If a couple wants to declare themselves “together”
Oops, meant to simply say “I’m fine with your response”
Who sanctions marriage? The person or the government? The government seems to think it is the higher order (over the individual) who can declare a marriage sanctioned or not. Why can’t the person tell the government, “I sanctioned this marriage, you have nothing to say about it.”
Either way. I’m not a fan of big government. In this case, I support the individual telling the government what is.
Anyone can call themselves married. Govt doesn’t stop anyone. But for govt related benefits it must be govt recognized, right?
Again, if I want to say my friend and I are married in our eyes and Isis’s eyes, the govt won’t interfere.
The main point is that there are many types of couples. I feel government benefits should extend to all couples…or to no couples. Keep in mind I am not a fan of big, complicated government.
Yea that’s totally what we are talking about
Stop being ridiculous.
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Sadly, she isn’t joking.
That is a pretty hot rollercoaster
I never denied that it didn’t happen. It’s just not a relevant part of the discussion. However, according to Meri, they should both get benefits.
Pretty much because death is scary.
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And since we live in a nation that has a govt that extends benefits they should extend those benefits to homosexual couples. We agree. It was shameful that conservatives opposed that, right?
Some people have friends that got divorced.
I like turtles.
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No. (And I’m responding to the past tense nature of your question.) Had the government tax laws, etc. included any couple, this would never have become an issue. For conservatives, the shame should lie much deeper. I have mentioned this before. Conservatives were okay with divorce, even no fault divorce. Conservatives were okay with adulterous affairs, with sex outside of marriage, with teenagers having sex (shrug, can’t stop them). In short, with the advent of The Pill heterosexuals decided it was party time when it came to heterosexual activities. Even those who disagreed, pretty much looked the other way when friends, neighbors, and even some politicians engaged.
Then the hypocrites dared to be horrified when homosexuals (where pregnancy never had been an issue) wanted to be as open about sex as heteros. Then with divorce and living together had made a joke of marriage already, they protest about homosexuals becoming married. One of the things I would like to give homosexuals a heads up on, is that those who practice divorce law (just like when divorce laws became more lax) are happy about another source of divorce income for themselves.
In short, until heterosexual conservatives clean up their own act, they should be ashamed now to be working to change the law on homosexual marriage. Let’s remove the beam from our own eye first (which, again, will.not.happen.) So there we are.
Keep in mind, you should be more understanding about how the faithful see marriage. It goes back to Genesis, specifically the latter chapters of Genesis. We see some of the Jewish patriarchs traveling beyond their own boundaries, out in other parts of the world. Story after story we see what they observed–that society after society with loose sexual mores and morals–were more chaotic. Please note I am not saying sexual freedom brings about chaos. However, it does seem that lack of sexual discipline may be a sign of lack of self-discipline in other areas, and that this overall lack of discipline results in chaos.
For themselves, Jews insisted that sex remain within the bounds of marriage. However, eventually they did begin to allow for divorce. With Jesus and Christianity, Jesus pointed to the ideal of marriage that God wanted for His people. Time after time, the marriage covenant and their covenant with God are compared. God keeps His covenants, and that should be our own ideal–to keep our covenants with God and in marriage. Both have shown to bring stability into our lives and into society.
Keep in mind that while it is true some are intolerant and prejudiced against homosexuals, there are also a great many of us who truly believe society should be looking up to the ideal, not sliding down the easy path. We are taking the narrow path, the road least traveled. If you wish to know which is which, ask anyone who is against homosexual marriage, what their opinion is on no-fault divorce, teenagers having sex, couples electing to live together outside of marriage. If they are okay with any one of these, then they haven’t a leg to stand on in criticizing homosexuality or marriage between homosexuals.
People either want the ideal, or they don’t. If they want to remove their own fraction (faction) from that ideal, then they should be perfectly fine with others removing their fractions as well.
Hi. Anthro here.
Formalized religion is relatively new. It developed around the same time as inequity/specialization. Before, shamanism was the standard belief system.
Also, I believe Marx meant that religion was the pain relief for the masses. It’s been misinterpreted.
I love this. This idea that “governement shouldn’t confer benefits on married couples” was an idea you NEVER heard from social conservatives…UNTIL ot became apparent the tide was turning and gay marriage was going to be legalized.
Because they new there was no good answer to the benefits question…so they drummed this up as a last-ditch effort to put a nice safe “small goverment spin” on their opposition to gay marriage.
“Oh…I NEVER thought the government should get involved in ANY marriage” they tried to pretend they always believed.
But for generation, they accepted their government-conferred marriage benefits with nary a peep about “government intrusion”.
Do you really think people weren’t paying attention when you trotted this one out?
Politicians and married couples didn’t see anything wrong with it. Nor have I been referencing them. However, among young single people paying taxes and having to live with several roommates instead of having their own place, we did complain about not getting the tax breaks married couples did.
Since some had widowed grandparents who were living together with someone so neither had to relinquish social security benefits, we questioned this government practice as well. We also had homosexual friends and we discussed how even they couldn’t claim couple status, either and also fell into the higher tax bracket–and did not even have family status at hospitals when they had been living together for five years! We were all outraged over that.
Of course! I remember now! Personal experiences (and what happened at the grassroots level) mean nothing. Carry on. 
These are the types of policies that Christians spent years trying to protect or implement into government
I think it’s important we all have something to believe in.
