Do you believe that purely religious or traditionalism ( or a combination of both ) is a good enough reason to pass a law? For example. "I believe that homosexuality is a sin, so therefore we should ban gay marriage" but no other reason given. or "Marriage is traditionally between a man and a woman. Because it has always been that way, it needs to remain that way" ( please note, I am using gay marriage here for my example because its an easy one to use, but this could just as easily apply to anything else. For example, it should be illegal to divorce, coveting they neighbors wife, or whatever religious law / tradition you want to insert here or so on and so forth. )
The problem with passing laws based on religion or tradition is whose religion or tradition do we use?
I dont disagree with you. I think many "so called" christians right now, who favor making things illegal based soley on that funny book they all read, are not thinking forward to the day of when / if they are no longer the majority.
It is probably the reason why some fundamentalist Christians are scared to death of the idea of Muslims becoming a majority to the point where they make silly, redundant laws like the Kansas anti-Sharia law. We don't need an anti-Sharia law as long as we respect and follow the First Amendment and the separation of church and state.
No, a law should have a tangable benefit to society. So for your example what tangable benefit too society would alowing homosexuals marry have? For that matter what do any laws concerning who can marry who benefit society other then those perttaining to the unwilling or minors?
Well, tecyhnically, there are no benefits to society for marriage. It costs us more money to allow marriage. Tax breaks, medical care coverage, and the like. So honestly, it would be in our countries financial interest to not allow marriage at all. Technically. Dont get me awrong, I am not arguing against marriage. Although, honestly. I think ALL legal benefits need to be removed from marriage. Such as tax breaks, right to life, inheretance and so forth. To me, Marriage shuold only be one of two things. Either it is a RELIGIOUS construct, and it belongs to the church. If that is the case, then ALL legal political benefits you recevie from marraige must be removed. OR. It is a political construct, in which case, the right to marry needs to be granted to gays in order to be fair.
I think everyone agrees that religion shouldn't influence peoples political views but it sadly does, I believe religion and politics shouldn't even be mention in the same sentence. Like with the homosexual marriage issue, if everyone looked at it from a political issue then pretty much everyone would agree homosexuals should be able to marry because they don't have the same rights of everyone else (benefits wise, etc), but if you look at it from a religious stand point then no one will want it people it's against their religion, and who wants to go against their own religion?
I wish that we could remove the word marriage from the whole equation. Why cant we all just call them civil unions for rights and property and let the Churches combine people spiritually without the state getting involved? But back to the laws question, I realy believe that a law should benefit society as a whole or promote something that benefits society. For instance laws agianst theft benefit society by attempting to prevent other from taking your property. Or laws that limit speeds in cars are ment to protect people from harm. So if a law based on religion or tradition benefits society as a whole I would have no problem with it. But it a law does no then why should we enact it? Laws agianst or for homosexuallity any thing, do not benefit society. Realy the same can be said for heterosexuality, unless we are promoting procreation or the nuclear family which not everyone agrees is a benefit to society.
Yeah..... we should totally use a book written by men from 2000 years ago.... sounds like good logic.
That depends on what that book says, A books age does not make it right or wrong. It is the words within it. The holy books of all the great religions have alot of wisdom in them. True you can not legislate by using all the rules in those books. It would not make sense and would harm society. But there are things in all those books that we should look too. Concepts that our ancesters came up with that still resonate today like "do not murder", do not steal, and take care of your less fortunate." Those are all things that benefit society, things that we today take for granted but back in the days of Hammurabi or Solomon were ground breaking.
Those ideas existed way before religion though.... I agree those ideas are needed but we dont need a 2000 year old book ( or 2 year old book) to tell us so.
Did they, I dont know about that (Would be a great doctorate thesis). And you are right we dont "need" those books to tell us so, but some times they are the only things that do. Why ignore the wisdom of our fore fathers and hope that people remember? It is amazing how often our leaders forget such simple concepts like love your fellow man. Books are a window to out past and our future, I think it was Churchal who said "the farther back you look the farther into the future you see." I read that in a old book.
