretations of Scripture to be found out there among belivers-- and non Christians deserve the basic respect of not having someone's sectarian morality imposed on them. Our world learned the hard way that fanatical insistence on doctrinal minutiae leads to bloodshed and tyranny and every sort of evil. Why is the ancient evil of religious extremism returning to plague us now? It could be the ruin of this country if we are not careful. Look at the Middle East as a cautionary example!

By all means everyone has the right to believe what he pleases in the privacy of his own home, and in his church. But non-universal theories have no place in the public square, unless people would prefer turning this country into the Disunited States of America (or worse).

That, as I recall, Roman Catholic Charities was ordered by the CSC to provide birth control to its employees as part of their health care coverage.

Because this person chose to be mayor, they must represent all people.

I just want to point out that this is a non sequitur.

One of the principle characteristics of representative democracy is that we elect people to represent us by exercisin gtheir judgment of what is right and wrong, good and bad.

During the 2004 campaign Kerry was asked about his views on abortion. I'll paraphrase him here but in essence he said that while he thought it was wrong he did not feel it was correct to legislate his views on the rest of society. The Senator seems to have forgotten that this is exactly what the people of Massachusetts sent him to Washington to do: to vote his conscience, on their behalf, on issues. If the people do not like his voting record every siz years they get a chance to remove him from office.

And in the case of any Senator, Kerry included, they never seem to feel reticent to 'vote their conscience' when it comes to voting taxes, entitlements etc.

...that throughout America there are bans on smoking in privately owned restaurants and bars.

And, as has been noted elsewhere in this thread, in California Catholic Charities has been required to provide birth control to their employees on the grounds that because they provide services without regard to the recipient's religion they cannot claim a religious exemption.

This April in Wisconsin the state pharmacy board repremanded and resticted the license of a pharmacist who refused to fill a prescription for oral contraceptives.

Don't say it can't happen here.

. . . that morality has no role in the public sphere?

issues of morality we can all agree on that are a proper role in the public sphere.  But on issues of whether or not homosexuality is or is not moral, there is a wide diversity of opinion, even within the Christian community.  To codify one portion of the Christian community's view of homosexuality as the law of the land is wrong.

That actually was a very good article in itself. Sure, you may remember me as the individual rights person in terms of personal conduct...but that certainly goes both ways..

Basically..my stance is...

Please don't get religion in my secularism and i won't get secularism in your religion.

Anyway, as for the cases itself, some I am not too outraged about (the mayor getting fined for not letting a gay pride event happen, although I wouldn't be upset if she got fined for refusing some sort of religious weekend as well)..and some I am very outraged about fining private citizens and organizations for not wanting to associate with people they do not want to associate with.

However, I get the impression that people are blissfully ignoring the crossroads, attempts to put religious or religion-inspired conduct into national law or prevent the minesweeping of such conduct already in law in the name of "heritage" and "tradition."

Basically, the public sector needs to be secular in order to preserve the right of the private citizen and organization not to be secular.

"keep your views out of the ballot box" argument.

with realizing that there is a diversity of opinion in this country and that while some moral issues can be legislated others cannot because their is not a consensus "morality" that society can agree on.

You may believe that homosexuality is immoral.  How would you like to apply that to the ballot box?  Make homosexual sodomy a felony (actually most sodomy laws banned all sodomy, heterosexual or homosexual)?  

Obviously you are against homosexual marriage, so let's leave that out of the equation and grant that the state will not recognize gay marriages.

But short of the damage to the family caused by allowing gay marriage, what governmental purpose is served by codifying discrimination against homosexuals?  How does criminalizing sex between them serve any purpose?  How does depriving a parent of visitation rights because he or she is gay help his or her child?

... However, I get the impression that people are blissfully ignoring the crossroads, attempts to put religious or religion-inspired conduct into national law or prevent the minesweeping of such conduct already in law in the name of "heritage" and "tradition." ...

So lets wee now. How about the heritage and tradition of laws against murder? Or the heritage and tradition of laws against robbery?

Why is it wrong to have a majority of the population proscribe some of the conduct of a minority? We do it all the time. We prevent people from smoking in public places, driving without licenses, driving under the influence, marrying more than one person, animals, or their sisters.

Let me start with a disclaimer:  I am not jip.  I am a close friend of his who he has authorized to post this under his name because this is something I feel passionately about and he agrees with me and thinks I can speak better on it.

I am a gay American.  I was born that way, and I'm proud of it.  Jip told me that folks on here don't really care about anyone's thoughts or feelings, but I just thought I might be able to help you guys think about this a different way by showing you how this post sounds to me.  No one is obliged to agree with me - I just hope you'll give this interpretation the consideration it deserves.

"Opponents of black marriage are regularly assured that their private views, especially if they are religious views, will still be protected once the full range of black emancipation (including, of course, black marriage) has been achieved. No one will force a church to marry two men. No one will infringe upon your right to hold and speak your beliefs about the nature of blackness.    

But the trends in jurisprudence, especially in those nations just a few short steps ahead of the United States, belie this reassurance. Writing in Touchstone, Rory Leishman provides a detailed catalogue of the harrying scrutiny, harassment, and finally, legal penalties to which Canadians are subject if they publicly deviate from Liberal orthodoxy on blackness. A mayor fined $10,000 for refusing to proclaim a black Pride Weekend in her town, and ordered to issue the proclamation, her freedom of religious expression being emphatically subordinate to the equality of blackness; a print shop owner fined $5,000 for refusing, in his private business, to print materials for a black organization, and duly ordered to print the materials; a school teacher ordered to stop writing letters to the editor denouncing blackness or lose his job; a citizen and a newspaper editor each ordered to pay $4,500 in damages for publishing a newspaper ad which included biblical versus condemning blackness; a Catholic high school ordered to allow a 17-year-old to attend a dance with his partner; civil marriage commissioners (as well as "virtually everyone else engaged in the provision of secular services for marriage ceremonies") ordered to marry blacks or lose their jobs, their personal beliefs notwithstanding; and so on. Meanwhile in Europe, a nominee for justice commissioner was rejected because, being Roman Catholic, he cleaved to Catholic teaching on human slavery.

This is a long and portentous list, and hardly exhaustive. Of course neither Canada nor Europe is not the United States, but it is fair to say that here we get a glimpse of the minatory posture of the Africanist legal strategy. The drab picture painted by Mr. Leishman -- an increasingly familiar one -- is, in the final analysis, the inevitable consequence of the legal regime of Tolerance. For tolerance, when enshrined as a guiding dogma, must become an oppression. Tolerance knows no principles outside itself; there is nothing within it to check its own action. A Christian aspires to extend charity to his opponents, because his Savior commanded that he love even his enemy; a Muslim seeks to extend tolerance to his fellow man because he feels deeply the awesome equality of man before God; but Tolerance knows not love or charity or the brotherhood of man. If a thing -- a sentiment, a belief, an argument, a man -- is judged to be intolerant it deserves no quarter. It is antithetical to the guiding dogma: an insufferable heresy, in the strict definition. To countenance it is to renounce Tolerance as a dogma.

Thus envisaged, we must recognize that the regime of Tolerance is profoundly intolerant, and it contains within it the ineradicable potential for justified cruelty and brutality -- for again, on its own principles there are no grounds for clemency for the heretics, that is, for the unapologetically intolerant. More deeply, we must recognize that true tolerance cannot be achieved by recourse to the doctrine of "rights" with which we are all so comfortable, but instead only by recourse to the older, saner language of duties and obligations; those things that bind us, not those that loose us. In other words, true tolerance depends on the public recognition of duties, and duties only make sense philosophically by reference to that which transcends us, a higher law to which we are all subject and to which we all owe obedience.

The project of secular Tolerance is emasculated at its very foundation; as it runs its course through our societies we will only see more of oppression in the name of tolerance."

Maybe we do need to think again about what tolerance means.  More importantly, why do we apply it to certain classes of people but not others?  

I am most tolerant and even embracing of all but the very most spiteful forms of Christianity (I draw the line at Neo-Nazi churches), though I am an atheist - does this make me a hypocrite, a moron, or a decent human being with goodwill toward his fellow man?  

If you believe homosexuality is a behavior and a choice and therefore you are allowed to hate it (I emphatically disagree, but for the sake of argument I posit this), I would add that Christianity fits all those categories, and that I don't believe that gives me license to hate it or makes hatred or intolerance of it constructive.

What I'm getting at here is that all "the tyranny of tolerance" asks is for you to love thy neighbor as thyself, or treat people as you would like to be treated.  Imagine a printer, even a private one, turning a Christian away and telling him to "can the Jesus talk" or some such gravely insulting nonsense.  I wouldn't wish that sort of intolerant treatment on my worst enemy - I hope none of you would either.          

There has never been a case yet (in the USA) of any church being forced by law to perform its sacraments on someone whom it found unsuitable for those sacraments.

The phrase "there's a first time for everything" comes to mind for some odd reason...

Well, the First Amendment would never allow it!

The First Amendment is a restriction on Congress only. I guaran-damn-tee you that those seeking to inflict Tolerance on their fellow man will become hardcore states-righters when their state enacts a law requiring churches to marry gays on demand--while simultaneously invoking a penumbra of an emanation of the 14th Amendment to force less "enlightened" states to Tolerate them.

The Second Amendment makes it extremely clear that the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. We're at, about 30,000 federal, state, and local laws that infringe in some manner on this right.

The Cult of Tolerance will show the same respect for the First Amendment that the armophobes show for the Second.

"But short of the damage to the family caused by allowing gay marriage, what governmental purpose is served by codifying discrimination against homosexuals?"

-- Damage to the family is damage to society, so government has a powerful reason not to destroy the millenia old definition of marriage.  And you're trying to conflate the innocent and worthy goal of preserving the very foundation of our culture with "discrimination".  Hardly.  Civil unions, O.K.  Gays pay taxes after all.  But this is what Paul J Cella is talking about.  You want to persecute people because they, with very good reasons, refuse to codify what you call tolerance.

And let's define our terms here to avoid confusion.  When we say "tolerance" in this context, we're really talking about "PC Orthodoxy".  PC Orthodoxy, BTW, is a whole lot less tolerant than Christianity.  Still another term for it would be "tyranny."

...how you got past the NO PROFANITY censor?  Ha Ha, just kidding.  Your points are well stated nad well taken...

Reread my post. I said "sacraments". Birth control is not a sacramental issue.

that SECTARIAN morality has no role in the public square. In other words, the Mormons may not forbid coffee to us all, nor may they team up with the Muslims and Baptists to reenact Prohobition. The Jews may not forbid us all Pork. The Muslims cannot demand we all stick our women in burkas and chadors and fast during Ramadan. The Catholics cannot ban birth control and divorce for everyone, and so forth.

There are of course moral stances which are not sectarian. That is, they derive, or can be derived, from  purely rational first principles without refrerence to theology. Laws against murder, theft, etc. Homosexuality (and sexual morality in general, except at the far extremes of rape, pedophilia etc.) are issues that depend crucially on theological reasoning (the Bible, "Natural Law" etc.) and public authority should cultivate a haelthy agnosticism on such matters.

that you are member of some church? Would yoy regard it as proper and licit for yoyrself or anyoen to press for your own church to be the only legal church in this country (junking the 1st Amendment, obviously)? I suspect the answer to that will be No. So then, you are in agreement that at least some private views (on the matter of the "true" religion) have no place in teh ballot box.

Reread my post. I said "sacraments". Birth control is not a sacramental issue.

Oh, I see. "Sacraments" are going to somehow be magically protected, but every other politically incorrect teaching of the religion in question will be fair game.

You should pray that we "intolerant right-wing theonomist Christian nutcases" don't become as "tolerant" of your side as you and your ilk are of us.

and George Bush could declare himself Emperor of the Universe and junk the Constitution.

The arg,ment "It hasn't happened yet, but it could" is pretty meaningless since it could be used to argue against anything imagineable. The liberals do this on church-state issues too. See their fears about the Dominionists.

...truly resent having their struggle for freedom equated with homosexuality.

Also, regardless of how one acquires homosexuality, it will not reproduce the species.  Thus, it is antithetical to the perpetuation of the human race in general, and American society in particular.  

Homosexuals should feel lucky they live in a Christian country which is far more tolerant of them than many countries are -- Islamic countries for instance.

Re: Why is it wrong to have a majority of the population proscribe some of the conduct of a minority?

Because we do so on the basis of UNIVERSAL principles, not on principles that depend on accepting this or that theologiocal definition.

And I am not sure that you want to use the phase "the conduct of a minority" since (as far as I know) laws against murder, etc. apply universally. Anyone (in principle) could be a murderer. Not everyone can be a homosexual.

Re: Also, regardless of how one acquires homosexuality, it will not reproduce the species.  Thus, it is antithetical to the perpetuation of the human race in general, and American society in particular.  

Um, one could make the same argument about celibacy and perhaps press dispaproval of monasticism as a result. Indeed, homosexuals are more likely to have children than monks, nuns and Catholic priests are.

The human species can easily tolerate a small population of non-breeders, whether religious celibates, homosexuals, or infertile heterosexuals. There have always been such among us. Demographics certainly have not suffered, not even in the bad old days of plagues and famines.

...is that while your hypothetical is unprecedented, and without any evidence of being Bush's intent, my hypothetical has plenty of precedent from observing how you and your ilk behaved to date, and plent of evidence to support it based on your side's expressed desires.

Like I said earlier--you'd better pray that we do not become as "tolerant" of y'all as y'all are of us.

... to misrepresent my response. My remarks about murder, robbery etc are based on your comments about "tradition and heritage". It might be worth noting that the prohibition on murder sounds a lot like "Thou shalt not kill." Laws against murder are "universal" --- almost catholic one might say :-)

The behaviours of a minority are proscribed all the time. To a pedophile his/her behaviour are perfectly acceptable --- to the rest of us is is reprehensible. NAMBLA is clearly in the minority but views adult-child sex as "enjoyable and proper" --- the rest of us find their minority view wrong and we proscribe it. Polygamists are a minority and the rest of society has proscribed their actions. Society is rife with proscriptions on minority behaviour.

This is not to say that polygamists, pedophiles or anyone else should have their other rights (free speech, religion, assembly, etc) abridged --- as a society we have decide they are inviolable. But society does not see sex with children, or marriage to more than one woman as basic rights.

their state enacts a law requiring churches to marry gays on demand

States can't enact a "marriage-on-demand" for heterosexual couples, so what makes you think that it can enact a similar law for gay couples?  There are many churches that refuse to perform weddings for couples where one of members has committed the sin of divorce, for example.

No church in the United States has ever been forced by the government to perform a wedding.  Ever.  Period.  It is absurd to even argue for such a possibility.

Opponents of homosexual marriage are regularly assured that their private views, especially if they are religious views, will still be protected once the full range of homosexual emancipation (including, of course, gay marriage) has been achieved.

1. No one will force a church to marry two men.

In the long history of the United States, no one has ever forced a church to perform any wedding that it was not willing to perform.  Ever.  Period.  Lots of churches won't marry inter-religious couples.  Lots of churches won't even marry couples who don't belong to their specific church.  There is no marriage-on-demand law in the United States for anyone.

2. No one will infringe upon your right to hold and speak your beliefs about the nature of homosexuality.  

Jim Crow has long been banished and yet groups like the KKK are still legal and can still say whatever they want to say.  I'm sure Westboro Baptist Church will still be allowed to picket the funerals of people who have died of AIDS with signs like "Fags Burn in Hell."

The arguments put forth in the case of Canada are based on Canadian law, which is different from American law (being a different country and all).  If you want to make the argument that freedom here in the United States will be abridged because somehow the government is planning to force you to tolerate homosexuals, can't you at least point to cases involving American law?  Surely there must be an instance of forced tolerance somewhere in the United States, right?

Where are the forced tolerance laws when it comes to race and gender, two issues that have a long history of struggle here in the United States?  The Catholic Church is still free to prevent women from becoming priests.  There are small Nazi churches that are free to keep black people from joining.  Churches are not being forced to accept tolerance of anyone and it is absurd to advance the idea that there will be some kind of change in that policy simply because gay people can get married.

dangerous, so it's not worth doing.  Why do all conservative arguments rely on the slippery slope.  You desperately want to protect our 50 percent divorce rate?  And look at the divorce stats and teen pregnancy stats etc..., a majority are coming from conservative states.  Don't blame homosexuality

But non-universal theories have no place in the public square,

Maybe you should re-read the First Amendment again. This idea that religious have no rights to express their beliefs (or even hold any public office) is more suited to the old Soviet Union, not the USA.

constitutionally, but as a matter of sound public policy, although I do think the Founding Fathers would agree there, as they lived rather close to the era when sectarian agendas in the public square had produced disastrous results.

In regards to matters involving public officialdom: since when have we allowed such people to use their personal beliefs to overturn public policy? A judge who refused to apply the death penalty, or a governor who commuted every death sentence in his state out of private moral principles, would come in for a great deal of (justified) criticism here. And what would someone say to a teetotaling official who refused to issue a liquor license to a qualified business, or a clerk of courts who refused marriage licenses to divorced persons out of loyalty to Roman Catholic moral precepts? Or to use a really egregious example: a pacifist soldier who refuses to participate in warfare.

Individuals whose moral principles do not permit them to function in a public role according to the law of the land do not belong in such a role.

The "tyranny of tolerance" is intolerant of other's intolerance.  

Canadians do have a somewhat different political tradition, and in particular I think we have more speech protection than they do.  I'm not sure how a similarly phrased anti-discrimination law would operate under our system.

The Canadian Charter on Human Rights is a pretty tough taskmaster.  Were the roles reversed, if a gay mayor refused to have a Christian pride week, I would expect the outcome to be identical.  If a gay printer refused to print Christian writings, the Christian would have a cause of action.  Just about everything I read in the article's little parade of horribles dealt with public officials, public acts, and, in one case, the market.  Different than interference with private decisions to believe and worhsip as you please.

of the religiously conceived and driven abolistionist movement or civil rights movement?

Yes, do indeed, keep those people who bring their ideas based on deeply held religious beliefs out of the pure, rational, only-secularists-need-apply public square. And never let them anywhere public office.

Re: you mean like the 'sectarian' disaster of the religiously conceived and driven abolistionist movement or civil rights movement?

You are incorrect here. Belief in abolitionism or civil rights was not sectarian in nature. These positions were supported by people of various religious backgrounds and of no religious background. And indeed, others people arguyed strenuously against these views on religious grounds too.The politics of abolition and civil rights can be argued on purely secular and rational grounds, with no need to invoke theology. The same is true of abortion today. But this is not true about about homosexuality questions where every argument ultimately comes back to either Leviticus or else to matters of purely personal taste.

Every time people argue for using the state to impose religious beliefs I wish I could force them to sit down and read an in depth history of Reformation era Europe, and then require them to explain why, in the light of hard historical lessons, they think their church would do so much better at making public policy than the Catholics and Protestants of that era did.

may seem obscure, but I trust that it will be understood.  And what I wish to say is that the overwhelming majority of those who have ventured forth into this discussion have no comprehension whatsoever of the background, logic, or trajectory thereof.  Pompous?  Let's spare one another the accusations of attitudinal impropriety.

The reason so few have understanding of these matters is that what is not grasped is that the language of our constitution and legal traditions and precedents, and even the language with which we wage our cultural conflicts, here and elsewhere, possesses meaning and reference which are not exhausted by the texts themselves.  The language refers to certain social contexts and enshrines or protects them; what is important to grasp is that one could apply identical language to different contexts and impart to it a different sense.  Life is the milieu of language and not vice versa.  

When, therefore, we witness, as we surely have over the past thirty years or so, a transition from a time when it was understood that the freedom of association permitted a business or charity to set the conditions of its own operations with respect to the "lifestyle" preferences of clients and employees to a time when the freedom of association no longer entails such guarantees, what has happened is not some mystical enlightenment, as though we all had epiphanies in which it was disclosed to us that Catholic organizations must materially cooperate in the commission of acts contrary to Catholic teaching and Christians must keep their faith between their ears - in a grotesque, Western parody of the old Soviet theory of the freedom of religion - in business and public service; no, what has happened is that social conditions have changed, and so language has been altered, redefined, jiggered and mutilated in order to accomodate the changes.  In the turgid language of philosophers, syntax does not exhaust sense.  Language is the slave of life, and reference to such notions as "tolerance" and "intolerance" without reference to the ways of life such concepts are intended to protect or exclude is an exercise in abstractionist onanism.

Now, examples of how this process has unfolded could be multiplied without end, and of the chronicling of such perversions there would be no end.  And it is this that enables us to see why those who facilely argue that it "cannot happen here (and if it did, those Christians would probably deserve it anyway?)" are mistaken.  For religion is life, and thought about that life does not precede that life, but is subordinate thereto; the great controversies of the early centuries of Christianity, though often conducted in recondite language, were ultimately grounded in a way of life, a tradition, and the language did not define, but only guarded, and bore witness to, that life.  So also are things today; if a man is compelled by law coercing him in the name of "tolerance" to serve causes he abhors, to stifle his conscience while serving his nation, to provide the means by which his faith is violated, a doctrine of religion is being forced upon him - a doctrine which holds that his religion is thought, and life may be divorced from that thought at the whim, whimsy, caprice, folly and degeneracy of another.  In short, another religion has been forced upon him, and he is forced to observe it, for the sinew of any faith is in its observance and enactment, and not even the gnostic conceit that would deny a man the integrity of his life and faith can efface that fact.

If we believe that such coercion will stop at the marketplace and charities, on the grounds that "religious institutions" are somehow sacrosanct, we are willfully blind, for if the integrity of a man's faith and life will not be regarded in the former, it cannot with consistency be regarded in the latter; public purposes will trump all, for there can be no "establishment of religion".

forced people to serve causes which they abhore. In any nation of significant size there will always be people who disagree vehemently with public policy on this or that matter, and yet they will be coerced into paying taxes to support those policies and obeying laws which are odious to them. This is nothing new, certainly nothing that had arisen in the last generation!

The question of course is to what extent do we liberate individuals from a duty to obey laws with which they disagree? Some provision in extreme cases of conscience is wise, I think, but one cannot simply say "Obey those laws you agree with and ignore the rest". That way lies anarchy.

But as for the US government coercing churches to change doctrine according to the passing political whims of the moment, you can argue until the cows come home on that one and you will not convince me it is a real danger.

versa, a public servants primary responsibility is to the welfare of the public, hence the name.  That welfare is above anything else, including his own moral views, if the laws or policies happen to go against them.  If the public servant doesn't like that, they shouldn't be there.

prove the point.  If governments "always force people to serve causes they abhor", then what follows is that governments may do so in the present cases, which, being interpreted, means that the regime of tolerance is becoming coercive.  Moreover, if a government can coerce a man to do the things which you claim it can coerce him to do, it is, by the nature of the case, preventing him from practicing his religion, because religion is not the gnostic thing one does Sunday mornings, but is life; that is, the government is altering, at the level of practice, the meaning and content of religion.  Sorry you don't see it, but this is game, set, match.

Your question about exemptions for reasons of conscience miss the point.  At what point in the previous history of our civilization has the state taken it upon itself to legislate expressly against the religious conscience, and in favour of the whims of those who want the universe to endorce their inherently disordered acts?

If the cause of public service is now understood to supercede religious commitments and doctrines, those doctrines upon which our civilization, like it or not, arose and flourished, then this is indeed something novel, and the notion of "tolerance" has become a militant creed, the establishment of a religious test for office.  Thanks for the notice of a momentous change in our civilization and constitution.  

Thanks for playing.

doctrines if you live in a country that allows people to have different views on which religious doctrines they follow.  A public servant can have certain beliefs, but if those beliefs deprive others of rights, those beliefs are superceded.

The point is that the present trajectory of the the law as regard these matters is a novelty; intolerance for the traditional understanding of these issues is a genuine novum, as is the idea that there exist de facto, implicit religious tests for public service.

The begged question is whether those who self-identify according to their predilection for the act of sodomy are entitled - have rights claims to - certain things from private citizens, businesses, and institutions, as well as the declaration of the state that the parodies of marriage into which they wish to enter are equivalent in meaning and substance to the marriage of my wife and myself.  You can shout to the heavens that they do have such "rights" until the ending of the age without once touching upon the nature and reality of a right or negating the fact that such assertions entail coercions and intolerances hitherto unknown among us.  In other words, cease the dissimulations of abstract, universal "reason" and admit the truth, which is that you advocate what amounts to a new doctrine, a new public creed in opposition to mine.  Such an admission would at least have the merit of honesty, as opposed to the shadow-play of rights-talk and public reason, as well as the obscurantist denial that what we are dealing with here is the opposition of two creeds.

After reading you link, it seems that the laws, as written in Canada, state that you cannot discriminate because of sexual orientation.  She was doing just that.  I don't know how else to get around it.  But I would go out on a limb and say yes.  Should she give it to a Nazi group who wants to celebrate a "We Love Hitler Day?"  I don't know.  There is an example of a group that expresses intolerence in violent ways.  There is where I get into grey areas.  But anything short of that is an absolute yes.  "Jesus Pride Day" sure, "Hindu Pride Day," bring it on, "Buddah Pride Day," I am one with you.  These are just people expressing themselves.  Should a mayor not allow it because they aren't Hindu, and believe that they belong to the one true faith?

Thank you for restating your opinion in response to my question.  You are saying that Tolerance in intolerant of intolerance.  I would say that you have not made your case.  The examples that you cite stem from a law that written in a specific manner.  Nothing in the US is likely to resemble that.  But if it did, I would say that there is still nothing in your examples to keep somebody from being intolerant in their normal lives.  In their private lives.  Mayors don't have to run to be mayors, and shop keepers, well, I don't want to say that they can choose a different profession, but maybe there would have been another way to go around it.  Maybe they could have reccommended another printer.  I can understand if they couldn't print the stuff themself, but to not allow the other person to get it printed at all is an abuse of power.  But there is no bar on any public display of intolerance.

Oppose that to the current atmosphere of intolerance.  It currently extends into their private lives, where they cannot express themselves publicly for fear of being dicriminated against.  Ironic that your fear is that you yourself will be discriminated against for your views.

Sorry this rambled so long.

On other issues seems to stop at the steps of the Church.  Or did I miss the memo on how Baptist churches must accept Catholics on grounds of tolerance?

Freedom of association is a right tied up tightly with freedom of expression.  Businesses, in general, have a much lower expectation of associational freedom in the same fashion that commercial speech receives much lower levels of expressional protection.  Participation in the public good called the "market" will subject you to greater regulation.

Onanism is such a fun word.  I always use Onan as a great example of why biblical literalism has certain, er, shortcomings.  Learned that in Catholic school religion class taught by a Xaverian brother, no less.

Your argument seems predicated on the idea that tolerance should not be coercive, or that supporters of tolerance do not find it coercive.  Of course it is coercive!  Where did you get that idea?  But the focus of the coercion is first and foremost on acts of government.  The coercion is directed on the people who already have the coercive reigns in hand, and limits what they can do in the name of the people, or even the majority.

All this crying about being "forced" to observe another religion makes no sense to me.  You may attend church with whom you please.  You may pray as you please, even in the public square.  You may worship in any fashion that does not impose itself upon others.  What you may not do is stand from the steps of government and dictate your particular theology to others.  Neutrality is not theology, no matter how many times you try to repeat it to make it so.

"So lets wee now. How about the heritage and tradition of laws against murder? Or the heritage and tradition of laws against robbery?"

I will answer this on two fronts.

First of all, do you see any sorts of movements on legalizing murder or robbery? It's a straw man. And second, yes religions does have some good ideas agreed upon by those who are non-religious, but does that mean that all the laws in a certain religion are worth making legislation, of course not!

"Why is it wrong to have a majority of the population proscribe some of the conduct of a minority? We do it all the time. We prevent people from smoking in public places, driving without licenses, driving under the influence, marrying more than one person, animals, or their sisters."

A lot of those I do find as wrong! People should have the right to smoke in a public place providing that the propietor of the place allows it, or marry more than one person or their sister, as long as they are consenting adults, they should be allowed to enter whatever private legal contract they like! As for the other things, unless PETA rules the world, people aren't going to marry animals as animals are seen as property in our legal realm. Driving under the influence? I wouldn't make that itself a crime, but if anyone dies due to a crash, they shall be charged for murder. Alcohol is no excuse, let the user beware. And as for driving without a license, its not a matter of conduct, just certification that they have the skill to drive.

Anyway, the majority does need their personal beliefs to be legislated in order for them to be perpetuated. Making less legislation just makes more options for the person on how to live their life, and the presences of options does not mean that a way of life will forcefully cease to exist. Culture is perpetuated by the individual, and if it is not perpetuated by them, it deserves to die. And if you do not like someones culture, you have the right to reason and put social pressure, but you do not have the right to have government meddle and do all the work for you.

The trend I am seeing in government is that matters of religious conscience are unprotected under a false understanding of the First Ammendment.  So if a Homosexual printer refused to print Christian material, and it went to court, I believe that we would see the "separation of Church and State" card played rather quickly.  In contrast- The ACLU would be all over a pastor who refused to marry two homosexual men.  

This is why we see the "Day of silence" on school campuses tolerated by school board Admins., but when Christians attempt to have a "Day of Truth" it is seen as a religious event- and the ACLU and the homosexual community tries to stop it, calling the Christians "extremists, religioug bigots, and homophobes."  Isn't the point of the day of silence to stop name calling?  Aren't the names that GLSEN and other gay groups call Christians like the Alliance Defense Fund a little intolerant and maybe even hateful?

Intolerance is a myth.  My morals may be different than another's-but there is something that we all cannot tolerate; whether lying, or name calling, or adultery, or discrimination.  The trend is to tolerate anything irreligious or sacreligious coming from the secular side, but when Christians speak of something they find intolerable the cry is nearly always the same "Religious bigot!  Hater! Seperation of Church and State!"

"Um, one could make the same argument about celibacy and perhaps press dispaproval of monasticism as a result."

-- I'm sorry, but this is nonsense.  Besides, celibacy is a choice.  According to gay advocates, homosexuality is not.  Neither has monaticism been called an abomination by God Almighty and shunned by all major cultures throughout the history of the world.

"The human species can easily tolerate a small population of non-breeders, whether religious celibates, homosexuals, or infertile heterosexuals."

Yes, and we do tolerate them.  But the original point was that changing the definition of marriage is a threat to society because it seriously undermines one of its' foundations.  Try paying attention before intruding upon the discussion.

you define yourself by your predeliction of a different sort, why is that any more worthy of recognition?

This is a group that does no harm to anyone by asking for these rights, why do you want to deny them?  How does state recognition harm any other person?

"inherently disordered acts".  But the state often legislates expressly against religious conscience. For instance bigamay is prohibited in this country and is an absolute ban to immigration eventhough numerous religions recognize plural marriages (most notably Islam).  Before Utah was admitted to the Union, the Mormon church had to modify its official stance on polygamy, suddenly discovering that the Book of Mormon didn't sanction it after all (except in the sense that you are still married to dead wives).  

And many people held (and still hold) religiously based beliefs that interracial marriage is wrong.  Are you arguing that Loving v Virginia was wrongly decided because it intruded on those beliefs?

"Also, regardless of how one acquires homosexuality, it will not reproduce the species.  Thus, it is antithetical to the perpetuation of the human race in general, and American society in particular."

As is any form of celibacy.  Not having sex is antithetical to perpetuation of the human race in general, because it will not reproduce the species.

Whether homosexuality is considered an abomination is an entirely different argument, not based on demographics, and so is irrelevant to your first point.  You can certainly make both points, but they are independent of one another, particularly if you are attempting to fit a critique of homosexuality into a non-religious context.

by any predilection, if by that term you mean what homosexuals often mean by that term - that they have some inborn tendency that, by some sort of mental alchemy, obliges them to act.  I define myself by my religion, my political philosophy, and a host of other things, all entered into with reasoned deliberation - the same rational deliberation available to everyone, regardless of the nature of the desires they find themselves experiencing.

As to the latter pair of questions, I am not in the mood to repeat myself, by retyping arguments I have advanced many times previously.  Suffice it to say that homosexuals have no right to an institution which, by nature, is oriented toward goods homosexual relationships do not realize, and that bowdlerizing the institution to suit them would declare that marriage is no longer that institution best oriented toward the production of  future generations, but is merely that which gratifies the sexual impulses of the parties to it.  If you don't see that this is an epochal change of significance, then no one, with no amount of verbiage, can help you.

with true equal rights.  

The trend I am seeing is the desire for special rights.  You cannot give special rights to one group (in this case the gay community) without taking them away from the church.

Most churches have a written moral code, which contains that which they find tolerable and intolerable.  Just because they do not wish to be invaded by another groups' values does not mean that they hate that group.

If one were to argue that the Gay Community is tolerant of the chuches values, I would humbly ask them to stop using words like "bigot, homophobe and hate-crime" when in fact no hatred exists.

http://www.indybay.org/lgbtqi/

Is homosexuality genetic or learned behavior?

I have not been convinced that it is not at least partially learned.  That being the case, I seek to raise my family with many values that are antithetical to the gay lifestyle.  Actually, it goes deeper than that.

In my view, when the Church has kids sleeping together in their youth groups, getting each other pregnant, and using drugs, thier first order of business is within thier own.

Yes, the Church as a whole is a religious organization.  But each independant church is also a private club, and receives no public money or support.  As such, the private club should be entitled to all the rights that any other club has- the right to have a moral code, to live by it, and not be accused of hate unless hate is actually happening.

Of course I realize that some in the name of Christ have committed acts of gay-bashing and such, but I believe that those are the exception.

And of course some of it is manufactured, as seen at this link.

http://www.365gay.com/newscon05/05/050905calHate.htm

True tolerance would respect the Churches' right to live by the Bible and function as a private organization. True tolerance would seek to stop all name calling.

True tolerance would allow politicians of faith to live by their convictions-regardless of where they come from.

Imposing Atheism or Agnosticsim on the Church through legislation should also be a violation of the First Amendment...

Is missing the point a foundational commitment around here?

You can say all you wish about certain institutions or undertakings carrying lower expectations of associational and expressive freedom than the Church; the notion that this idea entails the results we are debating is what is new and unprecedented, and if you believe that those of us who prefer the older understanding, which allowed us greater scope to observe our conceptions of what constitutes a life well lived, should roll over and take one for "society", you're quite naive.  

No, my argument is not predicated upon the notion that "tolerance" should not be coercive; it is predicated upon the reality that such notions as "tolerance" and "intolerance" receive differing applications from differing philosophies.  Unfortunately, the twin notions of "tolerance" and "intolerance" have become shibboleths by which those who oppose our more traditional past stigmatize those with whom they disagree and elide the distinction between rational argumentation and sermonizing.  I will say it again, and not desist from saying it - the notion that, in the name of "tolerance", certain "rights" should be extended in a manner hitherto unknown among us, with coercions hitherto unknown among us, as a means of facilitating the personal realization of the "sweet mystery of life" of those benefited by the new regime, is a doctrine without a monopoly upon either reason or neutrality (in fact, I think this latter yet another tired old shibboleth, at least as it is used nowadays - neutraility only exists within a framework of thought, never as an arbiter between them, and when people mistakenly assume it to be the latter, they DO make of it theology).

Telling Christians which of their teachings they may proclaim changes their religion; telling them how to practice their religion in their day-by-day lives does the same; forbidding them to serve the public except on the probationary terms that they act in accordance with the socially and legally debatable doctrines of their cultural adversaries does as well, and violates their integrity; and any notion of "neutrality" which allows for these things, and will countenance the political demands of homosexuals, but not Christians, has no just claim to the mantle of "neutrality", but is a pretense for cultural aggression and spiritual violence, a legal establishment of an entire social philosophy that might be summed up in the "sweet mystery of life" passage from Casey.

Establishment of religion.  Whose religion?  

I never said churches should be made to do anything.  Of course free speech being what it is, they don't have any "right" to not be accused of hate.  As long as they remain private institutions, they can do anything they want that doesn't hurt others.

couples, or those who choose not to have children, or those who divorce, why can't it make exceptions for homosexuals.  If the goal of marriage is children, then there is no qualitative difference between the groups I just mentioned.

Homosexuality has not been "shunned by all major cultures throughout the history of the world".  The Ancient Greeks and the Romans had very little problem with homosexuality and the Greeks in particular celebrated homosexuality.  Paul's admonitions against homosexuality were against practices that were prevalent and accepted in Roman society--especially pedarasty which is what he seemed particularly concerned with.  Of course Jesus didn't have one word to say about homosexuality.

don't forget most eastern cultures, which for the most part didnt have any hang ups with homosexuality.

Also don't have any hang ups with telling women what their place is, either.  But I guess that's a problem the United States is going to have to solve for them.

to realize the chief good of the institution does not change its nature, anymore than the failure of some to achieve the virtue of truthfulness negates the fact that lying is bad.  There is a difference between the nature of the institution and the people who observe, or fail to observe, it.  

The qualitative difference between those you mention and homosexuals is that in the case of the former, it is only some physical defect or behavioural failing, or tragedy, which prevents them from realizing that good of marriage; the nature of homosexual acts is such that they will never engender life.

to our very first response to militant homosexuals:

They don't just want equal rights, they want full acceptance and endorsement of their sexual proclivities by the (mostly Christian) public at large.

Civil unions are equal to marriage in all but name only, so what's the problem?

This is exactly what Maximos is saying.  Homosexual activists want to alter the ethos and mores of American society and want no lip about it (so to speak).  In addition, when basic religious practices "offend" one of them, well then, it's intolerance.  

It's really a kind of rhetorical 3 card monte they're playing.  If they object to us, it's a "rights" issue.  If we object to them, it's "intolerance".  Heads they win, tails we lose.  A great badger game for lawyers, but it stinks as public policy.

Re: Telling Christians which of their teachings they may proclaim changes their religion

??

And that's always and everywhere a bad thing? Maybe when a religion goes off the rails outside criticism can (should?) drag it back to sanity again. In our modern world the obvious candidate for "off the rails" is much of contemporary Islam. And in that regard I don't think anyone here has any problem with Islam being told that it may not impose some of its less than humane precepts regarding women's rights, its attitude toward the Jews, etc. on the larger society--or even on unwilling members of its own community. Indeed, most of us here (including the author of this thread) have been rather critical of the astonishing unwillingness of European nations to demand of the Muslims in their midst that they accept certain Western precepts concerning feminism, religious pluralism, etc, and, if necessary, adjust their theopraxis accordingly.

So methinks you do protest too much. There are indeed limits to what civil society can or should put up with from avowedly illiberal traditions. Unless you can convince me that you're OK with allowing our American Muslims to impose shari'a in the name of religious freedom, I really have a hard time seeing that your complaints are anything other than special pleading: limit THOSE illiberal traditions, but leave make mine the cornerstone of society!

And by the way, there is nothing new or unprecedented here at all. In 1789 our Founding Fathers were prepared to tolerate the Roman Catholic Church even though most of them really disliked it with a good old British anti-papist passion. They would not for one moment have tolerated American Catholics importing the Inquisition (still a going concern in Europe at that time), to these shores.

"The inability or failure of some to realize the chief good of the institution does not change its nature", then how would the failure of homosexuals to achieve this good change its nature?

"inheretly disorgered", you might wish to consult the Catholic Catechism for a primer on the subject.  I will say that genitals have certain purposes; they are called genitals for a reason, and not because it simply feels good to do certain things with them.

As to the case of the Mormons, well and good, that proves only that the Christian conception of marriage was taken to be normative in the US, from which it will follow that the present agitations are novelties and that there is nothing in our traditions which mandates that they be enacted.  See my remarks to Gengisdon, below.

Loving v Virginia was rightly decided because there is nothing in the nature of the institution of marriage which can rightly be invoked against racial intermarriage; male and female are what they are without regard to race.  

And in the cases above, some beliefs are just plain wrong, like the belief that homosexual "marriage" will serve the same ends, promote the same set of goods, and thus has the same nature, as marriage.

As do I, but that doesn't change the fact that some of these behaviours have been proscribed. How can one possibly condone prohibiting a restaurant owner from allowing smoking? If there are customers who don't like it they will take their business elsewhere and his bottom line will suffer. But to legally prohibit behaviour by consenting adults on private property?

Go to NYC some time and light up in a bar.

As a society we do it all the time. It's just a matter of who's ox is being gored. And whether the goree has a big enough soapbox to get it changed.

You seem to be arguing that Christianity is a monolithic structure and that all Christians agree on what it means to be a Christian.  Obviously you know this is just not true.  The Orthodox and Roman Catholic branches of Christianity split over 900 years ago.  The Protestant/Roman Catholic split 500 years ago led to hundreds of years of bloodshed in Europe that spilled over to this continent.  Don't you realize that along with Blacks and Jews, Catholics were also lynched in this country in the first half of this century?   Or that JFK's Catholicism was considered a serious impediment to his electibility as president?

And you state any notion of "neutrality" which allows for these things, and will countenance the political demands of homosexuals, but not Christians, has no just claim to the mantle of "neutrality", but is a pretense for cultural aggression and spiritual violence.  What about homosexuals who are Christians and Christians who advocate for the recognition of homosexual marriage?  Do you dismiss them out of hand?  My Christianity tells me that homosexuals can be who they are and also Christians.  The admonitions against homosexuality in the Bible, especially in the New Testament, are so insignificant, vague, and based on Jewish societal mores of the time, that they hardly deserve to be a foundational and central tenant of Christianity.

Besides, celibacy is a choice.  According to gay advocates, homosexuality is not.  Neither has monaticism been called an abomination by God Almighty and shunned by all major cultures throughout the history of the world.

Some people have criticized homosexuality by saying that gays do not have children and are therefore somehow bad for society. If that argument can be made about gays then it also applies to monks, nuns and RC priests.

As for "abomination" not everyone accepts that "God" called homosexuality an abomination--because not everyone thinke that God wrote the Bible (as opposed to inspiring it as He might also inspire a glorious piece of liturgical music or a profoundly beautuiful icon). Textual literalism is not a universal or even majority position among Christians, and this is exactly what I am criticizing when I say that sectarian precepts are an invalid foundation for public policy. What makes your reading of Scripture any more valid than mine? Moreover many things are called "abominations" (the actual word really means something more like "taboo" by the way) in the Old Testament and whether Leviticus condemned all homosexuality (doubtful) or only certain Canaanite cult practices is interesting in a historical sense, but irreelvant to how we live today since the Levitical Law applies only to Jews anyway, or else why do we not see social conservatives and Bible-Believing Christians picketing Red Lobster?

Celibacy involves a tiny fraction of a percent of our society and is not engaging in militant activism to make Celibacy acceptable to the general pop.  Nor does it wish to change the definition of marriage.

Homosexual behavior is a private affair.  I wish its' practitioners would keep it that way.  Besides, I'm not the one demanding a  "hetero day" parade or insisting that marriage be redefined to allow me conjugal relations with a bevy of bathing beauties.

 It's the old equal rights vs. special rights argument.  Too bad the latter evetually destroys any hope of the former or we could all have special rights (and all the children could be above average, too.)

That is why homosexual marriage cannot exist.  It is in the pretense that much social harm can be done.  And that is why the pretense should not be permitted - because confusion on this point will be productive of more familial and social disorder.  The law, to that ends, must maintain a clear conception of what marriage truly IS.

the government can prohibit a business owner from exposing his employees to hazardous chemicals and dangerous working conditions.  Although you may have the right to smoke, you do not have the right to expose waiters and bartenders to carcinogens from your cigarette smoke.  All the public bans on smoking have been based on these grounds and rightfully so.  We have banned entire classes of chemicals in the workplace (and smoking in most workplaces) for just this reason.  Bars and restaurants are among the last workplaces in the country where people are still allowed to smoke.

Think about it.  What if people were allowed to come into your workplace and smoke?  I bet you wouldn't like it.  Most people I know, even smokers, like their smoke free offices.

Re: In contrast- The ACLU would be all over a pastor who refused to marry two homosexual men.  

Based on what predcedent? Has the ACLU ever taken up a case of people whose church refused to marry them? This is a fairly common situation, you know. I even know people who could not marry in their own church for one reason or another (usually divorced Catholics). There is simply no precedent here whatsoever.

When the ACLU demands that the Catholic Church marry divorced persons, get back to me. Otherwise I am dumping this concern in the mental drawer labeled "paranoia".

or even discourage the other groups that cannot achieve the primary goal of marriage in order to preserve the ultimate goal of the institution as you see it, why must it exclude homosexuality?

all major religions in the history of the world.  Besides, in ancient Greece, pederasty was tolerated, but it was considered the behavior of younger men, who, after playing with boys, were then expected to grow up, get married, and have children.    

And of course Aleks311 gets to decide what is sectarian and what is not.

Before 1927 virtually every Christian denomination on earth taught that contraception was sinful. It became "sectarian" only when modern Liberalism defined it as such.

The Roman Catholic Church teaches against contraception (to stick with that example) based not on theology but on philosophy. That is to say, the Church teaches that if man uses his natural reason properly, he will discern, with no aid from Revelation, that birth control is evil. The Church is right, which is why I can agree with her here without being Catholic.

that I am not Roman Catholic so whether or not the Roman Catholic Church considers something "inherently disordered" is of no concern to me, and I hope of no concern to my government.  I used to be Episcopalean but even that was to close to the Roman Catholic Church (and now that I see they might accept the immaculate conception I am even more glad I left), so now I am Presbyterian.  

I am sure that some of the things I have done with my genitals the Catholic Church would disapprove of.  Overall though, I think I am a moral person and am comfortable with my sexuality and can conform my sexual mores to my Christianity.  I'm a heterosexual, happily married, once divorced.  But I think homosexuals should be allowed to marry.  I see nothing wrong with sex between unmarried, consenting adults even if it is purely recreational.  And the abortion laws in this country are just fine as they are now.  If my views on sexuality shocks you and contradicts what you believe a Christian can believe that is your right.  Fortunately, we live in a country where there are denominations that will accept more "liberal" views on sexuality than those of the Roman Catholic Church.  I guess that is what I would call tolerance.

Aleks, is it your position, then, that a man may not, in the course of a public argument against, say, gay marriage, adduce Scripture in any capacity? Of course it is possible to argue against gay marriage without reference to Revelation (like I did here). But it seems as though you are contending here that, once a man lets religious arguments come into the debate -- even if the debate can be logically carried on with out them -- he discredits himself and forfeits his privilege of public expression.

If so, then your position excludes the civil rights movement and abolitionism, precisely because men within these parties also turned at times to religious arguments.

Ah Maximos, you never fail to produce.  I'm sure the fact that so many people miss your point is due to our benighted ability to think.  Fortunately, there are shibboleths strewn about the field like bolders after an avalanche of illogical thought, so I will elide from rock to rock in an attempt to avoid the, er, succint nature of your characterizations.

"Christians," by which I can only assume you mean those that think like you, may serve the public on the same terms as everyone else, either of other Christian belief or of non-Christian belief.  There is nothing probationary about it.  Gay mayors can't fire Christians for that reason alone, and Christians can't fire gays (as if the two were mutually exclusive, which of course, they are not).  Gay printers can't discriminate against Christians.  Gay people can't purchase billboard space with crosses with a big "X" through them.  Gay teachers can't begin a public letter writing campaign to talk about how Christianity is destroying the country.  Gay civil commissioners can't refuse to marry straight couples.  Have we established a Christian religion via those restrictions?  No.

homosexual acts cannot in any way, or any sense, be made conformable to the institution, while those of the others you mentioned are, by nature, marital - oriented toward the good of marriage even if thwarted by inability/disability.

The ideology of Tolerance will destroy real tolerance.

But using my natural reason, I find birth control to be one of the wonders of the 20th century.  I suppose you find my reason used improperly, in which case it is not so much a matter of reason as opinion.

Paul, do you get to decide what is sectarian and what is not?  Birth control became sectarian when some sects decided it was fine and others refused.  Birth control became sectarian when the majority of American Catholics thumbed their noses at Rome and made use of what was available, and what made rational sense to them.

Are you really likening Christian opposition to sodomy to Islamic repression of women and the Inquisition?  Please.  This ill becomes you.  

Moreover, any Christian who cherishes his faith, and receives it as the treasure it is, and not a cafeteria display from which to pick and choose those things which suit his passions, will recognize this as a bad thing.  By the light of what modern philosophers would you presume to "correct" the faith of the Fathers?  In the name of which impieties would you overthrow the uniform witness of the Church against homosexual acts?  To draw an analogy between opposition to sodomy and the excesses of Islam, to allude to the need to draw the faith back to sanity - for someone who professes the Orthodox faith, you press too close to blasphemy here.

"Although you may have the right to smoke, you do not have the right to expose waiters and bartenders to carcinogens from your cigarette smoke."

First off, second hand smoke is not a significant health hazard, but most importantly, even if it were true science, shouldn't the waiters and bartenders accept it as an occupational hazard, just as a construction worker or a crab fisherman would? They agreed to work there...so no problem.

"Think about it.  What if people were allowed to come into your workplace and smoke?  I bet you wouldn't like it.  Most people I know, even smokers, like their smoke free offices."

Depends on the person, just like you have argued on behalf of gay rights, its the affair of the individual and in this case, the proprietor. The government has no stake in whether someone will allow smoking in the workplace or not. If it hurts bottom line, the proprietor would stop it his or her self. Or if they just plain like smoking or don't like it, who cares, its their place, don't tell them how to live. Don't like places with smoking, don't patronize them and tell you friends not to patronize them either!

it is philosophical.  I trust the difference is obvious.

"As a society we do it all the time. It's just a matter of who's ox is being gored. And whether the goree has a big enough soapbox to get it changed."

Shouldn't we then make an effort to stop it then? Personally, I am heterosexual agnostic caucasian female who does not smoke nor drink or take any drugs other than prescription drugs. It's what makes me happy, but I know not everyone is like me. Anyway, are you against consenting adults wanting to marry who they want? And if you are, why would you argument differ from rotwang's argument against smoking in bars?

in children does not conform with the goal of marriage, so how could the other examples conform?  Because they would if they could?    

with Christian divisions.  Some Christians - those who represent, in one expression or another, the historic teaching of the Church with regard to certain moral precepts - are being compelled to alter the manner of their practice and proclamation.

A Christian may have a homosexual orientation and live in a manner consistent with Christian teaching; a Christian may not engage in homosexual acts and claim the sanction of the faith for so doing.

The NT proscriptions of homosexual acts are unclear only to those who wish them to be clear; they have been clear to the Church for 2000 years.  Moreover, let us not hear of the silly notion that certain - only certain - traditional Christian moral beliefs are culturally relative; for the Christian, the faith is revelatory, and a faith that cannot seem to avoid being imprisoned in cultural forms which may be cast away on a whim is hardly revelatory.

that is non-marital in nature does not conform to the goal of marriage, and therefore cannot be made the basis of marriage.  It is the act and not the result, that must be such as to realize the good of marriage; the good, end, or gift of a child will supervene, as they used to say, upon the act in the right circumstances.

...becoming tedious:

"Some people have criticized homosexuality by saying that gays do not have children and are therefore somehow bad for society."

"Some people" may indeed have said that.  Unfortunately for you, I'm not one of them.  What I said was that changing the definition of marriage weakens it and that in turn weakens society.  And one of the many reasons for this is that homosexuals don't have children.  Try paying attention from now on...

"Textual literalism is not a universal or even majority position among Christians,..."

That may be, but the idea that homosexual behavior is a sin IS INDEED a "majority position among Christians".

"...I say that sectarian precepts are an invalid foundation for public policy."

-- I'll supress the urge to say that this is the most foolish thing I've heard all week.  Exactly what "foundation" would you use for public policy?  Special rights and the secularist precepts of "tolerance"?   Ooops, we're already trying to use such nonesense to supplant JudeoChristian precepts and it's been a huge success so far...

"(the actual word really means something more like "taboo" by the way)"

Yes, and that's the way Christians in this country have treated it.  I guess I was thinking of Islamic countries where homosexuals are killed outright...

"...but irreelvant to how we live today since the Levitical Law applies only to Jews anyway, or else why do we not see social conservatives and Bible-Believing Christians picketing Red Lobster?"

Oh, so now you're arguing for "textural literalism" in reading the scriptures.  Gee, it's hard to keep track of your ever-changing positions.  I wish you could pass out scorecards or programs or something so we could keep track of them all...

Obviously, your understanding of the Bible is limited. While I don't really have time for in-depth pedagogy right now, which you truly need, I will try to clear up a few things for you before I go.

In the time before Christ, there was no light in the world.  (See many NT texts where Christ is described as the Light of the World.") This was not literal, only that there was no understanding, enlightenment, or Messianic Salvation yet extant.  It was a time for moral law to be given, i.e. the Ten Commandments.  Also, other more prosaic laws, i.e. the dietary laws you mock, were given as a way of protecting God's Chosen People from disease and other scourges.  Finally, the Old Covenant with Him was in force and only included Jews.

When Christ came, He brought Salvation to the rest of the world.  He taught a new law of love.  But He did not come to destroy the old law, just to add to it.  Which is why the Holy Bible contains BOTH the Old and New Testaments.  The Old for instruction and the New for Salvation.  

If one has eyes to see and ears to hear, no contradiction is apparent.  Biblically oriented Christians love homosexuals, but hate homosexual behavior.  Besides God's admonition, such behavior is hurtful because it often results in disease and other scourges, i.e. HIV, AIDS, ARC, gay bowel syndrome, a diminishing population, etc.

So there you have it:  a Biblical instruction which is at once moral, practical, and difficult to follow (at times.)  "All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God," thus is Christ's forgiveness so important.  Jesus has written His new law on our hearts.  We ignore it at our peril.  

and then theres occupational exposure to second hand smoke.

Whether or not second hand smoke has an effect on the general public is open to debate.  Working in a smoky bar for an eight hour shift while doing fairly strenuous physical labor is a whole different issue.   At that point it is not second hand smoke but more like actually smoking half a pack of cigarettes (that is why smoking was banned on airplanes).

Now obviously you believe that the government has no business regulating workplace safety (freedom to contract and all that nonsense).  I disagree.  The government has the duty to regulate workplace conditions.  Employees shouldn't have to risk their lives to earn a living.  I guess that extends to food safety laws, the FDA and anything to do with product safety too.  Why force automakers to put those pesky brakelights and seatbelts on cars?  Buyer beware and all that good stuff.  I don't agree.  OSHA has saved countless thousands of lives.  Do you want our mines to be like China's?  Go back to the good old days when the rule of thumb was one life per story in the construction of a skyscraper?

After levelling such an insult at me, such a model of murkiness is quite a tasty irony.

No one is discussing Christian public servants firing gays; we were talking about Christians in public service being forbidden to express the mere opinion that sodomy isn't swell. That's a new development.

We are talking about Christian printers being forbidden to refuse to print gay pride literature; this is a novelty in our society, one that would be obvious to anyone not committed to the notion that religion is something that takes place between one's ears.  As to billboards and letter writing, it would indeed be novel if both gays and traditional Christians were denied these modes of free speech, for reason that someone might find the exercise offensive.  

Regardless of the nature of the doctrines enacted into law, someone's deeply held conceptions of the world and life will be the basis of the law; that the law and the rules of the game should be rigged in such a way as to yield the results that what Christians want is always wrong and bigoted, while what gays want is right and just is another marvel of dispassionate reason and enlightenment.  I might be inclined to consider "neutrality" afresh if it did not always lunge for my jugular.

in the "metal drawer" labled "liklihood" if you want to.  None of these attacks on Christian morality exist in a vacuum.  Nobody in the Episcopal church would have ever dreamed of ordaining a homosexual priest had not the general culture, aided and abetted by the ACLU, opened the gates long ago.  First it was nativity scenes, then prayer in schools, then gay marriage.

Much of this kind of cultural unrest was brought to you by an organization started and perpetuated by a gang of communists and other assorted malcontents - none other than the ACLU.  

In the past decade, my own church, where I had worshiped for 42 years, started coming out with position papers on why homosexuality is O.K.  Under the banner of "Justice Love", they effectively rent the church assunder and sent its' members either scurrying or sweating over how they could rationalize such nonsense.  None of this would have happened without the cultural attack waged by the ACLU, PAW, GLAAD, GLSEN, and all the rest of these putrified relics of the sixties given new life by the MSM.

Yeah, it's one of a whole alright.  And to say differently is just plain stupid.  

What form of government neutrality to religion would not "lunge for you jugular?"  How can a balance be struck that satisfies your concerns?  If neutrality is not it and of itself violative of your Christian tenets, then tell me how to make it work.  What would be acceptable to you?

why single out "as long as they are consenting adults"?  After all, that particular prohibition is based on religious precepts too.  And there definitely is a group advocating the legalization of sex with children....

the calendar said it was the Year of our Lord 2005. And these days only one major church teaches that contraception is sinful, since other Christian (and non-Christian bodies) have accepted what biology has learned about the process of human gestation and no longer base their moral precepts in this matter on the scientific errors of Aristotle and Galen. But of course being Catholic means never having to admit when one is wrong--or at least waiting a few centuries before allowing that, gee, the sun really is the center of the solar system and Galileo, though he may have been an arrogant old grouch, was not really a heretic after all.

Re: In the time before Christ, there was no light in the world.

Um, Christ, being divine, is timeless. There is no such thing as a "time before Christ". There is such a thing as a time before the Incarnation, but even there the effects of the Incarnation are applicable both backwards and forwards in time.

Re: Jesus has written His new law on our hearts.  We ignore it at our peril.  

Amen. But the new is simply this: Love God with all your heart and love others as you love yourselves. All the old Levitical stuff is a dead letter now.

whether the error is expressed by one bowing to Mecca or signing himself with the cross. I don't see how anyone can demand just and tolerant behavior from Islam, despite specific precepts of that faith which require intolerance and 9as we see it) injustice, and then turn around and say that a Christianity which goes bad is off the table and must be respected and adored no matter what its sins and errors.

As for the Fathers, they were not infallible popes, and they were capable of error too.

And blasphemy is speaking ill of God. I speak no ill of God, only of the pretensions of humankind.

Re: Moreover, let us not hear of the silly notion that certain - only certain - traditional Christian moral beliefs are culturally relative

Why not? I have heard that very line (or something very much like it) when we discuss how Christianity failed to condemn slavery for so many years. Or (a more minor matter) why it is that we no longer demand that women wear head coverings in church.

anything.  You just didn't like the direction your church took, and need someone to blame for it.

there would have been no need for multiple reformations and protestant churchs.

And the NT proscriptions of homosexual acts are certainly less clear than its approval of slavery, yet most churches condemn slavery now.  

Except for the Roman Catholic Church, and a few other minor denominations, most Christians, even Orthodox Christians, accept the use of artificial birth control, which is certainly a sea change in traditional Christian moral beliefs over the last century.  Likewise the role of the women in society has certainly seen a huge change from "traditional Christian moral beliefs", even within the Catholic Church, and they are far behind more liberal denominations who recoginize women as full equals to men in the life of the Church and society.  To say that Christianity, even the Catholic Church, is not culturally relative, is to ignore reality.

this is a question that we can work with.  Since I have stated that neutrality-as-such does not exist, but that there is such a thing as a neutrality which operates within systems of law or belief, what I would like to see is a polity in which all of these controverted questions concerning the position of homosexuality in public life will be settled democratically, and not be means of judicial rulings appealing to doctrines of "rights".  In other words, rights don't exist in a vacuum, and homosexuals should have to win the rights to "marry", have even Christian business men print their literature, proscribe Christian billboards of which they disapprove and criminalize quotation of certain Scriptural texts, at the ballot box, just as the Christian/natural law consensus they wish to overturn was once such a cultural given that it was enacted into law.  

The "balance" is the American political tradition, which is neither stranger to the denial of certain prerogatives to homosexuals, nor to the enactment of laws now thought to be sectarian and peculiarly "Christian"; the "neutrality" is democratic politics within the framework of that tradition, without preemptive appeals to disembodied rights defended by courts in the teeth of overwhelming majority opinion.  

I may not always approve of the results, but I harbour no desire to head a minority theocracy (It's actually contrary to the way we Christians understand the faith these days.), so while I might disapprove of the results of democratic elections, I'll have to grumble to myself and work to change that of which I disapprove, because the rules will have been observed.  

In other words, if the opponents of Christians would stop attempting to rig the game through the courts and through the equation of reason and neutrality with whatever they happen to want, the temperature of these controversies will be lowered considerably.  Construct sound arguments and win with them at the polls, and don't dismiss those with whom you disagree as unreasoning bigots and theocrats.  I believe that mine are fairly liberal sentiments, albeit not of the purely contemporary variety.

...as in B.C. (before Christ) and A.D. (anno Domini, after Christ).  It's really not a hard concept.  Just put your thinking cap on and...

"they forced [my] church into anything."  I said the cultural aggressors made the situation ripe for it.  Kind of like how honest Germans, who before the war had been peaceful, law abiding citizens, got caught up in Hitler's rhetoric and began pushing Jews into the gas chambers.

Christianity has not "gone bad" in opposing sodomy; that is simply what Christianity, and Judaism its Mother, have always taught.  

Again, the teachings of the Fathers on this score are uniform, and they certainly believed that they received them from Christ, and could vindicate them by reason.  Given that the historic Christian view is that this teaching is of God, one DOES tread CLOSE to blasphemy in rejecting it as an error or pretension.

One of the more persistent pretensions of humankind is the notion that sexuality entails a do-it-yourself-moral-philosophy.  But debating this with cafeteria Christians is tiresome.

Can you give us a citation of the NT approval of slavery? Yes, St. Paul counsels slaves to be obedient, to live faithful lives even in a condition of servitude; but he does not judge slavery to be good, nor recommend it as an admirable system.

did the western cultures.

this settlement, ably sketched out by Maximos, was given a particularly fruitful twist by the American principle of federalism. That is, diverse sources of democratic authority (local, state, federal) would allow voting with your feet, and would result in smaller, more responsive government. This principle, with specific respect to religion, can be seen in the fact, now horrifying to Liberals but prefectly consistent with an older Liberalism, that many of the several states had an established state creed at the time of the Ratification.

if one has truly understood and assimilated the moral teaching of the Church, which has as its aim the attainment of the balanced life in which no illicit passion is indulged and no licit passion taken beyond its measure, to the end that man becomes a partaker of the Divine likeness, one will see how this end is not only unaffected by the issue of whether women cover their heads in Church (making this a matter of contingent discipline), but how it is impacted by slavery (while it is tolerated in the NT, the entire ethos militates against it, as such "lording it over" others hardly conduces to the ends of the Christian life), and positively hindered by homosexuality (which, as a refusal of the created order when acted upon, entails a pride inimical to humility and charity, an "I will" of the sort that makes the Fall narrative so tragic).  

What we have here... is the pot calling the kettle black, to a certain extent.

Intolerance is intolerance is intolerance.  Justifying one brand of intolerance while condemning the other (regardless of rationale) is, in my view, highly inconsistent.  It produces an unworkable condition: one in which we ourselves are no longer even pretending to be consistent with our own rationale.

In my view, we should focus on protecting everyone's rights if we fear for our own- that's the only way we can truly protect our rights by law.

...in other words, it's consistent to condemn the left's intolerance, but only if you're willing to be responsible for your own.  Where are you unwilling to tolerate others?  This is where you create the conditions that will endanger your own sacredly-held rights... because what's good for the goose is good for the gander.

Ultimately, we need to choose between giving others the right to be themselves, and claiming the right to meddle with others' right to be themselves.

Try 1 Tim 6: 1-5, Eph 6:5-6, Tit 2:9, 1 Pet 2: 18-29.  These passages certainly see slavery as a situation that is a natural state and should be accepted by the slave even if the master is cruel and unfair.  It certainly looks like approval to me.  And even Jesus uses the proper master-slave relationship to illustrate points, Matthew 10:24 and 24:45-46, while never even mentioning homosexuality.

I cannot believe there was ever a time when the Son did not exist.

that God created homosexuality and that rather than judging His creation we ought properly seek the purposes for which He made it and take our morality from the understanding.

If by "natural state" you mean natural state after the Fall, then I tend to agree with you.

Many of the same passages counsel the master to be just and respectful. The whole point is to appeal to people (converts, for the most part) as they are, in a fallen world. To speak to people in a certain social condition while assuming that that condition will continue, is not to endorse it.

that this is not how reasoning based in nature/creation works; that, by the same logic, God created the aversion to homosexuality, and that we ought to discern the logic thereof, and take our moral bearings from it.  By the same logic, God created murder, pedophilia and so on - it should be obvious that this is not how natural reasoning is to be undertaken.

"why single out "as long as they are consenting adults"?  After all, that particular prohibition is based on religious precepts too."

Proof? Anyway, not like it matters, I am sure that child psychologists would come up with an average age where children could be considered more aware of their choices.

"And there definitely is a group advocating the legalization of sex with children...."

Well my position? Basically, marriage and sexual consent can happen without parental consent at 18, and at 12 with parental consent. And do most prepubsecent children enjoy having sex with pedophiles? Absolutely not! Why would they consent if they do not like it? Perhaps force, but that is illegal anyway.

Either way, I assume you agree with me about the consenting adults doing such acts...

And out of curiosity..you go by the name of "warrior", I know pro wrestler "The Ulitmate Warrior" is a conservative, could that be you?

"Working in a smoky bar for an eight hour shift while doing fairly strenuous physical labor is a whole different issue."

If they don't like that, they should bring it up with the propietor. If the proprietor doesn't change his or her mind, they could always find new jobs, no place is perfect.

"Employees shouldn't have to risk their lives to earn a living."

I never said they had to, they don't have to take certain jobs. Perhaps if people made a concerted effort not to apply for such work or not do business with such places, the place will get the message and have better safety standards. Getting the government involved is just plain lazy.

"I guess that extends to food safety laws, the FDA and anything to do with product safety too.  Why force automakers to put those pesky brakelights and seatbelts on cars?  Buyer beware and all that good stuff."

The FDA has outlived its usefulness. We already have private consumer advocates in this world. The FDA should be abolished and private companies can do the trick without taxpayer dollars. Not to mention the corruption the current FDA has! Anyway buyer beware is a good thing. It promotes personal responsibility and freedom in life. Any product worth buying would have one sticker or sign saying that it has been approved for safety by this organization. Same thing for cars. It would really force people to think about where their dollar is going and be smarter consumers.

"Do you want our mines to be like China's?  Go back to the good old days when the rule of thumb was one life per story in the construction of a skyscraper?"

China is a tricky subject in the matter that for a communist state, they have very few labor freedoms, but that will change over time but they will have the right to strike. Anyway, as long as someone is willing to work under those conditions, I see nothing wrong with it. We cannot protect people from their own decisions, nor should we spend tax dollars on it.

Your reasoning still sounds like the same collectivist reasoning behind banning any number of consenting adults regardless of gender from getting a civil union..it is their life...they have no obligation to anyone...let them enjoy their life. Please tell me how it differs?

what life was like before government got all in people's business with things like worker safety laws  the FDA, environmental laws, child labor laws, legal protection of unions, etc.

In your system Chinese mines will never get safer because unions will never be allowed to develop.  Without government protection of the right to organize, unions will almost always be crushed before they have a chance to form and there will be no right to strike.

The debacle with Bextra and Vioxx shows if anything that the control over private industry needs to be stronger, not weaker.  It's what happens when the government let's the pharmaceutical industry run the FDA.

"what life was like before government got all in people's business with things like worker safety laws  the FDA, environmental laws, child labor laws, legal protection of unions, etc."

People make bad decisions..the government can't protect people from their bad decisions..its a waste of money...and we are now a first-world nation, we can afford to improve the environment and preserve the quality of water and air on earth as we are the only species in the world capable of destroying the planet. As for preserving wild lands, well that is better off left to the environmental organizations watching over our national parks and wilderness areas..they are less likely to sell out than government..anyway government is the biggest polluter.

"In your system Chinese mines will never get safer because unions will never be allowed to develop."

I never said that...they will have the right to organize under my system..but the employer has the right to kick them to the curb. Both sides have the right to assemble and express themselves. It's not like the government is putting down unions under my plan unlike in China..but it will change there..

"The debacle with Bextra and Vioxx shows if anything that the control over private industry needs to be stronger, not weaker.  It's what happens when the government let's the pharmaceutical industry run the FDA."

Actually, you have proven my point on why the FDA needs to be privatized. This is the corruption I am talking about when a kleptocratic government is involved, you get scandals. If a private company does the matter, their own livelihood and name is on the line..they will be less likely to be corrupt. The FDA is a monopoly and there are no competitors allowed...very likely to be corrupt.

is like that...

but I was talking about man's relationship with God on earth before Christ came in human form, bringing with him Salvation and a New Covenant.  Is there something difficult here that you don't understand?

all you wish, but the fact is, ALL our laws are based on religious precepts.  You want proof?  Start a reading course, beginning with the Bible, the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, contemperaneous letters and writings of the Founding Fathers and so on.  Let me know when you've finished those and I'll assign you some more.

"...am sure that child psychologists would come up with an average age where children could be considered more aware of their choices."

-- Well, I am a psychologist (not a wrestler) and I can tell that you children should be in their late teens before having sex and bearing children.  You seem to think the "sex between consenting adults" disclaimer was created out of some PC formulation and/or thin air.  It derives directly from the sanctity of marriage and God's blessing upon it.  As I mentioned in an earlier post, God has many practical reasons for his law and they protect and effect us on many levels.

"Well my position? Basically, marriage and sexual consent can happen without parental consent at 18, and at 12 with parental consent. And do most prepubsecent children enjoy having sex with pedophiles? Absolutely not! Why would they consent if they do not like it? Perhaps force, but that is illegal anyway."

-- There's a whole lot of gibberish here, but I'll try to parse some of it.  On what do you base your age limits and conditions?  And why is force illegal?  Ah, yet another constraint based on Biblical principles and understandings.  More proof?  "Suffer unto me the little children.  Unless you become like these, you will not enter the Kingdom of Heaven."  Or how about, "He who harms one of these little ones, it would be better to have a millstone tied around his neck and thrown into the depths..." -- Christ Jesus

"Either way, I assume you agree with me about the consenting adults doing such acts..."

-- No, I presume you agree with me.

"...I know pro wrestler 'The Ulitmate Warrior'..."

-- Sorry, I don't keep up with rasslin'.  I'll leave that to you guys with the 6th-grade ejeekayshuns...

Our laws are based on our collective human experience, which naturally includes religion, as it plays an important role in regulating our conduct towards one another.  But not just Christianity - Western thought and morality does not come from Christianity alone, but also from Roman and Greek philosophy, either independently or as adapted by Christianity in late Empire.  We're standing on the shoulders of giants here, but it is the expression of the human condition in toto, not the end product of theology and dogma.

"Sex between consenting adults" is really an extension of the notion of battery, in that any harmful touching without consent is deemed an offense.  The term certainly covers relationships beyond the boundaries of marriage.

American law is descended from English Common Law, which in turn derives the law codes of the Anglo-Saxons. Elsewhere in Christendom civil law is decsended from Roman law, which also had no obvious religious component.

Christianity is not a religion of law. There is no Christian equivalent of Muslim Shari'a and even the canon law of the Church has as its model Roman civil law.

was brought to the world for all ages, for thsoe who lived before the Incarnation as well as those who lived after.

The politics of abolition and civil rights can be argued on purely secular and rational grounds, with no need to invoke theology. The same is true of abortion today. But this is not true about about homosexuality questions where every argument ultimately comes back to either Leviticus or else to matters of purely personal taste.

You're entirely off-base. One can be an athiest and from a POV of societal best-interests make reasonable arguments in regards to gay marriage (and other homosexual questions)

"'Sex between consenting adults'...The term certainly covers relationships beyond the boundaries of marriage."  

-- Yes, and that's why sexual relations outside of marriage are proscribed by the Holy Bible.  And I see you didn't do your homework.  America's founders derived the guiding principles of our law from Holy Writ.  John Adams said such a system would only serve a Godly people...

We're talking about guiding principles here.  Our Founding Fathers were mostly Christians and constantly alluded to Divine Provenance, meaning the Christian God, while debating and creating our country.  Try reading a history book, why doncha?

God's relationship to man before and after Christ' life, death, and Resurrection.  That's why there is an Old and a New Covenant with God.  This is not rocket science, try paying attention...  

before the Incarnation was a relationship with the Jews only. The Old Covenant you refer to was a Convenant with the Jewish people alone, and the books of the Old Testament are mostly useful as prophecy pointing to Christ, and a source of good hymns (the Pslams). I believe that among Protestants this idea is expressed as "We are under Grace, not law".

"Who's morality are YOU talking about. There must be about as many moralities as there are people, so which one of the 7 billion of us or so, should we pay attention to?

If a specific religion in it's tradition maintains a practice in which by law can be interpreted to be prejudice, (i.e. A church that refuses to hire woman) or, if the church seeks to affect government through means of organized morality translated into a form of law, then conversely, the government now too can seek to affect the church.

If it is sought to break the lines of seperation between church and state that the church and it's followers seek, which from this website can easily be deducted, then so be it, let the lines be broken, and it will now be the governments right to review religious practices and if they pass the test of law. Taxes and tax disclosures should now be enforced and the entire gauntlet and laws that they will have to pass.

Or, we can keep seperation of church and state. Either way, it will end up where it has always, and should be.

The Constitution doesn't say, "The seperation of industry and state". Nope can't find it. The Constitution doesn't say, "The seperation of clubs and groups and state". Nope, can't find that either. In fact the Constitution doesn't mention any other thing or entity except.....................................................................
...........................................DRUM ROLL.......................................................................
.................................. "Church" or "Religion".

What translates into the morality, ideals of life, philosophies and theologies that resonate from a specific religion or religious groups or combination there of, has always and should always be considered part of the church agenda and therefore should not be placed in any form of law.

The fundamentals of law already cover most moral issues. Murder, Theft etc, etc...There is no need for someone's specific morality.

...that is, the Jews.  God used them to instruct us as to His nature and to prophesy of Christ's coming, which essentially abrogates your argument that Christ was here before He came.  And that's why we study and honor the Old Testament and not the writings of Josephus.

Which part of the Trinity don't you understand?

As a fact, the Constitution says nothing about separation of church and state either. That phrase appears in a letter Jefferson wrote to a Baptist church in Connecticut.

What the Constitution does say about religion is that Congress shall make no law "respecting" "an establishment" of it -- a rather obscure formulation that includes, as I wrote above, the injunction against Congress meddling in state religions already in place (as many were in the late 18th century). In the same amendment, the Constitution forbids Congress from prohibiting the "free exercise" of religion, also a somewhat obscure formulation because, as Maximos and others here have argued brilliantly, free exercise in any non-gnostic religion (i.e., Christianity) includes the freedom to take one's religion into the public square. The Constitution also forbids religious tests for office.

It does not mandate a separation of church and state. It is fallacious to say or imply that it otherwise.

Re: As a fact, the Constitution says nothing about separation of church and state either.

The Constitution also does not use the phrases "Separation of powers" or "federalism" yet it would be silly to suggest that it does not establish those principles.

Aleks, your nitpicking becomes very tiresome at times. This is semantic fastidiousness, nothing more.

The principle indicated by the contemporary phrase "separation of church and state" does not exist in the Constiution. It is a later accretion of modern jurisprudence, pure and simple. The original document was perfectly silent on the question of church-state relations, and the First Amendment merely forbade the federal government, in its legislative capacity, from involving itself in the various church-state settlements of the several states.

I will let you carry on with the absurdity that saying this implies I must also believe the principles of federalism and separation of powers also do not exist in the Constitution, because the words do not appear in the text.

"all you wish, but the fact is, ALL our laws are based on religious precepts.  You want proof?  Start a reading course, beginning with the Bible, the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, contemperaneous letters and writings of the Founding Fathers and so on.  Let me know when you've finished those and I'll assign you some more."

I can rebut this reply on three levels.

First of all, you are succumbing to the logical fallacy that just because some laws in a religious book are universally agreed on that all the rules in that religious book are hereby good legislation. It's nonsense.

Second of all, name a culture which doesn't frown upon either assault, theft, and fraud. And if a culture does accept it among their peer group, doesn't it cease to be either of the three?

And last but certainly not least, the Founding Fathers were not the evangelists the Religious Right think they are. If they were, the goal wouldn't be free religious practice, but rather found another Oliver Cromwell state where people are only free to practice what the government wants them to practice. Anyway, most of them were deists, which basically is belief in a God or first cause based on reason and experience rather than on faith or revelation (thanks wikipedia). It makes sense because deism was in its peak of its popularity around the time the constitution was written. Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin, and Thomas Paine were deists. So the Creator reference were more of a reference of the best idea of the time of where the world came from rather than an OK to allow legislation based on the bible.

"Well, I am a psychologist (not a wrestler) and I can tell that you children should be in their late teens before having sex and bearing children.  You seem to think the "sex between consenting adults" disclaimer was created out of some PC formulation and/or thin air.  It derives directly from the sanctity of marriage and God's blessing upon it.  As I mentioned in an earlier post, God has many practical reasons for his law and they protect and effect us on many levels."

Ya know, you did have me there until you mentioned the Bible. The psychologist view would be accepted in a peer-reviewed psychology journal. But imagine instead of science, you used the Bible in your report in the psychology journal. You would be laughed at! May I ask how you practice your psychology..in what scenario?

"-- There's a whole lot of gibberish here, but I'll try to parse some of it.  On what do you base your age limits and conditions?  And why is force illegal?  Ah, yet another constraint based on Biblical principles and understandings.  More proof?  "Suffer unto me the little children.  Unless you become like these, you will not enter the Kingdom of Heaven."  Or how about, "He who harms one of these little ones, it would be better to have a millstone tied around his neck and thrown into the depths..." -- Christ Jesus"

Uh..I don't see Jesus saying an age. He could be talking about any age really. Anyway..see my above replies.

"-- No, I presume you agree with me."

You have yet to counter that argument...

"-- Sorry, I don't keep up with rasslin'.  I'll leave that to you guys with the 6th-grade ejeekayshuns..."

Oh come on! I just make a light-hearted question and you make it an immature insult. Lighten up! Anyway, I am not convinced that you are not a pro wrestler. Perhaps you are a pro wrestler with a conservative psychologist theme...you gotta have a name..got one...from now on..I dub thee...NARTH VADER!

"To hold a pen is to be at war." -- Voltaire

Ya know Voltaire is a deist too...

Re: One can be an athiest and from a POV of societal best-interests make reasonable arguments in regards to gay marriage (and other homosexual questions)

Only on the basis of A) Personal taste ("Gay is yucky") or B) factual inaccuracies ("Gays are all pedophiles", etc.)

were what we today would call mainline Christians (Episcopalians, etc.) or even liberal Christians (Quakers, Unitarians). They were emphatically not Biblical literalists. In their writings on political matters they referred constantly not to the Bible but to the examples of Greece and Rome, and to more recent writers like Locke and Montesquieu. They were of course politicians too and when speaking to religious audiences they would use the usual rhetorical religious props, as politicians do. Most of them had a decidedly low opinion of churches as such, and certainly of "priestcraft" by which they meant the meddling by the clergy in politics. They would be disgusted by the likes of Pat Robertson and James Dobson, and theologically they would have more in common with Bishop Spong than with Franklin Graham. As for reading history, where do you think my information comes from? Perhaps you should start reading REAL history not pseudohistorical disinformatsiya put out by Barton, North and their lying ilk.

Re: Anyway, most of them were deists

If, under the cataegory of "Founding Father" we include everyone who signed either the Declaration or the Constitution, then I think you will find the Deists were in the minority. However as I posted above you will find that they belonged to mainline Protestant or liberal churches. Hardly a one of them had membership in a church we would recognize as "evangelical"* or "fundamentalist", although one of them (Carroll of Maryland) was  Catholic.

* In German the Lutheran church is officially called Die Evangelische Kirche, and the translation of that Evangelische sometimes carries over into the naming of Lutheran bodies in America. It does not however ever mean what is generally meant by "evangelical".

Re: Celibacy involves a tiny fraction of a percent of our society and is not engaging in militant activism to make Celibacy acceptable to the general pop.

In todays' world this is true. In some eras of the past however the practioners of celibacy did indeed actively recruit others to that lifestyle. Indeed, a case can be made that the popularity of monasticism in the early Middle Ages long retarded recovery from the demographic collapse of the 6th century.

Re: Which part of the Trinity don't you understand?

The Trinity is the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Christ is the Son. All three Persons are both transcendant (outside space-time) and immanent (present in space-time). Christ was indeed "here" before the incarnation. As an example from Scripture when the baylonian king ordered the three Jewish youths cast into a fiery furnace and they came out unharmed, it was reported that a fourth person was present with them in the flames. This is believed to have been Christ.

Re: The principle indicated by the contemporary phrase "separation of church and state" does not exist in the Constiution.

Then why did the Founding Fathers speak of it so? Look, any way you analyze it the Founders were Enlightenment gentlemen. They may not have had the more severe anti-Christian prejudices as some Continental thinkers of the era (though Tom Paine certainly did, and Jefferson flirted with a Voltairean disdain for orthodox Christianity), but they had a profound suspicion of clericalism in politics and spoke quite ill of what they called "priestcraft". It's pretty clear that they approved of a religion which informed the populace privately, and busied itself with good works, but they solidly rejected the notion of bishops (or their equiavlent) dictating law and public policy.

Marriage, and the rights and assets that are part of that union is what the "state" looks at, those are the "state" issues. The "state" has no moral issue with the union or the tradition of marriage. It's only a legal interest to keep the parties equitable in case the union disolves.

In the case of gay marriage, this is a moral issue introduced by theology in which the "state" has no interest in because the "state" could not possibly cater to each and every countless theology out there as a matter of practice and additionally the "state" should not have any interest in "ESTABLISHING" any moral theological viewpoint or religious practice into functional law.

There must be at least 1,000 or so references within just memo's to this concept for the specific seperation of specific influences upon how the government would function that pre-date the Constitution.

The terms, "Church" and "Religion" can also be found in even more.

It's there, it can be found, the idea is fairly straight forward and not confusing to those who do not seek to make it confusing. It is why it has grown by design and function over the last 2 centuries and has anchored itself within the social fabric and judicial institutions of our country. It is one of the longest and proudest of American traditions and wisedom.

Ya know Voltaire is a deist too...

He converted to Catholicism on his deathbed.

Holy Spirit.  The reason for a Triune God is because all three have different functions.  Is this concept really so hard to grasp?

This conversation began with OhSure asserting that "separation of church and state" is part of the Constitution. It is not. He stands refuted, and neither of you have made anything but the most pathetic attempts to confront this.

It is perfectly legitimate to counter that, though an accretion (i.e., not a part of the original document and tradition), church-state separationism is a fine legal principle for X, Y and Z reasons. It is mere sophistry to argue that it is an authentic part of our political tradition as it descends directly from the Constitution.

I have not entered into a discussion of what the Founding Fathers believed about church-state relations. It would certainly be an interesting discussion, but it is a distraction from the argument at hand.

It is quite possible to argue against gay marriage without reference to theology (I do it right here). To imply otherwise is a kind of rhetorical obscurantism.

but most definitely motivated by religion, and conservative religious groups are the ones mobilizing opposition to gay rights.

An atheist could very well, and with perfect rational consistency, repudiate the spurious notion of gay "marriage" by observing that the traditional form of marriage is that which best conduces to the raising of children fit to perpetuate a society, while the gay simulacrum would alter the basis of the institution from the foregoing to the sexual satisfactions of adults - which arrangement, implicit in our society since the sexual revolution, has proven itself a manifest failure in terms of overall societal well being, and, particularly, the well being of children.  

In fact, most of us "dread theocrats" reason similarly, and refrain from the resort to Scripture.

You know better than to sink to such scurrilous and defamatory accusations as that opposition to sodomy is rooted solely in either lies or distaste; grow up and drop the BS.

to the discussion.

The Establishment Clause refers to the state giving official power to a particular church. For instance, in most colonial states prior to Disestablishment the Anglican Church performed all marriages, undertook all public welfare, and processioned property boundaries, among other things. It also taxed all citizens regardless of their church.

This is what the Establishment Clause refers to. Other interpretations have grown up over time, as Paul says.

The First Amendment states:

"Congress shall make no law respecting the  establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

Note the First Amendment does not state the "establishment of a religion or a state-sponsored religion."  It refers to governmental laws that establish religion in general.  

One rather curious observation: Until the gay marriage debate began in earnest I have never heard anyone claim that marriage was all about children. Every single source I can imagine, from childhood nursery rhymes ("First comes love, then comes marriage..."),to silly old songs ("Love and marriage...go together like a horse and carriage"), to church wedding liturgies, to popular culture, to the behavior of real world people has sent the same message: Marriage is about love. Now to be sure, there is another message out there, to wit: Children should be reared in marriage. This has been challenged by some of our more radical feminists, and (in a practical sense) by the modern divorce culture, but you will not find me challenging it at all: like you I do indeed believe that children ought be raised in a marriage. But you can't turn that around and say "Therefore marriage must involve children" It doesn't take Aristotle to see the invalidity of that reasoning.

In short: marriage is not about children (although children ideally should be reared in marriage). Marriage is about love. That is the sum, and yes, traditional, verdict of our culture since quite far back in antiquity. This riff about children is an innovation dreamed up by people who can't find any other way to argue the issue and are grasping at straws.

. . . which you would know if you read the essay.

Note the First Amendment does not state the "establishment of a religion or a state-sponsored religion."  It refers to governmental laws that establish religion in general.

Right, it all hinges on the lack of the letter "a."

The Amendment binds only Congress; and it forbids Congress not merely from establishing religion, but also from interfering in establishment laws already extant -- like those in Massachusetts, North and South Carolina, and several other states.

The Fourteenth Amendment makes the First Amendment applicable to the states.  If you find that offensive, you will find yourself in some very unpleasant company.

the Incorporation Doctrine as the the argument is really about whether some First Amendment case law was rightly decided. That is not an issue emanating and penumbra-ing from the Constitution.

Griswold overruled?

the Griswold Amendment in the Constitution. Oh, no, wait there it is. Right beside the Dred Scott Amendment and Plessy Amendment.

Griswold = Plessy and Dred Scott?

You of course know the holding in Griswold.  So, you really want to make contraceptives illegal?  Go for it...

. . .the constitutional arguments in Griswold is a hypocrite when they go after those who would defend Lochner.  Holmes was right when he noted that the Founding Fathers did not enact the collected works of Herbert Spencer, but neither did they make the addled musings of William O. Douglas the law of the land.

that they are merely Supreme Court decisions and they can be overturned. Yes.

of results oriented judicial reasoning. Start with the outcome and work backwards to find some reason to do what you want.

. . .that a law is stupid without arguing that the Constitution demands that it be overturned.  That was the point of Justice Stewart's dissent in Griswold, and Justice Thomas' homage to that dissent in Lawrence (which the usual collection of clowns on the left mocked without bothering to note its origins).

Your selective reading of various sources for your "knowledge" of what constitutes "marriage" is as laughable as the old saw about the journalist despondent over the re-election of Nixon, who cried, "But I don't know anyone who voted for him!"  In point of fact, the notion that marriage is grounded in love is quite recent, arising in the wake of the renaissance and the general diffusion of earlier and local ideas of courtly love; these ideas did not permeate society as a whole until much later.  Beyond that, your contention involves an equivocation, if it is intended to justify sodomite unions, for the love spoken of in the romantic traditions (which are late medieval at best, NOT ancient) was the love of a man for a woman and a woman for a man, as this was manifestly the only conception of love and marriage entertained in our civilization at all times prior to the late (very late) twentieth century; "love" as our civilization has understood it, whatever its relationship to marriage, did not bear a sense which could accept the association of itself with marriage and sodomy together.

I have not said that marriage must involve children, but that marriage is fundamentally oriented toward the perpetuation of the species.    That is part of the "form" of the institution; even childless couples, when they enjoy intercourse, are engaged in acts of the marital type. That is as it has always been, especially prior to our elaboration of some theory of "love" as the basis of marriage.  In point of fact, the vast majority of marriages formed in the history of our civilization have been devoid of love as we moderns understand it.  Love does not preserve cultures or civilizations; love does not transmit the values and precepts of a civilization to future generations.  At most, it is by love that we enter into marriage with the openness toward life by which we embrace the future.  

So, therefore, the fallacy is all yours.  If you reread my posts in this thread and yet fail to grasp the distinctions between childless marriages and the simulacra of sodomites, it is because you do not want to understand.  Children should be raised in marriage: one man, one woman, monogamous and enduring.  What follows from this is not that there exists some legal or metaphysical imperative that every marriage issue forth in new life, but that society must privilege this institution and not debauch, degrade, impugn, or parody it, or otherwise indulge the pretense that other sexual arrangements rooted in the "love" (lusts, actually) of the parties thereto are equivalent in meaning, consequence and substance to marriage, thereby giving social sanction to sexual contracts inimical to the interests of children and society as a whole.  

The entire meme about "love" is an artifice slapped together by those who wish to unmoor our society from its foundations, who wish to justify innovations never before entertained among us, who take no concern for the future, but only for present satisfactions.

any State should have the right to make contraceptives illegal?  That is the question posed by Griswold.  That goes beyond just being a "stupid" law.

I, on the other hand, can't see a provision of the US Constitution that justifies keeping states from doing it.  Once you start just making stuff up to justify banning government practices we don't like, we're right back to Lochner.

It is called liberty and is protected by the Fourteenth Amendment--which guess what guys applies to the states.

In Lawrence two adult men were jailed for engaging in consensual sex in private.  It was not some ivory tower parlor game...The bottom line is do you believe it was okay for the State of Texas to put those two men in jail?

there is no right to buggery in the Constitution.

A lot of things consenting adults do in their own homes, like smoking crack, are illegal. Why is this different, I mean, other than you might approve of this and be against crack.

the state can regulate the use of contraceptives. It requires a prescription for birth control pills. You can't pick up a six-pack of IUDs at CVS. You can't buy "the patch" or get a Norplant kit over the counter.

If the voters of a state approve of the state banning contraception I just don't see a federal issue.

was a Supreme Court decision that overturned national legislation.

We're back to footnote 4 of Carolene Products, in any event.

So you say it is okay for the State of Texas to put people in jail for gay sex and make contracetpives illegal?  Just say it straight; say that you believe such statutes due not violate one's Substantive Due Process rights to liberty; say that you're okay with putting adults into jail for engaging in consensual sex.  

. . . did not come with the 14th Amendment. It came with later interpretations of the 14th Amendment -- dubious ones at that. Thus, as I wrote above:

It is perfectly legitimate to counter that, though an accretion (i.e., not a part of the original document and tradition), church-state separationism is a fine legal principle for X, Y and Z reasons. It is mere sophistry to argue that it is an authentic part of our political tradition as it descends directly from the Constitution.

I don't find a "substantive due process right to liberty" in my copy of the Constitution and if one were there, there is no "due process" violation in a state legislature banning either activity. Due process does not mean you can do what you want. I means you cannot be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process. In both Lawrence and Griswold the defendants received due process. As it turned out the Supreme Court just disagreed with the ability of the state legislatures to do their job.

That is a big difference.  Are you in favor of allowing any state to ban all sales of contraceptives?  

And just what regulations would you impose or believe that a state could impose?  Proof of marriage?

But love in that context is quite other than the sort of love envisioned by Aleks as the basis of marriage.  The former is the virtue of charity, while the latter could be anything from a warm, fuzzy feeling to base lust dressed up in respectable garb.

Do you believe any State should have the right to make contraceptives illegal?

Yes. And only a tortuous series of legal sophistries has forbidden it.

And after that there was the Fourteenth Amendment, which states in part:

...."nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law..."

If you want to trash all the Substantive Due Process cases, then you will have to give up all those conservative decisions that talk about "property."

. . .the constitutional provision that justifies the lessened assumption of constitutionality of legislation suggested in Footnote 4 as relates to those matters.  If you're down to substantive due process as your fig leaf, we're all the way back to Dred Scott as far as the parade of unsavory precedents goes.  Considering all the screeching you've been doing about the tables turning regarding precedents being set, I'd think you'd be more reluctant to leave that particular tool lying around for an activist conservative USSC to use.  Sadly, the decision of the Court to forgo such nonsense in the late 1930's did not take root.

But you aren't going to hijack this thread by steering it onto your pet subject.

So try again, but keep on topic.

. . .are you endorsing "freedom of contract"?  

I guess we can look at the old Texas saying that first we will give 'em a fair trial then we'll hang 'em.  According to your logic, the state can do whatever it wants so long as it follows some "process."

Even most conservative judges would agree that a Substative Due Process analysis must be made under the Fourteenth Amendment.  But, hey, if guys want to re-make the judiciciary and put gays in jail, etc., knock yourself out.  While you're at it, go ahead and get rid of Marbury too.

is that you apparently don't have the requisite reading skills to understand what you've posted.

Liberty means liberty. It means you can't be deprived of liberty, to the native English speaker that means you can't be thrown into prison. You, however, are finding a freedom to license. It doesn't exist.

And no, we wouldn't be deprived of our "property" cases because other than those benighted liberal jurisdictions that have declared your rental apartment, welfare check, and housing subisidies to be property, conservatives find property protected by the Fifth Amendment, not by the addled ruminations emanating from Griswold.

Nothing is more certain than that the love which St. Paul speaks of so eloquently in I Corinthians is something altogether different from the debased romantic "love" of modern pop culture.

. . .because it can be used to justify banning whatever five Justices think is a Very Bad Thing that shouldn't be allowed, regardless of whether there's any support for it in the Constitution or not, which means that you're not going to have a principled counterargument if a future USSC changes its mind on the subject. If you're going to rely on the "Rule of Five" as the center of constitutional jurisprudence, don't complain when the Second Golden Age of Freedom of Contract comes around.

Guess what?  As you should know, the two gay men in Lawrence were put into....drum roll please....jail

I guess getting put into jail is a loss of liberty if you're straght but not if you're gay.  But no matter, the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection clause does not apply, er..., should not, apply to the states. Oh fiddlesticks, gays are just an abomination....

Substantive Due Process should be eliminated.  Just as long as the state is organized, efficient and follows some process, then it is okay to do what you will with them.  And we will even treat equal groups equally.  All blacks, all jews, all gays get the same treatment, right?    

Doverspa, are you following this?  This where your judicial philosphy leads.  Are you okay with this?  

That is what this current fight is all about.......You apparently support it; I do not.

Myers is a freedom of contract guy.

they were put in jail after a trial and conviction.... rimshot.

The received due process. Finito.

. . .as long as the "Rule of Five" is the coin of the realm, freedom of contract is fair game.  Your crowd is claiming the views of these judicial candidates are illegitimately out of the mainstream--which is nonsense:  they're merely playing by the rules that the Penumbrists have put into play.  Enjoy reaping what you've sowed.

saying that all jews, gays, etc. were to be treated in a certain way would be okay too.

Your analsyis assumes that as long as there is some "process," the state can do whatever it wants to whomever it wants.  You just have to be organized and have rules--but the "substance" of the rules doesn't matter?  Absurd result.

. . .that with those you could point to equal protection--which is an actual provision in the Constitution as opposed to William O. Douglas' senile ramblings--as a grounds for argument.  Contraception doesn't have such a convenient hook on which to base an argument.  Now, one might take issue with the various levels of justification that the USSC has come up with for overcoming equal protection questions (particularly the uneven way in which the "strict scrutiny" test has been applied to such matters as affirmative action), but at least there's something substantial there.

It is ridiculous to suggest that conservatives would not attempt to strike down economic legislation if the Supreme Court abandoned Substantive Due Process.  The Lochner attack was not a Substantive Due Process analysis--it was under the freedom of contract provisions.

I suppose conservatvies are anti-environment but most people like clean water and clean air.

That your argument would be much more consistent if you focused on the "privileges and immunities" clause rather than the "due process" clause.  Substantive due process is an anomoly, hated even by those who support it.

in the early 1960s--so senile doesn't work here.  If you want to go that route, there has been an older President, you know.

Griswold makes sense to me as protected liberty interest.  As does Lawerence.  You want to define liberty differently.  But one does have to have a deinition.  Our values are different.  I just believe the states should have no power to put gays into jail.  You disagree.

But the idea is to prevent the State of Texas from putting gays into jail.

would not necessarily invoke equal protection in this world view being expressed here.  Equal protection involves suspect classes. Here, being gay would not be a suspect class.  So, if you could put them into jail, why not stone them?  Right?  Bad law but not unconstitutional, right?

. . .you don't care how it gets done, as long as it gets done.

Remind me again on what your position on the Republican changes to the filibuster rule is?

under any constitutional analysis.  You just believe that being gay is not a protected right and that the state should be allowed to put gays into jail. I do not.  It is about liberty.  It is simple unless one has an agenda to undermine the courts.

. . .to someone who believes that the right to absolute economic liberty should be protected as thoroughly--when that person has five votes on the USSC to back him up?  

I'm not annoyed at the idea that gays can't be put in prison for sex acts or that contraception can't be banned--but you're not going to have any gripe coming when someone else gets a majority to ban economic regulations that you don't like using the same tools that your side has left lying around--it's pretty obvious why the fight over the judges is so rabid:  you don't want conservative judges to have their turn playing with your toys.

is seven decades of jurisprudence that has accepted footnote 4.  And I think the nascent revival of the Commerce Clause attack is moribund.

And, if 5 ultra-conservatives get on the court, what do I do?  Well, the same thing you would do if 5 ultra-liberal got on the court: try to rally opposition.

There is the conservative principle of stare decisis.  That should put to rest all the radical notions of repealing the New Deal.  But who knows, many conservatives like Sean Hannity hate America, and want to have a religious revolution.  

Explain Schiavo....

. . .I wasn't thrilled with some of the tactics used in the Schiavo case, either--but the corruption of the judicial system by the Rule of Five is rather bigger game.

that there is some nuetral, value-free way of deciding cases, that if the Justices are true to the Founders they will correctly and inerrantly intuit Natural Law en masse and come up with a value-free decision.  It is as if you assume that deciding cases is just like a mathematical equation that will spit out a decision after the correct data is inputted.

Explain what cruel and unusual punushment is.  Or how about "due process of law," or "liberty."  "General Welfare."  "Unreasonable searches and seizures."  And on and on.  There are may concepts that are not defined.  The Constitution is not like a state statute--it is much broader than that.

The inherent weakness in your argument is that you assume that you are being value-free, content nuetral, and that only we liberals are reading our values into the Constitution.  Well, one is always least aware of one's own bias. You conservatives are attempting to impose your values on the constitution.  It would be better if you were to fess up.  Then we could argue whose values are better, mine or yours.        

social statics btw.  Great line by a great Justice.

you can't stop a state from banning a religion either, if the voters so vote that way. California's decide that they want to ban Catholic churches in the state, then that's what they decided.

The mob rules mentality is normally not so quite and almost never tries to hide itself, but this one takes the cake. Seperation of church and state is a very straight forward concept.

Some people here that on the one hand will procliam thier faith to whatever God they have chosen, yet when it comes to actually admitting that an issue like gay marriage is distinctly derived from thier religious beliefs, (A long stroll through the various post of many of those replying here, provide statements that clearly state thier position is religious) now, for the sake of arguement are not so comfortable standing next to thier religion when it comes to admitting the source of thier arguements.

It's from religion, a specific religion, an idiot could see that. But, if you don't have the conviction to stand next to what was previously a jealously guarded and protected viewpoint at this stage in this arguement, then it seems this is just to mislead and not go back to the most fundamentally simple idea that church and state don't mix, never have, never will.

i.e. Iran, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Iraq and on and on and on.

In the end , the great desecration of human rights, (mostly woman and children) have been the legacy and governments influenced and or governed by religious doctrine. Better minds prevailed when the Constitution was forged.

Do yourself a favor and keep the intended institution intact, or that boomeranging cement truck is just gonna keep picking up more and more velocity.

...and that's where you either through confusion, or deliberation, maintain there is no "reasonable" argument against gay marriage.

NO reasonable person, religious or not, would or wants to interfer with the private relationship between two consenting adults. No one is advocating going from house to house and tossing gays into prison for living together.

But what we are talking about with "marriage" is the PUBLIC institution -- A form of contract that the government, through the power of The People -- has decided to endorse and support. People have the right to be left alone in the privacy of their home, they do not have a "right" to a contractual institution that by design, favors one particular configuration as ideal while not sanctioning others. Just because you are I cannot meet the ideal doesn't make us or the ideal illegitimate.

You sniff, "Marriage is about love."

Legal marriage is not. Go read any family law statute and you will never see the word "love" involved, because the government doesn't care about your motivation in marrying... be it love, business, convenience, friendship, pregnancy or a lark.

Now, you need to understand that I'm for civil unions and I will support allowing the institution of marriage being extended to include same-sex couples. But not as a "right". Only as I feel it will benefit society in the long run to encourage committed monogamy in same-sex couples and when we convince our fellow citizens that it is the right thing to do and the impetus for change comes from the People not the judiciary.

The PUBLIC

I can tell you without any doubt whatsoever, that your hypothesis on human behavior, the conceptual integrity of base human emotions such as love, empathy, belonging and so on, and your distinctly unique interpretation of social conditions are absolutely incorrect, without any substantive proof, data or merit.

Human forms of love all with comprehension roots in empathy pre-dates Christianity by thousands of years. Roman and Roman Western Societies and Social Structures put the final nail on some western philosophies and their social values. Sadly, the Barbarians had to teach the Roman's to be civilized, a perfect time for Christianity to flourish.

Also sadly, your distinct American Jewdeo-Christian attitude and demeanor and how you interpret love is far more distinct to recent times and almost exclusively American, mainly mid-west, which I would guess you are from at this point.

You believe that by waving some magic republican mid-west holy water that suddenly social structure and behavioral socializations are all now forms through that type of Bible-Belt thinking?

NO, I can tell you that your personal interpretation of how people thought and what their social structure was in centuries past is completely without merit whatsoever.

20+ years of sociology have not prepared you to read and comprehend a simple post in a simple political discussion.

I have not claimed that some understanding of basic human emotions has been absent from past iterations of our civilization, or that ancient civilizations have been devoid of love and empathy.  No, what I have claimed, which position is emphatically accurate, is that not one of these cultures or civilizations rooted the institution of marriage in love as understood as a disembodied emotion essentially unrelated to the division of the species into male and female types, such that a)marriage was conceived of as a union having no essential connection with the perpetuation of the species, but only with the emotional and sexual fulfillment of the parties, and b) marriage was open to any parties or combination of parties, without regard to sex, number, or intentions.  

The point is that NO conception of marriage entertained prior to the relatively recent senilities regarding homosexual "marriages" can be assimilated to the contemporary fiction of disembodied love, unrelated to sex and procreation, and required for the comprehension and legitimation of homosexual "marriages".  Not even the polygamous ones.  

There exists no substantive, historical evidence for anything that could even be taken as a remote approximation of what homosexual activists are demanding be instituted as the new marital regime; neither does there exist evidence that entire cultures and civilizations perpetuated themselves in spite of ideals of marriage which made no reference to the complementarity of the sexes and the biological imperative of reproduction - cultural ideals of "love", "affection", "empathy" and "attraction" were always rooted in these realities insofar as they interesected with "marriage", which is why, however tolerant or intolerant ancient societies may have been of sodomy, they never instituted anything that could be termed a "gay marriage", understood as a "blessed union of loving souls", a pillar of society in terms of family structure and inheritance, and so on.  Never.

So, you are free to wallow in whatever formulations of the ancient approaches to the emotional life of mankind best suit your temperment; what remains is that none of those conceptions was rooted in a social structure which allowed for homosexual "marriages" and posited the essential substantive identity of heterosexual and homosexual unions.  And if you really believe that all those ancient marriages were rooted in something that WE would recognize as an abstract ideal of "love", perhaps you ought to pass along some of what you are smoking.  

You can jettison the cheap, dime-store anti-Christian bigotry that informs your sneering remarks about midwestern holy water as well; it is the intellectual equivalent of exposing oneself in a public place.  And I can tell you that even ancient homosexuals would have found the notion of homosexual "marriage" quite queer.

What is your understanding of what marriage is? What and where are the origins of this tradition? Who started it? And, how has it changed and manifested into what we understand it to be today in America within the context and viewpoint of Christianity or any other viewpoint for that matter? What are the state's responsibilities and interest under the law for marriage whether it be homo or hetero?

No state should have the right to force any religiously based tradition to change that tradition to fit the viewpoints of some special interest group. Likewise, no state should get involved either, it's not a state issue.

where is it that you believe that anti-homosexual sentiments originate from? What socialization process do you believe could have possibily cause that philosophy to spring forth from a child's mind or an adults mind for that matter?

Where is it that you believe that belief comes from?

are addressed in certain of the other posts I have contributed to this thread.  I brief, I regard marriage as rooted in the natural order, in view of the natural, logical telos of human nature.  This is, perhaps, a sort of natural law spin on the institution, but something like this is unavoidable if one wishes to explain the uniformity of male-female marriage (with the well-known variations of polygamy, etc.) throughout the vast sweep of human civilization.  In that sense, then, this is not a tradition, but a manifestation of human nature.

The specific form of marriage observed in the societies of what was once Christendom has obviously been influenced by that tradition, although I rather seriously doubt that marriage customs of, say, the ancient Chinese or Japanese would be so alien that Christians of the sixth century would be able to make no sense of them.  Variations on a theme.  Christianity has, among other things, elevated the significance of the ideals of monogamy and permanance, although these ideals are not unknown prior to Christianity, and that in part because these best conduce to the well being of society by securing the well being of children and the social and personal security of spouses.  This is not, however, to disparage the influence of certain Greek and Roman customs or ideals on the development of our understanding of marriage; the early Christians understood themselves to be custodians of a good and rational world which disclosed its wisdom - though not the pefection of that wisdom - to all who honestly sought it, pagan or not, and so saw themselves as the inheritors of what was good and right in the cultures that preceded theirs, and the perfectors of that which was lacking.  

The specifically romantic element of modern marriage, it can be argued, was at least latent all along; what one can say, without even a hint of tentativeness, is that this has increased in importance over the centuries, and, severed from the tradition in which it was grounded, this has had the consequences - the rise of a sort of gnostic, disembodied conception of the self as regards "love" and longing, such that the longing self is somehow thought to be other than the bodily, sexed (male or female) self - I earlier decried.  The story of that development is long and tortured, as is the story of all of the social variations, even within our own culture, of the social incidents of marriage, but what is constant is the male/female schema, which is a reflection of the division of the species, and indeed, of the nature of Being itself, as one can observe in virtually every religion (despite the obvious inter-religious divergences of dogma) and even in the structure of most languages.

The responsibility of the state is to promote that conception of marriage which best conduces to the welfare of society, namely, marriage as defined by the Tradition.  The legal incidents by which marriage is set apart and protected/promoted may be discussed; the obviously vary in detail from time to time and place to place, although I imagine that there are significant continuities.  And that marriage, in most circumstances, will issue in children is constant.  The exceptions do not refute, but rather prove, the rule.

I agree that no state should redefine religious dogma or involve itself in defining marriage; it is not an abstraction waiting to be defined, but a substantial reality waiting to be recognized.

that sentiments against homosexuality come from the same place that the core constants of marriage come from - the natural order as concentrated in humanity.  A constant is not a simple universal, at least not in practice; it should be, however, an indication of underlying order, of the telos of things.  Socialization can strengthen or weaken the innate sense of, at least, the oddness, of homosexuality, but it can no more be eradicated than can the innate sense of there being male and female sexes/natures/principles of being.  

Which is to say that opposition to homosexuality does not come from hate; hate only comes in what one does with that innate sensibility.

Belief is inherent in all acts of speech and thought; not belief in the specificity of a tradition, perhaps, but belief, in a minimum, of the order and rationality of being, which is to say, its goodness, beauty and truth, without which speaking and thinking are pointless - impossible.  An elaborated system of belief is a man's metaphysical dream, his evocation and expression of that fundamental and good order he intuits and experiences in his own being.

those "are" very interesting philosophies, yet somewhat, actually very inaccurate, except one very important thing, that is apparently very important to you as well.

Marriage is not a natural human condition, in fact human are exactly opposite naturally. Human's do not under any theory, want to be with one person. Human's are not naturally monogamous and human's do not want to be by nature. This is absolute fact within the social and psychological fields of study.

However, if it is your contention that a society as a whole does better with the institutions of marriage, and that institution is born from the idea that it should be between a man and a woman and that this type of social structure is better for human kind, then you are correct.

Every single piece of evidence shows that society does indeed, and as fact, do better as a whole than those that accept unions that do not follow the laws of natural selection. (.e. the reptile part of our brains focus almost solely on reproduction,with the exception of running organs).

Yes, in that aspect, every single society that has accepted homosexuality as a norm has been destroyed or has failed altogether, and it can specifically be traced to the dissolving of the traditional marriage and union and social structure that is created from that. In that respect you have history bating a thousand for you and there can be no arguement over facts that are not challengable in the social science fields.

However, the idea itself "anti-homosexuality" is directly derived from religion, it not a normal human condition or emotion and does not appear anywhere in the world in those cultures that have no knowledge of western, asian or middle-eastern religions that reflect that philosophy.

There is no such thing as an "absolute fact" in sociology or psychology.

True.  lolol...

I realize that we are far past this comment thread, but you will notice that the issue under discussion was a view on public policy, not legalized religion.

Besides which, this straw man you've constructed is happily disqualified by the 1st Amendment, whereas my views on gay marriage are not.

You are confusing what people WANT to do with what is natural (ie. that which promotes the fulfillment and flourishing of human nature and purposes).  Natural law does not equal natural desires/wants.

As to the question of homosexuality, I simply do not buy your contention that it is only subject to disapprobation in cultures exposed to the great world religions.  There are certainly some cultures outside those orbits in which it is tolerated, sometimes even celebrated; but it is never normative in the sense of being obligatory or foundational to the entire social order.  That is an empirical indication of my claim.  Moreover, I am certain that one could find, without trying, some primitive culture in which it is abhorred.

apropos of streiff's quibble, that sociology, a social science which cannot generate categorical conclusions, is in no position to judge philosophy, which does strive for the universal.

that disapproval of homosexuality is not limited to those cultures influenced by Christianity or Islam. However it is also not the case that every culture everywhere has held the same views on the topic. As with most things there is a spectrum of attitudes ranging from casuakl tolerance to fierce opposition.

What I am saying, in addition to my rejection of the contention that only those cultures influenced or formed by the great world religions oppose homosexuality, is that in no culture is homosexuality normative - ie. constitutive of the fundamental bases of the culture.  It may be abhorrent; it may be a curious sidelight.  But neither homosexuality nor an ideal of love, central to the society, which encompasses homosexuality, is normative anywhere, which is why, given the place of a certain conception of love in our culture and the demands for homosexual "marriage", such radicalism is, well, truly radical.

The biggest problem that the licensing board had with the pharmacist was not that he didnt want to fill the prescription, it was that he refused to refer it to another pharmicist either in the same store or at another one.  The pharmacist wants the same exemption the doctor has here in Wisconsin but without the clause that exists for doctors that they do have to refer the patient on to another physician.