In Boston, there was a Catholic agency doing adoptions. They were very successful in placing children in families. They placed according to their beliefs; they would do adoptions for gay couples. They would refer them to another agency that would help them, they just would not do it themselves. They were forced to close by the state of Massachusetts.

Sounds like trying to force it on religious organizations doesn’t it? And yes there have also been cases where gay couples would try and force a Catholic church to marry them.

You bring up an interesting point. Perhaps the problem is that there is no acceptance of anyone with a strongly held belief no matter the belief.

“Belief” is dangerous, thus the moral equivalence between terrorists and evangelical Christians.

And if you don’t believe that, just wait for the hateful replies to this post.

If, your opposition to marriage is not due to religious belifs of any particular religion and just out of your concern for the well being of the society, I have this to say,

Mere acceptance of Gay marriage is not going to encourage it. Any society that has to ban something like Gay marriage to discourage the same is usually insecure about its own principles. A strong society never has to go out of the way to impose a ban on anything unless it does not trust the ability of its own citizens to uphold its principles, especially on something like being gay, which is not a course of life for most of us. This shakes your belief in the fundamentals of democracy as the marriage of 2 gay people is not going to affect your personal life in anyway.

If it is because of religious beliefs that you oppose it, it is not justified to prevent anybody other than yourself to do anything you dont believe is right, because the ’state’ does not have a religion and cannot dictate religious beliefs on its citizens. If 2 people in your state want to renounce all religion in their bid to marry each other, whatever sex they may be, it is their fundamental right by all means to do so. Those two people dont need your individual approval, but some sign of respect for their union from the state of which they are citizens of, to which they pay taxes and help uphold, which I dont think is too much to ask is it?

I put Jefferson on the list on purpose. Jefferson had problems with churches and priests, not God. There’s a difference. And America has room for his arcane views, too.

The whole history of these books [the Gospels] is so defective and doubtful that it seems vain to attempt minute enquiry into it: and such tricks have been played with their text, and with the texts of other books relating to them, that we have a right, from that cause, to entertain much doubt what parts of them are genuine.

In the New Testament there is internal evidence that parts of it have proceeded from an extraordinary man; and that other parts are of the fabric of very inferior minds. It is as easy to separate those parts, as to pick out diamonds from dunghills.

-Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Adams, January 24, 1814

My opinion is that there would never have been an infidel, if there had never been a priest. The artificial structures they have built on the purest of all moral systems, for the purpose of deriving from it pence and power, revolts those who think for themselves, and who read in that system only what is really there.

-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Mrs. Samuel H. Smith, August, 6, 1816

Why is there this need for you evangelicals to assume victim status?

Believe in your Bible. Go to a church of your choosing. That’s your business. Seriously, you might not want to hear this, but no one cares.

Really.

So yes, you are describing a real phenomenon; despite having been friends for well over ten years, my brother’s friend only found out my brother was religious because the friend made a disparaging comment about religious people and my brother then told him of his faith. The stereotype of pushy Christians was really turned on its head in this case!

Karthik, the civil recognition of marriage in the US is a favored class, i.e., society offers benefits to a group of people who do something considered to be beneficial. As such, it has nothing to do with religion. One can be married civilly or in a religious ceremony.

There is an obvious difference between the bulk of male-female partnerships and same-sex partnerships. Only in the male-female partnerships do children naturally occur. It is in society’s interest to encourage male-female commitments in a way that does not exist for same-sex pairings.

The institution of marriage existed before our laws and our society’s foundation. It will exist after we are gone for the same reason – children. The state of marriage does not exist in our society because our society wishes to encourage two adults to take responsibility for each other, as the existence of pre-nuptials and so forth amply proves.