Yeah, you're right; sorry about that.

I see. In the States, it's a different tale, where only ~13 states will actually allow even a civil union for same-sex couples, and the Defense Of Marriage Act prevents recognition of same-sex marriage on a federal level. If you do happen to be living in the right state, you still have to acknowledge that if you move to another state, there's over a 70% chance that your union will no longer be recognized.

I don't see why there is a difference between a marriage and civil union in the eyes of the states (perhaps politics is what is arguing semantics), and I agree that it should be represented as one entity.

I'd be all for the state to not have marriage as a legal entity.

A union isn't necessarily the legislation I mean. That's very sticky. A union between a man and a woman? A man and a man and a woman? A man and a dolphin (arguably persons)?

I mean something along the lines of a will -- a document where a person can list any persons that are next of kin in an order. And that should be it's only function. Additional documents can be used for shared ownership of property or the various other things married persons do.

It's important to keep a government secular (read: not atheist).

For some reason, it's acceptable (and even encouraged) for a politician to profess their first duty is to their god and faith. This is not true, their first duty is to their country, to which even their god is to take a back seat. That means upholding principles that may conflict with the politician's religion. If this is too much to ask, then you have no business being in office. It is not the government's place to say marriage is between a man and a woman. It is not their place to say that it cannot between a man and a man. It isn't even their place to say such an institution should or should not be allowed to exist.

So it is aggravating to see things like the DoM act, which are ruining the important secular principle of government. Any true American patriot and freedom advocate would oppose this -- which goes to show you just how many elected officials are putting their god before the people.

Well the existing marriage legislation in NZ is tied into lots of other law. Other laws say stuff like "married couple" which people who are in a "civil union" don't get the benefit of.

Abolishing marriage and replacing it with civil unions (a direct drop-in replacement) in NZ would require amendments to lots of laws. Completely abolishing the concept of a legal partnership as you're suggesting would require radical changes to lots of laws and would also make attaining the same legal rights a lot more expensive: at the moment you can just get married to someone and a whole bunch of laws suddenly take affect, but if you had to draft up specific agreements for those various rights and responsibilities it would cost a lot of money for lawyers etc.

I'd imagine the situation in the US is similar.

In response to previous replies regarding the "choice" of homosexuality and Christianity:

As I understand it, there are generally 3 categories of Christians:

1) Those that believe that homosexuality is due to genetic disposition.
2) 1, but with the addition of the belief that homosexuals have control over their actions and thus can choose not to act homosexually (I suppose this refers to dating, kissing, and fucking with others of their sex, and so on).
3) Homosexuality is entirely based on choice, from the very start. There is no biological component.

I don't know if people think of Christianity and its branches in a binary form when it comes to this subject, so I feel like adding this bit of info I derived from some reading I did a while back to fully understand the semantics that the two main parties use in arguments and discussions like these.

Also, it would be nice if OhMan stopped making scathing generalizations of all religious views on homosexuality and homosexual rights.

EDIT:

I guess now is also a good time to add/remind everyone sexuality is continuous, not discrete. I'm also curious as to how law deals with transexuals and bisexuals (and anything else I may have missed?).

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Sep 18 2012, 10:10 am by Sand Wraith.

Lol how is it continuous exactly? And on what basis would you be assigning the values? How are you operationalising the variable? Number of times they've had sex with men vs with women? Number of fantasies they have about opposite sex vs same sex? It is discrete: homosexual if you predominately sleep with same gender, heterosexual if with diff gender, and bisexual/asexual if there is no preference.

And what exactly is a 'scathing' generalisation anyway? It's no secret what many religious views are on homosexuality, especially the big ones (Catholicism, Islam, Judiasm).

Have any of these straight Christians every tried to be gay?

Clearly if it's a choice they can become and then the other.

I think you can extend those categories to any group of people, as that seems to run the gambit, and I've met homophobic atheists before, which blew my mind but they exist. It's difficult to polarize an argument for Christians, because there are definitely branches that support gay marriage/relationships (such as the Episcopal church; I posted a link in a different post above) and others that vehemently oppose it, and everything in between.

As for continuous, not discrete, I'm assuming you mean a person's sexuality is always evolving, or that a society's interpretation of sexuality is always evolving, which I agree with, and I think it is correct to let it grow and change.

As for the church's view on transexuals and bisexuals, that's a more difficult question to answer I think. The catholic word is far from the final one, but this link on homosexuality illustrates homosexuality as a sinful desire that can be overcome; so I assume they would see someone who is bisexual trying to "overcome" their homosexual tendencies, and if they were to marry someone of the opposite gender to more or less have overcome it. As for transexuals the pope condemned them in a Christmas Speech in 2008. But this is just the catholic church. The only other sexual orientations I can think of are polyamory (which can have bisexual/homosexual connotations) and asexual. I have a feeling polyamory would be more readily accepted, or ignored by the catholic church, and I think asexuals are probably seen as saints among men for throwing aside their sexual desires altogether. That's just wild guessing.

The big thing, and something I think everyone can agree with, is that it isn't the sacred right of marriage people want, it's to be joined in a legal union. As I probably said in the thread over a year ago, I think any two people over the age of majority should have the right to enter into a contract with each other that claims the other as a sort of partner in life. The exact ceremony they follow to get there is up to the couple (and the religious institution that would host the ceremony - I do not want to force any church or religious institution to host a ceremony if they do not feel it is in line with their doctrine).

In my personal, wild mad guessing opinion, I think the reason why the catholic church is pushing sexuality much harder than most other churches or the protestant church (I would argue that even if a protestant church will not host the wedding, beyond a few outliers they are not as outspoken) is because the Catholic church is afraid of losing its homogeneity and therefore it's control over it's people. I think this is true of Judaism, too, but more because Judaism is shrinking every year. Think about it; the original reason for books like Leviticus was to make sure the tribe survived and flourished when they were nomadic, and they wouldn't have flourished if they stopped reproducing. Now that we're in a secular society they're afraid of the tribe "dying out" again, so they're using any trick in the book they can find to maintain order. Like I said, unsubstantiated wild guessing.

Why would it blow your mind?

Specifically, this person harped about the prejudices found in religion, so to see her's was a bit of a surprise.

So singular, not plural?

Atheism isn't like religion in that it has creeds or doctrines or values that everyone subscribes to. An atheist can have any number of prejudices, nonsense beliefs, etc.
The only thing they have in common is a lack of belief in gods.

So it shouldn't blow your mind they exist - of course they would exist!

Oh wow, well isn't this interesting. "Everyone" in a single religion does not subscribe to the same creeds or doctrines, and each religion or spirtuality is a different experience for everyone. I'll admit that I did not phrase what I said well, but you'll have to admit it too. My spirituality is not characterized by the same things that characterizes Jack's.

You and Jack do not belong to the same religion though, no? He is a Calvinist - you are...?

Sure I am probably not being very precise with my phrasing, but you know what I mean. The catechism, basically a bunch of 'rules' that members of that sect are supposed to follow. Now not everyone follows them, of course, there are always, in all religions, people who follow the rules more strictly then others. But with atheism there is no 'catechism' no series of rules, no bible. And that is the distinction I am trying to make.

I was brought up in the evangelical covenant church, but I consider myself nondenominational until such a point I find a denomination I can agree with philosophically.

It would appear that I do not know what you mean if I had to correct your use of the term "everyone." Could an atheist believe in a higher being? That is a rule, isn't it?

Continuous/discrete: I was speaking in a broad scope. I used those terms because I couldn't think of any others at the time. (You could say that sexuality is a function of biological factors. Maybe other factors also.)
I guess you could also say it's like having one of those gradient colour choosers in MSPaint, except that it's in 3D and has a really funky shape.
I'll write more if you want - I'm starting to go off-topic.

Just going by your language, you're trying to condemn every religious person to this belief except for a tiny number of exceptions.
http://www.adherents.com/Religions_By_Adherents.html
I don't even know a bunch of these religions. And it's pretty clear that Judaism isn't a big one at all, just by looking at the numbers in the list. These are very large categories of religions too, and it can probably be safely assumed that most if not all have branches, which might have completely different views on homosexuality and sexuality in general.
It's fairly clear what the religious views on homosexuality are of Catholicism, Islam, and Judaism in general, but not of the rest of the religions and their followers, which account for around 45% of all religious people.

EDIT:

I'm just saying that you should chill your religion hate; it's got some pretty religious fervor behind it.

EDIT2:

On topic: I agree with Lanth's last few posts (the ones I read). Civil unions should be legal between same-sex partners. Marriage, legally, should not be a term, and all statutes that use the term "marriage" should be rewritten as using civil unions.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Sep 18 2012, 6:13 pm by Sand Wraith.

Well it's not really a rule. That is sort of the whole reason people call us atheists in the first place, because we see no evidence for the existence of 'higher beings' and therefore do not believe in them, exactly how you see no existence for Santa Claus and therefore do not believe in Santa Claus.

If an atheist were to start believing in such things, they would not identify themselves as an atheist. If a fan of Manchester United started rooting for Arsenal, they wouldn't identify as fans of Manchester United any-more would they?

Now the rules of the religious, baptism, eucharistic adoration, confession, prayer, communion, etc. These libations... these rules, are a great many and all vary depending on whichever denomination has taken your fancy. You find nothing of this in atheism.

I hope this clears things up.

EDIT:I understand that, I'm asking how are you justifying that? If I'm understanding you correctly, you are saying people can be homosexual/heterosexual to varying degrees. Lets say you have a line, on one end is homosexual (same gender ONLY) and on the other end is heterosexual (opposite gender ONLY), and in the middle would be "no preference". This is what you are saying, yes? I'm asking on what basis are you putting people on any particular position on the line? Number of times they have had sex with opposite/same gender? Number of times fantasied about opposite/same gender? Something else?
Judaism is a lot smaller than I thought.

You may be right about the 45% thing, at least in terms of just a general population.
http://www.religioustolerance.org/hom_poll3.htm

Barna Research, an Evangelical Christian polling company, conducted a survey of 1,003 American adults, asking their opinion about abortion and homosexuality. Results, released in early 2001-AUG were remarkable:

45% agree that homosexuality is "an acceptable lifestyle." This, of course, is an extremely biased question for the pollsters to ask. Many people consider homosexuality to be a sexual orientation and not a lifestyle. Thus, some persons polled would answer that it is not an acceptable lifestyle because it is not a lifestyle.

46% said it is an unacceptable lifestyle.

However:
Among born-again Christians:
27% said gay lifestyles are acceptable
66% said they were unacceptable.

Among fundamentalist and other evangelical Christians:
95% said that homosexuality is unacceptable.
2% called it an acceptable lifestyle
3% were undecided.

Now I didn't look for a similar poll from Islam (somehow I doubt they are conducted very often...) but I suspect the numbers wouldn't be very different.

But really, just ask yourself, how often do you hear about someone attempting to block gay rights? Every time on the news I always hear the same thing "religious group X says homosexuality is immoral blah blah blah" "religious group Y thinks gay marriage is abominable", etc....
There is nothing hateful in what I am saying. Where on earth did you get this impression?
I suspect most people are 1. Why? Because otherwise they have to ask the question: Why would their god create homosexuals, and then condemn them for it?

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Sep 18 2012, 9:02 pm by NudeRaider. Reason: double post merged

It doesn't, really. Not believing in a deity is a rule of atheism...it just so happens that religion has more rules than atheism, but atheism does have rules.

Like I said in the shoutbox, we are going on a tangent on religion that has very little to do with the conversation at hand, so I think we should stop wasting everyone's time and return the conversation to same sex marriage. And if in light of this conversation religion plays a roll so be it, but I hardly consider deciding whether or not a rule is a rule in atheism to be part of the conversation.

This is the whole point of why people have this debate. This is what marriage legally does. If legally it was just a pretty piece of paper that did nothing, gay people would just invent their own marriage, but they can't because they can't get the legal properties that way.


In fact, it is. When we elect a person to the government we give them the representation of our decision, whether we like what they do with it or not. If there is a thing that isn't the place of the government to decide, that must also be decided by the government, whether it be politicians acknowledging that such a thing is beyond the scope of their powers, or the President vetoing a law, or the Supreme Court striking down a law. In any case, the structure of society is to allow the government to ultimately make the decision, because the government is the only body with some form of validation by the people, in our case, elections. Obviously we can debate the efficacy of this system, but as it stands right now it is true.

Maybe you're referring to the 10th Amendment to the Constitution "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." Even in this case, the decision will ultimately be made by the individual State governments, not individual people.

Atheism is a definition, just as theism is a definition.

I do find it odd that there is a homophobic atheist out and about. Then again there was the "atheist" blogger that made headlines when she converted to Christianity, coincidentally just as she started dating a new boyfriend. Having read her blog posts I can fairly assert that she hasn't a clue what actual critical thinking is about and why someone would accept atheism, instead latching onto it like a fad, I suppose.

It's possible this person is likewise of little intellectual stature, not spending the immense amount of time required to actually critically examine beliefs.

Or maybe this is the hubris of the philosopher, but I am skeptical that this person has spent any amount of time thinking.


Not my problem :s



Pff yeah a document written three hundred years ago, regardless of how progressive and sound an idea, isn't really the best thing to go on. I really think the government should do its best to stay secular, or else this whole freedom thing just falls to shambles.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Sep 19 2012, 10:05 am by Sacrieur.

This is far from a new idea, in fact it was formally promulgated in 1948: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_orientation#Kinsey_scale It's also been described as a statistical J-curve: a small peak to the left for exclusively homosexuals, a shallow trough through the centre with varying degrees of bisexuality, leading to a peak making up 80%+ of the population on the right that self-identify as exclusively heterosexual.

Incidentally that wikipedia page is ridiculously detailed and exhaustive in it's coverage of sexual orientation in general, much more so than I was expecting.