Bishop faces tough question on difference between interracial, same sex marriage

Interracial marriage & same sex marriage are two very different things. You can't compare apples & oranges. Same sex marriage is not really marriage at all. Interracial marriage is marriage by definition since it is between a man & a woman.

The legality or illegality of interracial marriage involves a secondary characteristic namely race while sexuality is a primary characteristic. Laws against miscegnation are cultural. Such laws do not deny the fact that men & women of different races can enter a natural marriage.

This is similar to the Catholic ban on priestesses. Christ's sexuality is a primary characteristic; his race, color, ethnicity even religion (Jewish) are secondary characteristics. Hence gentile men of color can become priests while females may not.

There is simply no valid reason for a civil employee to refuse to sign a marriage license for a same-sex couple. The signature does not indicate a personal approval, it indicates that the marriage is being executed in accordance with state laws. That's it. A moral objection based on anti-gay bias is no different than refusing to sign the license of an interracial couple, or of Jews, or anyone else the clerk dislikes.

If the clerk is unable to do the simply duty of signing their name to indicate the marriage is being executed properly according to state law, they should quit or get fired immediately. I am sick to death of tiptoeing around bigots who are no better than the KKK but biased against some other group. Good riddance to them.

We say the state official performs the ceremony . That is not quite accurate .

The exchange of promises constitutes the entering into marriage and the representative of the state is the witness . No consent or approval is implied or expected on the part of the witnesses .

Let the churches get out of the business of standing for the state . In many cultures the church celebrates and blesses the union after the couple are legally married .

The churches then are free to decide who may come for a religious ceremony and may refuse couples who do not qualify according to their conscience norms .

from the article:
Nadler's sum-up of that response: "In other words, your religious belief is more valid than another. That's what you're saying."

yup, that's what he is saying. Miscegenation was a serious moral issue not that long ago in the USA. Long Live Jack Johnson! Yet Lori pushes his own agenda and dismisses that which the bishops do not ANY LONGER find offensive, so they say.

Anyway, doesn't Lori have enough long going legal problems back home? He ought to know how not to fall into a lawyer's linguistic logical trap by now. Yet arrogance and self-righteousness, and the expectation of customary deference blind.

Yes, there are tough choices for the Church now to face. Whether it will stand by its critical belief that Jesus did indeed define concerning marriage: "the Creator, from the beginning, made them male and female, and said, 'For this cause a man shall leave his father and mother, and cleave to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh." And so the bishop's response is completely accurate. Marriage, as defined by Christ, is between one man and one woman. Race never enters into the question.
The question against the Church and the Bishops and the Faithful now is, "are you willing to pay a price of suffering and reprisal for upholding what you say you believe."
Are we?
Are we ready to suffer at the hands of our countrymen for holding on to our religious belief? I believe that is the entire question that this author is pressing to us today. For many will call us bigots because we do not accept that sexual preference and how one chooses to engage in sexual intercourse, equals race as a marker of identification unto personhood.
It is a very good question. Are we ready to be called bigots and anti-american?
Are we ready to suffer? Or will we be like the mormons who gave up plurality in marriage just to enter into statehood? If it really was a core belief, then they would not have given it up.
The question is not, "is it right or wrong."

One significant difference is that interracial couples can procreate and same-sex couples cannot because same-sex relations are unnatural. You can't argue that God created a man to love another man, but gave him the wrong genitals.

Jerrold Nadler belongs on the short-list for the next opening for a supreme court justice!

He points out the essential hypocrisy of Bp. Lori.

Marrying someone that's not from your own ethnic background is severly punished in the Jewish Law that many Christians still practice today and use much of its content as a base for most of their moral practices. If you take it to these events, marrying a black man with a white woman and vicersa should be punished under this religious law. This man was right to refuse to marry an interracial couple, but it was also right for him to get fired. You can't work for Rome's emperor if your heart is in Jerusalem, if you understand what I mean.

I would like clear up, I'm a gay Christian and favor same-sex marriage. But, I also believe that each man's religion and beliefs must be respected. And as Jesus said, pay the Caesar what belongs to the Caesar and God what is His and this man just wasn't fit to do as the Caesar ruled.

Actually, Rep Nadler got the better of that exchange.

What if the clerk refused to sign the marriage license because the groom had been divorce, or the bride used birth control or they were living together before marriage?

Nadler was right to push Lori on the comparison of same sex marriage and interracial marriage. It isn't a different kind of discrimination. It is the same fear, the same reaction and blindness to reason and new understandings. Was it just 10 or 15 years ago that the Catholic church finally utterly condemned slavery? It only took several centuries more than the rest of the Western world, and it only took the rest of the world 1500 or 1600 years after the life of Jesus to understand he really did mean it when he said we are all children of God. The Spirit at work.

The government should not place barriers to either interracial or same sex marriages. If the employee who issues marriage licenses refuses to issue a license to a gay couple, he/she has put a barrier to a gay marriage. Whoever that is should be fired. Lori is asking the government to condone - to legalized - discrimination.

At one time we thought interracial marriage was wrong. At one time we thought women should not be able to vote, own property and should cover their heads before entering a Church. At one time, this country allowed slavery and even the Bible says that slaves should obey their masters. We need to be able to recognize that we can discover that something that was a deeply held belief, something believed for centuries and across cultures, can be found to be wrong, sinful, illegal, based on a false premise, a false understanding of science or who we are as human beings and children of God. The Church does not always get it right and this is another time where they have it wrong.

What the Catholic Church is trying to do to create government sanctioned discrimination in the name of religious freedom is terrible. It is crossing a line between what civil governments do and what religions do. Issueing a civil license to recognize a marriage for purposes of civil rights and benefits is not the same as a faith blessing a marriage. One is the world of Caesar; the other is the world of God. Don't think they are the same, not yet, not even close to yet.

The fact is that if one cannot carry out the work which one's job description requires, then it is proper that one quit/not take that job and find another job which one can comfortably carry out.
I am a nurse and when I interviewed in a pubic health facility, I was asked if I could do counseling re: abortion.
I could not.
I immediately understood that I did not fit the job description. No religious freedom issue. No conscience issue.
I simply would be unable to perform the job description for which I was going to be paid.
All this brohaha about religious freedom looks like an attempt to manipulate the law of the land and make others feel like they are morally wrong because they do not act in accord with the moral direction of Bishops of the Catholic Church (the Vatican).
The Vatican needs to stay out of meddling in how the laws of this country are carried out.
Ireland has said it so well.

Procreation only? The elderly getting married would be denied marriage then. Infertile men or women would be then also denied marriage. It is wrong to limit marriage to possible procreation as many couples can not have children. Many are also considered too old to adopt too according to adoption agency criteria.

Homosexuals have had children in the past and now. Oscar Wilde who publically let the world know he was a homosexual had two children with his wife. Many people living today throughout the world are descendants of homosexuals. Banning the marriage of homosexuals is wrong.

Monogamy and faithfulness in marriage should be celebrated and promoted, not stopped. Allow homosexuals to marry and grant them marriage rights and benefits too.

Regarding: "In testimony before the House of Representatives' subcommittee dealing with issues of constitutional rights Wednesday, Bishop William Lori said the bishops want to call congressional attention to "grave threats to religious liberty" that are "grim validations of the bishops' recognition of the need for urgent and concerted action.""

- One of the big problems with the postion of the USCCB on these matters it that they have failed to show how individual rights in some way accrue to an institution, be it an hospital, diocese, or school,or parish. That is, I think, the government at its various levels responds to invidual citizens, and their collectives such as neighborhoods, cities, schools, and even church groups. HOwever the government, especially the federal govenrment, does not consider organizations per se a person with an individual's rights. Though the federal government will orient itself to an organization because of the individuals who are that organization and who each have individual rights. This is the praticality of the secular state. Thus while an institution might feel put upon by government, the question should always be is the government serving the individual citizens in a manner that contributes to their commonweal?

Regarding: "After a quick back and forth exchange -- during which Lori was interrupted as he tried to say the bishops make "a very careful distinction" between same sex and interracial marriage -- the bishop said he wouldn't argue for that right for the clerk, as "marriage between people of two different races is an entirely different matter than same sex marriage.""

- Recalling what has been written about the USCCB's position on same gender marriage, what one hopes is that the USCCB has stopped invoking 'natural law' as the basis for marriage between one man and one women. The problem with this is that just about every Christian knows that normal and natural marriage in our religious past included polygamy. On top of that are cultures with a long history of polyandry supported by, you guessed it, knowledge that this is the way it has always been done and that it is necessary for the ordering of society.

Nevertheless, no marriage witness (cleric or laic) should be required by civil law to witness any marriage that the witness knows in his or her heart is not to the benefit of the either soon to be spouse. If that reason not to witness is religious, then so be it, civil law cannot force the witness anymore than it can force a marriage.

I agree with the good bishop. They should also:

Allow selling your daughter into slavery (Exodus 21:7)
Ban contact with a woman while she is on her period (Leviticus 15:19-24)
Ban Working on the Sabbath (Exodus 35:2)
Ban Homosexuality (Leviticus 18:22)
Ban eating shellfish (Leviticus 11:10)
Ban gardens with two different crops and Polyester and Cotton (Leviticus 19:19)
Ban divorce (Mark 1:1-12)
My Personal Favorites!
Ban Michelle Bachman from speaking in church (1 Corinthians 14:34)
Ban Michelle Bachman from speaking in public (1 Timothy 2:11-14)

The world is flat people! Stop your heresy and follow the one true god! Pope Benedict!