Since his elevation to the head of the Catholic faith, I have become a fan of Pope Francis — a pontiff who has become truly revolutionary in his faith and his lifestyle. As someone raised in the Catholic Church, I have never seen his equal. He has washed the feet of a Muslim female prisoner, declined the pomp and formality of past popes, and remained a humble priest in his lifestyle. Now, Pope Francis has written a long letter to a non-Catholic saying that he believes that even atheists can go to heaven and that God cares more about your heart than your profession of religion. At one time, such views would have gotten you burned at the stake. Even today, conservatives in the Catholic Church, like those associated with Opus Dei, are grumbling about this new Pope. Mark recently discussed the same view of the Pope on non-believers and now there is a report of a possible consideration of dropping celibacy for priests.
What is interesting is to see the continued effort to make Pope John Paul a saint when Pope Francis may be the most truly revolutionary man to ever hold that religious office. In his letter to the founder of La Repubblica newspaper, Eugenio Scalfari, Francis stated that non-believers would be forgiven by God if they followed their consciences. He said “You ask me if the God of the Christians forgives those who don’t believe and who don’t seek the faith. I start by saying – and this is the fundamental thing – that God’s mercy has no limits if you go to him with a sincere and contrite heart. The issue for those who do not believe in God is to obey their conscience. . . . Sin, even for those who have no faith, exists when people disobey their conscience.”
It is a remarkably tolerant and enlightened view of faith at a time of extreme orthodoxy and religious intolerance. It is all the more remarkable given the increasingly antagonistic language directed against non-believers. There is obviously a rising concern among political and religious leaders that faith is declining in society. Thus, even though the non-religious is now a majority in places like England, politicians are ratcheting up such rhetoric. The Pope’s words are in stark contrast to those of people like Tony Blair with his comparisons of atheists and agnostics to terrorists.
The Pope’s reforms also now include the possibility of allowing priests to marry — a major change in religious doctrine. Italian Archbishop Pietro Parolin, the Vatican’s second-in-command, told Venezuela’s El Universal newspaper that celibacy is not dogma. As such, it is not unchanging divine law. Many have argued for years that marriage could bring a broader array of people to the priesthood and reduce the sexual scandals that have plagued the church.
raff,
I’ll second that.
“Reproduction does not require marriage, but a hallmark of civilized society is the use of the institution of marriage for reproduction.”
An opinion is not a fact, David. The bottom line is that since the dawn of civilization, legally marriage has been as Mike Appleton so succinctly put it, a contract with “[t]he primary function of law is the protection and regulation of relational interests within the larger society. The family is the primary social unit. Therefore, laws have traditionally sought to reflect a public policy that encourages the development of strong families as the foundation of strong communities. Same-sex families are entitled to the same legal solicitude, and for the same reasons.”
In our society, whether you find it civilized or not, procreation does not require marriage nor is procreation the primary aspect of that contractual relationship as a factual matter of law.
That in your twisted mind the fundamental right of procreation is somehow conflated to a mandate that procreation is the axial defining characteristic of marriage is simply a display of your total lack of understanding of the law as is instead of what your moralizing hypocritical self-loathing posturing would fallaciously want it to be.
This also flies in the face of evidence that another model of child rearing, communal child rearing, has some substantive benefits to offer children that a nuclear family often cannot offer, making for children that are demonstrably self-confident, open, warm, independent and mature provided the necessary environment of basic trust exists (which may or may not exist in a nuclear family either). A good friend of mine, also a lawyer, was raised in this manner (on a commune) and he’s one of the happiest most well adjusted people I know. And . . . he’s perfectly civilized. The same has been seen in scientific examinations of modern communes and kibbutzes and indigenous peoples who practice communal child rearing.
The same is also found in single parent families as well. So long as trust exists and the children properly socialized, they turn out to be normal civilized adults.
So not only is your opinion not fact, it is not substantiated by alternate models of child rearing.
There is much more that goes in to making a society civilized than simply marriage as an institution for making children.
Gene wrote: “Same-sex families are entitled to the same legal solicitude, and for the same reasons.”
You ignore the distinct biological differences that make same-sex families different from opposite sex families. They deserve legal solicitude for different reasons, and their legal obligations and duties are different because of natural biological differences. You can try to pretend that a dolphin is a fish all you like, but that doesn’t make it true.
Gene H wrote: “… procreation does not require marriage nor is procreation the primary aspect of that contractual relationship as a factual matter of law.”
With this kind of reasoning, why not eliminate sex completely from marriage. Why not say marriage does not require sexual relations? Is that where you really want to go with marriage?
Gene H wrote: “That in your twisted mind the fundamental right of procreation is somehow conflated to a mandate that procreation is the axial defining characteristic of marriage is simply a display of your total lack of understanding of the law as is instead of what your moralizing hypocritical self-loathing posturing would fallaciously want it to be.”
If it is my lack of understanding of the law, then why am I the one quoting the law to define marriage? You only give your opinion of what you want the law to be, and then you accuse me of trying to define the law the way I want it to be? You seem to have forgotten that you are on the side of changing the law to be what you want. Your definition contradicts all the legal dictionaries prior to turn of the century. I have been explaining why the law is as it has been and why it should stay that way. You claim I don’t understand the law, but men like Professor Finnis and Justice Scalia are the ones who understand the law in the same way. If you are going to insist that I trust in legal authority rather than my own ability to reason, I am going to trust them over you.
Gene H wrote: “A good friend of mine, also a lawyer, was raised in this manner (on a commune) and he’s one of the happiest most well adjusted people I know. And . . . he’s perfectly civilized.”
That’s interesting. Did his parents abandon parental authority over him, or was the commune simply an adjunct to his parenting? Public schools basically spend more time with children than parents do. I’m not sure how much different that is from the commune situation you describe, unless the parents lay no claim on the children, and they sleep in different households, etc. Please tell us more about your friend.
Gene H wrote: “The same is also found in single parent families as well. So long as trust exists and the children properly socialized, they turn out to be normal civilized adults.”
I think you know that scientific studies show that children raised by two opposite sex biological parents fare much better than children raised by single parents. They have less problems with drugs, alcohol, suicide, crime, dropping out of school, get divorced less when they later marry, less likely to be sexually active as a teenager and less likely to become pregnant as a child, less likely to be physically or sexually abused, etc. A child raised by a single mom is 14 times more likely to suffer serious physical abuse than a child raise by biologically married parents. A child whose mother cohabits with a man who is not the child’s father is 33 times more likely to suffer serious physical child abuse.
As usual, what you state as fact is really only your opinion which is contradicted by the scientific evidence and virtually all the legal textbooks.
OS,
I like to refer to it as the freedom for everyone agenda!
David, there is a vast difference between visiting hours and institutionalized policies that expressly forbid, not only visitation, but any and all information about the person who is sick or dying. Even in hospice, family members who disapprove of the lifelong partner may keep him or her from visting despite signed agreements or civil unions.
As for “homosexual agenda,” if wanting to be treated equally by the law, then yes, it is rather like the “negro agenda” of wanting to be treated equally by the law. When the law creates a second class of citizen, then we have a problem.
http://americablog.com/2013/04/missouri-gay-hospital-visitation-remove-research-medical-center.html
what it use to mean. Marriage is the next target, to make it mean something completely different and thereby hijack laws written years ago when nobody even imagined a concept like gay marriage.
Exactly David, the world changes and so too must the law to accommodate how life is now.
Black’s First Edition defined marriage as the union of a man and a woman.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/q1ova82tbv1vk1s/marriage.jpg
That definition is based on Bishop’s Commentaries on the Law of Marriage and Divorce. This highly respected treatise on the law of marriage and divorce in the United States has been cited by the Supreme Court.
When looking to the Court’s holding in Loving, we must also recognize that the Court would have been relying on the traditional definition of marriage.
Apparently the courts who have declared same-sex marriage to be a right had to first redefine “marriage”.
Find me anywhere in the Constitution or case law that mentions gender. That did not come up until despicable groups that are to marriage what the KKK is to racism showed up and started writing patently unconstitutional laws.
Reproduction does not require any social institution.
People were making babies long before society existed.
Gene H wrote: “Reproduction does not require any social institution. People were making babies long before society existed.”
Reproduction does not require marriage, but a hallmark of civilized society is the use of the institution of marriage for reproduction. If you want to observe uncivilized society, go to one of the African tribes who practice polygamy and homosexuality and see what kind of society you get. Is that what you want our society to become?
“These kinds of visitation problems have existed for heterosexual couples too.”
***************************
Show me one. I can pull up dozens. How about heterosexual couples that are legally married? Keep in mind that hospital rules may NOT allow unmarred couples the same rights as married couples, which is exactly my point.
OS wrote: “Show me one. I can pull up dozens.”
The reason you can pull up dozens is because of the homosexual agenda that all of you deny even exists. Does the media want to write a story about a nice heterosexual couple denied humane hospital visitation? No. They want to write about same sex couples and spin the story anyway they can to create a social problem to fix, even if it doesn’t exist.
I have been kicked out of hospital visitation many times. I don’t run to the papers or to court to file a lawsuit when it happens. I recognize that it is the hospital’s right to regulate visitation in whatever way they choose, even if I don’t like it.
Have you never watched a movie where someone is going into cardiac arrest, and all the medical personnel run in and holler to remove the visitors? Ever see family members pace out in the waiting room, wondering what is going on and wanting to go in to be with their loved ones who are dying on the operating table? Ever see the spouse looking through the window only to have the blinds shut abruptly in front of them? Do you think these movies are unrealistic? It is fairly commonplace if you talk around to others with loved ones in the hospital. That is why hospitals have waiting rooms.
I will say that this is one positive benefit that the homosexual agenda actually has accomplished. It has drawn attention to the poor visitation policies of hospitals and caused hospitals to implement changes that benefit everyone.
You asked for one case. Here is one:
In a May 2010 commencement address at Yale Medical School, Dr. Donald Berwick, who was chosen by President Obama to oversee Medicare and Medicaid, talked about the pain that strict visiting hours can cause families. In his remarks, Berwick described the true story of a woman only allowed to visit her dying husband in the hospital for 30 minutes at a time, four times a day. The couple, who had been married for 19 years, was rarely apart and these limitations devastated them. Berwick then imagined an alternate scenario, in which he and his wife, one of them facing death, would be allowed to sit and visit with each other as much as they wanted.
Read more: http://healthland.time.com/2010/11/18/family-only-hospital-visitation-rules-get-scrapped/#ixzz2fBOb94m2
Just illustrating that neither of you understand what Loving was actually saying or why.
Gene H I am waiting for what I missed in the Loving decision that makes gay marriage a thing that Warren and the others really meant after all these years. Maybe you could educate us instead of issuing pronouncements from on high.
Also, some people can understand parts of the law without the proper training.
You aren’t one of them, David.
The law is a more complex and interrelated as a field of study than simply going out and cherry picking words from case law that you like. Especially when dealing with a fundamental rights issue such as this. There are dependencies and underpinnings based in both legal theory and black letter law that you simply don’t know or understand that would provide proper context if you had that knowledge. It’s a professional discipline, like medicine or engineering and aside from medicine it is probably the most difficult academic endeavor one can pursue. You’ve demonstrated time and again that you don’t have the proper context to understand that what you advocate simply isn’t going to fly so long as 1) marriage is legally recognized as a specialty contract and 2) the 14th and 1st Amendments remain in effect.
You can continue to gnash and wail in the Moralistic Fallacy you are trying to perpetrate to rationalize denying your true nature to yourself and trying to force that choice upon others, but the legal and sociological fact of the matter is that equal rights and equal protection for homosexuals – including the ability to marry – in inevitable, based in sound legal principle, the plain wording of the Constitution and constitutes in itself a net social justice in that it is equitable and increases social stability in removing an inequity.
davidm2575:
Not true.
Intersex:
Intersex, in humans and other animals, is a variation in sex characteristics including chromosomes, gonads, and/or genitals that do not allow an individual to be distinctly identified as male or female.
Examples:
Not XX and not XY
Klinefelter (XXY)
Androgen insensitivity syndrome
Partial androgen insensitivity syndrome
The list goes on.
Nal – I agree that some hermaphrodites are born, but the general normal condition is that people are born male or female and not unisex. It is this natural condition that leads to the male and female coming together for reproduction through the institution of marriage.
Name a specific harm, David.
David sez:
1) mankind comes into the world as male and female
I will admit you got me on that one. It’s true.
2) the woman completes the man and the man completes the woman
I assume you are talking about a lifelong companion. True if you are heterosexual. If you are bisexual, homosexual or transgender, then not so true.
3) man requires the woman and the woman requires the man to reproduce
True once, not so true any more. Ever hear of test tubes or turkey basters? Or adoption?
4) children require nearly two decades of parental care
That is generally true, but not an absolute requirement. Some grow up faster than others. We send teenagers off to bomb, strafe and shoot people halfway around the world. Do they need parental care?
5) marriage is a vehicle that greatly benefits the parents, children, and society in regards to procreation and the child rearing process
Not so much procreation (see #3 above), but the rest is quite true…..of both heterosexual and same sex couples.
So tell me again why it is such a bad idea for couples of the same gender to marry?
OS wrote: “So tell me again why it is such a bad idea for couples of the same gender to marry?”
If you take away male and female and treat mankind as unisex, and if you take away reproduction and child rearing, there is no reason to make marriage anything more than a simple contract between two parties. The truth is that if this is what marriage is, then most people would be foolish to enter into such a lifelong contract that treats the two as one.
The bottomline is that domestic partnerships should be called domestic partnerships and not marriage. What legitimate State interest exists for eliminating the traditional concept of marriage just so you can claim that you are correcting an inequity which nobody has ever bothered to demonstrate actually exists? Everyone just ASSUMES there is an inequity that needs correcting.
David wants to know what I am talking about. The sort of thing in this news item goes on all over this country every day:
Full story from ABC news:
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/story?id=7633058&page=1
There are lots more stories just like that, most of which never make the news. They just go home and cry about it without telling anyone. NOW do you know what I am talking about?
OS wrote: “NOW do you know what I am talking about?”
No, because cases like this one have nothing to do with the legal arguments that I make. You should in no way think that my policies would ever condone this kind of inhuman treatment of others. These kinds of visitation problems have existed for heterosexual couples too. It is a problem of the hospital, not the law.
In Washington State at that time, they had domestic partnership laws that recognized the relationship just as marriage. Janice Langbehn had a legal right to be there and to visit, but such does not force the hospital to grant automatic visitation to anybody who wants it. If the hospital is trying to save someone’s life, they will keep you out no matter who you are, heterosexual spouse or homosexual spouse. In this particular case, Janice Langbehn was allowed to provide health directives and make organ donation decisions just like any spouse would. She also was allowed in when the last rites were given. It seems to me that she is simply ignorant that heterosexual couples have exactly the same problems of access in a hospital. What outrages me is that you trumpet something like this as an example of same sex discrimination caused by gay marriage not being allowed. Well, Washington State actually has gay marriage now, but this will only increase the number of sexual discrimination lawsuits. I guess you think that is a good thing.
David,
What you want to define as tradition has zero impact on how the law treats marriages which – again – as a specialty contract. There is no valid state interest in legislating procreation no matter what you choose to cherry pick.
You aren’t a lawyer. I’d say quit pretending you are one, but it’s funny when you do and in line with your pretending you aren’t gay. Your mind is as convoluted as a bag of snakes.
I’m not pretending that I am a lawyer. You remind me of Muslims who claim that the Qur’an cannot be understood unless one properly understands arabic. Why is it that elitists always want to claim that they have an education or special knowledge that others lack, knowledge which demands others to respect and bow down to their greater knowledge?
The truth is that except for the following facts, marriage never would have been addressed by the law in the first place:
1) mankind comes into the world as male and female
2) the woman completes the man and the man completes the woman
3) man requires the woman and the woman requires the man to reproduce
4) children require nearly two decades of parental care
5) marriage is a vehicle that greatly benefits the parents, children, and society in regards to procreation and the child rearing process
If you take away male and female and treat mankind as unisex, and if you take away reproduction and child rearing, there is no reason to make marriage anything more than a simple contract between two parties. The truth is that if this is what marriage is, then most people would be foolish to enter into such a lifelong contract that treats the two as one.
What OS said! Well done Chuck.
David,
You posted a number of decisions, all of which say essentially the same thing I wrote upstream at 10:16AM. A contract that carries certain rights and responsibilities. As for consummating the marriage, I am not sure that can be enforced. How about deathbed marriages? Or the elderly? Or physically handicapped. Lemme tell you something. I was married for 55 years and marriage is far more than being about romping in bed. It is about companionship and sharing two lives. It is about being allowed to hold the person you loved all those years in your arms as life slips away. Two years ago tonight, at 11:29 PM, I held her in my arms as she took her last breath.
You and those like you see nothing wrong in creating a legal climate where the lifelong companion may not be allowed that if the “next of kin” disapproves. And that disgusts me.
OS wrote: “You and those like you see nothing wrong in creating a legal climate where the lifelong companion may not be allowed that if the “next of kin” disapproves. And that disgusts me.”
What are you talking about? This does not describe me. Why do you think this? Who could possibly be the closest “next of kin” than the lifelong companion?
My response to Gene got lost in WordPress.
David,
I forgot to add: I do read and study the Bible, but I am open to learn from others. Not just Hank & Matt, but also Pastor Charles Stanley (from Intouch.org in Atlanta, GA), and sometimes Creflo Dollar (Atlanta, GA).