puppydog85 wrote:
But to answer your questions. Question 1. What's wrong with a theocracy? Laws have to come from somewhere and if you think a perfect being has given laws for the world you might as well use them. A quick aside, this is the view of most of the founder's. Blackstone was the most quoted of all documents by the founders (after the Bible) and a quick read of him clearly assigns all law as coming from God. I can dig up quotes and stats if anyone really wants them.
Question 1: why do people continue to think that their own particular religion somehow has the right to define what a marriage is over an entire country? Puppydog (essentially): because theocracy A is the way to go.
Problems:
(a) the laws developed within a community aren't readily applicable to other societies. Customary law (which was developed in ancient societies) evolves through the interactions of many individuals over a specific circumstance of time and place. It eventually became codified, but copying and pasting codified (and informal) law into another area--across many different groups of people with their own laws--will lead to many problems, some of which will prove harmful and disastrous.
(a1) A great example of the changing nature of the law is seen with Islam, which has its holy book, a section of what the prophet did, and a third section which involves religious rulings and justifications for X, Y, and Z (because the code expressed in one old book won't cover everything). The law of Islam is interesting because it differs across many places. This is done to reduce problems and to resolve conflicts--which can't be done by appealing to one old book.
(b) Why support theocracy A and not theocracy B through Z? Surely, the reasoning in support of theocracy A can be replicated by others (e.g. Islam, Judaism, etc.). Any appeal to authority followed by that Awesome
Wheel of Power leads us to equally true yet contradictory theocracies, so how can we know if theocracy A is the right theocracy?
(c) What shall be taken literally and what shall be taken metaphorically from the divine words of theocracy A? We see this problem on CC too. Some religious people say that X, Y, Z should be taken metaphorically, but not A, B, C. But then, another religious person says that A, B, C, should be taken literally, but not X, Y, and Z. And then there's always that one guy who says, "everything in the Bible must be taken literally."
And those stances have been subject to change over the past 2000 years. So, if the laws or words of a holy book are inconsistently interpreted, and if these very words can simply be twisted from literal to metaphorically by means of creative thinking, then why would the laws and
institutions of theocracy A prove more promising than the status quo or alternative forms?
tl;dr (for others)To advocate for theocracy A across a country of 300+ million people is well-intended yet irresponsible and would be disastrous because (a) laws can't be copy-pasted into groups which have developed their own laws without creating great harm, (b) theocracy A is no more valid than some other theocracies, thus undermining its claims to being the Right theocracy, and (c) theocracy A would lend itself to an unacceptable degree of discretion for the lawmakers
(Imagine the Catholic Church legislating and enforcing the laws. lol, awesome.)
puppydog85 wrote:Question 2. Because most Christians have this thing with having to tell the world what is right. Something called the "great commission".
But seriously, what you described is precisely what Hitler did. Leave me alone and I will leave you alone, is more or less what he told the Christians. And you would rightly get all indignant if someone offered you that. Well, for some Christians homosexuality ranks with murder.
Reductio ad Hitlerum? Yeesh. Hitler != the US government, so you're not making sense here. At least, with the US, the Constitution and previous rulings would constrain Leviathan somewhat, but I understand your concern here. The US
might not prove good on their word. Either way, that would also be a slippery slope argument.
So, even if the US later forced churches to marry gay couples, I can't see this flying in court, so the slippery slope argument becomes less credible.
Besides, if they oppose gay marriage because they cherry-picked certain justifications from the bible, then why are some adherents so inconsistent in their interpretation? Why are some parts to be interpreted literally while others metaphorically? I'm sure there's plenty of hilarious stuff in the Bible which its believers don't follow, so why take such an arbitrary crowd seriously?
Furthermore, whatever happened to "love one another as I have loved you"? Where is the love for gays? Why are people hating on them because gays want their marriage to be legitimate? How far off from Jesus can Christians be on this? The behavior of that portion of religious people is despicable.
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