People, please read this... (re: Same sex mariage)

No there isn't. Marriage (Christian) and faithfullness to their partners would most likely have. Adultery would still be a risk, but then it goes against the principles and ideals of marriage. It still is a sin. Even if your partner does not have the dissease when you start going out, there is little you can do if they contract the dissease during your relationship by sleeping with someone else.

Hi Rrhain, applogies for my late response, but from now until mid October I will have very little free time. I'm going to try to pick on certain issues instead on every one if you dont mind, as else you'll have to wait another month for a full response. This is a bit of a extreme hypothetical situation, but I agree with you. Should a man choose for a close friend (non gay) or partner to be responsible for his life (if he cant talk) he should be able to appoint such a person over his family. There should be some form of legal guardianship he can setup with a hospital IF he doesn't want it to be his family. There are many cases where people dont want their family or spouses to be the ones responsible for them though. Restriction of visitors could be done by family members , spouse or someone 'set-up' with the hospital above to be a guardian. As a programmer I know it would be very simple to write a global database
for a hospital to specify guardianship. Again though, this is edge case where the patient cant talk. Not your everyday hospital visit. I dont actually know of many hospitals that dissallow gay partners, but then I dont live in the USA. Having done a quick search on google however there have been lawsuits against hospitals denying a non 'legal' partner rights for visitation. Ok, so now the problem is still going to be accepting a gay marriage as legal from country to country or even state to state. Allowing gay men to marry in the USA would still be an issue if they move to the UK. Legally, just too easy to abuse the system. Any 2 guys that see a financial benefit to getting married, could do so. Tax benefits, Visa situation ect. Any idea how easy it would be to get a greencard in the USA, or Residency in the UK, if all you have to do is move in with someone for a year, and sign a few documents ? Before you ask the question, 'how is this any different from a man marrying a woman' , well the answer is stigma. Most people would prefer to only be married once, however a straight guy that marries another man (purely on paper) would not have this, because if he is straight, everyone will see the 'joke'. Think perhaps how many mexicans immigrants would be 'gay' on paper if they we're allowed entrance into the USA ? And yes, I know it does happen where a woman marries a man just for a visa (or vice versa), but I believe this might escalate significantly with fay marriages.Married gay couples would also have to immediately be allowed to adopt children, which I'm sure you have no problems with, but many do. Different issue. Is it ok to have a child grown up with 2 fathers instead of a father and a mother. And here we might aswell start a new thread if we want to discuss if its the same. Just dont quote Patterson please From a Christian point of view, which ultimately my opinion is going to be from, I'm opposed to it, just as I am opposed to legalisation of anything I believe is sinfull. The legal complications I mentioned above really is not the basis of my argument. Personally I would prefer the law to uphold the moral values that I have, mainly because it means that I get to live and raise my children in a society that I believe is good for them. I oppose many things in todays society in any case and eventually yes I believe gay marriages will become legal.anyway, will respond to your other 2 posts later..
cheers[This message has been edited by Zealot, 09-17-2003]

'Zealot' came from a game called StarCraft. Nothing to do with Religion.Like I said, its your word and 'conservative anti-homosexual conspiracy theory' against all those other biblical translators. Next perhaps Paul's work is a fake. You ever lived in a 3rd world country ? Ok, some statistics.
http://www.plusnews.org/AIDSreport.asp?ReportID=2500&Sele..."Women continue to be the hardest-hit population group. Approximately 34.5 percent of pregnant women between 25 and 29 in South Africa were HIV-positive, and about 29.5 percent of pregnant women aged 30 to 34 were living with the virus. "You ever even seen a child with HIV ? Sorry its just that my sister was a doctor in a rural area, and dealt with it every day of her life, so I might have a better practical idea than you. No , actually HIV requires pretty drastic physical contact, infact you cant even transmit it by transfer of saliva. Provided you and your partner are not HIV positive and neither of you commit adultery you are pretty much Immune from contracting the dissease. This is not a dissease you catch from sitting next to someone on the train. This is a pretty distinct cause and effect model. With exception of some prostitutes in Botswana that have shown immunity to the dissease, if you continue to have sex with (unprotected) and with HIV infected partners, you will catch the dissease. Ignorant is stating the only different between HIV and Flu is 'slight physical contact'. You dont insert your penis into another persons vagina/anus through 'slight physical contact'. Its not accidental, but a pretty deliberate act. Andrea Yates killed all her children on June 20, 2001. She doesn't qualifies as a serial killer. PS anyone can call themselves a Christian. Christians oppose murder, yet this 'Christian' killed her children. Oxymoron really. Perhaps why we are asked to judge people by their deeds, not their words.Dahmer on the other hand, fully believed that he was a product of evolution, that he was born that way. He didn't see the need to adopt a set of socialy defined morals, he simply believed he was a product of evolution. Lot offered his virginal daughters.
Townsfolk didn't want them, because they were gay.
They wanted the men.Deuteronomy 23:17
"There shall be no whore of the daughters of Israel, nor a sodomite of the sons of Israel."

How does that make any sense? Marriage doesn't cure AIDS. If you have sex with somebody who has AIDS, you'll probably get AIDS. It doesn't matter if you're married to them or not. Marriage is irrelevant to the spread of STDs.

The whole city was gay? How could a whole city be gay? How would such a city survive beyond one generation if nobody's straight? You're mistaken. They didn't want to "know" the men. They wanted to know who the men were!Basically you're assuming that the whole city was gay because they refused to rape Lot's daughters. That's locker-room logic. I can think of a number of reasons to reject a man's offer to allow me to rape his daughters, and none of them mean I'm gay.

Please take your time to read and reread. If you cant understand that abstaining from sex until you are married and then having sex with ONLY your partner pretty much curbs the spread of a STD (such as HIV), then there really is little more for me to explain. In a married relationship, when one partner develops symptoms of an STD, usually there are questions to be asked.

Ever heard of Sparta ?Gen 19:4 "Now before they lay down, the men of the city, the men of Sodom, both old and young, all the people from every quarter, surrounded the house" Shall I try again ?Deut 23:17
There shall be no whore of the daughters of Israel, nor a sodomite of the sons of Israel.They wanted to have sex with the men. Sodom was notorious for its homosexuality, not its vibrant hospitality.

Zealot,Since you say

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Christianity does consider homosexuality a sin. It also considers murder, rape, stealing, swearing, gossiping, masterbation, and many many other things sinfull. Infact it consideres all sins equal!

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And also that

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From a Christian point of view, which ultimately my opinion is going to be from, I'm opposed to it, just as I am opposed to legalisation of anything I believe is sinfull.

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Are we to believe that you oppose legal leniency concerning such things as swearing, gossiping and masturbation? I mean, I don't curse much and I mind my own business. But would you believe I'm having one off the wrist right at this very moment?------------------
I would not let the chickens cross the antidote road because I was already hospitlized for trying to say this!-Brad McFall

Ah, my mistake. I assumed on an evo vs creation forum, that a guy preaching the word of God as law and named "zealot", might have been referring to his practice of that religion rather than a cool video game. No it is not MY WORD, or anyone else's about some kind of conspiracy. It is BIBLICAL SCHOLARS discussing original wording versus translations based on changing cultural references and practices. It is just like the Xtian faith incorporating local deities and holidays into Xtian practices to make Xtianity more popular with the local populations... something very much against one of the 10 commandments I might add.Here's my suggestion, put down the game controller and go to google and do a little research. Your glib putdowns mean nothing to me as I have no agenda one way or the other on this topic. I am simply talking about what REAL BIBLICAL SCHOLARS have found.You never addressed the point that your own link said exactly what I said. They were not going for literal translation, but fleshing out a version that was contiguous with current practices. Yes, I currently live in a country with one of the highest disproportions between rich and poor, with the highest percentage of its population in jail, with NO socialized medical or education system, and currently trying to replace civic administration with a shaman-based administration including revising education to remove science and replace it with religious teaching.Furthermore a large percentage of the population is wholly illiterate, and those that have the ability to read choose not to in order to promote their own religious intolerance and ignorance.Some even go so far as to believe viruses are actually caused by Gods or evil entities to strike down the immoral, ideas that were put to shame in civilized countries centuries ago.In fact, this moronic concept actually prevented my government from putting adequate resources into researching and stopping the spread of a deadly virus which spreads via contact with bodily fluids. This same attitude pervaded many African 3rd world countries until very recently, which is why they are in such bad shape.I live in what can only be described as the most well-armed, and credit rich 3rd world country on the planet. Holy shit, your sister discovered that HIV infection is caused by immorality and sin and not by a fluid based pathogen?Here's the flip-side zealot. Unlike the Africans who until recently, and unfortunately many still do, treat HIV with superstitious "faith-based" notions of what causes illness, European and American scientists and many within the society treated it as a disease and discovered routes of transmission and ways to prevent that transmission.Did your sister happen to tell you about how many African men felt that sleeping with a virgin would protect or cure them of HIV? That's about as helpful as Bush telling them not to use condoms because that promotes sinful practices.As it stands I have pretty good contact with open sexual lifestylers in the US and Europe. There has not been a case of anything, and I mean ANYTHING (not even herpes) among anyone I know, despite all of the fun and exciting adventures me and my friends have been having. Testing, care about the health of your partner (even if you aren't married to who you are sleeping with), and protection.One might add that as immoral and sinful as it is, the likelihood of contracting HIV through oral sex (even unprotected) is essentially nil, and through mutual masturbation is completely nil (unless you have open wounds on your hands). Ask your sister... she can tell you.I guess this means God only hates vaginal and anal intercourse? Thanks for only improving my point. There are many adulterous and lecherous sexual acts which you can engage in without ever getting HIV.Too bad about the doctors and patients who pass HIV onto each other, or people that get infected blood, or share dirty needles, or just plain helped someone out that was bleeding and had cuts on their hands themselves. These people never had sex at all. God must hate all of them bastards too, huh? Other than your accurate assessment that continuing to have unprotected sex with an HIV positive person is likely to result in infection, the rest just shows your ignorance.Wait a second... hahahahahaha... whew, you are so ignorant. IMMUNE from contracting the disease? You think moral purity grants you immunity? Do you even know what that word means? Well that would be ignorant, as ignorant as not reading what a person wrote and trying to draw some conclusion from it.If you had read what I wrote I said SLIGHTLY GREATER physical contact THAN OTHER communicable diseases. You can receive an HIV infection from contact with HIV infected blood, if your skin is just slightly broken. This is only slightly greater physical contact than required for some of the other illnesses I mentioned.Like for instance West Nile Virus which requires one not only to shamelessly and deliberately leave one's home when one is aged, but to allow a mosquito a landing spot on unprotected skin through which they can puncture you. God hath said that men and women should wear clothing when outside to conceal all of your body. This is what those old heathens get for not going out in Burkas!Or do you have anything to say about the other diseases which afflict mankind? You quite shamelessly avoided mentioning my argument along this line at all. I'm sorry. Let me requalify my statement to include mass murderers and spree killers. But if serial killers is what you need, how about Albert Fish for starters? There are more serial killers known to have their "bent" based in a belief in Xtianity, or having been warped by their parent's Xtianity, than by evolution... sorry bud. Seriously put down the joystick for a while and spend some time looking over your line of reasoning...PS, anyone can call themselves products of evolution and try to use that to justify their insane actions. While he may be a product of evolution, his actions were clearly the result of insanity and not based on any consistent concept of morality or personal ethic popular among atheists or derived from evolutionary theory. Was this the Cliff Notes version?Perhaps you should quote the entire passage in its entirety. Maybe in writing it down the actual meaning will become more apparent to you. I am still not certain whether the townsfolk were gay or not (Rrhain has raised and interesting and plausible argument to the contrary), but even if they were "gay", the subject of the entire passage is inhospitality towards strangers. If the earlier versions in Hebrew/Greek used the terminology of the English/Latin versions then this would be a condemnation of sodomy. And that would be fine by me. As I have stated, I have no interest except to know what it actually says.However, someone might point out that the English version itself indicates what is really being said here. Remember I said that Biblical scholars have found that male prostitute has been incorrectly translated into English/Latin as terms for homosexuality in general.Look at that passage. The first line says that women should not be prostitutes. The second half says men should not be gay? Wouldn't it be more consistent internal to the verse to be condemning prostitution in men and women? If anything that very passage suggests what these Biblical scholars have been talking about. It looks like in the translation someone replaced the word for "male whore" with one for "someone that practices sex acts with other men."But I cannot be sure without reference to the actual Hebrew/Greek wording. Rrhain? Doctrbill? Anyone?------------------
holmes

1) The men of Spara (and most of ancient Greece) were not gay. They were encouraged to be bisexual.2) Lesbians have the lowest rate of HIV transmission. Does this mean that God loves us more than all of you straight people?(I *REALLY* want an answer to #2).------------------
"Illuminant light,
illuminate me."

Well, the word in Dt. 23:17 is qadesh. It is derrived from Qadesh, the goddess of sexual pleasure (who the Egyptians adoped as a triad, with Min and Reshep). The cult of Qadesh (the goddess) was despised in Israel as being depraved for the promiscuous sexual practices that they performed. In Hebrew, the word came to mean "cult prostitute".I mean, for God's sake, the word translated as "whore" in reference to women is qadeshah (the female form of qadesh)! How can you get "whore" for one and "sodomite" for the other? It's ridiculous.------------------
"Illuminant light,
illuminate me."

It's the married bit that I don't understand. Having sex with only one person (or no people, as well) curbs the spread of STDs, yes.But whether or not you're married to them before, after, or never has nothing to do with the STDs. You get no more diseases from having sex with only ever one person outside of marriage than you do after marriage. Abstaining from sex before marriage has nothing at all to do with disease.[This message has been edited by crashfrog, 09-17-2003]

You can't use the term "sodomite" to refer to homosexuality if we're trying to ascertain whether or not the people of Sodom were homsexuals. That's circular reasoning. After all I could just as easily say that the passage from Deut. doesn't mean "there shall be no homosexual sons of Israel", it means "no son of Israel can be from Sodom."You're trying to say that we know that the people of Sodom were gay because we use the term "sodomite", and that we use the term "sodomite" because the people of Sodom were gay. That's circular reasoning. So yes, please try again.

Zealot responds to me:

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Yeah, right. The family is very often antagonistic toward their gay members. There are many stories of one member of a same-sex couple getting sick and the other partner being barred from the hospital at the request of the family. How do you convince the hospital that the family is going against the wishes of the patient when the patient can't talk?

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This is a bit of a extreme hypothetical situation,

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(*blink!*)You did not just say that, did you?Do you seriously think that there are few cases of the families of gay people excluding the partner out of hatred for the child being gay? You really need to do some more research.

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Should a man choose for a close friend (non gay) or partner to be responsible for his life (if he cant talk) he should be able to appoint such a person over his family.

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It's called "marriage." Marriage creates a next-of-kin relationship.

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There should be some form of legal guardianship he can setup with a hospital IF he doesn't want it to be his family.

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There is. It's called "marriage."

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There are many cases where people dont want their family or spouses to be the ones responsible for them though.

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It's called "divorce."

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What about security? The point behind restricting visitors is to make sure that random strangers don't just wander into people's rooms.

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Restriction of visitors could be done by family members

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But that's precisely the problem! The family members are restricting the partner of the one in the hospital.

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spouse

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But gay people can't get married, so they don't have a spouse and the family has all the rights.

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someone 'set-up' with the hospital above to be a guardian.

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That requires the good will of the hospital. Remember, just because you have power of attorney doesn't mean the hospital accepts it.

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As a programmer I know it would be very simple to write a global database for a hospital to specify guardianship.

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Excuse me? Do you really think it is better to assign a complete stranger to be the guardian of a person than to allow people of the same sex to get married?

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When a person is in the hospital and cannot make decisions for himself, it is up to the next of kin to do so. Power of attorney generally works, but it is commonly contested by the family and on many occasions, the hospital simply refuses to accept it.

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How many hospitals do you know who routinely deny spouses?

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I dont actually know of many hospitals that dissallow gay partners, but then I dont live in the USA.

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I know plenty. You should do more research. The entire point behind same-sex marriage is precisely situations like this: Refusal to recognize the partner.

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Having done a quick search on google however there have been lawsuits against hospitals denying a non 'legal' partner rights for visitation.

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Precisely. Do you seriously think a hospital would deny a legally married spouse?

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Ok, so now the problem is still going to be accepting a gay marriage as legal from country to country or even state to state. Allowing gay men to marry in the USA would still be an issue if they move to the UK.

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Indeed, but we take the battles as we can. In the US, the Constitution guarantees "full faith and credit" to the contracts created in other states. If you get married in one state, the other states recognize that (in general). If you get divorced in one state, the other states recognize that. That's why Nevada became such a haven for divorce since it was very easy to get one there.

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Why not just let gay people get married? .... 'specifics'

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Legally, just too easy to abuse the system.

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How? How is it any easier to "abuse the system" when the people are of the same sex than when they are of opposite sex? Be specific. You went on and on and on and didn't provide a single specific reason. What is it about an opposite-sex couple that makes them more or less capable of signing a piece of paper?

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Any 2 guys that see a financial benefit to getting married, could do so.

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And? How is that any different from any two people of opposite sex seeing a financial benefit to getting married and doing so?Specifics. I need specifics. What does the sex of the people involved in getting married have to do with anything?What [I][B]SPECIFICALLY[/i][/b] would change?

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Tax benefits, Visa situation ect. Any idea how easy it would be to get a greencard in the USA, or Residency in the UK, if all you have to do is move in with someone for a year, and sign a few documents ?

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And how is that any different from a man marrying a woman?

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Before you ask the question, 'how is this any different from a man marrying a woman' , well the answer is stigma.

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Oh, please. You're really not saying that's the problem, are you? Do you really think there is no stigma to two guys getting married? Everybody is going to think they're gay.Besides, it happens all the time already. It's called a "marriage of convenience" and one of the ways the immigration service investigates it is to look into the sex life of the married couple. If you don't have sex, then you need to explain why not.So if two guys try to get married, they're going to have to explain to the immigration service why they're not having sex.

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Most people would prefer to only be married once, however a straight guy that marries another man (purely on paper) would not have this, because if he is straight, everyone will see the 'joke'.

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Why would they? He married another guy! Obviously he's gay. And if he's an immigrant, there's a chance the INS will be knocking on his door and asking all of his friends about his sex life with his spouse.

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Think perhaps how many mexicans immigrants would be 'gay' on paper if they we're allowed entrance into the USA ?

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You know nothing about the Mexican machismo, do you?

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And yes, I know it does happen where a woman marries a man just for a visa (or vice versa), but I believe this might escalate significantly with fay marriages.

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Proof. I need proof. Not your speculation, not your wild assertion. I need specifics.

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Married gay couples would also have to immediately be allowed to adopt children, which I'm sure you have no problems with, but many do.

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Irrelevant. Whether or not people have a problem with same-sex couples adopting has no bearing on what would specifically happen if gay people were allowed to get married.I hate chocolate-covered orange. It's disgusting. But how does your eating it affect me?Be specific. How does person X's adoption of child Y affect person Z?

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Different issue.

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Irrelevant issue.

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Is it ok to have a child grown up with 2 fathers instead of a father and a mother.

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Yes. All studies show that children raised in same-sex households have identical outcomes to those raised in opposite-sex households. When the same-sex marriage battle was being fought in Hawaii, the state's own witnesses couldn't explain any reason why adoption was a concern.

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From a Christian point of view, which ultimately my opinion is going to be from, I'm opposed to it,

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Who cares? Your religion is not a basis for government. Equal protection under the law and freedom of religion preclude it. If you want to restrict marriage on the basis of sex, you're going to need a reason that doesn't invoke god.

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just as I am opposed to legalisation of anything I believe is sinfull.

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Same problem. Your religion doesn't enter into it. If you don't want to get married to someone of the same sex, then don't. Nobody is forcing you. But why should your personal squick factor be allowed to determine who somebody else is allowed to marry?

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The legal complications I mentioned above really is not the basis of my argument.

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What legal complications? Everything you claimed already exists with regard to heterosexual marriage. If it isn't sufficient to stop people of opposite sex from getting married, then it isn't sufficient to stop people of the same sex from getting married.

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Personally I would prefer the law to uphold the moral values that I have, mainly because it means that I get to live and raise my children in a society that I believe is good for them.

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What about me? Don't I get to live and raise my children in a society that I believe is good for them?Are you seriously saying that it is "good" to destroy families? It is "good" to stop people from loving each other?

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I oppose many things in todays society in any case and eventually yes I believe gay marriages will become legal.

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But you haven't given any reason why they shouldn't other than a personal squick factor.------------------
Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!

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Your experience is one thing, but no Christian church EVER condones paedofiles or adulterers.

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Um, hello?Catholic priests in the US? Child sexual abuse? Decades of covering up for the offending preists at the expense of innocent children?If that isn't tantamount to condoning the behavior, I don't know what is.