Fun with the foil hats.
This is a fun conversation I had with some one on FB
Thirza
Gays have exactly the same right to marry as everyone else. No one is keeping them from marriage. What they don’t have is the right to change the definition of marriage, which will remove a tremendous number of legal safeguards from children, and will strip the first amendment from churches. Civil unions happen in a court house. Marriage happens in a church. Once the state has the right to say that churches must bless same sex unions over their objections and God’s objections, the church will become a de facto state church. Every tryant, no matter whether you call him a monarch or dictator, every tyrant demands a state church that he can control, from Rome to Europe to Asia. That is why the founders gave us the first amendment. They’d suffered under that tyranny. They’d been chased all over Europe ahead of monarchs and their state churches. They’d withdrawn to their own home churches, which are always illegal under a tyrant. They wanted to be certain that we would never have a state church. Gay marriage will give tyrants and end run around the first amendment to get their fingers into every church in America, and every synagogue, and every mosque, and we will never have religious freedom again. Like every tyrant, they are lying to divert our attention. They are telling us it is about freedom. It ain’t about freedom.
Gavin
As a gay man I feel the need to jump in here. No one wants to “Redefine” the civil definition of marriage. We just want it to be expanded to protect all of the tax paying people. Nor does anyone think they can “redefine” the religious definition of marriage even though if you read your bible it has been redefined many times. However you must be aware that “civil marriage” and “religious marriage” are very different and separate things. You can be married in a church but without the legal document known as a marriage license it would mean nothing to the state or federal government.
People have to stop giving credence of people like Maggie Gallagher and Brian Brown. These people don’t really care about what they are fighting. They are making millions every year milking people of donations and paying themselves large salaries to spread fear. These people lie. Don’t trust them. If people stopped donating to them they would quickly move on to the next group of fearful people. It is how they make their living.
Gays don’t want to take anything away from Christians. Not all Gays are atheists just like not all atheists are gay. I and most of the people I know would not want to get married in a place they are not welcome so why would it be in our best interest to make churches perform gay marriage ceremonies. The God I grew up with spoke of love and how to make the world a better place through it. I was never taught to spread fear through venomous hyperbole.
Thirza
You can already mutually adopt. There is is no age limit. I have no idea who Maggie Gallagher and Brian Brown are, never heard of them. You are being manipulated by an agenda way larger than you, and whether you want to take anything from Christians, children or the elderly, legalizing gay marriage will do exactly that. It will take away many legal protections under the first amendment, as the state will have the right to regulate what happens in a church, just what every tyrant always does. Redefining marriage and family will take away legal protections that children have within a family. No one is spreading hate. I don’t hate you. I don’t hate any gay person. I may not like your behavior, but that is very different from hating you, unless you are, of course, defined only by your sex life. I wouldn’t define you that way, but if you do, I guess that’s up to you.
Gavin
1) “It will take away many legal protections under the first amendment, as the state will have the right to regulate what happens in a church” In what specific way? That is a general statement with no fact to back it up. Give examples. 2) “Redefining marriage and family will take away legal protections that children have within a family” What right will be taken away? Again a general statement. 3) I’m not talking about my “sex life” you brought that up (speaks volumes) I am talking about who I love and the legal protections to keep my home with out paying tax on it if my husband dies. The right to make critical medical decisions for someone I have spent 20 years with. The right to make final arrangements after death. etc etc….. there are 1000 rights you as a straight couple have that I do not. You are the ones with “Special rights”. I dare you to come up with 1 right that gay marriage will take away from your marriage.
Thirza
As I said, you can mutually adopt to have the same protections.
Thirza
Civil unions are performed in a courthouse. No one is fighting to legalize civil unions. They are fighting to legalize marriage, which happens in a church. As soon as you legalize gay MARRIAGE, the government can force churches to perform those marriages, over and above the first amendment. At this point, since the government can now demand that their law be followed, the church becomes a defacto state church, in which the rule of the government is above the rule of God.
Thirza
At that point, Christians will pull out and form house churches, and anyone who worships in a home church will be outside the law, and subject to prosecution and persecution.
Thirza
Children have a whole slate of legal protections within the marriage and family, just to start off with, the idea that their care and upbringing should be directed by their family. That is because this country is exceptional in the world, not that Americans are better than everyone else, but that our government was created to be a bottom up structure in which the family is our first line of government, followed by local, state and federal govt. Every other country is a top down structure in which power flows from the national govt. down to the people. As soon as you redefine marriage and family, our bottom line of defense no longer exists, and the fed can redefine “family” any way it wishes, including defining it as a govt. institution.
Gavin
You are talking in circles. So what you are saying is because I can get married that suddenly the government is going to tell you how to raise your children? Where is your proof of that? I could say that if you use a cell phone near a goat it will no longer be able to bare young. Just because I say it doesn’t make it true, so what is your proof. I have some for my side. A few states have had Gay marriage for years and there is no report of the states dictating how they should be raised. Some countries also have it and they seem to have survived. So I ask again, where is your proof or is this just something you read.
Paula
Ok stop, let me clarify something. This post is NOT about being gay…NOR is it about religion!! It is about ppl who vote for a candidate ONLY for the reason that that particular candidate says same sex marriage is ok. My point is this….there are FAR more important things happening to this country and a people should vote for the candidate who stands for the PEOPLE, not the government…who wants to SAVE this country, it’s FREEDOM, the economy, stop all the friggin wars and bring our troops home…etc. Please stop making this post about being gay or religious!!
Paula
If I were gay, Christian, Muslim, Jewish…whatever…I would have STILL posted this status.
Thirza
Gavin, have you read the UN CRC? When you’ve read it, get back to me.
Gavin
I will read it. But B4 I do answer me this. Is everything in it caused by gay marriage? That is what we are talking about here.
Paula
I understand, Gavin. :) I just needed to clarify my point of this to everyone on this thread. Misunderstandings are too easy on here.
Gavin
@Paula I was not commenting on anything you said. I usually, to a point agree with you and think you are even brilliant at times. I was commenting on Thiraz’s implication that some how my getting married will effect her or her child’s development. For the record, Obama’s announcement left me a little cold. It was his typical cowardly I think it but I will not do it.
Thirza
No, Gavin, that isn’t what we are talking about here. What we are talking about here is whether you should trust a politician that backs your own special interest to get your vote. That was the intent of the original question. I’m telling you that you need to let go of what you’ve been taught in by the media and in government run schools. There are really only two forms of government: those that dictate to the people from the top, and those that dictate to the government from the bottom. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, and those with power are always seeking more power. They are not going to telegraph to you that they are seeking more power over you, they are going to look for ways to take it. If they have courage, they’ll take it at the point of the sword or gun. If they are cowards, they will look for sneaky ways to use special interests to change the laws to take more power. You need to ask if politicians and government bureaucrats love Gavin so much that they want to make sure his every need is taken care of, or if politicians and government bureaucrats are willing to pretend they are taking care of Gavin’s needs to get more power.
Paula
Well now that looks funny, my reply to Gavin is over his comment I was replying to LOL!!
Thirza
If the answer to that question is that politicians and bureaucrats are willing to use Gavin to get what they want (and will then discard him like a used kleenex), then you need to ask what ulterior motive they are pursuing in using Gavin’s desires. You need to ask what ulterior motives people in power have had in the past, how those line up with current agendas, and what laws/treaties are currently in process that might benefit from using Gavin. The CRC is one of those that leaps quickly to mind.
Gavin
@Paula that because I had a typo and rewrote it
Paula
Yeah I realized it was different when I read it again hehe!!!
Thirza
If you do read the CRC, Gavin, you might also want to question which UN member nations were responsible for drafting it and whether those counties have a record of protecting the rights of children.
Thirza
You also need to know that while the CRC has never been ratified, it is being cited in court cases all over the country, and where it has been cited, it has been used for things like removing children from the home and family on the grounds that they are taken to church to often. Let that sink in a moment. They aren’t being removed for neglect or abuse. They aren’t being removed for drug use or prostitution or other crime in the home. They are being removed from their family and placed in foster care for going to church too much.
Gavin
@Thirza that was the original point of starting but you went into the thought that, and I quote “will remove a tremendous number of legal safeguards from children, and will strip the first amendment from churches” and again I ask, specifically In what safeguards and first amendment rights will be lost as a result of me having the same rights as you?
Thirza
Other judges may not cite the case, but they clearly follow the intent of this monster of a treaty. In one instance I know of, with a pregnant 13 year old girl, the family court judge removed the child from the family because she didn’t want to have an abortion and they wouldn’t make her. They are Christians, and they don’t believe in abortion. The child was out of her family’s care for over a year, and bore her son without her mother. She never was returned to her mother’s care, but she in her son are now, finally, in the care of extended family. The judge never asked who the father of the baby was. Never showed any interest in anything other than making sure he didn’t see the light of day. So it was that this thirteen year old was raped by an adult, and then raped by the state, and had to bravely stand for the life of her child whom she was aware did not share in his father’s crime.
Thirza
You have the same rights as me. No one is stopping you from marrying. You are being stopped from redefining marriage.
Thirza
You may marry any women you choose, any time you choose, which is precisely equivalent to my right to marry any man I chose, any time I choose.
Thirza
I don’t have a right to redefine marriage so I can marry Paula, and you don’t have the right to redefine marriage so you can marry a man. Our rights are precisely equal.
Thirza
As for the question about the first amendment, I already answered that. Scroll up.
Thirza
As for the question about legal safeguards for children, those safeguards are based on the definition of marriage as between one man and one woman. Once it is changed to mean one man and one woman, or two men, or two women, why can’t they define it as being between two men running a government institution together, and protest that hey, they aren’t removing the child from the family when they are placed into an institution, they are just putting them in a different kind of family?
Thirza
That family is completely equivalent to the child’s original family, and completely healthy, normal and natural. Its just another form of marriage and family, right?
Thirza Gavin, you need to understand that not everyone who disagrees with you hates you, nor do they wish you harm or want to take your rights. Not everyone who agrees with you is on your side.
Thirza
Meantime, here is the first amendment. The First Amendment (Amendment I) to the United States Constitution is part of the Bill of Rights. The amendment prohibits the making of any law respecting an establishment of religion, impeding the free exercise of religion, abridging the freedom of speech, infringing on the freedom of the press, interfering with the right to peaceably assemble or prohibiting the petitioning for a governmental redress of grievances. And here is an example of gay marriage being used to dictate how an army chaplain may practice his religion, there for impeding his free exercise of religion. He may no longer follow his conscience. Religion is not the practice of meaningless boring ritual. Religion is a relationship with Christ. Obama is working toward the ability to force him to do what he believes to be wrong, what many of us believe to be wrong. And not only do Christians believe this to be wrong, but so do Jews and Muslims. Nevertheless, our first amendment rights to the practice of our religion will be taken so that you can have the right to call your relationship a marriage. http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2012/05/obama-continues-his-assault-on-christians-will-force-military-chaplains-to-marry-gays/
Gavin
ummm I’m guessing you didn’t read my first comment. Civil marriage is not a religious concept. Actually if you want to get down to the nitty gritty of it, the word “marriage” never was in the original bible. The word they used was translated to “Union” It is just the modern bible that uses the word marriage. And since I am not in the armed forces the second argument is mote. We are discussing civilians. Chaplains took an oath to serve their commander and chief whether they like them or not. None have as yet been forced to do a wedding if they say no. I grow weary of this. You have nothing. I will not change your mind and you will not change mine. I’ll leave you on this note, It will happen in our lifetime like it or not. I wish you love and guidance.
