Shadow Footprints

Link: http://www.heraldsun.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5478,15535904%255E401,00.html

Looking at Pope Benny's comments, it seems that lasting marriages require the following sacrifices:

• Get married young, as it's the only way you're allowed sex
• Stay married, even though you made a mistake in the person you married. Divorce is not acceptable.
• Have lots of kids, whether or not you can afford to bring them up. Artificial contraceptive is not acceptable.
• Marry someone you are not attracted to. Marrying someone you love could be called fake marriage.

Maybe he'd prefer to see people join the priesthood and sublimate their sexual desires.

Pope blasts gays, divorce in first speech

POPE Benedict, in his first clear pronouncement on gay marriages since his election, has condemned same-sex unions as fake and expressions of "anarchic freedom" that threatened the future of the family.

The Pope, who was elected in April, also condemned divorce, artificial birth control, trial marriages and free-style unions, saying all of these practises were dangerous for the family.
"Today's various forms of dissolution of marriage, free unions, trial marriages as well as the pseudo-matrimonies between people of the same sex are instead expressions of anarchic freedom which falsely tries to pass itself off as the true liberation of man," he said.

The Pope spoke to families at Rome's St John's Cathedral on an issue that has become highly controversial around the world, particularly in Europe and the US.

In April, parliament in traditionally Catholic Spain gave initial approval to a law legalising gay marriage. It is widely expected to be approved by the Senate and to become law.

But just last week, California's assembly killed off a bill that would have allowed gay marriage in the most populous US state.

The Pope, who as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger headed the Vatican's doctrinal department for more than two decades, said "pseudo freedoms" such as gay marriages were based on what he called the "banalisation of the human body" and of man himself.

If marriage is restricted to be between one man and one woman, and the word man includes woman, then lesbians can get married in places where gay men can't.

I've just watched the interview of Marilyn Waring on Queer Nation. (Taped from Thursday night.) In it she talked about her submission opposing the Civil Union Bill. I particularly liked the way she started.

Marriage is a civil and political right, and civil and political rights are not negotiable. You can't have half a right. If it's a civil or political right in international law it's immediately enforceable. It's not something that progressively - you know - as it depends on what you politically can get away with - you might get there.

There's a better transcript on Scoop.

Update: Daid Young writes much more eloquently than me, in a piece titled The Liberals are Wrong to Support the Civil Union Bill. Found via David Farrar

Link: http://www.stonesoup.co.nz/chinashop/archives/003720.html

Iona, at Bull in a China Shop, looks at the issue of civil unions being marriage lite and instead sees that marriage is civil union in drag. She is not aware of who first coined the phrase that the Civil Union Bill is simply the Marriage Act in drag.

My previous arguments have been that the meaning of the word marriage has changed since governments forced marriages to be legal agreements and made themselves the third party in the relationship. By automatically giving priests the legal right to be witness to a union has muddied the waters. A church blessing on a union legally should be no different to a baptism.