Mike you create a false equivalence between the hatred of the two sides. One side hates people for innocent and harmless characteristics, the other hates people who seek to harm innocent people. One side’s hatred is justified, one side’s is not. Its not surprising anti-gay people want to walk away from this issue, they rightfully sense they are in the wrong and they don’t want to face the fact that they are bad people. There are not two equally valid viewpoints on this Mike, one side is 100% right and the other is 100% wrong. If you don’t want to feel bad about yourself then its time you changed. You can’t ask me to pretend you’re not a bad person when that is the reality.

You said “Arguing for male-female marriage as a created order (or natural) does not answer questions about what to do with persons who are not married. It doesn’t seek to “do anything” with my singleness. It doesn’t put me into a category of “the unnatural.”

I’ll start here. I totally understand that we all have the same rights as individuals. Just as you have the right to marry a man (I’m assuming you’re a woman, forgive me if I’m incorrect), I have the right to marry a woman. I am not barred from marriage. Here’s the problem, the Law is based on me being heterosexual. Marriage laws are not based on “God’s design for mankind” or “nature’s design for reproduction” or even what is arbitrarily deemed “optimal for child-rearing.” Marriage laws are in place to encourage stability for families thus lessening the burden on the State. The definition of “family” is currently limited to a heterosexual construct. Because I am not heterosexual, I am on the outside of the law. I am an alien with no hope of naturalization. Because of this, the law IS “doing something” with my individual rights. The law is excluding homosexuals from their individual rights by not recognizing their existence.

You said “The wholeness of male-female is not the wholeness or completion of the individual.”

I’m guessing that this statement is a response to my comment “The opposite that makes me whole is male.” Your version of wholeness (male-female) is spiritually different than mine. That is all. For me, the definition of physical, emotional and spiritual
relational wholeness is male-male.

Now the nice stuff :)

I have respect for the reasons why you choose to live your life the way that you do. Even more, I have respect for anyone that follows a statement of their own beliefs with the word “however”. I don’t expect you to champion law changes that eliminate discrimination, but I would love it if you were to (even casually) support the distinction between secular laws and your personal morals.

When you write “This is what I am willing to agree to and uphold in the secular arena even though I might have competing personal views.” I read that as your secular support for my potential marriage to a super hot dude. If that is what you meant, I will not ask for more.

I did not say that “marriage” itself was an anachronism. I said that the religious arguments against same-sex marriage were. These ‘pro-marriage’ arguments you are referring to, I’m assuming are those governed by non/semi? progressive Christians, such as yourself. The ones that say “No, you can not change the definition of marriage” and “No, you can not get married in a Church” but (in your case) “You can engage in a secular, contractual, civil marital union.”

If that is the case, then those “pro” arguments are in fact anachronistic, in the sense that, as Gene has so rightly pointed out, there are churches who are willing to fight for and who are willing to perform same sex marriages. And that there ARE same sex couples who actually want their marriage ceremony to “have meaning” MN and who do not, in fact, want to merely sign a piece of paper throwing half of their possessions away. What right does anyone else have to infringe upon the religious freedom of the Uniting Church?

Like you, persons like myself also fail to say, “This is what I believe; This is what I think is right; This is what I believe needs to be reconciled in order to adapt to modern society”

People like you and I, with opposing views, are always going to butt heads. However, I must say I have enjoyed our little debate, and I apologise for calling you a religious bigot. Your views may be conflicting with mine, but at least you display a level of understanding and compassion that many other religious followers these days do not.

Regards,

- E.H.B

but then you wrote this: “I do not think same-sex marriage is right. However, I am very much against the condemnation, hatred, violence, discrimination, barriers, suicide, depression, etc that has tarnished a society; that has corrupted a Christian faith; and that has destroyed individuals. If “civil marital equality” helps eradicate some of this plague I am supportive.”

do you understand how very, very close you are to actually understanding the problem? homohatred has tarnished society literally for centuries. you clearly understand this. But most important of all, it has not corrupted “A” Christian faith, it has corrupted THE Christian faith, literally for centuries, for millennia.

and the Muslim faith, and the Jewish faith, and every single culture and faith that Christianity has tarred with its homohating brush. e already know that many cultures had no problem with homosexuality until Christianity came around with with this splash of ham gravy on its god-loves-everyone necktie.

It’s clear in Corinthians. It’s clear in Romans. It is startlingly clear in the sodom story, well beyond all ofthe others. BY no stretch of the imagination is Sodom about homosexuality, as it might have been understood in 600 BC, and with 100% certainty, as it is understood now. the angels were threatened with rape, not actually raped. They certainly were not invited out for a dinner and a drink prior to a romantic evening in the sack, not by “All the people in the town.” For years, Sodomy was “the crime against nature, not to be named among Christian men.” funny, you can talk aboutthe wholesale slaughter of thousands. You can talk about incest, andthere was plenty of it. You can even talk at length aboutthe gruesome torture and murder of your man god, and picture it in loving detail in paintings, sculpture, and the Sado-porn of Mel Gibson.

Deicide you can reference easily. but sexual relations between two people of the same sex, actual love between two people of the same sex, is completely off limits?

Honey, this is the very essence of corruption. even more so if you define corruption as I do: becoming that which you hate. And that is exactly what has been done here. the forces of morality are lying through their teeth, lying about god, lying about faith, and lying about gay people.

Given that this corruption is as obvious and long lived as it is, and has pervaded every single aspect of the church, and through the church’s corruption, every aspect of society, exactly how can you say that homosexuality is in any sense that we as fallible humans can understand not natural and not whatgod intended for a certain portion of mankind, that gay marriage is not in fact a fulfillment of god’s plan for gay people in particular and marriage in general?

because if you can make that claim with a straight face, you are simply saying that that obvious corruption simply doesn’t matter in the face ofthe bias that you have already decried.