(December 17, 2014 at 6:46 pm)Lek Wrote:(December 17, 2014 at 6:01 pm)Simon Moon Wrote: The question then becomes, do you personally want to prevent homosexuals from getting married? Or prevent women that don't follow your particular Bronze age texts, from having nontraditional (by your standards) relationships or family structures?
Would you consider Evangelicals that do want to prevent these things to be bigoted?
I don't want to prevent homosexuals or women from having equal rights. First of all, it's up to each woman to either accept biblical views of her role in the church and family or not. Secondly, I think that homosexuals should have equal rights under the law with heterosexuals. They should have equal access to the privileges, protections, tax breaks, etc, that come with the married status. However, until recently, marriage, which is sacred to christians, has been defined as between a man and a woman. I don't believe it's right to redefine marriage and step on the toes of those who do consider it sacred. Equal rights can be allowed without redefining marriage. For example: A woman attends a college and attempts to join a fraternity. She is denied membership and is told that fraternities are for men only, but she can join a sorority which has equal status with fraternities. She is not being denied any rights by not being allowed to join a fraternity. Furthermore, she has no right to demand that fraternities be required to admit women into their membership.
In the US, marriage is nothing but a legal contract. Why would you want to discriminate against 2 adults of the same sex from entering a legal contract?
Are there any other legal contracts that you can think of that you'd discriminate in the same way?
The religious ceremony is a different story. If churches, temples or mosques do not want to perform same sex ceremonies, that is fine with me.
If you want to allow homosexuals the same rights as heterosexuals, then the correct thing to do is have the legal portion for all couples called "civil unions", and have the religious ceremony called a marriage.
How does it "step on the toes' of Christians?
You'd believe if you just opened your heart" is a terrible argument for religion. It's basically saying, "If you bias yourself enough, you can convince yourself that this is true." If religion were true, people wouldn't need faith to believe it -- it would be supported by good evidence.
