Not if your goal was to be in a mixed nationality marriage before you even meet the significant other. On the other hand both my brother and sister married Americans and seem pretty happy, but they were not shopping for a American as their spouse.
Gay Marriages
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well it isnt possible to have a sinless homosexual, mainly because it isnt possible to have a sinless human being.
As for lust, it is clearly a sin and one needs to ask god for forgivness for it, however, to go out and act uppon that lust is just saying to god you really dont care what he thinks. -
So then everyone who has ever acted upon lust is not in Heaven?
And why is it not possible to have a sinless human being?
It seems difficult, to be sure. But not impossible. After all, wasn’t Jesus -
Never mind.
~cheers
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I think it might be interesting to start arguing from a position of a person faithful to a different religion. I guess it would quickly become a mess:
After all, all christians are following an outdated way of praising God, and calling the prophet Jesus the son of God is a terrible sin, surely on the day of the Judgement the attending Jesus will not tolerate such a blasphemy.
And of course there is only one god and no such thing as a trinity.
Now, this is the truth as we all know.I guess some of the christians around here should be rather glad that the atheists and agnostics around do not take up such a stance but try to argue in the way that Renessaince and Enlightenment have tought us.
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lust and sin is slightly off topic, but yes Jesus never did sin, but he was hardly a regular human either
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Of course Jesus was human. He was a prophet, nothing more, nothing less.
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I believe the cleric Enoch never sinned either, and for this, was rewarded by God with the position of Metatron. of course, all that is assuming god exists, which he doesnt.
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Again where to begin . . .
I’ll go from last-post first.
Janus1 - Enoch, i don’t believe was a cleric per se, and it never says that he never sinned. Rather he walked closely with God, and so he never “died” but was simply taken to heaven.
F_alk - we both know that Jesus was not simply a prophet. He was either the Son of God, a crazy fool, or a liar. Be true to yourself - you believe he existed, so call it as you see it. He was a crazy fool or a liar in your opinion.
For the whole “lust” thing . . . i’m not certain that wanting to have sex with a woman is a “sin”. Jesus says that someone who commits adultery in his heart is guilty of committing it period. This is to say that if i lust after a married woman (i.e. if i do more than simply say that a married woman is attractive, but rather yearn to have sex with her), then i am guilty of committing adultery with her. Believe it or not, i actually do make a conscious effort to not lust after/fantasize about a woman who is taken. As for the single ones, well, I’m not feeling too bad about my feelings there. We’re expected to want to have sex with women, its the actual commission of this outside of marriage that makes things dicey.
As for homosexuals . . . i think that most rational Christians view it as “love the sinner, hate the sin”. -
my mistake CC.
not a cleric, but a prophet and a scribewww.belinus.co.uk/doorsofpeace/AngelsMetatron.htm
www.circle-of-light.com/Psychic_Readings/metatron.html
www.crystalinks.com/metatron.htmlaccording to these, and other sources, Enoch earned such merit in the eyes of God, that he became the Metatron, a sort of Super Angel (as i understand it, outside of the classical angelic heirarchy). it does not say specifically that he did not sin, however, i would imagine that to earn such merit in the eyes of god, he would have to be almost without sin, if not without sin entirely.
interestingly enough, i became interested in the metatron business from the movie Dogma. the religious lore is actually quite interesting, even though i do not believe it. however, the most interesting bits seem to come predominantly from the Old Testament.
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@cystic:
F_alk - we both know that Jesus was not simply a prophet. He was either the Son of God, a crazy fool, or a liar. Be true to yourself - you believe he existed, so call it as you see it. He was a crazy fool or a liar in your opinion.
Well, the latest holy book of three religions that praise the same good clearly calls Jesus a prophet. Thus, logically, i have to take him as such. I do not trust too old books and information when learning ;)
For my personal opinion: I think he actually was some kind of preacher (which IMO in that times often were called prohpets regardless of wether they could tell the future or not) and social reformer. What people made of him after his death is a totally different story. -
i think that gay couples are ok but marriage is wrong. I have nothing against anyone but it is just different so techically no i am not for gay marraige but i guess it could be oh and mutharussia–- that was really cool that u made sure about the racial thing!!
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mutharussia–- that was really cool that u made sure about the racial thing!!
I try! :wink: 8)
Thanks! -
mutharussia–- that was really cool that u made sure about the racial thing!!
I try! :wink: 8)
Thanks, I don’t get compliments on this site much! :lol: -
I am not gay.
I have gay friends.
If they wish to marry eachother. Fine.
Would it worsen my life in any way? No
Would it lower gas prices? No
Would it stop the war? No
Will God punish this? Who knows? Maybe. Then again maybe he’ll punish people who are too fat. :-?
If you’re not gay. Don’t marry your same sex.
If you are gay. Marry your same sex.
IMO this has nothing to do with religion and everything to do with prejudice. As for the God factor, we will all answer for something :wink:
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:lol: Genius, Genius! :lol:
But good points! -
@stuka:
I am not gay.
I have gay friends.
If they wish to marry eachother. Fine.
Would it worsen my life in any way? No
Would it lower gas prices? No
Would it stop the war? No
Will God punish this? Who knows? Maybe. Then again maybe he’ll punish people who are too fat. :-?
If you’re not gay. Don’t marry your same sex.
If you are gay. Marry your same sex.
IMO this has nothing to do with religion and everything to do with prejudice. As for the God factor, we will all answer for something :wink:
Will it take away from the seriousness and respect that comes with the historical tradition of marriage? Absolutely.
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@Deviant:Scripter:
Will it take away from the seriousness and respect that comes with the historical tradition of marriage? Absolutely.
How will it take away from the seriousness and respect? I don’t understand :-?
If you mean by the way gays and lesbians could now have an equal share of seriousness and respect, then, there you have the ‘predjudice factor’ of my arguement.
Here’s another example which is similar to your reply. One could say that blacks take away from the seriousness and respect that comes with the right to vote. That was one arguement from the southern white communities during the early 1960’s. Would you say that they are correct?
Well if you aren’t a racist (which I am not saying you are), you wouldn’t see truth and fairness in this. -
With a divorce rate reaching (or even surpassing) 50% in the US, i’d say heterosexuals have ‘taken away from the seriousness and respect that comes with the historical tradition of marriage’ well enough on their own.
~cheers
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“seriousness and respect”?
yea, ok. one word… Vegas
further than that, marriage is not some anceint and sacred tradition. for a long time, people married based on whoever provided the best dowry. some still do that. how is that serious and respectful?gay marriages will not take away from seriousness and respect at all. its simply allowing them the same rights as heterosexuals. I think your opinion on this matter is extremely bigotted.
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With a divorce rate reaching (or even surpassing) 50% in the US, i’d say heterosexuals have ‘taken away from the seriousness and respect that comes with the historical tradition of marriage’ well enough on their own.
~cheers
so maybe if it’s that bad we should abolish it? :wink:
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The following is the majority of an essay I have been writing in bits and pieces over the last few weeks on this very topic.
You know, I have heard several people, gay and straight, mention what they thought America’s founding fathers might have said on this topic. I think there’s a simple reason that no specific condemnation or endorsement of same sex marriage was ever made in any of the formative American documents, and that’s because the founding fathers never imagined anyone would conceive of it. I have no doubt that if you could conjure up the departed spirits of Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson and ask them their position on this, I think they would be aghast that we would even consider tolerating such unions, much less legally endorsing them. I’m sure many will despise and hate me for that remark (it wouldn’t be the first time) but I think it’s pretty obvious.
I’ve noticed a trend in America as I have become more politically aware over the last few years, and that is that freedom of religion is often mistaken of freedom from religion. People want to totally separate church and state from one another, but you cannot separate religion from America, for it constitutes the very fabric of the nation. That being said, America has surely deviated from basic Christian principles (though shalt not kill, but abortion and capital punishment are surely killing). I will be the first to say that over the course of many centuries various groups have used “holiness” and righteousness" and supposedly the “will of God” to justify many atrocities: The Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, and the Holocaust, to name a few. If the way that mortal men interpret and structure Christianity wasn’t horribly flawed in some ways, people wouldn’t have broken away from the oppressive Catholic church in the sixteenth century, Martin Luther would have never nailed his 95 theses to the door of the church in Whittenberg, and the Protestant reformation would never have been necessary. The fact that Jesus Christ had all these wonderful ideas about peace and loving thy neighbor, yet people spent centuries killing each other trying to decide exactly how he said it, shows how truly flawed man’s interpretation of religion can be. However, the core ideas of Christianity, of good moral behavior, peace, and loving thy fellow man, are those that can encourage people to be better than they are. A much wiser man than I, whose name I have sadly forgotten, once said “I tend to judge the merits of a religion by the behavior of those who profess to adhere to it”, and I certainly know that my beliefs have made me a much better person than I otherwise might have been. Frankly, I think this country would, given the horrible rates of cruel & violent crimes, corruption, and immorality, be a lot better off if everyone was a little bit more religious, or at least held truer to the most basic tenets of Christianity. It’s not that I want people to share my theological inclinations or even always agree with me, but I think it would simply make people more good and moral, and thus make life better for us all. My opinion aside, a very important thing to consider is that one certainly doesn’t have to be a religious person to be a good person, and I am more concerned with helping people be better people than getting everybody to march to the same drumbeat.
Nevertheless, it has been my experience that whenever anything religious is put in any public context, everyone acts as if they were so traumatized by it. If you don’t want to get involved in any religious ceremonies, then just bloody walk away. I have never in my life felt that I was in a situation where I was forced to be involved in any religious context. I was watching Tough Crowd with Collin Quinn on Comedy Central a week or so ago, and one of the guest comedians said something to the effect of “the only group you can really make fun of anymore are religious people.” I hadn’t really thought of that in those words, but it’s more true than I’d rather like to think about. The fact is that this country and many of its most basic laws and codes were based of off Christian ethics, and no other factor in the history of recorded time has influenced human beliefs and morals more than religious teaching. To act as if it’s absurd for religion to affect people’s thinking about gay marriage, abortion, capital punishment, and any of a number of other issues is absurd in and of itself. The legal institution of marriage in the modern world (modern being probably within the last millenium), with all its benefits and restrictions, was derived from the religious institution of it, and the Christian stance on this issue is crystal clear. Long ago, marriage was simply an institution in the eyes of God, and very, very sacred. At some point, and I honestly don’t know when, the government of America, as many other countries have, made it a social and legal institution with benefits (tax breaks) and restrictions (only one husband/wife at a time, of course). I will be the first person to say that many, many heterosexuals have made a mockery of what I consider still a sacred covenant, by marrying for money, prestige, guilt, revenge, lust, or any other of the many wrong reasons people get married for, as opposed to just marrying for love (what a concept). That being said, does it necessarily mean that the American people and the government should tarnish this ancient institution even further?
America has devolved to the point where everything under the sun is tolerated, except for ANYTHING that smacks of intolerance. It seems that as soon as someone disapproves of anything, they are branded with the mark of sexism, racism, homophobia, anti-semitism, and with every other discriminatory, recriminatory label in the English language. The fact that the horribly biased media is so unfailingly liberal makes it so that, in the case of this topic, they constantly disemminate the view that homosexuality is perfectly fine and not at all bad in any way. The fact that homosexuality has become a subculture all its own proves this. Also, homosexuals complain about the bias that they receive in this country, but if they don’t bloody like it they can go to the Middle East where they kill gay people in brutal ways. All things considered, they have it pretty well here. Further, "they* (being the media) endorse the opinion that anybody who has a problem with homosexuality is a horrible, hateful, intolerant, mean-spirited person, and thus they scare the general populace of the country into agreeing with them or at least hiding their beliefs if they have the nerve to have moral, ethical, or religious distastes towards homosexuality. Last time I checked, and granted I haven’t been in this country as long as many of you, there was still a “free speech” clause in the rulebooks somewhere, and unless I’m mistaken greatly that means that it not only allows people to endorse anything they want, but it also allows people to decry anything they want as well. The moral here is that freedom of speech is bilateral, and it’s an insult to put down intelligent, reasonable people simply because they disagree with you. But since the media is so utterly left-wing, that is the state of the matter, and it goes against the most defining principles of this nation.
(Part 2 to follow)