Agree with most of what you said. However, I don’t think we have a secular society. Government and the laws that govern Americans must be secular. Americans and American society is an entertaining mix of religious and non-religious folks, from overzealous atheists to sanctimonious Christian radicals and everything in between.

What’s sad is that the majority is being sacrificed for the fringes on each side.

We need seperation of church and state! shit! all marriages ever honored by the government need to be anulled since marriage is a religious idea… the government can’t have any hint of religious influence! Hell… the whole “thou shalt not murder” thing in the ten commandments… we can’t keep that law either!

Adam,

Running to the Old Testament. That is awesome and quite funny given that you appear to want society to break away from what the bible plainly states. If you were arguing for Polygamy then you could create a valid arguement by waving the bible at the relegious folks but your not. Now if you could point to King Solomon having 300 gay lovers you might be on to something.

By the way civil unions would be a nice solution but do you really think it will stop there? How quickly will Catholic Charities be sued for not giving spousal benefits to the same sex partner of an employee? I have no problem with Civil Unions but the mostly liberal gay community will not allow groups who object to the Gay lifestyle to follow their relegious beliefs. They will demand that the state force Catholic Charities to offer benefits to same sex families as people have demanded that they cover abortions and contraception. That is the reality.

Thank you for your excellent op-ed piece.

In truth, the situation vis a vis same-sex marriage goes far beyond civil rights. It is the early 21st century’s wedge issue that will determine whether America becomes a theocracy or not.

From Belgium to the Netherlands to Canada to Britain to South Africa (and, most recently, to South Korea) same-sex marriage and/or civil unions have been legalized.

The deeper danger is that America will, for its first time, alter its Constitution to impose a particular theocratic structure in this country.

Heaven help us if Washington becomes Tehran on the Potomac.

So, we have to discriminate against gays because some would want benefits from Catholic Charities??

Frankly, all charities are at the mercy of the US Government as long as they want tax-exempt status. Don’t want the government telling you not to openly discriminate? Reject that status…not so easy when money is involved. But then again, organized religion never cared about money, right?

I’m very religious, but gay marriage can be argued against very easily from a strictly biological/medical perspective. God, yes God, put two genders on this planet for one reason and one reason only, to procreate and keep the species going. Granted, there are heterosexual couples out there that don’t have children and I know the gay marriage advocates use that argument a lot, but the genuine purpose for marriage is to join man and woman to have children and raise them so that they understand the family structure and then do the same as adults. If a man marries a man or woman marries a woman, that can’t happen, unless they adopt and severely traumatize a child for the rest of it’s life. Also, it shouldn’t suprise anyone that the one activity that humans engage in for pleasure (sex for you that don’t have sex) is the same activity that leads to the perpetuation of our species. Again, that can only happen if man marries woman. The key to banning gay marriage is with Amendments because then the liberal, activist courts can’t overturn laws based on their own agendas.

So what’s the plan for when Islam rules the world? They make the Christian fundies look positively gay friendly.

i.e. No Christian fundies that I know want to pull walls down on gay people.

The genuine purpose for marriage is for the protections and benefits provided by law.

Biology has nothing to do with marriage/civil unions.

It’s either about religion or law. And if it’s about law then banning gays is unconstitutional. If it’s about religion, then all marriages are unconstitutional.

Wow, you bought into W’s bit about “activist” judges hook line and sinker. Maybe you should create an independent thought once in a while rather than spout the latest FoxNews rhetoric.

By the way, if a judge is activist based on the number of times they’ve voted to overturn legislation, then Antonin Scalia is the most activist Justice. OOPS.

News flash: the human race will not go extinct if gay people marry and never procreate.

The article as written attempts to give churches an out saying civil unions would be state controlled and Relegions can define marriage as they want. My post only points out the faulty logic as one poster responded, the state provides tax exempt status and can punish charities that do not conform to a new rule regarding same sex civil unions.

You can’t have your cake and eat it to. People have a right to freedom of relegion and that includes a dislike for the gay lifestyle, no matter how much you detest that viewpoint. Which is to my point, the current agenda is not simply to get the state to accept same sex unions. But to force all portions of society to accept same sex unions and to punish people or groups who do not conform to this new right created not by voters but by folks in black robes who are oh so much smarter than the average Joe.

You can not force people to accept a behaviour. In addition, ideas like the fair tax would eliminate most of the benefits for breeders that the state controls and does not start to impose Governmental neutrality on all sexual behaviours.

I’m not worried about Civil Unions, but I realize that the main agenda of the gay community is liberalism with the state forcing viewpoints on the population. Much like the Feminist movement being stolen by Communist/Socialist or Lesbian Women who really don’t care for men or anything that men have created.

“benefits for breeders”

The “benefits” don’t come close to paying the cost of raising the next generation of taxpayers.

But maybe we should just off-shore procreation, yeah that’s the ticket. But perhaps those coming generations will object to paying taxes to support old people to whom they have no connection.

I totally disagree with your assessment.The purpose of the proposed amendment is to preserve the instituton.(your biblical point is one sided !)I can’t wait to see the people of Wisconsin decide for themselves in our next elections.

“the people of Wisconsin decide for themselves”

What! That can’t be allowed!

They might not decide right - it should be left to their “betters” to decide for them.

The people against gay marriage say they want to let the people decide. But since when is it always a good idea to let the majority decide what rights the minority should have? Do we not recall the Civil Rights Era, when the white majority would certainly not have voted to give African Americans rights, had it been put to a vote.

What’s most striking about this debate is the arrogance displayed by those who consider themselves entirely qualified to over-rule conclusions held as sancroscint for as long as man has walked upright.

I’ve said it before, I’ll be saying for a long, long, long time, liberalism is a death-sentence. Liberalism is a sickness.

“…when the white majority would certainly not have voted to give African Americans rights, had it been put to a vote.”

I wonder if this god-like, all-knowing poster could also provide some good stock tips?

There may not have been a specific referendum, but the majority elected representatives certainly did make some changes. Of course it was an up hill fight against the southern Democrats.

Last time I checked being black, brown, or any shade of color is not a behaviour. Nor is being Male, Female or Hemaphrodite. One can argue as to whether or not society has a right to discriminate against certain behaviours, like the British did against Catholics. But should Relegious Freedom be equated with sexual behaviour as the comparision to Civil Rights is stretched thin. When a person walks in for an iterview, I know if they are black, white green etc… I only know, not suspect, if someone is Gay if they tell me, which would equate to being Catholic in Northern Ireland in 1960’s and 70’s. Not quite the same thing as being Black. California has a law on the books restriciting marriage to a Man and a Woman, does anyone doubt that WI soon will.

“People have a right to freedom of relegion and that includes a dislike for the gay lifestyle, no matter how much you detest that viewpoint.”

Yes, that’s true. The govertnment can’t make you LIKE homosexuality, but your are expected to TOLERATE it. You live in the United States of America, one of the greatest countries on Earth. Part of the conditions for that is that you have to tolerate anyone else who lives here so long as they aren’t actually hurting anyone. So, until you prove to me that all homosexuals have a secret agenda to murder all the heterosexuals or ban children, you’ve got no ground to stand on.

“What’s most striking about this debate is the arrogance displayed by those who consider themselves entirely qualified to over-rule conclusions held as sancroscint for as long as man has walked upright.” Man has been walking upright for a hell of a lot longer marriage has existed. Besides, just because something is old, doesn’t mean it’s right. Mankind practiced slavery since prehistory, but we still abolished it. In fact, if something is that old, that might be all the more reason to take another look at it and make sure it isn’t doing more harms than good.

“I’ve said it before, I’ll be saying for a long, long, long time, liberalism is a death-sentence. Liberalism is a sickness.” Oh, yes. How horrible it is that we should want to make sure that people don’t starve or freeze to death in the streets of one of the richest nations on the face of the Earth, and that we should want people to be free to be who they are and live how they want without other people being able to force them to do otherwise. Look at it this way, pal: the main idea of conservatism is to keep things the way they are, or to go back to the previous way of doing things. If the US had been founded as, say, a (hypothetical, I know this would never actually happen) primarily homosexual Islamic nation that persecuted Christians and heteros, liberalism would be lookin’ pretty darn atractive to you right now.

“God, yes God, put two genders on this planet for one reason and one reason only, to procreate and keep the species going.” Yeah, okay, great, but we don’t need people having twenty kids just to make sure one or two survives to adulthood anymore. The planet isn’t just teeming with us, it’s overloaded. We’re over-populated, and we don’t have enough places for everyone to live. The human race would BENEFIT from a few fewer kids being born, not suffer. It’s god-bots who have sex but aren’t allowed to use contraceptives because of their religion, not gays who adopt kids who already exist, who are doing the most damage, here.

“If a man marries a man or woman marries a woman, that can’t happen, unless they adopt and severely traumatize a child for the rest of it’s life.” Are you actually claiming that any child raised by a homosexual couple will invariably be screwed-up? Look, to the best of my knowledge, there has never been a NONPARTISAN scientific study that has showed that homosexuals are any more likely to screw-up their kids than heterosexuals are.

The bottom line here is that gay, bi, and lesbian people aren’t hurting the world any more than straight people are, and I’m sick to hell of people trying to deny them their rights just because they feel kinda icky when they think about those people. I have gay and bisexual friends, and while I never want to hear about anything that goes on in my buddy Nick’s bedroom, I also never want to hear anyone descriminate against him just because of who he is.

“The govertnment can’t make you LIKE homosexuality, but your are expected to TOLERATE it.”

Then I trust that you are working against the moveon.org crowd’s avowed aim of surrender to the Islamo-nazis, who would tumble down walls upon all sodomites once Islamic law wa enforced world-wide?

The main point of conservatism is to restrict the growth and encroachment of Governement beyond the boundaries intended by the constitution. Not to keep things the same nor are all conservatives hyphenated with the precurser Relegious. The planet is filled with governments that have far more control over their people but last time I checked when it gets Cold in France Homeless people freeze to death and when it gets hot old people die of heat stroke. But to make France better than the U.S. they get to have an unemployment rate of about 18%. With people under the age of 25 or of color having an unemployment rate nearing 50%. Yeah Socialism, which is what the left in this country have become, most of the people posting on the left would never vote for someone like JFK, he would be to anti-choice and pro heterosexual marriage.

The last study I read showed America’s poor have a problem called Obesity not starving to death. But hey why quibble about facts when rhetoric is so much more fun. Some look at america and see money grubbing, robber barons, fake boobs, oil profiteering, the military industrial complex and commercialism. Others look at America and see 4.9% unemployment, an expanding economy, more freedom than any other country on earth, more choice in food, entertainment, transportation and a life style where we live in $400K houses and worry about collapse because we no longer have to worry about being eaten by lions, tigers and bears OH MY.

Back to the main point, the constitution does not require that I tolerate the sexual behaviours of others. Which is another weak construct that has been created in the courts and not through the legislative branch or the people as intended. Anybody who watches South Park knows that the behaviour of Mr. Garrison and Mr. Slave in the class room should not have to be tolerated by anyone. Even if the characters were called Ms. Garrison and Mr. Slave. Behaviour is not protected by the constitution and the right to privacy has been modified by Congress on more than one occassion.