"semck - my point is that Gary Mcfarlane and Lillian Ladele both thought their rights were being trampled upon and they were wrong. "

Look Maniac, we KNOW churches love to whine about discrimination and persecution when there is none, its their favorite retarded thing to do and it works well to get rubes worked up into a frenzy. But sometimes, just sometimes, they are actually right.

You can't use their history of constant unrepentant bullshit to dismiss everything they will ever say (as tempting as that might be). What you are suggesting is one of the rare times when the religious folks would be justified to get up in arms about something - for reasons Draugnar and Semck have explained quite well, I think.

You can't force a church to marry gays - it will never happen, and despite the unfortunate consequences of that, I don't think it ever should. The consequences of forcing this kind of change are far worse than those that result because two gay guys can't have a Catholic wedding.

PS don't worry about Semck - he's a bright boy, but tends to get condescending when he's driving the point home.

"PS don't worry about Semck - he's a bright boy, but tends to get condescending when he's driving the point home."

Poor debating skills...... so sad :-(

No, not at all, in fact his are really better than most anybody else's I've seen.

I'm just saying he's often fairly cutting when he's critiquing an opposing argument. His reasons WHY it sucks are often legit and insightful, but he likes to let them know they "fail."

"Look Maniac, we KNOW churches love to whine about discrimination and persecution when there is none,"

Churches are *never* discriminated against? REALLLLLLLY? You must live in a different world than I...

How astute krellin, yes, that's exactly what I was trying to say in the quoted text.

Whatever, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt, and explain (slowly) to you that the temporal permanance you have interpreted in my use of "none," is in fact contrary to my intent.

Idiot.

If you have to explain slowwwwly what you meant, and in fact admit it is contrary to your intent, then you should be thanking me for pointing out your poor literary construct that left the reader wondering your true feelings/intent...

Honestly, I still have no idea what you believe at this point...but I'm not really thinking that hard about it, nor do I really care. I was just bored and throwing a comment out there to distract my mind from the currently-boring task at hand.

On the contrary, dear sir, I feel quite content ignoring most anything you ever say about most anything. You remember earning that, right?

And while you're planning your undoubtedly pathetic retort, why don't you go ahead and assume I meant it exactly the way you read it - then ask yourself whether that changes a damn thing about the point of the aforementioned "literary construct."

Distracting your mind must be difficult, indeed.

Krellin - Your trolling or being an ass or both. When read in context, YJ males it perfectly clear what he meant as he continues to say something to the effect that manoac *is* persecuting them and attemtping to.force them to violate their beliefs is persecution giving the church justification in it's cries of such.

"You can't force a church to marry gays - it will never happen" I hear you YJ and only time will tell. All I'll say is about 60 years ago a bloke called Alan Turing was made impotent after accepting chemical castration for breaking the law. I e for engaging in homosexuality. Look how far society has changed when a conservative PM champions same sex marriage. The age of consent and repeal of section 28 happened years ago. I'm old enough to remember the furore about women vicars and now church seemed almost embarrassed that the vote for women bishops didn't pass.

I accept that my views may be years ahead of most people on here, it's just a cross I have to bear ; )

I'm bowing out now. I think we're exhursted the subject.

Ahh maniac but if I'm not mistaken, the women vicars thing came from within the church, didn't it? I think that in 100 years from now, most respectable churches will be doing gay marriage, and they'll be doing it because it's what they see is best.

I don't think it's so fair for you to say your views are ahead of ours. I think in principle we (you and I and Draugnar at least, anyways) have values that align quite nicely on this issue. We merely disagree about the place of religion and its overlap with these values.

YJ note my ; ) at the end of my statement - I believe it's Internet code for trying to be humorous

ahh yes, I did miss that entirely.