[Bardan the Slayer]

Originally posted by Yorick: And where do we draw the line? What about good male-male platonic friends? Why should they be discriminated against simply because they don't have sex with each other, yet live together? The whole idea is not discrimination against homosexuals, but elevates and encourages generic family building. It recognises the foundational value a family is to a society. Making a hetrosexual marriage work is not easy, yet is vital to a healthy functional society. [/QB]

Well, I would guess that the male-male platonic friends wouldn't have the desire to get married, and no cohabitation law is going to be so phrased as to deem married any couple living tiogether for whatever reason.

And if they did want to get married for some inexplicable reason? That just proves that a civil union would be as open to abuse as a religiously-based one. Plenty of people have married in churches and sworn their vows (consciously lying through their teeth) to enter a marriage of convenience, or for whatever other reason. There are the rules, and then outside of that there is abuse. Don't confuse the two [img]smile.gif[/img]

And again, you're doing the very thing that I am railing against - mixing the legal side and the religoous side.

The idea of a civil marriage does indeed recognise the foundational value of a family. That's what it creates. that it does not fit your idea of the standardised nuclear family is your problem.

The idea of a christian marriage (lets get specific) does indeed discriminate against homosexuals, who simply say "You can't do it."

Separate the two. Allow churches to discriminate against homosexuals as their way of encouraging the family unit they approve of, and allow the civil union to to 'marry' homosexuals and heterosexuals alike as their way of encouraging a family unit that the church does not approve of.

I have no doubt that having a healthy heterosexual marriage in the majority of the population is a way of keeping the society stable and healthy, but I fail to see how denying homosexuals the same rights as heterosexuals can be supported as a viable way of ensuring stable heterosexual marriage. Just because homosexual marriage will be allowed, this will not take young heterosexuals off the street and make them think "Hey! I'll marry a man instead!" It will simply mean people are free from discrimination.

As to your idea of the 'draconian' measures that I stated before, I never said "Remove all legal weight from everything except the civil union ceremony." Rather, I said "Strip everything legal away from the religious ceremonies, and leave them as purely spiritual unions." If some very well phrased cohabitation law was made up in such a manner that it didn't have any of the loopholes (like defining bachelor flatmates married after a period of time), I would be fine with that, as long as it was something that applied equally to homosexuals and heterosexuals.

And don't try and give me rubbish about "This denies people the right to marry under a religious ceremony." It does no such thing. It merely places things in their proper place in the scheme of things. Homosexuals and heterosexuals have equal rights, religious people can get married in a church just as they please for their religious ceremony, as long as they also undergo whetever civil process the law requires for them to be legally recognised as married, and also let the churches turn away people they do not want to marry, for whatever reason they choose.

Saying that taking away the legal aspect of a religious marriage makes it impossible for a christian to practise their religion is absurd. You're claiming that there's somehting about your religion that states "Marriages performed by a priest of our religion *must* be recognised as legal marriages by the state, or else it's opression!" It's no such thing - it's common sense. A religious ceremony should be religiously, spiritually significant. Period. A civil union should be legally significant. Period. If a homosexual couple want a religiously significant ceremony, then they can find a church that will authorise it. I'm sure there are any number of them that would, but that are currently prohibited by state or national, religiously influenced law.

EDIT - I must add, above where I said :

A civil union should be legally significant. Period.

I did not mean that people should somehow suppress any spiritual feelings they have while going through the ceremony, or be disallowed from expressing them (or indeed feeling them, if such a thing were possible) - only that the law not involve any language or action within the ceremony that somehow enforces spiritualism through mentions of God, Bhuuda, The Great Wind Spirit, Zuggtmoy the Great Fungus, or whatever. It should also not be based on religious dogma (with which a significant portion of the public disagree) founded in a society far different from the one in which we now live, when it comes to matters of allowing homosexuals to marry. [img]smile.gif[/img]

[ 08-01-2003, 07:58 PM: Message edited by: Bardan the Slayer ]