LGBTQ+ Rights and Religion

Yes, because "males" is not a group or something...

As I've said, you insist on being totally non-contextual. But in that case, you would actually have to go: "Both men and women can only marry men" or "Both men and women can only marry women". Or of course: "Both men and women can marry men or women".

Unbent, Unbowed, Unbroken. Unrelated ME1 Fanfic

If the context is: "You can have one of these cookies, but it has to be one of the chocolate ones and not one of the raisin ones", then, yeah, kind of. That's the context that your example brought to mind.

edited 18th Apr '12 12:23:12 PM by pagad

With cannon shot and gun blast smash the alien. With laser beam and searing plasma scatter the alien to the stars.

Point taken on males and females. But then, the issue would be not the discrimination between heterosexuals and homosexuals, but the one between males and females. Which brings me back to the issue that not all discrimination (in this sense) is necessarily bad. Not all rules apply to all situations in the same exact way. I am not allowed to do things that other people to do, because circumstances are never exactly the same and certain rules only apply to certain situations.

Also:

Catholics — individually or collectively — have certainly the right to support whatever laws they want to support. And, of course, to bear the responsibility of having done that in front of others and in front of history.

But doesn't that make the notion of "discrimination" entirely meaningless then? I mean, suppose that I really want a nice car, but I have no money to buy it. Somebody else has the money, and buys one. The rule on what one can buy is then contextual on how much money they have to spend.

Do we really want to count this as an example of discrimination?

edited 18th Apr '12 12:28:22 PM by Carciofus

But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.

The cookies metaphor doesn't really apply here, at least not as it was set out. A more apt metaphor would be something like: Left-handers are only allowed to eat raisin cookies, and right-handers are only allowed to eat chocolate-chip cookies. Nobody is allowed to have cookies that are incompatible with your handedness.

Discrimination is denying somebody a right or privilege possessed by others because of what group they belong to. If I were to sell a car to a tall person at a lower price than I would charge to a shorter person because I like tall people, then I would be discriminating against short people.

edited 18th Apr '12 12:31:29 PM by Lawyerdude

What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly.

Which would be a stupid rule, of course. But the point here is not that it is discriminatory, but that it is stupid. If there was a valid reason for it — for example, because left-handers are allergic to chocolate and right-handers are allergic to raisins — then it would be perfectly acceptable.

But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.

Yes. Discrimination is stupid.

What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly.

But there isn't a valid reason to stop same gendered unions. Only a particular passage in a book that no-one can accurately gauge its true meaning

Dutch Lesbian

I agree with you on this.

But my point is, if we define "discrimination" simply in terms of different rules applying to different people, then there is no reason to think that discrimination is unjust in general. If rules apply differently to people for no valid reason, then we have an unjust form of discrimination.

Now — and to return to the quote from the CCC from the previous page — the current belief of the Catholic Church is that there is a valid reason not to allow people to marry same-gendered people. However, this does not justify, not even in the eyes of the most conservative interpretation of this teaching, unjust forms of discrimination like, for example, denying service to people because of their perceived sexuality.

edited 18th Apr '12 12:39:18 PM by Carciofus

But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.

By unions I meant ofc Marriage because like the British Government, I believe that separate but equal isn't equal and discrimination

edited 18th Apr '12 12:41:20 PM by whaleofyournightmare

Dutch Lesbian

Probably not. Apologies, I've had a drink or two and I've just seen my bank balance (the two are not unrelated), so there's probably some faulty wiring upstairs at the moment.

With cannon shot and gun blast smash the alien. With laser beam and searing plasma scatter the alien to the stars.

No worries. My apologies if I'm sounding curt or a bit confused — today has been a slightly unpleasant day for me too, and I'm not entirely all there. Actually, the idea of a drink is not bad, I think I'll adopt it myself

But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.

See, the Pope is choosing to speak out against what has been established as a legal right in several countries. Spain, the Netherlands, Portugal, Norway, Sweden and others.

He is saying that same-sex couples should be stripped of that legal right. Now that he is advocating taking away that legal right, is he going to stop there? Once you open the door to say, "God doesn't want these people to have full legal equality with others," where does it stop?

After all, if religious groups raised millions of dollars to destroy the marriages of thousands of people in California back in 2008 (money that could have gone to feed the hungry or shelter the homeless), what other legal rights do they feel their religion justifies opposing?

What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly.

Slippery Slope Fallacy, there. If I said "If we let same-sex couples marry each other, what else will they start counting as marriage? Should we legalize polygamy, and incest, and pedophilia too?" would you let that go? No, you'd say it was a Slippery Slope Fallacy, and you'd be right. Doesn't make it right when you use it either.

That'll be all.

edited 20th Apr '12 8:15:29 PM by Ultrayellow

Except for 4/1/2011. That day lingers in my memory like...metaphor here...I should go.

According to this, the Vatican opposes laws that decriminalize homosexuality. So the apprehension that the RCC opposes homosexual people is based on actual statements from high ranking authorities in the church.

What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly.

It's things like that which make me loose a lot of faith in humanity.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Might be off topic, but any anecdotes around here for whether homoromanticism is seen the same way as homosexuality by religious groups and/or whatnot?

My anecdotal experience on what response you'll get from anti-gay-marriage religious people on homoromanticism as opposed to homosexuality: a blank stare. It's not something they tend to think about.

Smile for me!

Yep. Tried it. Got a blank stare. Then the standard anti-gay talking points.

edited 20th Apr '12 11:57:57 PM by Vehudur

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Carciofus is correct in that, technically, under Catholic and fundamentalist Protestant doctrine, everyone has the right to a heterosexual marriage, and in that sense it's nondiscriminatory. They believe that "people have a right to marry heterosexually, and should be encouraged to do so" is the basic right that everyone has. People don't have a right to marry "someone of their preferred gender."

Naturally, for someone who says that "all individuals have a right to marry their preferred gender" is the natural right to defend, the above position is discriminatory.

@Lawyerdude: Wow, that page has a really quick backpedal. Still, yes, the Pope is on record as saying that a U.N. declaration that calls on the world governments to decriminalize homosexuality is a bad thing.

If I'm parsing his statements correctly, he's saying that he thinks this resolution might inspire the nations of the world to start recognizing homosexual marriages. And it's true as far as it goes; once homosexual acts are decriminalized, homosexuals will start looking for marriage rights, but even for a Catholic, that shouldn't be grounds for trying to (tactically) hold the line on homosexual acts themselves.

edited 21st Apr '12 12:12:26 AM by Ramidel

I despise hypocrisy, unless of course it is my own.

By the way, that statement was criticized rather harshly (and, frankly, deservedly) by the Catholic community. Yes, there are elements in the hierarchy of the Catholic Church who are certainly supporting objectionable positions; and people, quite naturally, object to such positions.

There seems to be this sort of widespread assumption that once the Pope of some other high-ranking member of the clergy says something, all Catholics everywhere have to automatically agree with them or drop out of Catholicism. This is nowhere near true. There is a healthy amount of internal debate and discussion — if anything, what worries me is that at times it tends a bit too much towards factionalism.

One thing that we don't want to do, however, is to create a schism. I may disagree with the Pope on the subject of homosexuality: but that does not give me, or anybody else, the right to reject his (in my opinion, rightful) authority altogether. I'm not the head of the Church, he is.

Yeah. Even assuming that homosexual acts are a sin, it is well-known that criminalizing sin in itself is not the best idea ever. And in any case, if adultery (a far more serious sin, as it involves breaking a most solemn oath) is not criminalized, why would one even want to criminalize homosexuality?

edited 21st Apr '12 1:22:05 AM by Carciofus

But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.

Of course those "elements" are the ones in charge making the decisions. If Catholics disagree and are in the majority it falls to them to insure the leadership of their organization reflects their wishes.

You can't fault someone for the assumption that if the leadership of an organization makes a statement and little to no action is taken in rebuke, then the majority of the organization must agree with sentiments. If they didn't those people wouldn't be in power in the first place.

edited 21st Apr '12 7:37:00 AM by LMage

"You are never taller then when standing up for yourself"

Yeah. In a very real way, the RCC is the Vatican and the hierarchy. If the lay people do not like what the upper echelons say, well, they could just leave. Now, if they put the "unity of the church" or the "canonic succession" above those issues, then yes, they will be judged.

Unbent, Unbowed, Unbroken. Unrelated ME1 Fanfic

Maybe there are lay Catholics who disagree with the Pope or church teachings. But it's not their church, it's the Pope's. He can say whatever he wants and do whatever he wants, and he's not accountable to any earthly authority. The RCC is not a democracy, so if you don't like its teachings and don't want to quit, there's not much a member can do to change things.

What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly.

I would modify that statement a bit: there's not much a member of the RCC can do to change it that a nonmember can't. The Church has folded to external pressure before.

Smile for me!

If we have to get technical, it's Christ's Church, and the Pope is the head of it on Earth. And, just to get this out of the way, I don't think that he is a bad person: he is a dedicated, intelligent, highly learned and sincere person who, I think, happens to be seriously mistaken about this specific matter.

As for what lay Catholics can do... well, we can do what all Catholics should do anyway, try to behave in the correct way (with varying degrees of success, of course) and call out injustice when we see it. We try to do that.

But if you are asking us why we don't march out or try to somehow topple the Pope... well, that is not going to happen. Not now, not ever.

edited 21st Apr '12 10:13:33 AM by Carciofus

But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.