I would say I can't wait for a Muslim county clerk in, say, Dearborn, Michigan (which has a huge Muslim community), to refuse to issue a marriage license to a Christian couple on the grounds that the this kafir couple hasn't been paying jizya
Just worth a mention - this divorced clerk is technically an adulterer - and that's a sin that made The Big Ten (homosexuality ain't).
- As one couple, David Ermold and David Moore, tried to engage her in an argument, Ms. Davis said several times that her office would not issue any marriage licenses. “Under whose authority?” Mr. Ermold asked. “Under God’s authority,” she replied.
Someone just needs to point her to the direction of Romans 13.
Would you believe me if I told you that you're not the first to ask that question?
One of the things that is very interesting about the American Revolution is that there were religious leaders on both sides of the issue.
This is going on about an hour from me in the small town where I attended college. I'm going to be a little reluctant to list that on any future resumes.
Kentucky in general frequently let's me down with what it receives news coverage for.
Simply upholding the sanctity of marriage? Divorced three times, she gave birth to twins five months after divorcing her first husband. They were fathered by her third husband but adopted by her second. WTF?
I love Dan Savage's columns for both their humor and his ability to often cut to the essence of an issue. My favorite was a response to a guy that wrote in saying he liked his partner to put a finger up his butt during sex and wondered if that made him gay. Dan simply responded: It depends, does the finger belong to a man or a woman?
nitpick: Christians aren't considered kafir. Kafir are atheists. Christians and Jews are still people of the book.
ETA additional nitpick: Dan Savage is misogynistic, biphobic, transphobic trash and I hate him being used as any sort of voice for the LGBT community when he really only represents the G community.
Good question that I don't know the answer to 100%. Dhimmi status came from Muslim caliphates which I think were united under a single belief until the schism over legitimate caliphates leading to the Sunni-Shia split. Almost certainly not for Wahabi. Alawites are a subset of Shia with some Christian beliefs included (tripartate god) but I don't know where they stand on Jews (likely negative because they're Syria based)
- "Christian" is now synonymous with "anti-gay bigot."
I can't wait for this to go away, but I'm not sure it will. (How's the Muslim/terrorist association going?)
While pointing out hypocrisy is interesting, remember that there are only two consistent resolutions. Either Christianity forbids both homosexuality and divorce, or it allows both. So if you're trying to make an argument that Christianity accepts homosexuality, you should be very careful about using Christianity to argue that there's something wrong with divorce.
Of course, this is orthogonal to whether there are other reasons that something's wrong.
A simple non-religion-based rule about relationships that most people would probably agree with is: "when in an intimate relationship with one person, do not have any intimate contact with anyone else". (Polyamory, swinging, and open relationships are statistically insignificant so I will ignore them). By this rule, we can still judge the woman, but note that the divorces are irrelevant except to help position the other events relative to each other.
In conjunction with this rule, I can find some small sympathy for homophobes. If they cannot imagine ever not being involved in a heterosexual relationship, then it would (seem to) follow (to them) that any homosexual relationship would be cheating. This impression is not helped by the existence of "cover marriages".
But personally my favorite argument against trying to enforce an interpretation of Christianity via law is "Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's." Talking about the separation of church and state as described by America's founders is futile.
- But personally my favorite argument against trying to enforce an interpretation of Christianity via law is "Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's." Talking about the separation of church and state as described by America's founders is futile.
In my opinion, Romans 13 would probably be more appropriate as the whole interpretation of "Render unto Ceaser" could really go either way. Whereas Romans 13 is more specific, cut, and dry.
Though, I guess she could point to the second half of Romans 13 and say "See? They're in the wrong." Which goes to show how hard it can be to use the Bible as a guiding source. Still though, the first part does put obedience to authority in plain, simple English. According to that passage, it is a must.
Edit: Unless you're using the passage as a way of saying Church and State are two separate things? I dunno. I'm tired and full of dumb at the moment.
Seeing how disparate the interpretations were was certainly enlightening. But then:
- I think we'd be hard pressed to find any religious concept that isn't disputed by someone.
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Romans 13 might be more applicable for the specific case of obedience, but the underlying problem is that these people can't acknowledge a government that is separated from the church.
Besides, giving someone a whole chapter as reference means TL;DR. The Caesar quote stands alone. Regardless of how much people can argue about where the separation needs to be set, it must be there somewhere.
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As for using the Bible as a guiding source ... someone asked Jesus that and his answer seems pretty clear.