quote:Right. It is NOT in all households. Certainly not in mine. Most non-Christians see the Christmas tree as being symbolic of...Christmas.
The Christmas tree is symbolic of Christmas. But what is Christmas but a festival celebrating life? In those households that choose to have a Christmas tree, whether they actually know it or not the Christmas tree is representing life. As someone pointed out the use of evergreen decoration at Christmas dates back a very long time.
Posts: 8473 | Registered: Apr 2003
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I don't see why marriage rates should fall off because gay people start marrying. I can see divorce rates rising--you see, when more people can get married, that means in the long run more people are getting divorces too.
I would not jail the minister. It seems we've reached consensus on that. However, when he hits the "Mississippi Burning" level and starts handing out buckets of stones, you have to do something about that.
Really, my objection is how against letting people see our relationships as normal and therefore more tolerable a lot of anti-SSMers seem to be.
Posts: 1735 | Registered: Oct 2004
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quote: The only solution I see that meets concersn going both ways is the one I've advocated before - the clear demarcation of the civil institution as merely a collection of legal rights, default rules, and duties from any other concept of marriage.
I don't quite understand why this isn't a more obvious solution for both sides of the issue. In every non-civil aspect of "marriage" we've already "won" the battle. As I've posted before, there are a growing number of Christian churches which welcome homosexuals into their ranks and will perform marriage ceremonies for them.
It's odd that anti-SSM Christians aren't more vociferously attacking these renegade Christian churches. I mean, if anyone is weakening the concept of "marriage" as a God-ordained union to be shared only by one man and one woman, it's these renegades, no? To me that shows that battling the concept in the courts for religious reasons isn't about "defending" anything. Its about getting the government's endorsement of your narrow religious views. In this way it's very similar to the fight to get "Intelligent Design" taught as science.
I find it immensely ironic that if I wanted my relationship with Chris to become a Holy Union of some sort, I could have that. Yet I'm barred from the civil recognition and its accompanying rights/responsibilities. What purpose does this serve? What is the good to society in this?
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