Super Bowl Coach (hearts) Bigots.

No, but he directly said he's for that legislation. I don't know about you, but that seems to make him in favor of discrimination in my eyes.

And I have a problem with that. So does the Constitution.

 

That's not what you said. What you said is 'THEY can't legislate it.' Now you're saying they can't support legislation. They're two different things.

Never mind. I can't explain it well.It's why I only post on stupid threads. I'm out of here.

 

Which is why we don't have mob rule in this country: People like Dungy can't introduce legislation. But the people elected to represent him sure can -- and they have.

It doesn't make him any less of a bigot for supporting it, though.

 

I see your point. I disagree, but i see your point.

 

Which is all fine and good except that there are financial benefits to being married, namely taxes. If you are going to do that, then it is unfair to withhold that right from a section of the population.

Also, at one point, black people were not counted as citizens in this country. It had been that way through the entire history of the United States until we finally got smart enough to change it.

Also, women were unable to vote. It had always been done that way...until we realized it had to change.

I'm not talking the history of man here. This has become an issue of law, so I'm sticking to U.S. history only. Saying it has always been that way just doesn't hold water. And one of the great things about the Constitution if the United States is it allows for growth and change, so we don't have to keep something just because it has always been that way.

We're human. We fuck up. Sometimes we fuck up when we make the rules. That's why we need to be able to change them.

 

Many in the "family values" crowd -- myself included -- have clamored for years for laws that would make it substantially more difficult to get a divorce.

Because of the lobbying of the "family values" crowd, several states have initiated the option of "covenant marriages," which have *much* stricter regulations that make divorces difficult.

We're not happy with the divorce rate among straight married couples. And we'll admit that it's high in our churches. We've done quite a bit to attempt to reverse that tide. However, the women's rights crowd led to "no-fault divorce" being the law of the land in nearly every state, which helped lead to the skyrocketing divorce rate. And the evangelical Christian community didn't get involved in politics until a lot of the damage was done -- the Warren Court years -- and stemming the tide was almost impossible by that point (and has remained difficult).

We allowed the other side to set the agenda for too long, and once we begin getting involved, we immediately are labeled as bigots.

But, many "pro-family" groups tend to see marriage as not a civil thing. We believe it is more sanctified than that. The concept of marriage is, to the "pro-family" groups, something created by God, and any attempt to sully that by calling homosexual unions "marriages" is therefore an abomination to the concept of an insitution created by God. The Bible mentions homosexuality in multiple places. None of them confer any positive feelings toward the practice. Probably the mildest mention of it is to call a homosexual relationship "unnatural" in Romans 1.

So, why would someone who holds similar beliefs to Dungy support relationships that his faith considers something between "unnatural" and the reason for destroying Sodom & Gomorrah horning its way into an institution that was created by God.

I understand today that marriages confer both civil and religious meaning. Let's just let "marriages" -- in a civil sense -- become "unions" for all types of relationships. That could be monogamous heterosexual relationships, polygamous relationships, bestial relationships and homosexual relationships.

And therefore, we can let "marriage" be determined by religious institutions?

Fair?

(and the comparison of homosexuality to the plight of African-Americans, which has come up on this thread, is rather silly at best. Unless you're Michael Jackson, you don't really have a choice to be African-American. It is possible to "change sides" and go from being gay to straight or vice versa. Sheryl Swoopes was once married to a man before she came out. There is a large -- but often-silenced -- ex-gay movement in the U.S. of former homosexuals who have become straight. One is a lifestyle that can be influenced by environmental factors -- including sexual abuse and neglect in a child's early years. The other is a racial makeup that cannot be changed except through multiple plastic surgeries or -- for future generations -- marriage across racial lines).

 

Ding ... all we need to officially recognize (or deny) same-sex marriage is a vote by 2/3 of each house of Congress and 3/4 of the states.

Neither will get enough traction to allow us to change the Constitution, so I guess this debate will have to go on until Earl Warren gets appointed chief legislator, um, I mean chief justice again.

 

Tony Dungy is entitled to his opinion on this matter. The same as George Clooney is entitled to his on Darfur. Or me on anything on which I wish to opine. For the record, I don't agree with Dungy on the issue, but I'm not a Hoosier voter. So mine is moot.

 

Just wanted to make sure this bit of brilliance didn't get lost in the shuffle.

 

Fenian - don't hurt yourself