Judge outlaws prison group's Bible program

The religious concept can't be banned, and isn't.

The financial and legal system, thats a different can of worms.

Same can of worms.

If christianity allows straight people to marry, and married couples get certain legal and financial benefits...

If a Pagan religion allows gay couples to marry, and married couples get certain legal and financial benefits...

How is it legal to prevent one religious group from getting the benefits of another religious group?

The core of this issue is civil rights.

but the legal support of marriage is already on shaky ground since it s a legal recognition of a religeous belief.

The governement should either strive to make it truley secular (in which case the sex of the people involved should not matter)

Or else remove marriage as a legal concept.

Exactly.

See my post above this one.

As I understood it ... marriage was originally a secular concept thousands of years ago as a "property transfer". The woman's family "sold" her to her potential husband for the price of the dowery ... they'd have a ceremony ... and the families were joined. Arranged marriages, dowery, all that fun stuff that can show us as the inferior sex in some cultures.


It wasn't until later that it became a religious ceremony .. when, like alot of things, religion saw a way to turn a "pagan"/secular practice into their own.


One way or another marriage should be altered. Either it is 100% religious and you take away the civil/legal side of it ... or it is 100% civil/legal and you remove religion's claws from the mix.

I personally don't see how religions can "claim" marriage ... just like they can't claim the word "mass". If I want to throw a party at my home and call it a "BBQ Mass" no one can show up and kick over my hibachi and tell me I'm not allowed to use the word "mass" because it belongs to their religion ... how come "marriage" is allowed to be an owned word?

Ahhhh, I see where you are coming from. Point taken.

Actually the simplicity of the Marriage points made in the last few posts -

Should carry over to every single religeous based law that has ever been passed or is in the works.

either take the religeon out of it - or get rid of it.

Agreed.

The only law that should be on the books in reference to religion, is one that guarantees the freedom to practice it.

There are Christian denominations that marry gays & lesbians. If the Christians can't agree amongst themselves, how can they push for legislation?

Some of them have a hell of a lot more money.

Atheist's side? My my. I don't know where you grew up, but where I grew up, the vast majority of folks who believe in evolution are religious. My uncle is a Baptist Minister, he believes in evolution. Most of my extended family and friends believe in evolution, and are also religious. I would say the "blame" for evolution being taught lays at the feet of religious people moreso than atheists, simply because of the religious demographics of this country.

Gay marriage - yes it is a religious argument when religion tries to own it - or tries to claim they invented it, and the biggie is that married couples receive benefits from the state. It can't not be a religious argument.

"don't tell the pro-abortion side"? Again, like with evolution, not everyone who is pro-choice is an atheist. In fact I'd say once again, and common sense supported by the fact that 3/4ths of this country is Christian tells me there are probably many more religious pro-choice people out there than there are atheist pro-choice. My mother is deeply religious and is pro-choice. Most people don't fit into your neat little boxes, especially those that serve to try and not-so-cleverly villianize people by using incorrect labels for them.

Yes, like "In God we Trust" on our coinage, right? Or like the insertion of "under God" into the pledge during the Cold-War, right? Or Congress having a prayer when opening?

According to several founding fathers, it does say there is a wall, and it is in place to prevent bleed-over in both directions. That's why it is called separation OF church and state, not separation of church FROM state, or vice versa. You can say, "That's it.", until you're blue in the face, it doesn't make such a simplistic interpretation true.


Pendulum schmendulum. Despite recent setbacks because of an overzealously fundamental (which is why they are their own worst enemies in my book) US administration and it's affiliates, we have been moving towards a more liberal, common sense, non-religious dominated, humanist doctrine for a long time now.

Intelligent design has to do with origins, as in "Was there a creator who started life, or was it abiogenesis". Are you suggesting evolution describes how life came from non-living material? If you are, then yes, evolution in that sense is a belief, without any backing in fact.

No. No more than I believe God made Adam from non-living clay. I don't presume to know if it was abiogenesis or a creator. None of us do.

I am saying it is very possible to believe in both creationism and evolution, and that many scientists, teachers, professors, truck-drivers, ditch-diggers, and so on do. The minister uncle I mentioned sums up his ability to accept both with the old adage about the Lord moving in mysterious ways. Now, while I don't agree with him about the existence of his one true God, I am far happier with Christians with open-minds like that, then with the dogmatists who reject what they can see with their own two eyes, and who indeed would like to remove those things from all of our sight, and replace them with a curriculum of creationism. I am not saying that this is your particular agenda, but I know many for whom it is.

If you want to call it a belief, have at it. I don't see what the big deal there is. The further down we dig, the more primitive the remains become. It's really not rocket science. So yes, I believe that life on this planet has evolved, but it is a belief born of having seen physical proof. Religious beliefs are not the same, regardless of whether or not you try to play gotcha with me, and equivocate the two.

I personally don't believe in the Christian concept of our origin anymore. I haven't for 10 or 15 years at least now. I don't believe any religious concept relayed to me by another human being, because I think it is preposterous to assume that one belief set is right, and all the others wrong. Therefore, I will abstain.

Now before you assume that I don't know what I am talking about with respect to religion - know this - I come from a religious family. I was confirmed, attended church twice a week for the first half of my life, took over my mom's Sunday School class for a year-and-a-half when she fell ill, and at one point was considering entering a seminary. Then, because of an unstable step-father, I got out of where we were, and I ventured out into the world. I was in the military and then went to college. I had many, many discussions with both people of faith and those not of faith (I still do, both in RL and on the net). I have read literally dozens and dozens of books on the matter, some coming from a religious POV and some not. I have made up my own mind, and that is, that beyond what we can see here in the physical world, in the fossil record, with astronomy, and so forth, I am not willing to speculate about. I have concluded that speculation of that sort has done far more harm to the inhabitants of this world than good, so I will simply not participate in a contest of that sort.

As an aside, because this has always bothered me...

That doesn't matter.

The constitution is what was agreed on and signed by *all* of our founding fathers. It is not their later writings, ramblings, or deathbed confessions. What any one founding father says later is his own opinion, and has no more bearing than the opinion of you or I - if one of them said, "Yeah, you know that whole "Search and Siezure" bit? I didn't mean for that to apply to black people" in his memoirs, that doesn't make it legit.

Rei makes an excellent point.

The Constitution is the result of compromises made between the Founding Fathers. If it had been assembled by majority vote on concepts, it would be much more liberal (and incidentally, many of these arguments would not come up).

However, this is also why it was left open for amendment. They knew that they could not set out all possiblities for enforcing freedom for all time.

Hell, they figured the country would be lucky to last 50 years, much less 200. And were right, we were quite fortuitious.

I agree that there should be NO government differentiation between a church and a normal NPO. Marriage should NOT be a legal institution; it cannot be done without the church being so engrained in the state that specific marriages are handled by an ever-expansive number of different departments, and that the legal nature of the marriage is entirely defined by the person's religious declaration, in a manner that prohibits declaration from being arbitrary and forces the religion to adopt to the state's penal code.

If you want to preserve the "SANCTITY" of marriage, get rid of its legality (which is tied to property ownership) and set it as a religious status.

Madison drafted that amendment, and is quoted as stating that that clause did indeed mean the separation of church and state. Jefferson, and other founding fathers, as well as the high court - many times hence, have also interpreted it that way. I know it's inconvenient for some, but it's pretty clear to me, and I will defer to the author, and those who've echoed and agreed with his own interpretation of his philosophy. Those who've made politics and philosphy their life's work. Characterizing it as "ramblings" or what not is, well, just incorrect and conveniently dismissive, in my opinion. I am reasonably sure that when Madison submitted his proposals, he illustrated what he meant, in no uncertain terms - remember there was a lot of contention between the Federalists and anti-Federalists, so clear and precise explanations were surely demanded. Then it was signed by the others, which to me says that they agreed.

Interpreting the constitution (and other law) is the first step towards applying it, and who better to interpret it than those who were involved in drafting and ratifying it? In modern times, we leave that up to the experts - the Supreme Court justices, and other judges. It's the way it works, like it or not.

And yes, it does matter, because that particular interpretation has been the basis for many, many rulings. If we're going simply marginalize the interpretation of the constitution, and henceforth the application thereof, why not just throw it out the window altogether then? Do you feel the same way about retroactive interpretation of the other amendments too? What other method is there?

I will stop here, and let you answer, if you like. I have explained my stance thoroughly on these matters, they're not likely to change significantly (except slightly, over time - much more time than the lifespan of any internet thread), and there's just not really much more to be said on my part. I generally don't involve myself in these online political debates anyway, and I suppose I only did here because the particular subject matter here is something I have given a lot of thought to.

Oh, that's right. Kevn argued that gay men shouldn't be allowed to marry because they get AIDS more than any other group. I'm not sure why that applies to marriage, maybe because marriage would encourage mongamy and then the infection rate among gay men might fall? It didn't seem to make sense to me.

Are there other non-religous reasons?

(Yes I realize everything I'm about to say here is completely off track from the original topic but it was stated here so I'm responding to it here. My apologies to those annoyed by the switch in topics.)

1. SOME kids will have sex, we should teach them how to protect themselves from the life altering consequences so that one mistake doesn't ruin their lives forever.

2. Kids will drive and SOME will drive drunk, we must teach them the dangers of alcohol and help them make the wiser choice through knowledge.

3. SOME kids will do drugs, we must teach them the dangers of those drugs and help them make the wiser choice through honesty and knowledge.

When we tell a child "Just don't do it because its bad." We deny that they are intelligent questioning and curious human beings. Nancy Reagan's Just say No campaign was less than effective because of one basic point of logic most children understand. If it's all bad why are people doing it? There must be something good about it or no one would be doing it anyway.

This is what I told my children about drugs.... "Yes there is a reason people do them. That reason is that because when the drugs work the way they expect them to it feels good. I won't lie to you about that. But the problem is that its like gambling. Sometimes you win a little and thats great... but when you lose, you lose big. Let me tell you about some of the things I saw when my friends and I were doing drugs and things went wrong." Then we spent an afternoon talking about things that can happen and answering questions and even looking for information about drugs online. The first part was admitting to my child that it was a mistake I had made and therefore knew something about not pretending I was innocent and expecting them to be too. The second part was giving the child every possible piece of information we could find together and answering every question they had. KNOWLEDGE is the key, not denial.

There, again my apologies for going waaaaaaayyyyy off topic. *hops off soap box*


EDIT: Oh and I also made a deal with my son when he and his friends got their drivers licenses. The deal was that if he promised that any time he found himself either drunk or with people who were drunk he promised to call me for a ride instead of driving and in return I promised there would be no lectures, yelling or arguing when I came to pick him up. It turned out he never needed to call me but it was a promise still if he ever had.

When one says "separation of church and state" as the founders spoke of it, one means a wall that keeps the government from adopting a religion all must follow, like the Church of England or restricting religion or control religions in any way.

The words are unambiguous. The leash is on the government, as it clearly say "Congress shall make no law.... ". It has nothing to do with anyone but Congress. You can't keep religious people out of government, and their ideals come with the package.

I don't care who wrote the passage, there were 55 delegates who hashed it out, and they agreed on these very simple, plain English words, so it can't be misinterpreted. If you can post from the constitutional convention quotes from a majority that they wanted the government to be 100% secular, I'll agree with you. But we know that even after they created this constitution they continued to allow religion in every aspect of government and public schools.

Do you think he never rode in a car with a friend who had been drinking? Seriously...

I agree with teaching children how to be safer. I certainly would not teach a child proper needle procedures for doing crank to make it safer for the child. I will teach the child to avoid it. I won't teach him how to drive safer when he is drunk. I'll insist he avoid it, no matter how much he wants to drive.

As to the point of sex education. I didn't say a child shouldn't get it, the child should learn it from their family according to their customs. The point I was making is if religion is such a personal issue that children must learn it away from school, then the same should be true of sex education. Imagine how embarrassing it would be for a very religious Mennonite girl seeing the teacher apply a condom to a cucumber as he explains it, and much more.

It just shouldn't be forced on kids.

As to your first paragraph, thats simple logic... although insisting a child rarely works without some explanation to back it up, I'm assuming that like most people you would offer that too.

As to your second paragraph and ending statement.... In fact knowledge and education is often forced. We force our children to listen and learn throughout their lives.

That young mennonite girl is going to be a teenager some day and going to be dealing with teenage boys. When a boy tells her, "Its ok you wont get pregnant the first time." You want her to have the knowledge and education to be able to put him straight. Realistically how likely is it that her very religious mennonite parents are going to be sitting her down and teaching her that information? More likely they will be going with the "Don't do it its just bad." method of parenting. Thats nothing against religious parents, but having been raised in a very religious household myself, I'm aware that it is often the pattern.

In our schools we teach our children many things their parents don't or can't. We teach them about chemicals in science class, about algebra in math class, creative writing in English class. We teach them proper hygene in health class even. As a parent who is already open with my children, I still prefer a school system that is willing to cover the areas of education I dont cover. In the third grade in health my daughter learned all about oral hygene and came home with things we integrated into our own routine right away. In my mind, teaching a child about how best to take care of his/her body should involve all aspects of the body. Teaching her to protect herself sexually is just as important as teaching her to protect her teeth.


EDIT: And actually, I know for a FACT my son has never ridden in a car with someone who had been drinking. I know because we've talked about it. I know because he's talked to his sister about it and he made the same deal with her that I made with him. I know because he has in the past volunteered to be a designated driver as he doesn't drink.

How is knowing proper condom application going to set him straight? If anything it will make her more likely to engage in sex thinking she is protected. There is no such thing as safe sex for her, only safer sex. Big difference.

You are welcome to your opinion, as am I. But you want your opinion to be law. I just want parents to decide. If a parent wants to delegate their responsibility to teach their child sexuality to a PE teacher, they should have that option. But in the same regard, a parent wanting to retain their rights over their child's sexuality training shouldn't be forced to do so against their will.

I wonder how many people who would object to their child learning sexual education in school actually have enough knowledge and wisdom to actually go through with the conversations.

It seems to me that most of the people who object to sex-ed, are actually trying to avoid dealing with the issue themselves. (out of sight, out of mind?)