Thursday, October 18, 2012

An argument I think advocates of marriage equality should stress (2)

As I noted earlier,
we should decide the scope of secular marriage under secular principles rather than any particular church's interpretation of Scripture. This argument must be a strong one, since whenever I bring it up, the 'phobes immediately change the subject.
Now, it appears that the Second Circuit agrees with me. From the opinion:
But law (federal or state) is not concerned with holy matrimony. Government deals with marriage as a civil status--however fundamental--and New York has elected to extend that status to same-sex couples. A state may enforce and dissolve a couple’s marriage, but it cannot sanctify or bless it. For that, the pair must go next door.

Wednesday, October 17, 2012

Today's vocabulary word: interpret

interpret, v.t. to ignore; to rewrite from scratch

Tuesday, October 16, 2012

My cafeteria Catholicism is better than your cafeteria Catholicism.

Supporters of Biden take Ryan to task, and vice versa, for picking and choosing which teachings of the Catholic Church to follow, while ignoring the fact that both they and their favored veep candidate do the same. In both cases, cafeteria Catholics criticize someone for, well, being one of them. Both sides also seem to think that when it comes to those Catholic teachings that they want to see written into secular law, the establishment clause somehow does not apply.

Meet the new philosophy, same as the old philosophy.

The recent exchange regarding the dreaded book logic got me thinking about a Biblical-literalist church of which I had once been a member. At that church, the pastor and deacons encouraged us to go beyond head knowledge to heart knowledge and were even fond of saying — and I quote verbatim — "Don't reason." The religious right and the politically correct left refuse to recognize any commonality, even when it's that glaringly obvious, and thereby confirm what I said here.