To be honest they change their beliefs for money anyway and will marry anyone, may as well do it for gay people as well...
Some of the comments here beggar belief.
Is no one in the least bit interested in searching for a solution which us fair and equal to everyone, whilst keeping the maximum number of people on board?
Steve W
LOL You started it data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7
Yes.
The solution is for the CofE to recognise it is pointless trying to protect sandcastles when the tide is coming in.
Well, at the moment
And in your bid to prevent discrimination (when the law changes), you want to discriminate against the church by no longer allowing them to conduct marriages.
Or am I completely misreading your posts?
You are mis-reading.
I'm in favour of the church doing what it thinks is right, but I'm libertarian. However this is not the Governments policy. The policy is to move towards an inclusive social structure by means of enforceable laws. Now I'm not in favour of that way of forcing people against their wills and that includes the church. However, its too late, we have already accepted the laws and the church cannot be excluded from these laws by creating a law which is direct opposition to the prevailing policy.
It took me a while to see what Gaz was saying, but once you can see how crazy it is. What's more, those laws will isolate the church even more than it is now.
How can everyone be equal but some are seen as justifiable targets for discrimination?We talking Animal Farm here?
When two groups are wanting the opposite thing (to discriminate, to not be discriminated against), I'm not sure there is a compromise that would make both happy, only
A) Make exactly one side happy
B) Make exactly the other side happy
C) Make nether happy (in fact **** them both off)
The government is going with something closer to C from what I can see.
The option should be A or B, and which one is chosen is the difficult bit, but the tides of society are siding with equal rights far all, over the rights to discriminate by the few.
The law should not be dictating the actions of a Religious group, over and above how the law is applied for everyone else.Religious groups should be sorting their own problems out, it shouldn't be the job of MP's.
You'll have to explain which comments beggar belief because I can't see such things (unless you mean the rights/views of Religious belief superseding everything else).
Currently the Government is proposing enshrining in Law the right for the Church to discriminate, not only by saying they don't have to marry same sex couples, but also changing the equality act so that Churches have an opt out from treating people equally.
In other words the government is trying to make it pretty much entirely illegal to discriminate against gay people (the last hurdle being marriage), except it is granting Churches increased powers to discriminate.Its hypocrisy of the highest order.
The way I see it, its a lose/lose situation.
No matter what you do, youre discriminating against somebody?
Banning the Church from marrying people, as has been proposed here, is discrimination in its own right.
In my opinion, it should be down to individual Priest/Parish to decide who (from a theological point) they wish to marry.
I know several gay Christian couples and they have sought out and worship in sympathetic parishes. If the law changed tomorrow, these priests would happily conduct same sex marriage.
While addressing the troops in Afghanistan, David Cameron uttered this little gem.
He urged the Church of England to lead a revival of traditional Christian values to counter the country's "moral collapse".
Mmmm... Did he have anything in mind?