sshyperion

quick note: religion doesn't have total equal power as the state. if they did then the apparent separation of church and state would be meaningless and we'd be still nowhere better off. btw in reference to your abortion issue, would you like it if your girlfriend or a female friend was raped or sexually molested and was forced to carry a child that may be resented and harmful to her? I know I wouldn't want that upon her... but I digress... **SECULAR** Legal marriage is a state matter, not a religious one. The church's concept of what marriage is its own and shouldn't influence who gets to marry. True, the concept of marriage may be based on religious background but that was then and this is now. The church doesn't have to agree with non straight people legally being married and thus should not be screaming at the state to ban them just because it doesn't agree with them. this equal power and authority business with the church ended long long ago when separation of church and state came into effect. **secular law** i repeat **secular law** ...once had religious basis but now is distinct from religious ties like that... as it has been repeated before and again in this thread, they don't have to be married in the church's eyes if the church doesn't want to but that shouldn't mean they can't legally be married for financial or whatever other reasons.

umm what about black segregation in the southern states and slavery in general up to even the 1950s in the US. wasn't that a violation of US ammendments? "...and all men are created equal." from the looks of things that wasn't very equal the way they were treated along with various other minorities...

Let's look at this discussion (as we've been trying to at times) excluding all religious aspects to the concept of marriage. In terms of general human rights, non-heterosexual people should be/are en!@#$%^&*led to the ability to be legally married. In the religious elements !@#$%^&*ociated that's a different story but is irrelevant for the core issue. Secular law, whether it has been influenced at one point or another should not be bound today by such religious ferver. the person earlier above who said that allowing gay marriage would give precedent for other obvious outrageous social alterations/legal alterations should realize that the precedent for anything "outrageous" can happen from any other legal event besides gay marriage. Btw, the right to bear arms in the US, is that not a legal way to slay another given certain cir-*BAD WORD*-stances? There is your first precedent without even relating to gay marriage. I agree with Omen and the others that "just because" is not a valid logical excuse. Where are your "feelings" based from? Are they coming from religious/religious-based personal upbringing? I am catholic in background and pretty much everyone knows the catholic church's view on non-heterosexual marriage. Yet, I disagree with that totally and believe that all people are en!@#$%^&*led to legal "marriage" regardless of what a single religious group or groups say. when it comes to social rights we should not look at what organized religions believe but what is good for people in general. Denial of such a right on the basis of "just because" or "biologically" or "because God" this and that is not a reason or even a half decent excuse. would you like it if we followed Hindu belief and were not permitted to kill cattle for food or if we went with traditional amish beliefs in technology and its uses and were banned from using the major advances in both medical and social comforts that technology can bring us? I find that the cons of such decisions outweigh the pros too much. Same goes for equal marriage. To deny people the right to legally be "married" is just as bad as saying "we're sorry because of a religious aspect that shouldn't be used in making law we're denying you the right to be officially recognized as a married couple." To deny non-heterosexual people the ability to marriage we're setting a horrible precedent as well for future exclusions. We're back to wide scale segregation within our society more so than it already is and was in the past. I don't know about some of you but others can agree it's nothing good for the short and long run in society by prohibiting equal marriage.