General Discussions

This is too vastly complicated to be encapsulated in a single poll.

To summarize my position without undue explanation... I support homosexual couples having the same civil rights as heterosexual couples. But I am against the government coercing religious groups to administer the right of marriage.

If you want explanation, search for one of the billion or so threads out there.

I agree that there have been far too many threads on this same matter. And most times it just ends in an arguement.

Should gays be allowed to married?
Why not?
It's a human loving another human and wanting to further their relationship.
Fine with me.

I vote yes because it's almost impossible to argue them not to anymore IMO. This is why I don't follow any religion anymore and became Agnostic. If God created you that way, how could it possibly be a sin?

It's just like back when women didn't have any rights, the U.S. will stop being stupid and realize "Oh homosexuals are people and equal like you or me." I predict in less than 10 years, every state in the U.S. will allow gay marriage. And like FFqueen said, EVERYBODY deserves love.

Zorrodude, you are awesome!

This is exactly like many situations of inequality and segregation in the U.S. and the world as a whole.

Every step in human advancement has been done to better humanity as a whole, and now we merely have a couple more minorities in the U.S. to make equal in every form before we can start talking about freedom and equality to the rest of the world without sounding like a hypocrite.

Why should we not advance past the shackles of the institutions which have always worked to perpetuate the old evils of the world? If the hyper-Christian south had won the civil war, we'd still have slaves galore. If the hyper-Christian southern groups had won during the African American civil rights movement, Blacks would still have to sit in the back of the bus.

Hell, let's look a bit deeper. If the hyper-Christian people of the world had their way way back then, we'd still be smashing kid's skulls in if they got drunk or had sex before marriage, murdering women whom spoke out against their husbands or proved themselves smarter than their husbands. Women couldn't go into business or go to school. And of course there are the Puritan Witch Trials from Salem Massachusetts that resulted in over 20 innocent people being murdered on the word of little girls whom only had to say with a straight face that so-and-so was a witch and pricked them in their sleep for the person to be put to death. Whether you lied and admitted it, or whether you held fast to truth and got hanged, your life was pretty much forfeit on the word of those girls and their hellish lies and spiteful souls.

So yeah, be glad Christianity has become so lax with what their bible tells them to do, or odds are your family line may have been snuffed out long ago or would still be in danger.

We have a little thing in this country called the "Separation of Church and State".

If you breach it one way--by using the government to force religion to do something--you then make it OK for it to be breached the other way and one week later you will be living in a Theocracy, regardless of what party is in power.

Then should the Church REALLY have a say in Marriage anymore?

Here's a thought. The State guarantees rights based on marital status. Either the Church has to STFU about same-sex marriage, or the State has to cease guaranteeing the rights afforded to legally married couples.

I don't think either would back down, but it would be a great service to the world if the former happened.

In United States common law, MARRIAGE exists only in the religious sphere.

There is no legal protocol called "marriage", except in slang.

The document that says "Marriage License" is not a "marriage" license at all, but a petition for the legal distinction afforded by a civil union.