From the Washington state Voters’ pamphlet, the section on Referendum Measure 74, which would allow same-sex couples to marry. From the Argument Against.
God’s creation of marriage as the union of one man and one woman is the foundation of society and has served us well for thousands of years.
Seriously?!
I shouldn’t be surprised. The statements are prepared by the people who prepare them. They can have batshit crazy stuff in them.
But I am suprised, all the same. “God’s creation of marriage as the union of one man and one woman” doesn’t exist. One man often had lots of women in God’s old-timey world.
My “Promised Land” is a place where people don’t talk stupid shite like that.
Neil Rickert says
They are not reading their own bible.
Janine: Hallucinating Liar says
They do not need to read that book. The big sky daddy reveals to them all the knowledge they need.
jonathangray says
“Have ye not read, that he who made man from the beginning, made them male and female? For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife, and they two shall be in one flesh.”
Ophelia Benson says
@ 3 – that is one passage. It is not the whole of the bible.
It’s also not god, of course, but even if you think the bible is the source of what god said, that’s not the whole of it.
Alverant says
So all those other pre-christian cultures didn’t have marriage?
Sylvia Sybil says
At one of the Seattle town halls, the Reject 74 (anti same-sex marriage) debater kept trotting out this stinker over and over again, and I don’t believe the Approve 74 (pro-SSM) debater refuted him once. It was very frustrating to me, because it’s such an obvious lie to anyone with even a passing familiarity with the religious books in question. Instead, the Approve 74 debater focused on how the language of the referendum specifically permits churches to choose whether they will permit or refuse to perform the ceremony (which is ALREADY in place but whatever). Which I suppose is the better strategy politically because it allays the feelings of fence-sitters who might believe the “oppression of religion!” lies, but it left a bad taste in my mouth because it felt like the Approve 74 debater was admitting these false claims* through silence.
*Not only was he wrong about what his religion actually says about marriage, but his religion has nothing to do with my marriage in the first place.
jonathangray says
Ophelia Benson:
Where in the Bible does God say otherwise?
Alverant:
Not as God intended it, no.
Sylvia Sybil:
Well that’s what the culture war is all about, isn’t it?
“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”
“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”
“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master – that’s all.”
Stacy says
“God” created it? Do tell.
“It’s what (we think) (our) god wants!” is a theological rationale. It is not evidence or justification for law in a secular society.
Define “us.”
feralboy12 says
Biblical marriage:
One man + one rape victim + 50 shekels of silver paid to victim’s father.
Yup, the foundation of all that is holy and good.
Gordon Willis says
Sorry, who’s God? Anyone know him/her?
Anonymous Atheist says
The many varieties of biblical marriage:
http://thinkprogress.org/lgbt/2012/08/06/646781/nom-defends-biblical-marriage-including-slavery-concubines-polygamy-and-rape/
http://galileounchained.com/2012/03/05/biblical-marriage-not-a-pretty-picture/
michaeld says
Or here’s a more amusing way of the different versions of bible marriage. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFkeKKszXTw
Tony–Queer Duck Overlord of The Bronze– says
Someone remind me:
Where in the Bible does it mention that Adam and Eve were married? I can’t seem to recall seeing that word anywhere in Genesis…
Sylvia Sybil says
@ Jonathan Gray,
Here’s a link describing eight different forms of marriage in the Bible. My favorite is a toss-up between Levirate marriage (Tamar & her dead husband’s brother Onan & her dead husband’s father Judah; God expressed his approval of Tamar’s pursuit of the pregnancy owed her by granting her twin sons) and handmaiden marriage (Abraham & Sarah & Hagar; God expressed approval by sending an angel to tell Hagar to return to the marriage).
I actually agree with you on this. This culture war is all about whether or not someone else’s religious beliefs should affect my civil rights.
The point of your Humpty Dumpty quote seems to be that words have to have mutually agreed upon meanings, otherwise communication would be impossible. This has nothing to do with whether or not a secular and governmental institution should be segregated or integrated. Did the meaning of the word “soldier” change when DADT was repealed? Did the changing meaning of the word “computer” change the nature of people who perform mathematics? The meaning of the word “marriage” has no connection to your quote abut making up gibberish.
…but we still call them marriages, don’t we? We talk a lot about people having weddings and being married and having relationships with their husbands, wives, and in-laws, no matter whether they are Christian, pre-Christian, or non-Christian. One individual religion has never had a monopoly on the word “marriage” or the related words. So whether or not your god “intended” these marriages to take the various forms they had, we still call them marriages.
Beatrice, anti-imperialist anti-racist Islamophobiaphobic leftist says
Tony, they had children! They couldn’t have had children without being married so that proves they were married. Duh.
Tony–Queer Duck Overlord of The Bronze– says
jonathangray:
Which type of marriage did your god intend?
http://www.religioustolerance.org/mar_bibl0.htm
At last count, there were 8 different types of marriage found in that immoral religious tome believers of Christianity worship (you know, the Bible).
Tony–Queer Duck Overlord of The Bronze– says
Beatrice:
Oh I’d forgotten that part of the Bible that talks about incest.
Hein says
@Gordon Willis I am. Don’t believe a word from those fuckers. They don’t know me. They’ve never even met me, but they spread lies about me. I really couldn’t care less who marries whom, as long as all parties involved consent…
Tony–Queer Duck Overlord of The Bronze– says
Stacy:
The 1%.
Rutee Katreya says
FAiry Tales: Perfectly plausible basis for social institutions.
Eh, as they claimed their gods intended it, yeah, they did. And most of their Gods were less terrible people than your Tripartite God.
Yes, little one, words’ meanings do change over time. Lewis Carrol wasn’t complaining about the natural drift of language.
sheila says
Yeah right. Marriage has “always” been one man and one woman, just like Christians have “always”been against abortion (since about 1980) and “always” been against racism.
And we’ve always been at war with Eastasia.
Rodney Nelson says
Devout, faithful Christians should never accept same-sex marriage, because it is an affront to the traditional family values upheld by Henry VIII and his wife, Catherine of Aragon, and his wife, Anne Boleyn, and his wife, Jane Seymour, and his wife, Anne of Cleves, and his wife, Catherine Howard, and his wife, Catherine Parr. They all knew the meaning of marriage and none of them lost their heads over the matter.
[Stolen from Ryan Major]
jonathangray says
Various:
The fact that the Bible describes different types of marriage, some of which God was willing to tolerate at certain times, doesn’t mean they are all equally good in God’s eyes. The words of Jesus which I quoted earlier make that clear.
Besides, anyone with even a cursory knowledge of Christian doctrine knows that not all the permissions and prohibitions of the Old Covenant are binding under the New.
Of course I appreciate that atheists regard Christian doctrine as nonsense; but they have no grounds for regarding it as inconsistent nonsense.
Sylvia Sybil:
Indeed. And vice versa.
&
Rutee Katreya:
I think Humpty Dumpty is making the point that the meanings of words depend on who wields cultural hegemony (“which is to be master”).
sheila:
“you shall not murder a child by abortion nor kill that which is born” – Didache, late 1st/early 2nd century AD.
“Gentes licet barbarae tamen humanae.” (“The people may be barbarous, but they are human”) – St Augustine, City of God, 5th century AD.
Rodney Nelson:
You do know Henry VIII was excommunicated, right?
Stacy says
No. Humpty Dumpty was talking about making words do whatever he wanted. The passage is very clear, and it has nothing to do with “who wields cultural hegemony.”
Humpty Dumpty claimed the word “glory” means “a nice knock-down argument.”
(When I use a quote….)
Stacy says
Then there were all those Christians who allowed abortion up until the fetus looked human enough, or up until quickening:
http://www.religioustolerance.org/abo_hist.htm
Rodney Nelson says
jonathangray #23
Which particular permissions and prohibitions are effective and which are discarded is up to the individual Christian’s taste. Certain church leaders claim they know which ones are operative and which aren’t, but quite often these opinions are ignored by their followers. The Catholic hierarchy claims that contraception (which isn’t mentioned anywhere in the Bible) is a big no-no, but much of the Catholic laity don’t pay attention to this prohibition.
You do know that Henry VIII was head of his own church, right?
Rutee Katreya says
Today, you learned that “Christian” does not solely mean “Catholic”.
*Snicker* Oh, does the Catholic Fool want to pretend that the Catholic Church wasn’t racist because some chump saint made a two line proclamation? THis’ll be a laugh. You know that indigenous slaves were almost as common on churches as they were on manors in an Encomienda, right?
Also, ‘barbarian’, in the middle of the Roman Empire (or really, ever), is not the shining example of non-racism you seem to think it is.
Stacy says
Yeah, Augustine gets no cookies for granting humanity to the barbarians. The pious Christian slaveholders of antebellum America also admitted their slaves were human.
Sylvia Sybil says
Jonathan Gray @ 23
My civil rights have no bearing on anyone else’s religion because nobody else’s religion has a right to my body or my life. That’s why I don’t tithe, I don’t cover my hair*, and I don’t go to church; because no religious institution has a right to my money, body, or time unless I freely choose to give it to them. This is why my marriage to a man can be performed by a Justice of the Peace or by any religious official who consents. My secular marriage is still valid even if your priests (I’m assuming you’re Catholic because you think Catholic excommunication has any bearing in this argument) don’t sign off on it.
This idea that my right to partake in a secular institution, my ability to financially provide for my wife and secure our children’s future, has any bearing on someone else’s religious beliefs is only valid if that religion has the right to my body and my life. They don’t; I am completely separate. Like it or not, in the USA separation of church and state is one of our founding legal principles. And you should like it, because it’s what prevents Jehovah’s Witnesses from stopping your blood transfusions and orthodox Jews from banning your pork chops. They’re not allowed to enforce their religious prohibitions on you and you’re not allowed to enforce your religious prohibitions on me.
*Not scaremongering; I grew up in a strict Catholic community where mantillas were strongly encouraged for girls over First Communion age (~7).
jonathangray says
Stacy:
How would you understand Humpty’s cryptic remark “The question is, which is to be master – that’s all”?
It may be true that at certain times in history, certain Church Fathers, popes, theologians etc were of the opinion that abortion up to a certain point was not murder. That’s not the same as “allowing abortion” up until that point.
Rodney Nelson:
Which particular permissions and prohibitions in US law are effective and which are discarded is up to the individual US citizen’s taste. Certain political and judicial leaders claim they know which ones are operative and which aren’t, but quite often these opinions are ignored by the citizenry. The courts claim that murder (which isn’t mentioned anywhere in the Constitution) is a big no-no, but many US citizens don’t pay attention to this prohibition.
( ̄o ̄)y~~
Rutee Katreya:
( ̄o ̄)y~~
&
Stacy:
Slavery has taken many forms throughout history and is not synonymous with ‘racism’.
Sylvia Sybil:
A monstrous act of lèse majesté. One wonders if the Gadsden flag was a satanic riposte to “Ipsa conteret caput tuum”…
Rutee Katreya says
Dude, we’re not talking about generic slaves. We’re talking about specifically non-white slaves, taken because they weren’t really full people, because they weren’t white. When you enslave the native people of carribean islands or Aztec or Inca because they’re lesser than you, it’s fucking racist. When you maintain a structure of slavery wherein only black people can be slaves because they’re lesser than white people, that’s fucking racist.
The Catholic Church signed off on Encomiendas until the natives were too dead to continue being the primary source of labor, at which point black slaves were shipped to Spanish colonies; again, with total approval of the catholic church. The same applies to when Portugal imported absolutely ludicrous numbers of slaves to Brazil.
To say the technically true generality that not all slavery is racist, when we’re specifying monstrously racist forms of it, marks you for an even bigger fool than your average heterosexist Christian twit.
It’s not like Catholics would be the winners if the nascent American states would have done that.
Jadzia626 says
It is simple really. What any god or prophet says about marriage applies to that particular faith, not to anyone else. No one owns marriage. The legal aspects of marriage should not be affected by religions, neither should the state enforce religious laws on people who do not follow that particular religion. That is a major human rights violation. If people want to submit themselves to weird laws, that’s their business, but not the business of a state that gives 2 cents for human rights. As history is a repeated example of, a state run by a religion or a totalitarian ideology is an oppressive state.