WASHINGTON — Voters in the state of Maine approved a ballot measure Nov. 6 to redefine marriage to include homosexual couples, becoming the sixth state in the U.S. to do so and the first to do so by a vote of the people.
Previously, marriage had been put before the people 32 times, and voters had affirmed marriage as the union of a man and a woman in each case.
Question 1 on the Maine ballot proposed to legally recognize “gay marriage,” reversing a similar referendum in 2009 that was narrowly defeated.
With 45% of precincts reporting on the night of the Nov. 6 election, the measure held a 55%-46% lead, enough for analysts to project its passage.
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Come Holy Spirit. You know what is the best for us, but in case you wait for this request, here it is - Come Holy Spirit. Change us. Sanctify us. Make us saints, for we cannot do it on our own. We are the sinners, and your people are getting lost without the Light. In this century we failed miserably. Father! You have proven us that without you, we cannot be happy, and without us, the world can become nightmare, where people run after ocean water in thirst only to thirst more and die. Please, change us, quench our thirst, and let us the Light for the world…again.
equality won today, nobody lost.
Congratulations to all the families of Maine.upon61
Sad but US normal marriage at the legal level is a farce that can be broken by US state governments in a nano second.
We are pretending that legally fragile hetero marriage was a great sign. For a nation to have the Catholic concept, that nation would have to have no divorce except annullment for mental defect at point of vowing but inclusive of separation for abuse…physical or emotional.
The problem is Catholics do not live their faith. Not in the voting booth, not in the bedroom, not on their job, not anywhere.
Only *God* defines what marriage is, not the state, not corrupt men. Jesus’ own words tell us exactly what marriage is. Let those that challenge the laws of God be chastised. Mark 10:2-12: Some Pharisees came and tested him by asking, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” “What did Moses command you?” he replied. They said, “Moses permitted a man to write a certificate of divorce and send her away.”“It was because your hearts were hard that Moses wrote you this law,” Jesus replied. “But at the beginning of creation God ‘made them male and female.’ ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife and the two will become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no man separate.”
10 When they were in the house again, the disciples asked Jesus about this. 11 He answered, “Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery against her. 12 And if she divorces her husband and marries another man, she commits adultery.”
“One may well ask: ‘How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?” The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the last to advocate disobeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that “an unjust law is no law at all’
Now, what is the difference between the two? How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law.”
Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. - Letter from a Birmingham Jail
What law is unjust here that one would break?
Posted by dch on Wednesday, Nov 7, 2012 10:10 AM (EST):
What law is unjust here that one would break?
______________________________________________________________
Any law that redefines marriage is unjust.
sad, sad, sad
dch
“What law is unjust here that one would break?”
Only the “law” that has existed in nature and acknowledge by all cultures and societies from the beginning of recorded history is - only the union of a man and a woman is natural. So, in response to your first posting above - civilization lost in Maine to man made desire for their licentiousness to be recognized as legitimate as procreation love.
Doesn’t surpise me. Maine is full of liberals.
What is material is the FACT that marriage equality now exists in Maryland, Maine, and Washington in the year 2012. There is nothing you can do about it, but it will not harm you in any tangible way. This war is over in New England..period. The GOP has milked this for a decade but will likely drop it as an issues. Once it crosses over 50% it becomes useless as a get out the vote issue for their electoral ticket s in the remaining states.
Let others live their lives in private and marry whomever they want. This is not the Vatican. This is America, the land of Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of happiness.
dch said,
By insisting that two clearly unequal things be treated the same, those who support same-sex “marriage” have effectively said that equality is utterly unimportant. They are the arch-enemies of equality.
I find it amazing how it is the obvious things that become forgotten in our society.
Gay people have been getting married for about 10 years in MA and civilization as not ended. We’ve simply moved away from past, nobody has been harmed in any relevant way. Now the opponents of equality have lost their most effective tactic of the ballot proposition since it had backfired and been turned against them. The courts are more risky, so that path is closed as court losses become case law precedents. Its over people. You’ve simply got caught by history. Gay people are not going back in the closet and will no stand up a fight. They no longer fear the majority. The GOP will drop this as a wedge issue.
dch, you cannot say that same-sex “marriage” has not harmed anyone in MA, let alone elsewhere. In that state Catholic adoption agencies were left with no choice but to cease their services when the law required them to place children with same-sex couples. In Canada and Sweden clergy have been investigated for violations of the law for merely preaching the Gospel. In some U.S. states public school teachers and students have been suspended for merely voicing their opposition to homosexual practice. In the UK a couple’s application to be foster parents was denied on the grounds that their Christian faith’s teachings on homosexual practice are “inimical to the interests of children.”
The problem that government recognition of homosexual unions and practice causes for those who don’t recognize them is that they are weak things, and the weaker a thing to be protected, the stronger that protection must be. That is why same-sex “marriage” and other laws respecting homosexuality, far from letting everyone else live according to their own values, become a tyranny against those who don’t recognize it.
GOD BLESS MAINE! Maine now lives the philosophy of inclusion of Christ. Again, thank you Maine for teaching us what it means to be Christlike, to be Catholic!
dch
“There is nothing you can do about it, but it will not harm you in any tangible way.”
Well if it isn’t going to cause any harm to me in a “tangible way,” then why did you have to have it made into law, we weren’t causing you any harm “in a tangible way?”
@michael vocino: Your statement shows that you are an alien to this board. God gave you freedom of choice, the same as to all of us. You can believe in your BS, live for your BS, and die for your BS. Me too, but I realized that I don’t want my or your BS. I want the Truth. Only the Truth. If you don’t want it then what you do here is a work of evil, and you state through this action that you don’t want call God your Father, even He is your Father, but you prefer an other father - father of lies. Repent or else your eternity will not be part of your nature, and that will hurt like hell (if it does not do that already.) May God Bless you.
michael vocino
And thank you for making me laugh. You will find out soon enough what Christ thinks about YOUR beliefs, and you won’t be “happy” about it. I’ve read His book - it’s all in there. Read and repent, for real happiness that will last eternally and save yourself from the torment of Hell for ever.
Spare the “GOP” and “Vatican” boogie-men for the sophomores bumperstickers. The contrivance called “same-sex marriage” is a lie that no civil law has the power to make true. “An unjust law is no law at all.”
As for dch’s “Gay people have been getting married for about 10 years in MA and civilization as not ended.” Is that your measure of determining what is good, true, and just? We enslaved Africans - legally - for hundreds of years and civilization didn’t end either. By your (il)logic there was nothing wrong with that moral evil either.
Tony K: “Let others live their lives in private and marry whomever they want”. Really? Anyone should be able to marry anyone? Are you sure about that? Anyone? Because I can think of plenty of couplings that should never be given legal recognition. Can’t you? How would you oppose them without meeting your definition of being a bigot? That is precisely what is at stake here.
The harm to ss couples is real and simple, unequal treatment under civil and tax laws, I am a straight married man with children so I don’t have a personal stake. The issue is equal treatment under the civil, family, and tax laws. SSM is now real and here for good and there is nothing the opponents can do in the states that have already transitioned to a new era. The adoption agencies cited were operating with tax payer funded contracts and were required to follow MA state laws, they CHOOSE to leave the adoption business rather than comply.
The reality is simple, the opponents of equality lost yesterday, but they lost nothing personally while thousands of fellow citizens gained equality under the law. In four states, majorities came down in favor of equality. There is simply no way to stop this if the courts and majorities of voters support it.
another Sodom and Gomorra
@Damon Owens: “How would you oppose them without meeting your definition of being a bigot?” That’s the point. I’m not interested in OPPOSING anyone else’s marriage arrangements. I’m not interested in being a part of the morality police force. If two men or two women want to marry, what business is it of mine? If a man and 3 women freely choose to have a polygamous marriage, same thing. I’ll stay out of the private lives of others, and they’ll stay out of my private life. The underpinnings of the Declaration of Independence was very clear: Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. This is America, the only country in the world founded on the stated belief that citizens know what’s best for themselves and should be allowed to live accordingly.
Tony K: “Let others live their lives in private”?
But that’s exactly what those who voted against this supposed redefinition of marriage want. They don’t want to have anything to do with what other people do in their own bedrooms. It’s the “yes” case that wants to make it a public matter, and force every person, every goverment and every organisation to publicly endorse and celebrate it.
Michael vocino; ” the philosophy of inclusion of Christ.”? Have you ever even glanced at the Gospels? Christ sure didn’t say anything in faviour of inclusion, on the contrary He said a whole lot about EXclusion. He hammered His message over and over again: do what He says, or you’re OUT!!
dch said,
Despite years of asking, even via a letter published in USA Today, I have yet to see anyone acknowledge the reasons that laws that recognize married couples were enacted in the first place, then attempt to show how same-sex couples fulfill the purpose of those laws.
They were indeed operating with government contracts, but forfeiting them still would not have allowed them to continue operating according to their moral principles.
“Even if Catholic Charities ceased receiving tax support and gave up its role as a state contractor, it still could not refuse to place children with same-sex couples.” - http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/012/191kgwgh.asp
Tony K
“The underpinnings of the Declaration of Independence was very clear: Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. This is America, the only country in the world founded on the stated belief that citizens know what’s best for themselves and should be allowed to live accordingly.”
Aren’t you forgetting in your above quote what made those things mentioned possible in the document you referenced? Specifically, “...to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them…. And aren’t you forgetting that “We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights…?” Why do you leave out the statements about “Nature’s God” and “endowed by their Creator?”
Isn’t it also interesting that the founders found some things in what they were doing to be “self-evident?” Certainly, it is “self-evident” that Nature’s God did not make man to procreate with man. And marriage is culture’s and society’s way of forming a contract between the stronger sex and the weaker one so their joining together provides for the protection of the weaker as she gives birth to off-spring of that marriage, while at the same time giving protection and legitimacy to the off-spring which will continue the procreation of society. Marriage was not created for the purpose of providing “tax deductions” or, for that matter, because two people love each other, or they want to covet other people’s respectability is their choice of a sexual partner. That’s not the purpose of marriage.
As for any of this being “business” of yours, it’s not, so why are you pushing it on society?
Well, I’ll just end with a “thank you” to Tony K for at least being honest about the connection between redefining marriage and the unlimited variety of couplings that can now demand public acceptance WITH THREAT OF GOVERNMENT FORCE: polygamy, polyamory, bestiality, adult-child “lovers”, family members by blood or adoption…
Now that marriage has been reduced to affection, attraction, and a “commitment”, marriage is anything….therefore nothing.
No. Same-sex “marriage” has no more chance of public acceptance as slavery or abortion. No chance.
Neither a moral wrong nor a strong desire qualifies as a Civil Right.
@Tony K: Dear Tony - Are you also agreeing that we have a right to tell that homosexual unions are abomination for God, and the people (or more, if you agree for polygamy,) living in such unions are living meaningless sexual life? For if we have right to say that then we have right to vote agains it. And if we do not have right to say that then you say it is okay to persecute us. And your answer will be “what business is it of mine?” Then if this is not your business to say no to persecution of us, then maybe it will not your business if someone of your children start telling the truth and will be persecuted too? What I am trying to say is that you have no middle here. You can be either on Christ side or be against Him. Blessings.
Are all the people writing here Catholics?
Dear all: We have the Truth, they have “truths”. We worship Love. They call everything “love”. For us God is the Idol, they have “idols”. Now we have Marriage - an unbroken union between a man and a woman, joined by God, creating human family in an image of Eternal Family - the Trinity. They have ‘a marriage’. It is the utmost time to clean up our Marriages, take care of the children God gave us to teach them what Love is, and show what Real Marriage is all about. They stick to ‘ersatz marriage’ for they don’t know what ‘Real Marriage’ is. Do you? Time for confession. Time to purify this home of Holy Spirit, so the Body and Blood of Christ is received worthily.
Here’s where we’re headed:
“If there was any doubt that gay marriage would be taught to young children in Maine schools just as it is in Massachusetts and Canada, that doubt should be removed now,” he [Bob Emrich of Protect Marriage Maine] said. “If they are willing to teach our kids how homosexuals engage in foreplay, do you really think they won’t force gay marriage instruction of young children when it is the law of the land?”
http://radio.foxnews.com/toddstarnes/top-stories/school-children-taught-about-gay-foreplay.html
“No. Same-sex “marriage” has no more chance of public acceptance as slavery or abortion. No chance.”
Uh, it just got approved by majority votes in Maine, Maryland, and WA. By definition its has been accepted by the public in those states. There is nothing you can say or do to change that at this point. simply accept the reality of SSM in ten states. CO assembly is likely to pass a bill in its next session.
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