DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Everything Else... Satanists Seize On Hobby Lobby To Test The Limit Of Religious Freedom

How do you figure?
If it is and has been illegal and you are fighting to make it legal, it is you who is involving the Government in changing existing law. Right?

Don't get me started Lemmy or I will tell everyone where you got them warts!

Of course people have an agenda. Every person on the face of this earth has an agenda, or numerous agendas. We all have things that we want to see come to pass, or prevent coming to pass. Anyone who says otherwise is lying.

Jesus saw nothing wrong with pointing out the sins of those in power. He called the Pharisees a "brood of vipers" and other truly complimentary descriptions. He was never afraid to call out those who pervert their positions of authority, especially in the areas of religious power. However, let's remember that in many ways, religious power was the power over life in those days, and religious power was the power over social issues. For the most part, Rome cared about collecting their taxes and keeping things quiet in the Jewish areas. That was it. The social power was, for the most part, with the Jewish authorities. Jesus certainly did not stand by quietly and let them do as they pleased.

HAHAHAHAHA!!! I'm genuinely curious what your take on divorce is. I like to learn how people think about a number of topics, especially when their views differ from mine. I think it's really interesting.

Fact that it is illegal, means the Government made a law at some point. That would mean the Government is IN it, not OUT of it.

OUT of it, would imply the government have no say whatsoever.

That really is not true. They are asking for the creation of a completely new category of marriage. TThey already have the right to marry someone of the opposite sex. Obviously, however, gay people will not pursue that particular right. Not everyone will pursue every right we have. That does not mean that they do not have that right, or that their rights are being suppressed. Every single person, of age, who is not currently married to another person already, has the right to marry a person of the opposite sex. Many choose not to do so. There are many straight couples who never marry. They have the exact same right, but choose not to exercise it.

People act like gay marriage is somehow a rights issue, but it truly is not. Every person has the right to marry someone else. However, there are laws and rules that govern those marriages. A man cannot marry another man. He cannot marry another man and another woman. He cannot marry a child. He cannot marry someone who is unable to give their own consent. He cannot marry and have a harem of any gender makeup.

Men and women, every man and every woman, has the right to marry. However, that right, as are all others, is governed by law. It is not a "right" issue, but a desire issue. That is why I strongly disagree with those who say that it is somehow a rights issue.

I am going to say this, and strictly as an analogy ..... so please, I don't want to hear that I am somehow calling gay people anything here .... it is just an analogy .....

People make this argument that since marriage is already a mess, then how much worse can it be if we let gay people marry as well. (or other similar arguments, worded more eloquently, with this same meaning) Many argue that the foundation of marriage is already crumbling and disintegrating right before our eyes, and some say this is why we should allow gay marriage, because marriage itself has already been devalued.

However, marriage has been the very foundation of civilization as far back as we can find recorded history. In the Bible, Adam and Eve were joined together as one. Man then perverted marriage, and allowed for any man to marry as many women as they wanted, and Moses allowed for "easy" divorce as a response to sinful man's actions.

Then Jesus arrived, and said that marriage is one man to one woman forever, and that divorce should be accepted only in the event of one partner being unfaithful sexually, thus breaking the bond between the 2 partners.

Man has turned this completely back around again. No fault divorce has created the idea that marriage is a disposable institution. In addition to people deciding to have sex with anyone and everyone, having children all over the place with little regard as to who will support them, this has led to the institution of marriage itself crumbling. The foundation of marriage was to create a stable family unit, and frankly, in most cases, to allow for a child to have a stable environment in which to be raised. This idea and ideal has fallen apart.

Now some make the argument that because the institution of marriage has fallen apart, then it doesn't matter what other iterations and forms marriage takes. The foundation is falling apart, and instead of trying to fix the foundation, many want to pack explosives around the remaining foundation, (analogy, just an analogy) expecting that it "can't hurt".

I disagree. I think that it does hurt.

Your statistic about women being harmed by partners they have previously had an intimate relationship with is actually an argument for a return to more Biblical values. You say that these horrific things happened without gay marriage polygamy, and so on, and you are right ... however, there has been a concerted and institutional attack on marriage through divorce laws and changes to societal norms. Divorce becomes acceptable because it becomes legally and societally accepted. Sin becomes acceptable when it becomes legally and societally accepted. Then people ask, "well, since that is OK, then why not this?" ..... and then "Why stop there,? What about this over here?" In the meantime, we have eroded the very institution that has been the basis of civilization. Then many say that because it is eroding every day, we should not try to save it, but instead direct a water drill at the foundation, as if that will help.

I disagree with this idea.

Government is people. However, that does not mean that certain people who hold power within government do not try to drive societal change by virtue of the laws they put forth and/or manage to enact. No fault divorce is a great example. That one change to one kind of law has singlehandedly eroded marriage to catastrophic levels, and has done so in a very short period of time. (what, less than 50 years?) Reagan signed one as Governor of California in 1970, and all US states have had no fault divorce since 1985. What has happened to divorce since then?

We have to have laws if we are to remain a civilization. Without laws, (and enforcement of those laws)we would revert to an unrecognizable state. Bad laws, however, are not preferable to no laws. Well intentioned bad laws are not better than well thought out laws. In the "no fault divorce" area, the states felt that because lawyers used a bunch of legal loopholes and such to manipulate the system, instead of fixing the system, they would just blow it up. They "fixed" divorce by planting dynamite, not by fixing the law so that people could not manipulate things for a favorable outcome. It exploded all right, and today people look at marriage as temporary, and now we want to further "fix" it by further eroding the base of what marriage is. We just never learn.

YTown, would you be able to help me in finding where Jesus is saying this? That marriage is between one man and one woman? The closest I could have possibly found is Matthew 19 (KJV of course!) but he never says marriage must be between man and woman. In fact later in the chapter he talks about those who which this type of marriage would NOT work, including those who forsake marriage to serve God, those who were made eunuch's by men at the time, and "natural" eunuchs which in the greek parlance at the time meant gay men.

I agree with you that saying something is broken is not a good enough reason to just say "well lets just leave it broken."

We aren't even saying "This is broken so let's leave it broken", we are saying, instead, "This is broken, so let's throw something else at it that will further break it, and that should fix it".

As for where Jesus speaks about marriage, it is in Matthew 19: 3-6:

Some Pharisees came to him to test him. They asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?”
“Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”

Jesus was never one to avoid unpopular opinion. If He felt that gay marriage were an acceptable thing, He would have said so. Instead he reaffirmed that marriage is one man to one woman for life.

That is God's plan, but as with all other things in this world, man has really screwed it up.

I see that I did not completely answer your question, so let me have another go at the rest:



He certainly does. Marriage is to be one man joined to one women, with the implication, since no man may separate them, that this is an arrangement for life.

At the end of the verse: Matthew 19: 10-12.

“Why then,” they asked, “did Moses command that a man give his wife a certificate of divorce and send her away?”

Jesus replied, “Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning. I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another woman commits adultery.

”The disciples said to him, “If this is the situation between a husband and wife, it is better not to marry.”

Jesus replied, “Not everyone can accept this word, but only those to whom it has been given. For there are eunuchs who were born that way, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by others—and there are those who choose to live like eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. The one who can accept this should accept it.”[/quote]

Now what is Jesus saying here. He says that marriage is one man to one woman for as long as the 2 of them live, unless one breaks the bond between them by infidelity, and in that case the aggrieved party has the right to then divorce.

In the verse about eunuchs, he says that not everyone can live according to this. Obviously those who cannot have sex cannot take part in marriage.

As far as: [i]"and there are those who choose to live like eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. The one who can accept this should accept it.” He is saying that there are those who choose to live a life without sex for the kingdom of God, and if someone can accept this, they should. Obviously they will never marry, if they have decided to never have sex.

You can't be married and not have sex with your spouse? If you're married, you must have sex?

What would the benefit of marrying someone you will never have sex with be? You might as well just remain friends.

Emotional connections, to profess their true love to God (which I figured you would have already known), to commit each other to the other for eternity. Marriage is much more than sex. A wounded war veteran who is paralyzed from the waist down or had that part of his body mangled who comes home to his girlfriend isn't allowed to marry her because they can't have sex?

I saw a show not long ago where they teach wounded Vets and their spouse how to have GREAT sex, even with broken or missing parts. Everyone was smiling by the end of that show as me and the wife slipped upstairs to make some smiles of our own.

I guess that then brings the definition of sex into play. If those wounded vets aren't having intercourse with their wives, should they still be allowed to marry since it doesn't match with the definition in the Bible? If we do claim that to be sex, how could we then say gay couples can't marry since they're not having sex when they could do the same acts as those wounded veterans (who are allowed to marry)?

Your overpaid gardener wasn't involved was he?

Wow, deep. I however think it comes down to the Biblical Fact that Wounded Vet Sex and marriage is NOT a sin. Gay sex is.

Not at his prices!

I find it hard to accept that there could be a lifelong emotional connection to another person in a marriage without any kind of sexual expression whatsoever. You do make a good example of the person who is physically damaged, and that is one that I had not really considered all that closely, but that seems to be an exception, rather than a rule, and as was mentioned elsewhere, they can have some form of sexual expression even with physical difficulties. This is very much the exception though.

YTown stated as fact, quoting the Bible itself, that those who can't have sex cannot get married. He then followed that up with asking why two people would get married if they can't have sex.

Ytown was right and

I told you it is possible for Wounded Vets to have sex.

Why do you still torment me?

So if we make an exception for those kinds of groups, what stops us from making exceptions for others? The Bible says that two people who cannot have sex shall not marry, but we're all okay with it in this case, don't worry about what the Bible says. Why put a limit on the exceptions as if we have the right to choose who is excepted and who isn't? There seems to be too much gray area and picking certain spots from the Bible that some want to follow and some don't. Shouldn't you follow the Bible to the word if you're a true believer instead of making exceptions here and there?

I hope you don't take my questioning as disrespectful, I'm always trying to grasp ideas and thought processes from all different groups of people. I'm truly curious how situations like this can be explained by the Bible and those of faith. No disrespect intended.

If their reproduction organs are damaged beyond repair, they're not really having sex. If we redefine sex to fit whatever they're doing, then homosexuals can perform the same acts, making what they do in their bedrooms also sex as defined by you. That would make homosexuality not a sin.

If a Wounded Vet had frozen his sperm before going off to war, he and his wife could go upstairs and make her pregnant. Try as they might, both sinful Gay men could have sinfully frozen theirs and still not get sinfully pregnant.

A woman who is artificially inseminated did not have sex with the donor, whether that's the husband or not.

Why do you keep banging your head against the wall? Can we not have a mature discussion without you insinuating how frustrated you are? If you feel you're getting nowhere with me, please stop replying.

Ok.

Lemmy, you have just illustrated exactly why I put no credence into what Christian extremists say - they only use the Bible when it is interpreted in a way that is beneficial to their argument. I'm sure there will be plenty of quotes and other pieces of information to try and debunk what you just said, but you've got them agreeing with the Bible on one hand and then outright disagreeing and saying it doesn't matter on the other.

This is why we should not use anything Biblical (or based on any other religion) to make laws.

Yes they have us on the run.

In the case of Abraham, whose wife Sarah was barren, she set him up with her slave (Yes, the term used in the bible) to bare a son, named Ishmael.

She was barren, but still capable of having sex.

jc


Nebraska woman files lawsuit against all homosexuals on behalf of God

Somebody dig up George Burns, he's got another court case to do.

Somewhere on the line between funny and very sad... that's where this belongs...

This is indeed the case (whether it's good or bad depends on your point of view though)

http://www.christianpost.com/news/study-...portant-116882/

https://www.ministrymatters.com/all/entry/5809/why-arent-millennials-attending-your-church

I still read the Bible, to try to understand it. To see how Christians have gotten so far away from the teachings of Jesus. Do churches even preach the New Commandment anymore???

I can definitely see the hypocrisy in church. I was never bullied in public school, even though I was a huge computer nerd since the age of 5. But baptist private school? I was tormented on a nearly daily basis. And my teachers response was that it was up to me to change it. Of course I was punished for trying to change this. I got into a fight when a preachers kid implied my mom was a hermaphrodite and then suspended. The preachers kid was sent to just detention because no way a pastors kid could say such things!! Baptist kids are so nice...

Being Bullied is rough as a kid.
So, that being said, have you given your life to God and Jesus or have you given your life to Church?

I can promise, one will complete you while the other will let you down.

Frankly I still don't understand what 2 people who could not have any kind of sexual intimacy (which is what I basically thought when you said that) would get out of a marriage. Now over time, if they lost that ability, then that I could see, but to never have received any level of sexual intimacy would seem rather unfulfilling to me.

Did you kow that there are some states in the US where you are not considered married until the marriage is consummated? (though how they would verify this is beyond me)

This reads like it's the NIV edition of the Bible, correct?

But either way; These passages only mention about what conditions Jesus found acceptable for divorce, not marriage. For the record it seems the only acceptable condition is infidelity. It speaks alot to me that the gospels are silent about Jesus on his stance about gay marriage. The bottom line in my reading is that Jesus did not say one way or another whether he supported or unsupported the idea of gay marriage. It is also worth noting anecdotally that marriage in the time of Jesus was economic, not for love. Women had to secure their financial future in a man because her ability to make a life for herself was otherwise impossible (without say selling her body sexually or via servitude)

However Jesus did make mention of homosexuality in regards to men, and it's in Matthew 19!



Jesus was asked by the Pharisees earlier in Matthew 19 about the scenario in which divorce can occur from marriage. The disciples then asked Jesus about whom this may not apply, and Jesus names 3 classes of enuch:

eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake - monks/nuns/etc
eunuchs, which were made eunuchs of men - castration

the last one is "eunuchs, which were so born from their mother's womb." Now a literal case could be boys born without genitals, but that case is so insanely rare as to be barely worth mentioning.

But even so, if we dive into the greek translations of the Bible, the original texts, the word used is eunouchos, to mean one who guards the bed. But Jesus would not have likely used this term because he spoke Aramaic. The Aramaic word for eunuch is saris. The word saris is used several dozen times in the Old Testament and not all of them refer to eunuchs castrated post-birth. Additionally in other cultures such as ancient Egyptian and African cultures, eunuchs often referred to men either castrated manually after birth or homosexual men. In ancient times a eunuch was mainly a man who did not seek the comfort of a woman.

I bring all of this up because I believe that the Bibles teachings of homosexuality tend to be overdone and in many cases (depending on which "Bible" you read) an outright lie.

NOW! This chapter to me at least does show that Jesus spoke of marriage as a heterosexual construct, not a mere numbers game of 2 people (or more). So I would grant a Christians viewpoint if they felt marriage should be between just a man and a woman. That being said, this does not make homosexuality a sin in the eyes of God, and I further challenge Biblical interpretations of such.

Anyone who isn't a Bible geek just skip over this, but I recommend people to pick up a good concordance, such as Youngs or Strongs. It is important to always remember that any English Bible you read is a translation by men, and like any translation it is susceptible to bias or incorrect interpretation.

It's rough but it also helped, in a way. I don't take it as being a downtrodden example but rather having to learn to fend for myself in the face of not just peers but positions of authority such as teachers or bosses in the workplace.

As for my purpose of religion I do not attend church for I have never found one that did not let me down. Every church community I have been a part of ostracized me.

I do not believe one *needs* Jesus to feel whole in their life but I do understand those who do. My Dad and I have vigorous theological conversations on these matters weekly, for he still attends "religiously"

For me, the focus is on the message of Jesus and a church is a nice quiet place to worship with others. "Where two or more are gathered in My name, there am I also."

The church is built by man and run by man, sooner or later man will let you down.

Christians are different too. Some are Holy Rollers who can't talk about anything else while others like me can at once be talking about sin and its destructiveness and then making jokes in the penis thread. Others hide their beliefs and worship silently. Christians have just as many personalities as everyone else because we are everyone else, just Christian.

Many fail to realize that man is created in God's image so I would think the Lord has a good sense of humor because many of us do.
Good luck on your adventure.