There is absolutely nothing to stop Holyrood altering the Marriage Act to allow any of three permutations of couples to get married in an compliant religious establishment.

You floated a scenario that there’re agitators who seek-out disapproving establishments, and promptly sue them when they refused in ways divorcees don’t sue disapproving establishments.

Despite offering a caveat that you might be slipping into mad paranoid territory, your apparent self-awareness was not sincere. You were, and in doing so were repeating the trope that there is a ‘homosexualist’ plot to make heterosexuals subservient.

You also lamented that every was engaged in really unkind criticism of the SNP, which they wouldn’t do if they knew how nice the SNP was.

Your Party – like any other Party – is not entitled to respect and uncritical praise. If it wants either or both, it should take-up religious orders… and then start pleading special favours and exemptions from the Scottish Government.

I rarely get into personality debates in these things but in this case I am going to have to say I Told You So.

I and others suggested that, after getting themselves tied in knots courting various different and competing bloc votes (or, more accurately, the self-appointed gatekeepers – middle-aged, middle-class men mostly – of those ‘communities’), the Scottish Government was running scared in an effort to keep them sweet.

And, as we’ve seen with Tartaglia and O’Brien’s nasty bigoted comments, that’s failed. Bohica, there’s more to come.

~alec

And I guess this is what the article we are commenting on is about, it needs the rank and file members of the Church to speak out.

The level of intolerance on these comments sometimes is just amazing. Im sure many of you will disagree but callign someone a bigot, prejudiced, or a homophobe because they disagree with a policy is a form of bigotry.

I, personally, do not support the introduction of ‘gay marriage’.

I didnt support the introduction of civil partnerships.

For almost exactly 4 years now i have been in a monogamous same sex relationship.

Many of you will probably say that means im gay.

I dont care, its never a term ive used.

Every one of you that has read what i have posted above and assumed i am a homophobic bigot should be ashamed of yourselves. Most of they gay people you know may support these policies, but to assume that because someone has sex with a person of the same sex that they must hold a certain view is no different than the KKK assuming that black people aren’t as smart as white people just because they are black.

Some of you may be offended by the comparison to the KKK. I dont care.

how well you know me.

I mean ive only been in a same sex relationship for the past 4 years.

Quite frankly though more concern and action should be given to the figures for mental illness in the lgbt (especially b/t) and suicide rates than for the terminology of what the officially recognised union of two partners is but of course that’s more difficult, especially when people get so incredibly defensive.

And I largely agree with the middle paragraph of your last post.

I will keep on going and maybe in my lifetime progress will happen. But as I said to my daughter you can only change something if you engage with it. Disengage and my view means nothing.

The problem with the RC leadership is that they have seen the radicalisation process go on with Islam and Evangelical Christianity and thought “why not us?”, and have been on a course of hardline catholisism since then. The Pope himself pinpointed non believers as “the enemy” when he visited Scotland two years ago.

The problem is (and this is what I alluded to on The Burd’s post yesterday) how do you critisise in a constructive manner without being tarred with the biggot brush?

“i dont know that ive ever heard a christian fundamentalist say it wasnt anyway.” – Try looking for Keith O’Brein’s rant the last time he was on GMS… the one the MacBloggosphere was all silent about but was first up on that week’s Question Time when Will Young (and the rest of the largely English panel) took him to task.

Actualy, i wasn’t assuming that you were one of those christian fundamentalists… see the use of the words “probably.. Especially if…”. Though I see from the other comments you have been making that you have been using an awful lot of rope for your petard.

It must be really tough for you that the SNP is delivering this exactly as they said they would and within the exact timescale that they set out.

Was it only a week ago that you and others were all outraged about the SNP backing off on gay marriage?

I rarely get into personality debates in these things but in this case I am going to have to say I Told You So.

However, the fact remains that organised religions seem to have a problem getting to grips with modern ways of thinking. Probably not helped by being led, in the main, by old men who formed their views of the world when homosexuality was still considered a bad thing (maybe even when it was still illegal). People tend to get more reactionary as they age, so it hardly helps matters when, for example, an 80 year old man is made head of an entire church.

I think matters might be helped if religious tomes were updated to match modern knowledge and thinking, particularly removing nonsense like creationism. But then, that would sort of ruin the idea that they’re the words handed down from gods, and that the words of those gods are infallible…