New York State to Recognize Gay Marriages

[Fmr President & Senator Polnut]

Funny, I consider giving people full legal recongition to be the moral thing to do.

[Fmr President & Senator Polnut]

To be fair, I've never met a homosexual who has stayed in a relationship longer than a month and having lived in the Bay Area, CA and Santa Fe, NM, I have met my fair share.

Really?  There was a lesbian couple living across the street from my grandparents who had been together for decades.  My grandmother used to invite them over for tea.  (Yes, my grandmother was of the "invite people over for tea" generation)

Now that I think about it, I do know two lesbian couples who have been together for years.

It's the males I know that can't stay together very long.

I stayed with a couple, guys my Aunt worked with in Australia, in SF. They've been together for 12 years.

[Fmr President & Senator Polnut]

The reactions and reaction to reactions in this thread highlight a really important element here.

I don't believe Okie is a bad person because of his beliefs, although the "I respect them as creations of the almighty" bothered me a bit. You should respect other because they're human beings like you.

Equally... actually maybe a bit more, the comments which blast out the idea that this suggests faith of any kind is bad is equally stupid.

I consider myself a very strong and committed secularist, but I acknowledge the important role that faith plays in people's lives and society. Most of it, isn't bad. Charities who feed and clothe the homeless and support struggling families regardless of faith, are so incredibly important. Not the least being the comfort it bring, whether you believe it or not.

I went to church and sunday school, did the whole shebang up to being able to take communion when I was 16. But it was always on my terms, if I found something in the bible I didn't like, I said so, I didn't try to convince myself it was right. A lot of it comes from the biblical tradition of the chruch you come from - the Southern Baptists have a world-wide reputation for being hardline direct word of God poeple, I managed to get by in the last breath of mainstream liberalism in the Sydney Anglican archdiocese.

I was brought up believing that the bible was written over a long period of time, my many different writers, edited and translated and re-translated over and over again. So there's nothing wrong with treating some things as not being fact, and considering things like historical context in reading things. The bible is no different from other religious work in its make up, Jesus actually specifies when something is parable or not. But the bible is likely full parable and metaphore. Picking and choosing biblical precedent on matters like homosexuality, when ignoring slavery and corporal and capital punishment - is not treating the bible as a complete work - if you can accept that society has developed to realise the slavery and extreme physical punishment is wrong, and the bible was written in a certain time, to the standards of that society... then why is this issue probably one of the last old-testament issues (yes it's mentioned in the NT... but not to the specificity of books like Lev.) that survives?

Even if that's the case, it doesn't lessen it's teachings or it's message.