http://forums.randi.org/showpost.php?p=9739957&postcount=678
"Quote:
institution by working to preserve traditional marriage lies clearly within our religious and constitutional prerogatives. Indeed, we are compelled by our doctrine to speak out."
Gordon B Hinckley
Sure everyone has a right to speak an opinion. Compulsion is certainly arguable though. Unless the Mormon church can honestly say that all civil weddings are sacred in their own sense of what a wedding is, they cannot base a political opinion on the false assertion of sacredness. "

Exactly. And how about the sacredness of historical polygamist marriages? Are they sacred too? Was Mormonism's rantings and ravings about the monogamists in their polygamist heyday all "speaking as men"??? It was Mormon prophets talking down on non-temple marriages. They still do talk down on non-temple marriages yet they can call them sacred in defending their gender arrangement of non-temple and non-homosexual marriages???

How does fighting against legalization of SSM do anything to
"protect" heterosexual marriage? Marriage is under assault and
has been for quite a while. Divorce rates are VERY high and
domestic violence is rampant. None of that has anything to do
with SSM. If Hinckley or anyone wants to "defend traditional
marriage" more power to them. But they're not defending
traditional marriage. Instead they are trying to make things
worse for others of a different viewpoint.

This.

I'd just like to know how gays can possibly ruin anything with a *50% failure rate*.

As you may have noticed, we have recently had this debate in France.

Yesterday, we had the official figures: since June 2013, there have been 7,000 same-sex marriages here.

That amounts to... 4% of the total number of marriages during the same period.

The first year is likely to see more SSM than subsequent years because of the people who had been waiting for it for so long (i.e. forever ;-).

Is the probably record figure of 4% likely to threaten anything at all?

That still leaves 96% of "traditional" marriages.

Nobody can call 4% a threat.

Tom in Paris

It doesn't even bother me that religions oppose same-sex marriage. Of course they would. They believe in a cruel arbitrary god of ancient texts from barbarous cultures halfway back to cavemen. I pity them for thinking their life is a crusade for god...and naturally I disagree. But, I also acknowledge religion is part of humanity and a complex psychosocial instinct.

In pluralistic democratic society we very frankly disagree about religion. At first it was disagreeing which religion, and now it's just as much disagreeing on if religion. Religious people themselves revel in our agreed freedom of religion, which protects them and me from being governed by a religious paradigm we disagree with. The agreement is that a religion will NOT govern...the separation of church and state. It's a simple equality issue. Another religion will not govern them, and their religion will not govern me. Inherent in this protection is that religious laws are inadmissible in secular laws. This protects citizens of different religions from each other, and citizens of no religion. It's fair. You practice religion personally. You can proselyte, picket, and hold almost any prejudice you want...but you can't make it law. So, when religious people want their religion to be the law, they're being blatant hypocrites, especially if they're calling it "freedom of religion" in the very act of oppressing another's religion or disbelief in religion.

But I'm not mad when they just bring inadmissible religious reasons to court/congress/whatever. At least that's just transparent and honest...just wrong. I'm mad when they pretend to use some "legal" argument, when it's just their dogma dressed up.

amos2 Wrote:
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> So, when
> religious people want their religion to be the
> law, they're being blatant hypocrites, especially
> if they're calling it "freedom of religion" in the
> very act of oppressing another's religion or
> disbelief in religion.

That rubs me wrong as well.

They love religious freedom as long as they can use their money and influence to protect their forms of "sacred" even when they encompass stuff like civil heterosexual marriages into their sacred umbrella.

http://www.mormonnewsroom.org/official-statement/religious-freedom

It is their pass card for their form of hypocrisy.

added his name to a list of religious leaders in our city who support same-sex marriage. I was so proud of him for doing that. First chance I had, at a meeting, I approached him and thanked him for his courage in adding his name to the list.

To my surprise, he got tears in his eyes. He thanked me for my support and said that mine was the first approval he had received. He said he had gotten plenty of verbal flak from other members.

I assured him that TBM DH (who attends with me) and I were squarely in his corner. I'm proud to have someone as thoughtful and devout as he is, standing on the side of doing what's right.

catnip Wrote:
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> I assured him that TBM DH (who attends with me)
> and I were squarely in his corner.

THIS is amazing. He is a true believer and he supports gay marriage AND attends a wayward not-as-true church?