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View Full Version : Why conservatives need to advocate getting govt out of the marriage business altogether




Lucille
06-08-2012, 11:47 AM
This will come here too. They can count on it.

The demolition proceeds (http://voxday.blogspot.com/2012/06/demolition-proceeds.html)


Homogamy has never been about the imitation of marriage. The vast majority of gays don't even want the public pretense of monogamy that "gay marriage" typically entails. The entire political effort has never been much more than an attempt to force the organized Church to sacrifice Christian values and submit to the mores of the secular state. While the American aspect of the movement is vowing up and down that no church will be forced to perform such "marriages", the spearhead Danish aspect has already made it clear that no resistance of the state-imposed morality will be permitted.


The country's parliament voted through the new law on same-sex marriage by a large majority, making it mandatory for all churches to conduct gay marriages. Denmark's church minister, Manu Sareen, called the vote "historic". "I think it's very important to give all members of the church the possibility to get married. Today, it's only heterosexual couples."

Denmark has been a pioneer in gay rights since 1989, when it became the first country in the world to offer civil unions for gay couples.

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Semi-related! See For Greater Glory (http://blog.independent.org/2012/06/04/see-for-greater-glory/) [this weekend! We must support liberty movies in the rare event that they're made.]


Of special interest to all freedom lovers is the sweeping, new, epic film directed by Dean Wright, written by Michael Love and starring Andy Garcia, For Greater Glory: The True Story of Cristiada, that has just been released in theaters across the U.S. This story is one with particular interest to Garcia, the Academy Award-nominated, Havana-born actor, director, and producer, who has produced two major films depicting the terror and oppression of communist rule in Cuba (For Love or Country: The Arturo Sandoval Story and The Lost City). For his brilliant and courageous work in defending liberty, the Independent Institute presented him with its Alexis de Tocquevile Award at A Gala for Liberty in 2008. (Here are the presentations by Senior Fellow Alvaro Vargas Llosa and Andy Garcia at the event.)

Headlining a superb cast in For Greater Glory that includes Eva Longoria, Peter O’Toole, Eduardo Verástegui, Catalina Sandino Moreno, Rubén Blades, Oscar Isaac, and Bruce Greenwood, Garcia portrays Enrique Gorostieta Velarde, the retired army general who from 1927 to 1929 transformed an unorganized, minimally armed, indigenous insurgency into The Cristeros, a powerful, country-wide rebellion against the government of Mexico that had embarked on a campaign to rid the country of Christianity beginning with the persecution of Catholics and ban of public religious practice. When widespread peaceful protest, petitioning of the government, and an economic boycott resulted in 1926, the militant Marxist (i.e., atheist) Mexican president Plutarco Elías Calles denounced the dissent as treasonous and responded brutally with repression, torture, hangings, firing squads, and mass murder by federal troops. In 1927 the National League for the Defense of Religious Liberty recruited Gorostieta to lead the Cristeros against the government forces of Calles, who incidentally was publicly supported in the U.S. by the Ku Klux Klan.
[...]
This conflict is actually rooted in the imposed secularization of the Mexican Reforma (1855-1861) which in turn led to the Mexican Revolution of 1910 and the subsequent Mexican Constitution of 1917 and sought to impose a secular, socialist state over the entire country, at the same time the Bolsheviks were doing so in Russia. In imposing a system of compulsory government education, this Constitution reads, “Education services should be secular, and, therefore, free of any religious orientation. . . . The educational services shall be based on scientific progress and shall fight against ignorance, ignorances’s effects, servitudes, fanaticism, and prejudice.”

In my article “Secular Theocracy,” I note how in the modern world secularism has hypocritically been the driving force for intolerance and the creation of nation states, collectivism/statism on a gigantic scale and massive and invasive wars, and the Mexican government is Exhibit A. As Wikipedia correctly notes, to this day and in keeping with its own “secular theocracy”:


The Mexican constitution prohibits outdoor worship, which is only allowed in exceptional circumstances, generally requiring governmental permission. Religious organizations are not permitted to own print or electronic media outlets, governmental permission is required to broadcast religious ceremonies, and ministers are prohibited from being political candidates or holding public office.

And as part of this secular censorship, propaganda, and repression of religious freedom, there is virtually no mention of the Cristero War in the history books, films, and other media of Mexico, the U.S. or elsewhere. Indeed, both most Mexicans and Americans have been utterly unaware of this story in which 90,000 people were killed (out of only a population of 15 million), and only now with the film with Andy Garcia are they able to learn vital lessons of their own history with more than obvious relevance for us all today. In this regard, the solution to the problem of church-state power is to de-socialize and privatize the public square, not seek to “take it over” and erect yet another theocracy.

Lucille
06-10-2012, 10:20 AM
Goodbye, Military Chaplains (http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/goodbye-military-chaplains/)


Remember how no clergy member will be forced to perform same-sex marriages against their will. If the Obama administration has its way, all US military chaplains will have to do so. Excerpt:


The Obama administration “strongly objects” to provisions in a House defense authorization bill that would prohibit the use of military property for same-sex “marriage or marriage-like” ceremonies, and protect military chaplains from negative repercussions for refusing to perform ceremonies that conflict with their beliefs, according to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).

If this goes through, the Catholic and the Orthodox chaplains will have to be withdrawn from the US military. Many Evangelical chaplains will choose to leave. If same-sex marriage is constitutionalized by Supreme Court ruling, then I don’t see how even a legislative exemption would be possible. This is another one of the answers to the question, “How does my gay neighbor’s marriage to his partner affect me?”

Erin Manning, who sent this link along, writes about possible implications beyond the military:


What it’s going to come down to, eventually, is this: “Oh, I’m sorry, Catholic Church/Orthodox Church/Protestant churches who agree with them re: marriage: you either perform gay “marriages,” or we take away your right to participate in civil marriage licensing. Everyone else can get married in a church and have it “count” for the purpose of their civil marriage license, but Catholics and other “bigots” will have to “marry” in front of a judge or something and then have the church ceremony which won’t mean anything in the eyes of the state.”

It’s coming.

fisharmor
06-10-2012, 10:25 AM
Eh.
If the chaplains left, they'd just replace them with more realistic versions.
The kind that are open about how they're just cheerleaders for state violence.
IMO it's one of the better things that could happen to the Church.