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Arlen Specter Bails

308
SixDegrees4/28/2009 12:33:35 pm PDT

re: #287 nikis-knight

Either direction is legislating a morality.

Not so much. Marriage, as recognized by the state, is a legal construct; marriage, as recognized by a church, is a religous and/or moral construct. The two have little, if anything, in common. And this two-tiered system is what currently exists right now in nearly every case - except for the case of homosexual marriage. As a Roman Catholic, you are perfectly free to obtain a divorce from the state and to remarry with the state’s consent; the church, on the other hand, will not recognize either arrangement.

Proposals to allow homosexual marriage at the state level say nothing at all about how churches must behave regarding such a union. Such an extension simply shuts down one of the last fuzzy areas where church and state still overlap. The degree of overlap isn’t a problem in most cases, but in this particular case it is.

Despite the granting of a marriage license, churches will still be free to ignore the union and to condemn the couple to eternal damnation, hellfire and brimstone.