Up Front: The Up-Front Guides: The Weasel Translator
481 Responses
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Lilith __, in reply to
But I really, truly, deeply, feel that God has defined marriage and we would be wrong to change it.
But Tess, why would God care? If there's a divine and unchanging truth, humans can't change that whatever we do.
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Sacha, in reply to
objectively
There you go again. Be proud of your faith, but do call it what it is.
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BenWilson, in reply to
But I really, truly, deeply, feel that God has defined marriage and we would be wrong to change it.
Does God make definitions? Really? If God said 1+1=3, by definition, would that make it so? Does God saying 1+1=2 by definition make it so either, really? Isn't it so anyway, no matter what God thinks about that? This is a really, really common mistake in religious thinking, IMHO, that God defines things like marriage and morality. Whether God exists or not, they still can't make the illogical logical, the false true. At best they're a guide to the truth, the scriptures could point to the truth, maybe. But evidence to the contrary, is, I'm sorry to say it, evidence against the scriptures. If you could show that the existence of God implied 1+1=3, you'd have found a logical disproof of God's existence.
Marriage is just a word, it describes a relationship humans can have. If you say that it's man with woman by definition you're only arguing about the meaning of a word, not the validity of an institution. And yet there is a subtle conflation that seems to happen at that point, that having got fussy over the meaning of a word, that therefore implies that some practical outcomes are obvious. They're not - even if we decided that the word "marriage" (which I'm sure does not occur anywhere in the ancient scriptures, English having not come into existence), has to mean what you say, then can we please just use another word? This argument wastes time, and fudges something that leads to an outcome of oppression. Lets just say if the bill passes, then we've got mharriage now. It's just like marriage, only better because everyone is allowed.
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Lilith __, in reply to
if the bill passes, then we’ve got mharriage now. It’s just like marriage, only better because everyone is allowed
Mharriage Lhaws. Love it. :-)
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Sacha, in reply to
the main concern of marriage laws, support and child-rearing
and property, as others have mentioned
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Stepping on God's toes? I think you will find that as spirit made manifest that God don't have no toes.
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Tess Rooney, in reply to
Does God make definitions? Really? If God said 1+1=3, by definition, would that make it so? Does God saying 1+1=2 by definition make it so either, really? Isn't it so anyway, no matter what God thinks about that? This is a really, really common mistake in religious thinking, IMHO, that God defines things like marriage and morality. Whether God exists or not, they still can't make the illogical logical, the false true.
I can't spend much time here, I have dinner to cook, but no, I don't think God can do the illogical. I know some Muslims believe that God's power is utterly absolute, 1+1=5 kind of thing, but Catholic teaching is that God is logic, ergo God can be illogical. Okay that makes God Spock... Anyways.
When it comes to marriage and God I agree with John Paul II's Theology of the Body.
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Make that God can NOT be illogical. Sorry.
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Tess Rooney, in reply to
Jesus' toes?
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But I really, truly, deeply, feel that God has defined marriage and we would be wrong to change it
That's nice. Which god, BTW?
You see, I really, truly, deeply, feel that our current marriage laws are a human institution, and it's up to us to keep on rethinking and redefining and remaking that institution, in an ongoing act of constituting ourselves, though discussion and argument and by reference to other ideals that we have. Like that piddly little one about the state not discriminating against people on the grounds of race, gender, ability, gender, and so on.
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Sacha, in reply to
I really, truly, deeply, feel
A great basis for lawmaking. :)
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Craig Ranapia, in reply to
Tess. I can see why Craig suggested it was concern trolling
Small point of order. I don't think Tess is concern-trolling at all. My issues with her lie elsewhere, but I do think Catholic spokesmen do. A lot. And they never seem to get called on it.
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Can I just say that I'm impressed that a discussion that could have gone throughly off the rails has not done so?
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I think all this God business is beside the point in any case, just like any other appeal to authority. Unless a position is defensible in rational terms, it's irrelevant.
I'd like to hear some of these religious folks give real, concrete reasons why allowing gay marriage would be bad. Reasons that relate to the human rights, and human happiness, and greatest utility.
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John Armstrong, in reply to
Unless a position is defensible in rational terms, it's irrelevant.
Isn't that maybe going a bit too far the other way? Particularly in the context of a discussion about the institutionalisation (or something) of love?
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Tess Rooney, in reply to
Which God? The God of Abraham and Isaac, the one who told Moses that He was the "I Am". The God of the Israelites, the Christians, and Muslims.
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Fair point. Although I'm not lawmaking I'm just saying what I think. Lawmaking will happen through democratic processes.
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Lilith __, in reply to
a discussion about the institutionalisation (or something) of love?
I think you misunderstand me. Love and bonded relationships are good for people and society. Nothing irrational in that.
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BenWilson, in reply to
Fair enough, Craig, I wasn't sure who you were talking about, and it is one way of reading Tess' argument. I'll give her more credit for now. I think she's hit on one of the classic liberal paradoxes - "Anything goes means everything stays". In a pure sense, legal marriage should hardly matter at all, responsibility for the various functions that have adhered to it could be distributed without any of the pair (or more) bonding irrelevances. But practically, for now, marriage does matter, it does affect people greatly whether they are married or not, and therefore the widening of the scope of marriage is a highly progressive move, even if it's not the pure liberal dream. There's a whole 'nother debate about why it is that married people have any special treatment or responsibilities at all. For now, they simply do, so lets stop excluding gays from that. Furthermore, even if marriage were just a legally meaningless word, a ritual that a church could set its own rules about, I'm still don't think it's OK for them to exclude gays. The church is simply too big and powerful to let it hand down the hurt like that. It's time it stopped.
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How would you force a church to marry LGBT people though? And how would you square that with giving people freedom of religion?
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Bart Janssen, in reply to
Could you give examples?
Most asian civilisations had clear distinctions between civic and religious law. Most South American civilisations also. It is the western bias of the history we are typically exposed to that leaves you with the impression that civilisation and civic functions are intimately intertwined to religious functions. Even in the Western hemisphere civic and religious law was frequently separated.
And all that only refers to recorded history. There were many civilisations where there is no real recorded history but still evidence of civilisation. For these we can say nothing about how religion and civil law were intertwined.
It is simply a myth perpetuated by the western churches in particular that civilisation and religion were dependent.
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DexterX, in reply to
A right to a belief systems stops short of the right of other people to be who they are.
Although I find the arguments against to be largely nonsense – one can’t help but feel sad for people living in places where there is no possibility of the debate even taking place.
The wider Christian principle, as I see it, is that one accepts people as they find them without any judgement; what sits alongside this is people have the right to find themselves as they actually are.
The debate on same sex marriage is proof of a significant moment of civil and cultural evolution taking place - a milestone on the road to human equality.
I have felt that those opposed to same sex marriage are to hung up on what they imagine the sex lives of others to be.
When any persons want to form a union under the guise of “marriage” it is about more than an act of sex. All people of whatever gender should have the right not to be denied – the right to make vows to another and to commit to that set of vows. One doesn't need a church to be married.
I support marriage, even though saying this and what follows rankles with me as being against my better judgement, I support gay marriage – gay people have the right to be married and then, on the law of averages, be just as miserable as most everyone else.
Once this milestone passes recognising the rights of all people to marry – it would be good to just see “it all” as “marriage” rather than gay or straight – it is after all a union and an exchange of vows between people that should not be denied.
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Keir Leslie, in reply to
You wouldn’t, and you can’t, is the short answer.
(The long answer is that there is little prospect of any NZ court compelling Catholic clergy to solemnise marriages that are contrary to Catholic belief, because of s29 of the Marriage Act and the religious freedom parts of the BORA, Re Same Sex Marriage is quite convincing, in my opinion.)
If you were to compel people it would be the same way you enforce all the laws of NZ.
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Steve Barnes, in reply to
If you were to compel people it would be the same way you enforce all the laws of NZ
Visions of AOS accompanying the marital limousine kinda takes the romance out of the occasion one thinks.
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Lilith __, in reply to
Riding shotgun
Visions of AOS accompanying the marital limousine kinda takes the romance out of the occasion one thinks.
There are some people I know who would LOVE this. Though they are no doubt in the minority. ;-)
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