Personally, I think that when reasoning about laws a key question to ask is if what the law forbids causes external harm.
From a purely secular viewpoint, it seems to me that neither homosexual activity nor same sex marriage cause external harm. This makes me inclined to hold that the law should not forbid them.
From a Catholic perspective, I regard homosexual activity as sinful and same sex marriage as absurd. Yet, by themselves this is not enough for me to agree that the natural law should be enforced in civil law. The "destroy the values of heterosexual marriage" effect might qualify, but I do not think that laws are the solution: the solution is conversion, both in terms of evangelism and on-going conversion.
One line of reasoning related to external harm is that when one part of the body is hurt, the entire body suffers, hence private sin is harmful to everyone. The problem with applying this to asking if what the law forbids causes external harm is that it effectively means that there is no such thing as external harm: clearly, it is too inclusive.
Still, there is a dilemma for me: on one hand, I would not want to impose the conclusions of my religion on others by law, when the law would then forbid something that does not cause external harm. On the other hand, not opposing a law that allows such activity can be seen as tacit approval of the activity.
Perhaps one way out is to oppose by speaking out in public, but to abstain or vote my approval... but that would be inconsistent, and would even amount to a lie if I represented other people and did not admit my inconsistency.
I still got "Source Code Review Tool" as one of the ads :DQuote:
Originally Posted by MK27
hmm... that actually makes you sound like a troll who decided to post flamebait :oQuote:
Originally Posted by Mario F.
I think that even if civil marriages were universally renamed civil unions, the Catholic Church would continue to take the same stand against same sex civil unions. I deduce this from the fact that the Catholic Church does not consider marriages outside of the Catholic Church to be invalid, and that it considers marriage to be more than just a human institution. Consequently, just renaming does not change anything: a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.Quote:
Originally Posted by cpjust