Marriage: The Secular Institution

[prog-expat.livejournal.com]

New York 2011.06.24

Washington 2012.02.08

Both Republican. I salute the Republicans who are starting to come around to recognizing the same-sex marriage debate for what it is: a debate over the right of the state to deny marriage licenses to couples based on the gender make-up of the couple.

Religions would not be required to perform services, just as right now they have the right to deny services to anybody, be they mixed-denomination or even mixed-race couples, and that was the only legally defensible objection they could possibly have for denying this right. The right of marriage does not derive from any religion in the United States, but purely from the legal authority of the states themselves.

A wedding of an opposite-sex couple presided over by a county clerk is every bit as legally valid and binding as one presided over by a clergyman, and to claim that marriage is a sacred institution or that religion has any special claim to it is an indefensible and grotesque argument that violates the separation of church and state that has been so carefully and clearly codified into the Constitution and which has worked to the benefit of the American republic for so long.

Comments

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

At least you spelled it with a capital H.

[prog-expat.livejournal.com]

One must always remember the capital H.

[prog-expat.livejournal.com]

Honestly I'm a bit surprised that nobody caught or commented on the fact that "godless" and "Heathen" are mutually exclusive, Heathens believing in a slew of gods and all.

[a-new-machine.livejournal.com]

That's actually pagan. Heathens are just people who don't acknowledge the God of the Bible, according to Merriam-Webster (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/heathens).

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

Don't believe everything you read in the dictionary. People of the heath are also people of the country side (the origin of the pagan denomination).

[a-new-machine.livejournal.com]

It's good to know that language must hew to its original roots, and that meanings never change. I'll be sure to use the word "raped" every time I mean "punched in the face."

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

It is good to keep in touch with your roots. It is one of the reasons why fundamentalists can read the Bible until the cows come home, but never truly comprehend what is written therein. Corrupting meaning corrupts consciousness.

[a-new-machine.livejournal.com]

Yes, hewing to millenia-old definitions is certainly important when you're reading a millenia-old document. This is not to say that we should freeze language at the earliest possible point for the sake of linguistic purity, though.

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

I do not advocate freezing language, but expanding it to include multiple levels of meaning. The fundamentalists can have their corrupted definitions and the rest of us can have those along with original meaning.

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

Your grasp of monotheistic dogma is rather weak. In the paradigm of the One True God, those heathen deities are mere spirits, demons, and idols.