Comments on: Marriage, just like christening

By: Ben in Oakland

Ben in Oakland — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 11:25:27 +0000

Jim, I have long wondered why we aren’t pursuing that angle in court. the minute these campaigns started saying god god god god god, they made it about the establishment of religious belief and discrimination on the basis of religious belief. we have laws at every level of government that prohibit this. Why is this any different?

By: Timothy Kincaid

Timothy Kincaid — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 01:22:12 +0000

Jess, it sounds like your pastor actually read the words of Jesus including Matthew 25. What a wacky radical!!

;)

By: Jess

Jess — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 00:51:11 +0000

I think we both concluded that both of our pastor’s would. Mine is very young and idealistic. He has pushed our church towards a focus on hunger in the community, ways to combat it etc…

Reed, how did the church you were at react to that? It must have been pretty divisive here, (I don’t remember)

By: Timothy Kincaid

Timothy Kincaid — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 00:17:33 +0000

Reed,

So if I read you correctly, you quite object to the latter portion of my commentary. You didn’t read it, but you object to it anyway. Well, I guess that’s your right.

On another note, I am very much enjoying the conversation between the ECLA (current and former) members and their wondering whether their particular pastor would bless a same-sex marriage. It fleshes out the otherwise rather dry news reports we have to rely on.

By: Reed B

Reed B — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 00:01:07 +0000

P.S. TO JESS –
Four of those “church secretary” years (see post above this one) were for ELCA congregations at the time when Egertson ordained Anita C. Hill.

By: Reed B

Reed B — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 23:58:37 +0000

Thanks for this pleasant reminder of the seven years I worked as a church secretary. We DID have requests for baptismal records – and my own supplemented my “proof of live birth” (which is NOT a “birth certificate, but it’s what my generation of Air Force brats were issueed) a couple of decades ago.

And then came WHAT IF – and I realized TK had once again picked up the big spoon to stir some . . .thingie . . . and stoppped reading, free from hypothetical wrangling.

By: Jim Hlavac

Jim Hlavac — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 20:40:22 +0000

I have long maintained that gay folks religious rights under the 1st Amendment are being trampled and denied. I don’t care about the doctrinal issues of one church or another, or their convergences or disagreements. There are 1400 or so denominations of Christians alone in this nation; you need a score card.

Meanwhile, our right to believe our God says we’re OK is being denied; our Creator did give us certain inalienable rights. Our clergy are not allowed to have the weddings they bless recognized. Gay folk’s right to be free from gov’t interference in our religious beliefs are nil. And the gov’t establishes other religion’s views against us into law. That’s the short list.

And yet, these things seemingly are never mentioned in any of the lawsuits I see about gay marriage, or gay anything, really. It’s almost as if lawyers for us are afraid to claim we have religion; not to mention that society, in general, simply believes we are non-religious, or even anti-religious, and so can’t use the religion argument at all. None of which is true. Call us pagans for all I care, or apostates, heretics, whatever, but even they can get their marriages recognized by the gov’t.

By: Timothy Kincaid

Timothy Kincaid — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 17:19:03 +0000

Martin,

Thank you, I removed the “ed”.

Matt

In the Perry case, the whole issue was driven not by the language of Prop 8 but by the intent and language of the campaign materials.

By: Regan DuCasse

Regan DuCasse — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 17:06:19 +0000

Not that I’m surprised, but this article and the following comments are so much more intelligent and informed than the same on firmly anti gay sites. Even those same people whose claims of religious reasons for hating gay people aren’t capable of making comments like these. In fact, there is a great deal of superficiality in the comments and eventually there are NONE that can identify and individual. They stop speaking as such, and use quotes from the Bible to lodge an opinion instead.

This is one of the reasons ex gays never seem to be INDIVIDUALS with differing experiences, or personalities.
The Bible, is a song that remains the same. If one keeps singing it, without saying anything ELSE of substance, originality isn’t there at all.

That’s how certain people of faith begin to strike me as very, very weird. And sometimes, not especially smart. And why after a while, it’s like dealing with someone who is brain damaged.

By: Martin

Martin — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 16:08:11 +0000

Psst… It’s “Reform Judaism,” not “Reformed Judaism.” The distinction is not trivial, and the error is downright offensive.