If this is personal don't answer what is your religious affiliation? Catholic? or a denomination of Christianity? Just out of curiosity
I'm Mormon.
I wouldn't say births out of wedlock and divorce have screwed things up, throughout history we have plenty of examples of successful people coming out of these situations. I don't see a total global meltdown coming if we "change" the definition.
Then you haven't been paying attention. Much of today's societal ills are due to the breakdown of the family unit and traditional values. Government legitimization of gay marriage only takes us further down that road.
I'm more than happy to leave it up to the states, as it should be. It doesn't mean I would consider those states who would legalize gay marriage as being morally right but it would at least be following the Constitution. What's happening right now, i.e. gay marriage being legalized by liberal activist judges, is against the Constitution.
The cases don't have anything to do with the right to marriage. They are about gay rights in conflict with religious institutions. If you are gay and go to a church ask a priest to marry you, it is not wrong for the priest to say "Unfortunately I can not because according to the Bible and book I consider to be the word of God, marriage should be between a man and a women." If someone goes to a Town Justice and says will you marry us, the judge can't say no because of religious feelings. The right to dedicate your life to someone you love does not restrict the rights of others.
Once again, the point is we are already seeing the so called "rights" of gays intruding upon the rights of others. The kinds of things gay marriage supporters said would never happen. And it's only going to get worse.
Spoken with true ignorance, since I first said it was about freedom of speech, with a link to Cornell University Law School First Amendment definition "The First Amendment of the United States Constitution protects the right to freedom of religion and freedom of expression from government interference."
Brought up the Universal Declaration of Human Rights because Americans helped write it, and the United States voted in favor of it.
Big difference between a Liberal and a Libertarian. Big difference between religion and politics, you can't seem to differentiate the two.
The subject at hand has nothing to do with freedom of speech. It has nothing to do with freedom of expression. And it certainly has nothing to do with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. You say you're not a liberal but only a liberal would even attempt to bring something like that up. This issue has to do with the U.S. Constitution alone and what powers it gives to the federal government and those retains by the states. Period.
You probably have no desire to find a moderate any interpretation that differs from your you view as criticism.
It seems you live in a small world then, I've met extremely intelligent Christians, Muslims and Atheist. It was actually a Muslim who opened my mind to how great the teachings of Jesus are. Before I would argued the Bible is complete nonsense now I have a desire to know more about Jesus(as a man not as a son of God).
Well that's another untenable position many secular liberals take. They like Jesus' teachings but don't believe He was divine. Christ's central teaching was that He was the Son of God and Savior of the world. He was either what He professed to be or else a mad man. You can't have it both ways.
Well when he says "He who is without sin, let him cast the first stone." He is telling a crowd, he is teaching them the error their way(how the Torah's teachings were not correct). It seems he deliberately waited for the crowd to leave when he tells the women "Go thy way and sin no more," I take that as go and stop violating the Torah because I won't be here to protect you next time, if she continued to be an adulterer the same crowd would come and stone her because they were following the Torah
While Jesus certainly condemned all the vain additions the Jewish leaders made to the Law of Moses, this situation didn't pertain to that. Those who brought the woman to Jesus were correct in that she was guilty of adultery and, under the Law of Moses, should be stoned. However, Christ (as the One who originally gave the Law of Moses) had come to once again offer the fulness of the Higher Law or the Gospel, which fulfilled, transcended, and superseded the lower Law of Moses (which was simply full of types and shadows pointing to the eventual Atonement of Christ). Contrary to what many secular liberals would like to think, this
did not mean He condoned or excused her adultery in any way. Forgiveness was available to her, if she repented and "sinned no more," but the latter part of that exchange liberals seem to prefer to overlook when they simply quote the first part about "casting a stone."
