Someone pointed out that it was a bit much for an organisation founded as a way of a King, divorcing and killing 5 of his wives to complain about not respecting the institution of marriage.

If they are right and gay marriage outside of their establishment could threaten their establishment, its already in trouble.

The moment you start saying that marriage is for procreation you preclude marriage for older people, the infertile and people who want to spend their lives together and just don’t want kids.

Marriage is about love and commitment.

Same gender couples are as capable of those as the rest of us.

If you don’t like gay marriage, don’t get gay married.!

Is this the Church of England driven to reform by Henry VIII and his desire to change the rules concerning marriage? Expecting reason from zealots is like expecting receipts from Fianna Fail.

Tired of the same tired out arguments against gay marriage. Every opposition has been proven to be nonsensical, the idea that marriage is for procreation when infertile/old couples can marry for example.
The marriages that would result from the law are not even religious marriages, and wasn’t the Church of England set up so Henry VIII could get a dicorce? Wish religious institutions would realise they’re practically redundant, sit down and mind your own business.

The Church of England’s place an the “Established” Church places them in quite the legal quandary with issues like this… I don’t anyone, but the most extreme, would advocate forcing a church to hold a ceremony with which they had moral reservations but the CofE is placed in the awkward position of being obliged to perform a same-sex marriage ceremony because of its “Established” legal status.

Although, gotta say, this is probably a better argument for disestablishment than against same-sex marriage.

The thing is what the C Of E is saying is in contradiction to the law as it is proposed. This law would explicitly state that no church will be obliged to carry out such a ceremony if the local parish does not wish it to. This would supercede any existing law.

The question then arises as to whether a same gender couple would take this as an opportunity to sue that parish.

Personally I think that if this situation arose then, backed by Stonewall, they’d sue.

I also believe they’d lose. If they went to the ECHR then as the law stands they’d lose, but if they won then there’d be a situation in the UK that might well result in the UK removing itself from the ECHR.

I’m not entirely sure what would happen next.

in this day and age why can’t we live and let live. i have more important things to worry about than who’s marrying who,if gay people want to marry let them and do you know maybe if the church got down off its high hires about a lot of issues it might actually see a few more people going to mass

That C of E document contains absolutely no clearly defined arguments as to what specific harm would be caused by allowing gay people to marry. The basic thrust of it is “Marriage has always been between a man and a woman, therefore it would be unwise to change that, especially since many male-female partnerships can produce children”. At least if they said it would cause floods (as bishop of Carlisle Graham Dow said in 2007), we would have something to go on.

If heterosexual people keep having gay kids that grow up and want to get married who’s fault is that? I wonder would any of the people against it want their child to be refused marriage because they turn out to be gay? It’s 2012, this shouldn’t be an issue.

I think really think God needs to come down and change the rules of the church. How long has it been since we last saw him? all this confusion and he won’t even make an appearance! Does he really love us?

Explain to me exactly how equal rights somehow lessens the rights of others? Would we be debating this if the motion was to deny marriage rights between white and non- white people? Or between Catholics and Protestants? Church marriages will always remain solely religious affairs for those who wish to have a religious marriage ceremony. The State has every right to legislate for people not morality.

‘It argued that gay couples already can enjoy many of the legal benefits of marriage…’ note the key word here folks; many! This argument completely undermines equality. Gay marriage is a civil rights issue, let’s just legalise it and move on.

And i object to churches/Cults having tax exempt status

As a secularist I can’t understand this same sex marriage thing. As most Christian religions of my understanding discriminate against homosexual people in one form or other why would people of this group want to be unified under the banner of their ceremonies anyway? Why belong to, follow or associate with an organization that discriminates against you?
To my mind the real problem is that civil unions are not given the same legal beneficial status in jurisdictions where religious dogma is allowed to influence to law of the land meaning citizens rights are diminished in the interest of furthering religious aims.

Not really interested if gay people want to get married it’s none of my business.

I believe in marriage between a man and a woman.

Separation of Church and State should work both ways. The Church doesn’t make the state laws, and the State shouldn’t make Church law.
This appears to be a case of the State making Church law.

high horses that was meant to say