Monday, October 16, 2006

Gay marriage a threat to religious freedom

It seems that some pastors and governemnt leaders believe that their religious freedoms are threatened. And by what? The fact that some people are fighting to expand the definition of marriage in the civil arena. Some inconvenient facts are ignored. There are some Christian denominations and other faiths that do not mind or support same-gender marriages so that religious freedom would mean that those religious groups that support same-gender marriages would have the right to perform such and those religious groups that don't support same-gender marriages wouldn't have to perform such.

What these people are talking about is contrary to religious freedom. They want to impose their religious view and a view of history that is plain wrong on the rest of the nation. That deserves to be called what it is - religious intorlerance and lying. There's a famous satire by Juvenal from when a Roman emperor married another man. But the satire is not about a man marrying a man - that was acceptable. It was about the higher status man taking a lower status role in the ceremony. History, even western history, includes examples of same-sex marriages as part of religion. To say that it's a new thing is contrary ot fact. And to say that such marriages deny religious fredom is also contrary to fact. Those who believe differently are just fooling themselves.

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