LGBTQ+ Rights and Religion

Thousands of "Christians" file for divorce following Supreme Court decision. Don't ask me how this is supposed to support the sanctity of marriage.

Because they don't understand the concept of separation of state and church, they thought they lived in a country where evangelical, protestant marriage was the only kind allowed, the realised that that's not reality is hitting some folks pretty hard.

Also I question the idea that "thousands" are actually doing this, a couple dozen maybe, but that will be it I think. Thousands might claim that they're going to, but they're all talk.

edited 6th Jul '15 9:56:42 AM by Silasw

Whiny pissbabies, the lot of them.

Holy shit, some people actually pulled that stunt. And some groups are trying to eliminate government's involvement in marriage altogether, burning the entire structure just because they didn't get their way.

I don't remember this happening when marriage equality came to Canada ten years back, or in any other country really. Murica is still in a league of it's own, as always.

Out of curiosity, when divorce was legalised did Catholics have a similarly outraged reaction? Though obviously they wouldn't be getting divorces in that case.

Because many fundamentalist have the idea that they are doing good and they should continue that way, so if someone get in the way like to said...the goverment, then so be it.

Is like a fundamentalist version of the "Im a man and I cant help myself" they said is in their belief to kept marragie into "what it is" and if they dont is "un-christian" is not surprising their near patalogical determination about the issue

Not really. The worst there was was stuff like this:

Or this:

There was plenty of discussion and protest through the usual legal and diplomatic channels (as well as ocasional boycotts), but it seems that there were no real nutty cases going on. And if there were, it was severely underreported or ignored.

Nowadays, most Catholics get divorced through secular channels, anyway. The only problem left is that communion is still denied to divorced folks.

edited 6th Jul '15 10:45:36 AM by Quag15

This plays into the distinction between religious marriage and legal marriage. Ultimately, they are two very different concepts. Religiously, different faiths that employ the principle of marriage have different tenets regarding it that may not be represented by the government when providing a marriage certificate. Nowhere in the Bible did God promise a tax break.

Meanwhile, as part of the separation of Church and State, the legal principle of marriage and the rights that it accords has been struggling to find its own identity after breaking off from the U.S.'s Christian founders. It's still trying to find its sea legs as it explores the question of what marriage even means when divorced from any religious context, but it's making progress.

What people need to realize is that, while the two are often performed alongside each other, the religious ceremony in which a pair is wed in the eyes of their faith and the signing of official documentation indicating the pair is entering into a bond of mutual legal responsibility are not the same thing. You can be married in the eyes of your God without legal representative rights over your spouse, and you can be married in the eyes of the State without ever having set foot in a Church or even being part of the faith.

Everyone deserves the right to have both, but the State is not beholden to the tenets of any Faith.

edited 6th Jul '15 10:50:06 AM by TobiasDrake

For both those cases it was defeated at a national referendum though, which may have contained the wackjobs a bit more. Also how much did the Catholic Church get the concept of religious marriage being separate from secular marriage at that point? Had it already had to accept the difference between the two?

It took a little while after it came to pass, but it ultimately had to accept it^note in a sort of, 'well, we can't interfere with the secular government' or 'well, times are changing, so, we'll adapt to it' way, in accordance with the Concordats between the Holy See and various nations and the principle of separation of church and state.

Keep in mind that a wedding celebrated both within a church and in the civil realms is still not a fully separate realm, hence why divorced Catholics cannot really receive the communion. You get what I'm saying? In the eyes of the Catholic Church, a wedding celebrated within one of its churches is still a wedding in the eyes of God, even if the married couple gets divorced later.

edited 6th Jul '15 11:19:02 AM by Quag15

I do wonder if part of why it accepted it relatively easily is because it had been defeated before, in the end the Catholic Church learnt that it couldn't just more national governments to comply to its faith after the 30 years war. Protestant churches (particularly American evangelical ones) have never really had to learn that lesson.

Though said Churches also didn't quite have the level of power the Catholic Church did, especially in the realm of international affairs. They've always been integrated with the state/government at their most powerful while the Catholic Church existed apart from them for a long time.

A brief history of the 20th century:

Catholic Church: Do this thing.

Governments: No.

Catholic Church: OK.

Pretty much.

Some earlier popes put out some pretty blistering encyclicals condemning separation of church and state, but ultimately Vatican II affirmed it.

I may not be alone in this but I cam froma religious background and I was always raised that homosexuality and they will suffer horrbily if they pursue it. I'll admit that while I may not be as religious as used to be, the idea of same sex marriage and people of the same sex makes me cringe due to how I was raised. I know that isn't an excuse but thatwas mean fr people who are not as tolerant towards this? I do not condone it but I am learning not to condemn it either.

What you're describing is very common and the first step to change things.

If you were raised with dangerous or bigoted attitudes, this isn't something you can just automatically turn off even if you know how that it is irrational.

Take your time, be aware of your limitations, and be aware that you can't change these reflexes overnight.

If you're interested I'm more than willing to explain my personal reasoning behind not seeing homosexuality as a sin.

Okay state some reasons, it may help in the future.

edited 13th Jul '15 3:41:39 PM by GAP

You can start with how the Hebrew word used to describe a) the severity of homosexuality was also used to describe b) eating pork or shellfish and c) what the Egyptians thought of Hebrew table manners. Toevah didn't really have much moral connotation and had more to do with ritual uncleanliness.

In nomadic desert tribes, people who had poor hygiene got sick more. This is a good part of why so much of the old Jewish rituals are washing, as well as why the Jews grew to massively conflate physical and spiritual cleanliness — the idea that sick people must have done something bad. That conflation is one of the big things Jesus tried to dismantle (see pretty much every time he talked to lepers).

As for the execution punishment, consider that the Hebrews were passing through foreign territory that practiced temple prostitution among many other taboo sex rituals, was not on good terms with them, and was considerably stronger than they were. Cultural identity and tribal loyalty were paramount to survival; participating in foreign religious and social rites and generally going native was not only blasphemous, but also indicative of treason that could get everyone killed.

Also consider that the Mosaic laws specifically mention men sleeping with men — women sleeping with women are never addressed at all, which implies it's probably not an inherent moral issue.

Sexual orientation just wasn't a known thing at the time. When sex happened between two men, it was usually either war rape (which is what was going on in Sodom and Gomorrah — the cities were awash in recent war prisoners from the Battle of the Vale of Siddim, and they sexually hazed foreigners and visitors to establish dominance) or some kind of foreign ritual. Even what the Greeks' and Romans' same-sex relationships were mostly power dynamics (pederasty), which psychologically has more to do with rape than sexual orientation.

edited 19th Jul '15 9:33:55 PM by Pykrete

Well, the fundies said all along that SSM would destroy "traditional" marriage and now they're trying to prove it.

It's not unlike an abusive spouse going "See!?! See what you made me do?"

edited 20th Jul '15 7:45:27 AM by tricksterson

It's fine, they're only punching themselves in the face.

So it's more

"You're ruining marriage!"

"Only for asshats like you, which I'm totally ok with."

How long do you think it will be before the majority of organized religions claim they've always been against bigotry and discrimination towards non-cishets? Just like they were "always" against slavery, genocide, and other evils? I say majority because fifty years from now there will probably still be some holdouts that consider us a threat.

At this point it's probably a toss up whether or not that happens before we all upload our brains onto the internet and cis and trans become meaningless terms consigned to the history books.

Former pastor posts video on Facebook encouraging Christians to fight equality through force of arms.

I think the ATF should pay a visit to this guy.

What a Waco.