North Carolina Passes Amendment Banning Same-sex Unions

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

but Marriage was around before the Church - and you can get Married without ever seeing a priest or the inside of a Church

trying to claim the Marriage is purely Religious and using that to say Gay couples cant marry is ignoring the fact that in out Modern world, it isn't.

That's absolutely true - but I didn't say that.

I merely quoted the Bible - I'm allowed to do that in support of the argument, the opinions of the Biblical authors are not invalidated by their being Christians.

Also, until around 1750 odd the Church in England was not legally involved in marriage, and whether you were married or not was covered by Common Law. Marriage statutes were introduced to clear up legal confusion in the 18th Century and the Church became involved as an arm of the State.

[Sir Moody]

That's absolutely true - but I didn't say that.

I merely quoted the Bible - I'm allowed to do that in support of the argument, the opinions of the Biblical authors are not invalidated by their being Christians.

Also, until around 1750 odd the Church in England was not legally involved in marriage, and whether you were married or not was covered by Common Law. Marriage statutes were introduced to clear up legal confusion in the 18th Century and the Church became involved as an arm of the State.

which is another bone of contention with me... its about time we separated the Church of England and the State... that's just a pipe dream however - I cant see the Government letting go of their control of the Church...

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

which is another bone of contention with me... its about time we separated the Church of England and the State... that's just a pipe dream however - I cant see the Government letting go of their control of the Church...

It won't happen before we become a Republic - and despite what ideaological opinions you might or might not hold regarding monarchy, that is not a process you are going to want to live through.

[Sir Moody]

It won't happen before we become a Republic - and despite what ideaological opinions you might or might not hold regarding monarchy, that is not a process you are going to want to live through.

Funnily enough I am pro Monarchy as well as pro Secular... sadly you are mostly right we cant have both...

If I had to chose one or the other it would be a Secular Republic...

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

Funnily enough I am pro Monarchy as well as pro Secular... sadly you are mostly right we cant have both...

If I had to chose one or the other it would be a Secular Republic...

It's a nice idea - but it's not worth sacrificing peace and stability for. Even Italy, which abolished it's monarchy by popular referendum, did so only after the Facists had ruined the country under the cover of the Crown.

[Sir Moody]

it seems to work well for the French...

(and don't bring up the French Revolution - hopefully we have come far enough now we wouldn't need bloodshed or to abolish the Monarchy to institute a Republic if it came to that... or am I being optimistic?)

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

it seems to work well for the French...

(and don't bring up the French Revolution - hopefully we have come far enough now we wouldn't need bloodshed or to abolish the Monarchy to institute a Republic if it came to that... or am I being optimistic?)

I don't like the French system, it relies on you being very French for it to work - and it is highly prescriptive. Nor are the French political class as accountable for their actions as the Bitish are - witness Strass-Kahn, caught only because he was in the US when he misbehaved.

As to change without a revolution - find me a country that has managed it without either first going through national trauma, or having trauma subsequntly.

Now, for Whacker - as he insists on picking a fight with me:

I have at no point made a judgement of the sorts of emotional or spiritual relationships which may be formed between two men, two women, or a man and a woman.

I shall make such a judgement now, so that you may have it on record:

It is impossible to quantify the love which two people can have for each other. Such love can take many forms, the emotional relationship between to otherwise heterosexual men or woman can reach such a pitch as to border the erotic, likewise some parents find after twenty years of marriage that they have little in common besides their children and yet that is enough for them. Some relationships last a lifetime, some of the most intense can last only a few months, some are warm and secure while others are like an inferno. Some of the most loving relationships are utterly destructive to those involved and those around them. Love is not always found where we expect it - intimacy can arise between people who have not obvious compatability, somethimes they are not even of the same sexual orientation. Plato tells us that Socrates believed the greatest love was between two people who had no sexual involvement at all, regardless of preference or gender while Aristotle opined that a relationship between two men of equal status who do not debase themselves or each other is better than any other kind, especially because any sexual act between them expresses Eros and is not driven by a base need to procreate.

From this I would draw one conclusion - namely that whatever else may be said of the various couplings human beings engage in it can be said exclusively of heterosexual relationships that they produce the next generation, and of homosexual ones that they are entirely free of this motive. From this may be drawn a further conclusion, that no man will ever into a relationship with another man merely in order to have someone to bear his children.

However, the potentially superior emotional and spiritual quality of homosexual relationships does not mean that homosexual physical unions should necessarily be given the same social or religious status as marriage.