What bothers me is your inability to display Christ-like love. Or is this your version of that?

“Maybe if you would’ve prayed as often as you should, you wouldn’t have strayed”

This shows how little you know about my life history and my relationship to prayer. That you would make this assumption makes me feel a little sorry for you, but I don’t expect that to bother you.

I was once young and and full of righteous judgment like you. There’s still hope for you, bro. I sincerely hope that you gain some basic empathy—for gays and for former believers on the Internet as well as for others—as you experience your mission and go through life. Peace.

Regardless, I find this to be a rather negative place where people are just ready to attack rather than listen to others with open minds, even if they disagree. I don’t need to be called a bigot just because I’m exploring ideas rationally and legally. I don’t need to have my statements ridiculed. It’s impossible to have a discussion this way. Perhaps you should reread my statements and you might question just what are you attacking? I don’t think anyone here has even understood my platform, you’re so hell-bent on crying foul for equal rights. Try listening to what I am saying. If you want to just scream “bigot”, then go for it, I have better things to spend my mind on. Just remember, not all gay people share your views, neither do all No on 8’s. Just because you think something is one way and you have your interpretation of the Prop 8 campaign, doesn’t mean that it is gospel truth. I read your responses to my lesbian friend, and she actually thought the whole thing was rather silly.

I thought this would be a good discussion, but I have lost interest in seeking rational discussion. I can be ridiculed by closed-minded people any place I choose. I don’t need to do it among strangers. I can use my energy to have better, more thought-provoking discussions elsewhere.

Thanks anyway, guys.

Even if two card-carrying Mormon gays decide to get married in the church, they cannot sue. Any court would decline to rule on it. Just as they decline to rule when priests get fired. Now, this hypothetical litigious couple could sue to force any church who makes their facilities available to the public available to them—but that’s not a doctrinal “freedom of religion” issue, more of a property rights issue.

As a female who was in no way given from one male to another upon my marriage, I object to the assertion that “marriage” is an unchanging, written-in-stone concept. “Marriage”, from what I’ve seen of it, changes with each couple involved in it—and probably even over time within those couples.

The argument that homosexuals are not a “suspect class” is “suspect”. Following the definition of it, homosexuals certainly qualify (their homosexuality is immutable, they have a history of discrimination, they are politically impotent, and they are a discrete & insular minority). Which part of that definition do you object to? [Setting aside, for the moment, the fact that, in the State of California, discrimination based upon sexual orientation is already enshrined as "suspect". All the Court did was remind us all that Proposition 22 was unconstitutional.]

It’s the difference between you saying that Mormons are going to hell, and refusing to rent an apartment to someone because they were Mormon. I’m not advocating telling anyone that they ought to go to hell, but I advocate my right to have a belief in a moral code and to not have the state tell me that my belief is discrimination.

I’m not quite sure what you’re arguing here. If not that we shouldn’t tell people they’re going to hell, all we’re left with is “don’t rent apartments to people you don’t like”. Which is already illegal. Again, Prop 8’s demise would not change that. It is currently illegal to refuse to rent to someone who is [Mormon/gay]. Are you saying that it shouldn’t be?

There’s a different between biological traits and actions.

So is being gay biological or an action? And how does that make it different from being Mormon?

Sweeping rulings by judges that uphold existing laws are wonderful. Sweeping rulings by judges that legislate a change in definition are anti-democracy.

I’m going to ignore this one, since I already addressed the fact that the Court did not create law. It reminded us of the law. What are your thoughts on District of Columbia v. Heller? Is that another heinous example of “activist judges” or is it simply judges exercising their role as judges to interpret the law?

gay people do have the right to form civil unions, and that grants them all the legal protections under state law as married couples have.

My recollection is that the Supreme Court specifically addressed this and said that “separate,” as we can all remember from 7th Grade Civics, “is not equal”. In that sense, it is very much like the Civil Rights matters of yore.

General dittos to Sean, Craig, ebrown, & JohnW.

As Craig already said, religions are currently allowed to discriminate against whomsoever they please; and they exercise that right pretty damn often. Religions discriminate most often against nontheists (or wrongtheists), women, and gays. This law won’t change that at all. Title IX didn’t change that right to discriminate on a national scale; Prop 8’s defeat won’t change that on a state scale (esp. since defeating Prop 8 will simply allow things to continue as they already are).

Craig also raises the point that, when we look at the arguments and break them down, there is no real argument for Prop 8 other than “my religion says it should be so”. Obviously, for nonthetists & wrongtheists, this is no argument at all. The only other argument that we can come up with for why any thinking person should be for Prop 8 is intolerance and bigotry.

Craig did not challenge any of your arguments because you have not yet presented any. You have simply made assertions and forced him (us) to invent your arguments for you. Present us with arguments that we might debate.

My rationale is not what you make it out to be

Then please, provide us with your rationale. I’m struggling to figure out how any of my fellow humans can be so heartless as to be pro-Prop 8. I have not heard any valid arguments as to why one can be pro-Prop 8 and not heartless. Hence, I do assume that all people who are pro-Prop 8 are heartless (hatefilled bigots). Unfortunately, you also say, “I don’t want to keep arguing,” because I’m quite interested in what your arguments are. But just as I do not expect to change your mind, please don’t expect to change mine. The value is in the argument.

And also that the California Supreme Court ruling that struck down the man-woman definition of marriage specifically states that churches will not be forced to perform any marriages that go against their internal rules.

There’s a difference between disagreeing with the morality of someone’s life and changing the state constitution to limit someone’s ability to live that life.

I used to think I was owed respect for being religious. I look back on those days now and wonder what made me think I was entitled to that. I believed in something there was no proof of. Generally, people don’t care if Christians or Muslims or Jews or whomever are easy going people who are trying live their own good life and keep their religious judgment focused squarely on themselves. It’s when those people claim their god and/or prophets know what’s best for everyone else that people have a problem with it.

You don’t see running around blasting and attacking the work Mother Theresa did. Why? Because her focus was the doctrine of love and service. That is worthy of respect.

Church members funneling millions into promoting de-legitimizing a minority group, that’s not worthy of respect.

I’ve got an lds friend who’s not in CA who’s about had it. She believes in the church but yesterday wrote that she wanted to be edified by the doctrine again instead of having every Sunday be the LDS version of Bill O’Reilly’s talking points.

When churches put their focus on serving and the fundamental teachings of the Christ they proclaim, they’ll regain a modicum of respect. As long as it is about attacking others, sorry but it is difficult to tolerate intolerance.

You’ve still yet to give a cogent, logical, and non-hypothetical argument as to how your religious rights are *possibly* in danger, maybe.

Once again, your religious rights are not more important than my civil rights, and especially when there is no REAL (demonstrable, actual or current) threat to your rights, whereas there ARE to mine.

Clearly my right to be treated as an equal outweights what may or may not happen, maybe perhaps when gay marriage is legal .

All your other “liberal” credentials mean nothing to me. Either you respect rights or you do not. Your constant claim of victimhood over your religious rights being maybe violated IN THE FUTURE, is absolutely preposterous, and I fail to comprehend why you keep thinking it makes any sense.

I will not “agree to disagree”. That is a cop-out. This isn’t about theoretical disagreements, this has to do with my LIFE, and no one person anywhere has yet demonstrated at all that religious rights are RIGHT NOW being threatened to the same degree or greater degree than my (and might I add your) rights to absolute equality regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity are right NOW being desecrated.

Civil unions with all the benefits of marriage doesn’t exist and is a farce. The benefits of marriage include not only the legal rights but also the social recognition. You are advocating for “separate but equal”. The very fact that you think that marriage is some unassailable religious heterosexual institution proves my point. It is discriminatory and it has to be changed, and if that requires “activist legislating judges” doing what is quite literally constitutionally required of them to do, then so be it. Separate is inherently unequal, and no matter how nicely you try to couch it, or how loudly you scream that your religious rights could possibly be violated, it is discriminatory.

If religion become ever more useless and deemed as negative, divisive and discriminatory, all the better.

Ah, yes: the sea of undefined, amorphous horribles. Churches in this country are NOT “state-sanctioned” although many theocrats in the right wing are constantly arguing in favor of it. “This is a Christian country.” “The founding fathers were Christian.” “Our laws are based on the Bible, on the 10 commandments.” “Please fund us.”
The State of California recognizes that various religious organizations are valid witnesses to the legal document know as a “marriage license.” It does not proscribe nor prescribe who the churches may marry. In fact, many churches discriminate in their practice in ways an ordinary business might not without violating the law, e.g. Mormons are free to keep non-Mormons out of their movie theaters although no secular movie theater can do so.

The efforts of the pro-Prop 8ers is to segregate a certain portion of the community for imaginary and hypothetical reasons, since they can demonstrate no reality-based reasons for doing so.

This is indeed a water-shed moment. Think a moment, why is de jure segregation in the schools bad? Were not the schools separate but equal, which is the status many pro-Prop 8ers are consigning their gay brothers and sisters to? One need only look at the record in Board to learn that the schools were laughably unequal, but the court was asked to make its decision, as if they were equal (of course, one could, and many did, argue that the mere existence of the school was enough to constitute equality, despite the many substantive disparities). The Supremes decided in an unanimous ruling that separate was inherently unequal. Since there is no rational basis for this segregation it must rest on imaginary and theoretical bases which have at their root an inflexible and narrow world view.

Anyone who thinks “God will sort it out in the eternities” is just passing the buck to an imaginary friend.