Well, not only are you bogoted but like most religious fundamentalists woefully uninformed.

I understand that in modern times fundamentalists like to bury their heads and pretend that the world is only a handful of thousands of years old, but historically speaking christianity is a very modern religion - evolving from out of Judaism which itself was borrowed from Chaldea/Babylon and thence from India/Egypt. This is a historical and archaelogical fact, with remnants along the way every step of this transition as events were copied and names slowly changed. I do not expect you to accept this, but if you put an ounce of effort into researching religious history you would probably cease being religious.

It always makes me wonder how the religious extremists can fool themselves so thoroughly. You know that the bible was not only written independantly spanning decades to hundreds of years after its subject matter, you know that it is in a form completely - completely - different from that which it was originally, and this is seen by the remnants of ancient biblical manuscrpits which do not match the current. You know that the translations themselves were erroneous at best, and fabricated at worst. You know that various churches have simply made it up as they went along, most noticably the bishop clementus of alexandria and the council of nicea, and you know that every church existant today believes they are right and everybody else is wrong. If they all belive as fervently as each other that each is the sole and true interpretation of the word of god, how can they all be right? If you can believe everybody else to be mistaken about this, why not yourself?

As other posters have said, not only do we as a society have a responsibility to do our best to maintain rational and moral laws that are constantly updated to fit the needs of our philosophies and our changing and evolving society, but marriage in itself has a long and convoluted history of change in different civilisations, including between brothers and sisters in certain circumstances also, by the way.

Marriage is not a religious construct, it is a construct of society, of which religion is also the construct. No wonder that the two have always been closely interrelated, as whatever religion that is present within a society has usually been the repository for all of that society's rituals - it is this fact that would let us deem that body as a religion. It is unfortunate that christianity had the short but thorough stranglehold that it did on western society - and we can see the effects of letting christianity have free reign between the fall of rome and the enlightenment, a little period known as the dark ages because they were so fucking dark - but now fortunately humanity has made good progress at liberation from that immorality, and truly the greatest moral and philosophical abomination as we begin to implement changes, globally, that reflect our greater desire for love and equality - something christianity preaches, but christians never seemed to grasp.

I would love if marriage and associated rituals could be a religious affair. I just don't know of any religion acting mature enough today to handle them.

Edit: by the way, congratulations NY!
Edit 2: I'm not going to arguue against your ridiculous assertion that homosexuality is a choice. You choose to have sex with someone of the same sex, you don't choose to fall in love with them. If you want to research this I suggest using not google but google scholar, as you can set the criteria to match only peer-reviwed scientific studies. Learn your way to compassion.

PWNED. Oh man that was great. +rep

+1 to Ron Paul.

That's how people get elected, right?

He'd have to get passed the primary, then he'd have to convince the liberals and independents that he's not a whack job.

All in all the odds of him being elected are indistinguishable from zero.

No doubt. He can be coocoo for cocopuffs at times. I have not read into him much but what I do remember sounds like what our current situation could use.

I'd rather they ran somebody that was more moderate, focused on solving problems rather than taking pot shots at the President. I liked McCain in the 2008 primary and voted for him, but in the final election I just couldn't do it. He had swung so far right after the primaries that I couldn't justify voting for him. Then when he didn't think there was a problem with the economy, that was more or less the last straw on my voting for him.

As long as the GOP candidates are focused on returning us to the policies which caused the great recession and repealing healthcare reform, I don't think any of them stand much of a chance of winning. The healthcare reform package is getting more and more popular as more and more provisions phase in.

Where are you getting the idea that healthcare 'reform' is getting more popular? I haven't met anyone who has changed their mind on it either way since it passed. It's all a wash anyway since healthcare 'reform' is nothing more than a federal mandate forcing every person in the country to buy into the 'old' system. As far as I can see the only reason the republicans are mad is just to be contrary since the public still needs the illusion of choice. This plan is a corporatist wet dream.

As for Ron Paul, he's exactly what the country needs right now. He's the only politician that wants to bring our troops home NOW, the only one that voted against the Patriot Act, he called the recession years before it started and warned everyone, but neither side listened... Yeah, he takes shots at Obama, but remember he also took NUMEROUS shots at Bush as well. He just tells it like it is. Unlike most people that take shots though, he always finishes them with a plan to do better. It's never mindless bashing.

Since both the dems and republicans have almost no differences in how they handle economic policy (no matter what the pundit screechers say), any moderate is just going to be more of the same: More corporate cronyism, more wars, skyrocketing debt, and tax cuts for the rich.

Other than a few small factors, Barrack's presidency has just been a continuation of Bush era policy: We're still in Iraq and Afghanistan and are even engaging in hostilities in Libya. Guantinamo: still open. Tax cuts for the rich: renewed (broken promise). Corporate bailouts: continued. Patriot Act: renewed. Public Option Healthcare: Still dead. Federal reserve? Still calls the shots and controls our currency. I could go on.

Why would you suggest another moderate? That's the VERY last thing we need. Moderates, by definition, don't mess too much with the status quo. and the one thing that the dems and repubs agree on at this point, is that the status quo is tearing this country apart.

This is the common trend in the world, that liberals reach 3-5% of votes in election. Because there are this many liberals in societies, unfortunatelly. Rest of them is either narrow-minded, straw-chewing conservatists, or idealess, sheep-following socialists.

okay. but there are many gods in the world. a government cannot recognize one to be true and not another anymore. whether your God is the true one is completely irrelevant.
same of those gods are not okay with gay marriages. some are.

therefore what consists of marriage is not determined by one religious group but is defined by the country in which people live or in this case a state in USA.

Marriage exists outside Christianity, whether you want to admit it or not.

Congratulations New York!

[OffTopic] I don't like calling it health care reform, its just better access to a shittier system
[OnTopic]
Civil Rights--Ron > GOP
Economy-----Ron > Dems
Military--------Ron > Both

He's a president that is serious about economic reform but won't cost us our rights.

Healthcare reform was never as unpopular as the GOP claimed, the numbers going into the debate were approximately 85% in favor. In order for the GOP to get anybody to oppose it they had to make up all sorts of whacky stories like death panels and how it was going to kill the economy. But the fact is that by the 2010 elections, the FUD had largely warn off and it was an even divide over whether it should be retained or repealed.

As for your initial question, I got that idea from the polls that have been trending more and more in favor of retaining the reform with tweaks. Most folks are smart enough to know that "repeal and replace" is code for repeal and go back to the previous broken system.

Continuation of Bush administration policy? So that's why we got healthcare reform, Osama bin Laden is dead and banking reform, albeit weak reform?

The President has been a pretty big disappointment on the civil liberties front, but you'd have to be pretty willfully ignorant to claim that he's continuing the Bush era policies to that extent.
It's reform, assuming that the GOP doesn't manage to repeal it as they intend to do, it's definitely reform.

I see these posts where people claim that it's a shittier system, but quite frankly our system sucks. And the main reason why we have such a shitty system is that they previously could drop you for getting sick, if you got sick you couldn't buy insurance and preventative care was frequently not covered. Not to mention that we allowed corporations to make money by being health insurance companies. I'm not sure who in their right mind thinks that it's OK to make profit by selling health insurance.

I see plenty of parts of the reform package that address those points.

I wouldn't say continuing, but ironically he has done little to "change" besides healthcare reform (I wouldn't call Osama a win). Bush was a big spender who did little for civil rights. While I liked the tax cuts, they only work if you cut spending (duh). Obama made unrealistic promises about troop withdrawment but I still expected better than this. We will see if he gets us involved in another front.

Oh, and I'm happy that Osama is dead, I just don't think it actually accomplished anything. Maybe a message: You have at least a decade.

Edit: I meant the same system which is still shitty. As far as I know (admittedly not much) the system is still the same.

Looks like I stepped on someone's toe here, but I definitely won't be apologizing for my sense of morality. Hate me all you want, I won't respond by doing the same.