Gay Marriage upheld in California
And Conservatives are already preparing a counter case to strike it down.
Honestly though, what does it hurt? This is just about as moronic as men striking down women’s rights in recent history, or looking back, the South supporting segregation. Or just look at any idiotic motion to support any sort of discrimination at all throughout history.
Gay marriage does NOT affect straight marriages AT ALL. The biggest complaint I’VE heard is that people will just do it for tax breaks. Well you know what? There are a great deal of white (majority) straight (majority) couples popping out kids for welfare money. There are a great deal of straight couples that can stay married just to get tax breaks. Is this a game of who can outsmart the government and who can’t suddenly? Frankly people who would do this sort of thing are going to find a way no matter what.
Seriously. These people look like monsters. “Ok, yes, this is the land of the free. But what about FAMILY VALUES?!” Yeah? What about them? Last time I checked this was not a country that was supposed to have a government influenced by a SINGLE religion, let alone any religion at all. The founding fathers did NOT approve of that model and that is what we ESCAPED from in England. He who fights the monster must becareful lest he become one. America, observe said proverb. In fact we make a big deal about the Muslim government in middle eastern countries…yet we’re fine with being hypocrits.
I think at some point during my travels abroad I saw how backwards Americans really are. No wonder almost every other country in the world hates us. There’s a reason folks. I’m not even sure if we can reverse the pervasive ignorance around us.
Grow up folks. Intolerance was so 1800s. We’ve made it through slavery, we’ve survived through women suddenly wearing pants (GASP- THE HORROR!), we’ve stumbled through Japanese internment, now we just need to jump through the recent immigration discrimination and the treatment of homosexuals. I still think love is love and people are people.
Hey Paul,
Been out of town and very busy as of late. Thought I’d pop back in to the blog world for a visit. It seems a bigger picture theme that surfaces in your blogging hovers around this question, should religious thoughts influence government policy? Another good question. Thought I’d submit for your comment some quotes from a fascinating book I am reading called The Reason for God by Timothy Keller and see what you think.
“What is religion? It is a set of beliefs that explain what life is all about, who we are, and the most important thing that human beings should spend their time doing… It is a set of faith-assumptions about the nature of things. It is an implicit religion. Broadly understood, faith in some view of the world and human nature informs everyone’s life. Everyone lives and operates out of some narrative identity, whether it is thought out and reflected upon or not. All who say “You ought to do this” or “You shouldn’t do that” reason out of such an implicit moral and religious positions. Pragmatists say that we should leave our deeper worldviews behind and find consensus about “what works” — but our view of what works is determined by what we think people are for. Any picture of happy human life that “woks” is necessarily informed by deep-seated beliefs about the purpose of human life. Even the most secular pragmatists come to the table with deep commitments and narrative accounts of what it means to be human.”
“Secular grounds for moral positions are no less controversial than religious grounds, and a very strong case can be made that all moral positions are at least implicitly religious. Ironically, insisting that religious reasoning be excluded from the public square is itself a “sectarian” point of view.”
“When you come out into the public square it is impossible to leave your convictions about ultimate values behind. Let’s take marriage and divorce laws as a case study. Is it possible to craft laws that we all agree “work” apart from particular worldview commitments? I don’t believe so. Your views of what is right will be based on what you think the purpose of marriage is. If you think marriage is mainly for the rearing of children to benefit the whole of society, then you will make divorce very difficult. If you think the purpose of marriage is more primarily of the happiness and emotinal fulfillment of the adults who enter it, you will make divorce much easier. The former view is grounded in a view that human flourishing and well-being in which the family is more important than the individuals, as seen in the moral traditions of Confucianism, Judaism, and Christianity. The latter approach is a more individualistic view of human nature based on the Enlightenment’s understanding of things. The divorce laws you think will “work” depend on prior beliefs about what it means to be happy and fully human. There is no objective, universal consensus about what that is. Although many continue to call for the exclusion of religious views from the public square, increasing numbers of thinkers, both religious and secular, are admitting that such a call is itself religious.”
“Efforts to craft a public square from which religious conversation is absent, no matter how thoughtfully worked out, will always in the end say to those of organized religion that they alone, unlike everybody else, must enter public dialogue only after leaving behind the part of themselves that they may consider the most vital.”
Those are the quotes from Keller. From here on is my writing.
What do you think? Is it possible to exclude “worldview / religion” from the public square?
Consider the beginning text of the Declaration of Independence.
“When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation… We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
Would it have been suggested that founding fathers were bringing their religious beliefs into the public square based on the above text? Did some religious belief set compel them to “hold these truths as self evident?” - isn’t that in it of itself a presumptuous religious statement? Who are they to hold any truth self-evident for all? And why make any reference of any sort to God or the Creator if all religious thinking was to be left out of the public square?
Enjoying the discussion,
Andy
Comment by Andy — June 7, 2008 @ 4:19 pm