North Carolina Passes Amendment Banning Same-sex Unions

[Andres]

One of the principles of our western legal systems is equal treatment or, put "negative", non discrimination.

If there exists a certain legal framework for couples to chose for if they decide to go live together, then that legal framework should be accessible for all couples, gay or straight. Even if that legal framework is called "mariage". If you're going to exclude certain couples, e.g. gay couples, then you are discriminating. A discrimination which is based on nothing else but sexual orientation. It's up to those opposing gay marriage to give convincing arguments as to why gays should not be allowed to marry. But I, for one, fail to see what can justify such discrimination. The arguments against gay mariage are usually religiously inspired, sometims people refer to history, culture, tradition, which is all utterly irrelevant. Of course, that's valid for the legal framework, the mariage for the law.

The legal mariage should be seen strictly seperated from religious mariage. It should be like this: everybody is allowed to marry for a civil servant. That's your legal union/mariage. After you're married before the law, the same couple can marry again, for the church/religion of their choice. When it comes to the religious mariage, the rules of the religion must be respected, since religion is not the state's business; it's a private affair. So, a gay couple should be allowed to marry for the law, mariage concluded by a civil servant, but not before let's say their local Catholic priest. Relgious mariage should carry no legal weight whatsoever. This means that if you marry for God, but don't go to the civil servant first, you'll be married for God, but without any legal consequence: for the law, you're not married then.

Agnosticism is the logical conclusion. Nothing we do provides any concrete evidence for or against a God.

Why does the atheist have to provide concrete evidence. The atheist doesn't claim the existence of a supreme being, he merely says he doesn't believe in it. It's the believer who says there exists a God who carries the burden of proof. I never understood atheists who try their best to prove there is no God; why would you have to do that?

Agnosticism is not the "logical conclusion", it's just a euphemism for not being able to make up your mind Either God exists or he doesn't. And you believe or you don't. The agnosticist is a coward who's too afraid to have faith and too afraid to accept all the consequences of atheism, namely that there won't be an afterlife.