Re: What's Going on in the Americas?
Reply #552 –
There's a consistent recognition of sanctity of marriage in the Bible and there are regulations for all kinds of failure to uphold it, including your kinds.
Which means zero in a secular republic such as the United States. In fact, that reasoning would separation of church and state, insta-unconstitutional. I reiterate that marriage is not necessarily a religious ceremony at all.
Each religion is free to have it's own rules about who they can conduct the ceremony for, but rightfully doesn't have the authority to impose its rules on the entire nation because they find some offense. For instance, a fundamentalist church does have the right to refuse to marry two adulterers together on religious grounds, but not the right to prevent them from going to a different church or a judge to get married. Likewise if two men or women want to get married, except the Bible actually seems to care more about adultery then homosexuality. On a wide scale in the US, this exactly what the fundamentalist tried to do - impose their view of who's allowed to get married via amendments to the state constitutions and even made noise about adding it the Federal constitution, in a move of almost sublime idiocy. It's as if they said "We not only refuse to marry you together, we'll make sure no one else can either!" The sad part for them is that in having this attitude, the facilitated the very thing they sought to prevent far more than the "queer lobby" ever did or ever could hope to since same-sex marriage was already illegal.
Of course, when the fundies lost, they immediately tried to make themselves out to be the victims. The bully that finally finds himself hit back is the victim.