From the catholic/gay marriage article – petition for gay marriage

it headlines

“as the time come for gay marriage in the UK?Deputy leader of the Liberal Democrats’ comments on gay marriage may be the end of a long and tortuous road for campaigners”

I’m sticking with this one , if relgion gets excluded then why shouldn’t it be the next stage on from CPs.

As for keeping your CP then why don’t you just look at some of the countries that have brought in gay marriage, many of them eg Holland still have their CPs around and unlike us they are open to straights – they’re fine for them as well but they are NOT SPECIAL and they are not GAY specific…

No church is obliged or forced by law to marry any couple presently whether they are mixed sex couples or same sex couples, giving same sex couples full marriage rights including the use of the name “married” won’t change that.
There will be the usual lies and scaremongering from the pseudo-religious anti-gay crowd anyway that they will be forced to conduct same sex marriages …untrue, their easily debunked justifications for opposing same sex marriage deserve to be dealt to and brushed aside.

That better bloody well not happen. If people want their CP’s renamed Marriage that’s fine, but my partner and I most certainly do not.

We entered into a Civil Partnership on the first day it was available and that’s what we wanted. We didn’t want to be married.

For those who do, absolutely fine but for those who had a CP and are happy with it, how dare anyone deny us of that?

Simple? If it were simple then there could not be any opposition to your statement. It may be simple for you. If, however, there is disagreement then it must be because it is not simple for everyone. If it is not simple for everyone then it cannot, by definition, be ‘simple’.

I find the simplicity of the proposal to be a difficult proposition. Jews and Christians in the recent past have faced death or torture rather than to renounce their faith. Whilst I am in favour of a secularity in the public sphere, I would be very uncomfortable to force it in the home and the private sphere.

If governments have the power to force us to carry out or accept particular action in private then that would seem to harm severely the concepts of freedom of association, freedom of thought and all notions of privacy.

Whereas most of can accept that the provision of goods and services to the public in the public sphere should be non-discriminatory and the proper exercise of power by the state in the public realm, I am not sure that the provision of private religious goods and services constitutes something that is available to the “public” at large, rather than being more in the manner of private goods and services for private members.

We all want people to be ‘good’. However, where government takes upon itself the responsibility for promoting the ‘good’ and forces all of us to be ‘good’ in public, in our homes, in private places of worship, in the bedroom (mutual mutilation or s&m is an illegal assault), it intrudes from the public space into the private space from which most of us would prefer to exclude most others.

As a matter of fact I am :p But then, people who believe in fairies don’t go round trying to impinge on my rights, so I’m not really interested in them (or whether fairies exist – I can’t really say I’d spent much time considering it).

But – if you’re asking me to expand on my position as regards god/gods – then if I had to pick a side, I’d go for there being no god. However, I wouldn’t presume to know for sure, even if I was 99% convinced there wasn’t one. As for the ‘god’ portrayed in the Bible and other books like it – no, I DEFINITELY don’t think that that god exists. But, again, I wouldn’t take that to mean that there was no….*trying to think of neutral word that’s not god…. instigator? sentient cause? at the start of our world.

That’s why I draw a distinction between ‘god’ and religion. In my opinion, religion is so obviously made up by men (and, yes, I do mean men rather than human beings in most cases) that it can be laughable.

No-one can be sure either way, so I would class myself as an agnostic very much on the ‘no god’ end of the scale, if that makes sense. (Oh, and as regards fairies, the same )

I’ll believe this when I see it, and I’ll take any statement from Simon Hughes – who despite being “bisexual” – ran the most homophobic election campaign in history, with a huge pinch of salt.

And worse still for us blacks, because the Tories were no different to the BNP, we were simultaneous/subsequently going to get tossed onto the next banana boat and shipped back home (and I don’t mean South London) …. yet the bloody Tories have welcomed a decision by the Supreme Court that says we can stay here if going home means we’ll be tortured and killed.

Wait … you don’t think …. could it have been …. is it possible that …. maybe …. the Labour trolls were making stuff up.

I’ve popped a little overnight bag in the Winnebago though just in case we are all off on a road trip though.

“And even if not, is there a distinction to be drawn between belief in god and religion?”

Excuse the brevity, but I’m half-asleep so I won’t attempt any long answer to that But, in my opinion, yes, there is a difference – to me, at least. I’m an agnostic (used to be a Christian) and while I don’t know for sure that there is or isn’t a god or gods or whatever, I DO know that religion is man-made, and I like it less and less as I get older. However, I accept that many people (including members of my family and my friends) find comfort in it, so, as long as it doesn’t do any harm, then it’s OK. But I see religion as VERY separate from any ‘god’. Just my personal opinion.

As for civil marriage – I still don’t get how it’s acceptable to discriminate against people because of their sexuality. And I also don’t see why anyone needs to be consulted prior to opening civil marriage to us, particularly anti-gay groups, who aren’t shy about their dislike of us getting rights. Many religions won’t re-marry divorcees, yet we didn’t consult these religions when we allowed divorcees to marry in a civil marriage – quite simply because it’s nothing to do with them.

Same goes for equal marriage, as far as I’m concerned. It’s a secular thing and nothing to do with any religion.

Is that really correct – is there no qualitative difference between religious beliefs of established religions and racists? I see arguments as to the irrationality of religion and their ludicrousness often on this site, but have not stopped to think seriously about this issue.

Even if belief in god is outside rationality, there are powerful arguments deployed by philosophers such as Kant in his Critique of Pure Reason. Do these deserve respect as rigorous, scholarly works? And even if not, is there a distinction to be drawn between belief in god and religion? Does the latter have weight as a form of tradition and established cultural practice?

I am unsure – being not sufficiently learned in these schools of thought. I am, however, reluctant to condemn entire philosophies and established societal pillars as having no value without considering this further and more seriously.

There is, for me at least, the danger that my sexuality, being in conflict with much of religion, becomes the reason for me dismissing such works and practice rather that it being properly considered and weighted argument. Repudiation rather than refutation.

“It’s up to the people really. The government will be consulting with all those with a stake.”

Yes agreed, this is a serious cause for concern.