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Why America makes me angry sometimes
Rychard the Lionheart Wrote:Why are two Senators, both are from Utah, challenging a local law in DC.

Because Utah voters care about what goes on locally in DC, at least when it comes to recognising gay relationships. If the Congressmen didn't think there were votes in it they wouldn't waste their time advertising their own political impotence.
Fred

Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans.
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"Why are two Senators, both are from Utah, challenging a local law in DC?"

This has to do with how the District of Columbia is governed. When they set up D.C. it was determined that the capitol should not be in any state, as it might privilege that state. So, it is separate. However, this would leave a governmental vacuum. So, the city of Washington works in conjunction with Congress to govern D.C. Likely, the conservative senators from Utah don't like what allowing gay marriage in D.C. would symbolize for the nation as a whole.
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Salt Lake City, Utah, Feb 24, 2010 / 04:29 pm (CNA).

On Tuesday, Cardinal Francis George, president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, gave a talk to nearly 12,000 students and faculty at Brigham Young University in Utah. The cardinal dedicated his speech to exhorting the two faiths to defend religious freedom and their place in the public square.

“In recent years, Catholics and members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have stood more frequently side by side in the public square to defend human life and dignity,” said Cardinal George on Tuesday morning.

The cardinal gave his presentation, “Catholics and Latter-day Saints: Partners in the Defense of Religious Freedom,” at a BYU forum on Feb. 23, at the school's Marriott Center. Receiving a standing ovation at the end of his address, Cardinal George is believed to be the highest ranking Catholic official to ever speak at the Mormon university.

“I'm personally grateful that after 180 years of living mostly apart from one another, Catholics and Latter-day Saints have begun to see each other as trustworthy partners in defense of shared moral principles,” noted the prelate.

Cardinal George lauded LDS members for their commitment to serving the poor, defending traditional marriage, fighting pornography and opposing abortion.

He also praised the work of Catholics and the LDS Church in their collective fight in supporting religious freedom. This freedom, he stressed, should not be limited to the private sphere alone but should also be thriving and present in the public square.

“Any attempt to reduce that fuller sense of religious freedom, which has been part of our history in this country for more than two centuries, to a private reality of worship and individual conscience so long as you don't make anyone else unhappy, is not in our tradition,” said Cardinal George, who added, “It was the tradition of the Soviet Union.”

Cardinal George also addressed the opposition that Catholics and Mormons have faced for their joint advocacy of human rights and dignity, citing the response from Proposition 8 opponents in California as an example.

“What I most regret is not the opposition, that is understandable ... And those of us who have gay people in their family as I have, know the anxieties and the conflicts in their own life. And we have to be there for them and love them and support them.”

But when Prop. 8 opponents “respond by thuggery, by quasi-fascist tactics, then the common good, our whole society, stands in great jeopardy,” Cardinal George said.

Opposition to the efforts of Catholics and LDS members should be expected, he added. “But despite that, if we stay together and go forward, … if we simply continue to talk together, (it) will in the end bear much fruit.”

“When government fails to protect the consciences of its citizens, it falls to religious bodies, especially those formed by the Gospel of Jesus Christ, to become the defenders of human freedom,” the Chicago cardinal said.


If the Utah State religion and the Catholic church merged into a super church, could we be in deep shit?
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Rychard the Lionheart Wrote:If the Utah State religion and the Catholic church merged into a super church, could we be in deep shit?

On the one hand don't worry, Catholics don't consider the Church of LDS to be Christian. On the other hand there is a growing habit of North American churches to ignore their (huge) differences and work together against common enemies, for example, forget that they hold near opposite views on the permanency of marriage (from eternal, to lifelong, to not even that) to work together so that same-sex marriage is never.
Fred

Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans.
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Rychard the Lionheart Wrote:...If the Utah State religion and the Catholic church merged into a super church, could we be in deep shit?
It is extraordinary that this even took place at all since Mormons are taught from birth that Roman Catholics constitute the "great and abominable church" mentioned in the Book of Mormon. No, they may join in common cause on certain issues, but one will not submit to the other. It would take an almost impossible amount of manoeuvring for that to happen.

Of more concern is the blinkered viewpoint that
Quote:“When government fails to protect the consciences of its citizens, it falls to religious bodies, especially those formed by the Gospel of Jesus Christ, to become the defenders of human freedom,” the Chicago cardinal said.
Those consciences have often been nurtured through indoctrination and unquestioning obedience to dubious authority figures.
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First gay weddings celebrated in Washington DC


Article from the National Post. Published: Tuesday, March 09, 2010

WASHINGTON - Amid heavy security and without many of the trappings of a traditional wedding, three gay couples were married on Tuesday in a ceremony in Washington on the first day same-sex marriages were celebrated in the U.S. capital.
Police cars lining the streets outside the headquarters building of gay rights group Human Rights Campaign as Angelisa Young and Sinjoyla Townsend became one of the first same-sex couples to be wed in Washington, just days after the U.S. capital began issuing marriage licences to gay couples.
Ms. Young, in a chiffon and lace peach-colored dress, exchanged vows with Ms. Townsend, wearing a white suit, and were pronounced "partners for life" by Reverend David North.
"You are my friend, my partner, my love. I love you today, I love you tomorrow, I love you forever," Ms. Young told her partner of 12 years, bringing tears to Ms. Townsend's eyes as the couple were married in front of a group of around 100 well-wishers.
The history-making same-sex wedding in Washington was followed minutes later by another when Reggie Stanley and Rocky Galloway, both 50, were married as their 15-month-old daughters Malena and Zoe looked on.
The Reverend Sylvia Sumter called on "the loving, loving father-mother God" to bless the union of the two African-American men who have been together for six years.
"Today, especially today, the arc of our rainbow universe is long and bends towards justice," Mr. Stanley said, paraphrasing civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.
The path was cleared for same-sex couples to wed in the U.S. capital last week when the U.S. Supreme Court refused a request to hold a referendum on gay marriage, which would have delayed the same-sex union law's entry in effect.
Hours after the Supreme Court decision, couples flocked to a courthouse in Washington to apply for marriage licences. They then had to wait at least three business days before they could get married.
When the waiting period expired on Tuesday, Washington joined a minority of states that allow gay couples to wed: Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Vermont.
A state supreme court decision in California briefly allowed same-sex unions but the ruling was overturned six months later by a referendum that defined marriage as a union between a man and a woman.
"Marriage is a gift that was long denied to everyone in D.C., but today we open that gift," said Reverend Dwayne Johnson as he married the third couple, Darlene Garner, 61, and Lorilyn Candy Holmes, 53.
Legalization of gay marriage in the U.S. capital was "a great step forward for equality," said Washington Mayor Adrian Fenty as a police helicopter whirred loudly overhead.
"The United States has always been a place where people with different views have been welcomed and treated equally. Now, in Washington, everyone has the same opportunity to get married, no matter what their sexual preference," Mr. Fenty said.
David Catania, the D.C. council member who introduced the capital's marriage equality bill, and who is himself gay, said he was hopeful that equal treatment for gays would one day be commonplace around the United States.
"As sure as we stand in D.C. today with justice shining on us, it will one day shine across this great nation," said Mr. Catania.
Police cars were parked four-deep on every street leading into the junction where the HRC building stood, and policewomen stood in pairs on every corner of the intersection, some leaning against unused parking meters as they kept watch over the historic wedding ceremonies.
"We're making sure no protesters try to get too close," one of the policewomen told AFP, adding that there had been no sign of the handful of protesters that had chanted anti-gay slogans and sung songs outside the courthouse when the couples applied for marriage licenses.
Besides a few fluffed lines and with the security presence threatening to dampen the mood at Washington's first gay weddings, the group ceremony went off with few snags and without an irate protester to mar the newlyweds' day.
"Today was like a dream to me," said a beaming Ms. Young after she and Ms. Townsend had exchanged vows.
"I always felt it would come true and today it's real - this is my spouse," she said, hugging Ms. Townsend close.

ClapClapClapClapClap
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Nice to have some good news. I'd have been irritated by the helicopters, though! I notice that all the weddings were conducted by a "reverend", which I have always assumed is a religious title. Is that normal in the USA? Our civil partnerships are conducted by registrars with no religious connection at all. In France the PACS is more like going to a solicitor to sign a legal document.
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[COLOR="Purple"]Everyone hoping gay marriage is going to be big business...

I get this mag Psychology Today (I never pay for mags, always find a free subscription on the net) and there is an ad that says:

Tongue3 LIVE THE ART OF LIFERemybussi

Party BECOME A CELEBRANTWavey

They got this program to make you a Celebrant and you can officiate at all these ceremonies... LOVE LOVE LOVE the mindset of American Entrepreneurship.[/COLOR]
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I've just read this extraordinary story. So keen are the opponents to ending Don't Ask, Don't Tell in the US military that some are apparently making up stories discrediting gay men and women who are serving their countries with courage and integrity. General John Sheehan has decided that the reason Srebrenica fell during the Bosnian war, resulting in the massacre of thousands of male civilians, both men and boys, was that the Dutch army allowed gays to serve!

An unfair attack on gay troops - latimes.com
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Actually, he said that a Dutch commander said that was why Srebrenica fell. The commander in question has denied saying any such thing.
Fred

Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans.
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