Can you oppose ethically abortion AND homosexual marriage?

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Awesome blog article It is really impossible to sort people into two biological sexes, much less two genders.

I'd like to add another example: Two young people with different sets of genitals get married. The husband happens to be a crossdresser, and over time he realizes that he was born in the wrong body. Of course this doesn't affect his sexual orientation. He -- or rather, she -- is essentially a lesbian woman in the body of a man.

Her wife, who happens to be bisexual, doesn't have any problem with this and is very supportive of her transsexual husband. So her husband becomes a wife. She goes through hormone replacement therapy and sex reassignment surgery, and legally changes her name and sex. What happens now if they live in a country where gay marriage is illegal? Are the two forced to get divorced?

That was in fact the case in Germany until recently. No divorce, no legal sex change. It didn't made a lick of sense. The same could be said about all laws against gay marriage.

And BTW: http://campaigns.dailykos.com/p/dia/act ... ion_KEY=71

Quite the opposite.

Ethics are objective rules of general application. Morals are subjective rules.

If you try to save everyone, you are going to fail. The fact is, we cannot. Many people in this world are bound to suffer and do. There is no stopping it. The best we can do is try to make the best choice in each individual situation.

I understand the pro-life position, I really do, but men should not be so self-righteous in their views of abortion because they do not understand what women go through. Forcing a woman to have a child when she has been raped for example is pretty damaging to the woman. Things are not so black and white.

I like to take things case by case. Forcing a woman to have a child when she does not want one is a negative on the whole, because everyone suffers, including the unwanted child. Oppressing gay men by saying they are inherently wrong and unnatural is also wrong. There is no getting around it. It is wrong and debating why it is wrong is just aggravating the issue and missing the point. It is a matter of human rights.

We cannot solve this problem though by looking for the greater good. Each individual has the right to do as they wish. There is a reason why so many people in this world are starving.

I would like the U.S. to uphold its own Constitution and separate "church" from "state".
Marriage should be an entirely religious institution, with every religion free to marry whoever or whatever they deem fit. Does anyone worry about the rules for baptism? No, because we don't tie legal rights and tax breaks to baptism. We should do the same for marriage.
Civil unions for all, and legally-recognized marriage for none!

But then you still have a situation where some people are married (civil union + church wedding), whereas gays are merely... what would that be called, unionized? Anyway, you'd still have a two-class society in terms of marriage.

Baptism is no big issue because people usually get baptized as children, and most churches wouldn't mind baptizing an adult gay person either.

There are churches that are willing to marry gay people.
But even there weren't, there's nothing stopping people from starting new churches.
Would anyone really want to force a church to marry them, anyway? Why would anyone even attend a church whose values they didn't share?

Of course I wouldn't want to force churches to marry anybody. In fact, I don't see why priests, shamans and witch doctors should be allowed to conduct a legally binding, state-recognized marriage at all. What about separation of church and state?

In Germany, you can only legally get married at a civil registry office. Many people have a church wedding in addition, but that has no legal significance and is just a pointless ceremony. Why not use the same system in the USA? People already have to apply for a marriage license, so why not get married right there and then?

Alternatively, you could leave it to the people if they want to get married by a city clerk or by a guy in a fancy robe. Nothing would change for religious people, and everyone else could get married at the municipal office.

I agree with you, CrazyCatLord (typing your name makes me giggle).

The problem in the States is that some people are offended by the use of the word "marriage" being legally applied to gay couples. Marriage is a religious institution, and the government should not be making ANY decisions about who may marry. Thus, if we have a legal institution called "civil union" and a religious institution called "marriage", it solves that problem. No more mixing religious terminology with legal terminology.

There is such thing as civil Marriage. It may have been a religious institution one day, but not anymore. Atheists can marry and there are countless of religions that allow different kinds of marriage. As long as the government doesn't force churches to allow homosexuals to marry, religious people should just admit that they don't have a right not to be offended.

In the US, you have to be recognized by a state to marry someone. You can be a judge, clergy of any faith, or a ships captain in certain waters. Clergy doesn't really have to be religious. The Universal Life Church will ordain anyone via mail order I believe, and then you just go to the courthouse and pay for whatever it is you pay for to be able to conduct a marriage ceremony. Some clergy are not authorized by the state to marry people because they haven't gotten the whatever it is by the state. There are lots of "lay preachers" who don't have their own church who haven't gotten that. There are lay preachers around here who do have their own churches that can't do that either.

Mr Sam at the grocery store has his own church. It's a small, rented concrete block place that him and some other folks rented. They pay for it out of the collection. He has services and stuff and a radio show, but he isn't ordained and doesn't have a 501 (c)3. He can preach all day to you, baptize you, help you get "saved", do a funeral and all that but he can't legally marry you. People in his church who want to get married go to the courthouse and get married then they have a regular wedding at the church afterwards that isn't legal but it's religious. Most of them wait to move in together or consumate it after the church wedding. (Some have already consumated it, but wait between the courthouse wedding and the church wedding to do it)

Back before my son and his baby mama started hating me, they were planning a wedding and wanted me to marry them. Why, I don't know. He's an athiest and she's a baptist. They were going to get married at the courthouse but have a ceremony at the lake house on the point and they wanted me to make up a pretty ceremony for them. I'm pretty creative and know a lot about weddings, I guess thats why they picked me. But, hopefully they won't end up getting married because if they do, he will never be able to get away from that crazy b*tch.

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