2861U2 said:
My belief comes from (get ready) the Bible, folks. The Bible says marriage is a man and a woman, a husband and a wife. Read Genesis 2, 1 Corinthians 7, Ephesians 5...
as you know, the Bible says a lot of things. does this give you the right to infringe upon the rights of others?
And my position on homosexuals? Yes, also from the Bible. The Bible condemns such relations and condemns sexual immorality (which includes many things). The body is a temple, a gift from God, meant only for creating life, something which homosexuals cannot do.
well, as for Biblical "condemnations" of homsexuality, there's another poster in here who's far, far more schooled than i in these matters, so i'll wait for him.
but let's take the part about the body being a temple. i assume you've never masturbated. i assume you'll never engage in oral sex. or use birth control. because each and every time you have sex, it should be for the creation of children.
you know what? i can accept that, from a Biblical perspective. but what follows, logically, is that homosexuality is no worse than masturbation, oral sex, or protect sex, or every time a woman swallows a birth control pill.
but let's get away from you, and let's talk about other people. do you know any gay people? do you know that they're pretty much exactly the same as you, and that their relationships are pretty much exactly the same as yours? and do you know what your attitudes do to them? do you know what the denial of civil rights does to other people?
i'd encourage you to try to walk in someone else's shoes. principles are fine and dandy, but to see if they truly hold up, to see if they are principles worth holding, try and see an issue from someone else's perspective.
how would you feel if you were denied access to your wife as she was dying? how would she feel if she could not see you on her deathbed? how would you feel if your medical/dental benefits were suddenly revoked?
maybe you should ask
Mildred Jeter and Richard Loving. they know all about being in a relationship that was condemned from a Biblical and social standpoint.
Mildred is black, and Richard is white. and the judge in Loving vs. Virginia -- from 1967, barely 40 years ago -- said, thusly:
[q]Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, Malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.[/q]
how is that *any* different from what you're talking about?
Um uh, well um, ye um STATUS QUO STATUS QUO!!!
but I think most of us here will appreciate this lil story. 
) in Nantucket and Gov. Duval Patrick was there. Mother of the Groom and he, it seems, go way back to when they were both on some school board together or something. He was asked about this development in MA and said he was proud of his state, and thought of marraige equality as a "civil rights issue". 
