focusedfire wrote:
We already covered our views on the possibility of a church making a "political statement" by refusing to marry thus losing its status as a non-profit entity. I, again ask that we agree to disagree.
I'm not sure churches should not be permitted to incorporate to begin with, but that is an altogether much more complicated matter.
focusedfire wrote:
Once accepted as the new term Civil Unions, with supreme court backing and one pen stroke your argument falls. Again, offering to agree to disagree.
The trouble is the acceptance of the legislation.
focusedfire wrote:
But once notarized its a legal doc and in some areas ,I beleive because its been so in the past, and some areas have allowed that document to be filed. All I ask is to pull the word marriage off of the county document and the rest will follow. Again, offering to agree to disagree.
But pulling the word marriage off the county document would be just as traumatic as simply giving homosexuals access to it. After all, it wouldn't be that hard for the gay marriage opposition to simply sell the legislation as prohibition of marriage. Not to mention that the passing of such a law would lead to an even more drawn out legal battle as the gay marriage opposition would contest each and every change made to the legal code which previously featured the term 'marriage'.
A similar issue arises from the manner in which the clergy is permitted to function as an agent of the state in that it is very clearly Unconstitutional, but if the Supreme Court were to pronounce it so any marriage license bearing the signature of a clergyman would be invalidated.
focusedfire wrote:
There are moderate bi-partisan groups moving toward this end(removing the word). There numbers are strong but they don't make for good news as to they aren't playing into the conflict.
I've never heard of such groups; care to enlighten me?
focusedfire wrote:
Finally some food for thought. We have a modern concept of separation of church and state. The founders felt this ammendment necessary or it wouldn't have figured so prominently. It was that the church and state had for a long time been synomous in Europe.
They weren't really synonymous, the closest they ever came to that was in the Anglican Church. But even there the matter was one of state approval of any given religion, rather than state dictation of a single religion.
focusedfire wrote:
What with state religions, nobility crowned by the church, Divine right of Kings. There was no distinction of marriage in church and state because the two were considered irrevocably intertwined.
Wasn't till the thought of constitutional monarchy that this slowly began to change. Took about two hundred years for the first ratifications and laws on marraige. It, also, was the time that spanned the hundred years war, the war of the roses, and Henry VIII. So they, probably, should be pardoned as to the tardiness of their actions.
Really it was because the idea of the state, as we understand it, did not exist until well after the foundation of the Constitutional Monarchy; which was itself still dependent on divine sanction in its first few incarnations. Prior to the Treaty of Westphalia there was no state in terms of a contiguous territorial holding, or a truly centralized government. Rather, there was the Church, and those people whom were blessed to act in its name through the application of hereditary title.
focusedfire wrote:
Even as this country was being settled the Protestants were being pesecuted by the state religions of England and France. The church and the royalty both ruled together. With religion used to control & subjugate the masses far more cost effectivley than constantly keeping the army on guard for revolt. Agree or disagree Its history(oh no it rhymed, you may apply demerits as you see fit)
Of course, what is frequently ignored is the extent to which Puritan beliefs called for a similar persecution of 'deviance' from explicit Biblical text. They required literacy amongst their membership so that all men might gain insight from the inner depths of the Bible, but heavily regulated what forms that insight would take. Indeed, they practiced a kind of evidential conversion process which worked in almost the exact same way as the right of hereditary succession which they meant to protest. Their argument wasn't so much that the state should not sanction the church, but that the church and the state should be one and the same as extensions of the individual.
