How American Evangelicals Helped Stop Same-Sex Marriage in Cuba

[Potoooooooo]

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/...elicals-helped-stop-same-sex-marriage-in-cuba
The Evangelical church has gained a huge amount of political power in Cuba, and LGBTQ people are dealing with the consequences.
Over the last decade, discrimination against LGBTQ people in Cuba has been waning and there have been tangible gains in the area of LGBTQ rights, led largely by Mariela Castro, Raúl Castro’s daughter and longtime director of CENESEX (the National Center for Sex Education). In 2008, the government made gender confirmation surgery free under the national healthcare system, and in 2013, it banned workplace discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. But that was before the recent uptick in evangelism in Cuba, aided by financial and ideological support from the U.S.

 

[fast]

How would each side feel with a compromise?

Consider the following: each union between a couple will be equally treated under the law with all rights and privledges afforded to one and all so long as unions between heterosexuals are regarded as a marriage and homosexual unions are regarded as a narriage.

Recap:

Two possible unions recognized by (and written as such in) law:
1) Marriage - heterosexual union
2) Narriage - homosexual union

To the homosexually tolerant, I would ask, does the word mean so much that you’d restrain from taking the compromise and at best severely delay gaining all the rights and privledges sought? If so, what explicitly more are you after?

To the homosexually queezy, I would ask, doesn’t it occur to you that no law in the land could ever make a marriage a holy marriage by calling an unholy marriage a marriage? I’d say it’s a word, but somehow, I’m sure it’s more.

 

[Keith&Co.]

Consider the following: each union between a couple will be equally treated under the law with all rights and privledges afforded to one and all so long as unions between heterosexuals are regarded as a marriage and homosexual unions are regarded as a narriage.

That would not work, though.

The 'rights and privileges afforded' to a married couple are not all listed in one document. For example a hospital ward will have a policy about who gets to visit the patient, specifying specific blood relations and 'the married spouse.'
An entirely different document would list the details of a medical proxy to include the spouse.

Which means either we legislate that each and every agency, business, and legal decision be amended to include 'narried spouse,' or it'll take several hundred court cases to establish precedents so that each and every instance of 'married' rights be extended to the narried couple.

Also, I don't think that this would pass the Lemon Law. What's the secular purpose in creating a 'narriage,' and giving selfish superstitious people a monopoly on the secular legal partnership of a 'marriage?'

 

[fast]

Consider the following: each union between a couple will be equally treated under the law with all rights and privledges afforded to one and all so long as unions between heterosexuals are regarded as a marriage and homosexual unions are regarded as a narriage.

That would not work, though.

The 'rights and privileges afforded' to a married couple are not all listed in one document. For example a hospital ward will have a policy about who gets to visit the patient, specifying specific blood relations and 'the married spouse.'
An entirely different document would list the details of a medical proxy to include the spouse.

Which means either we legislate that each and every agency, business, and legal decision be amended to include 'narried spouse,' or it'll take several hundred court cases to establish precedents so that each and every instance of 'married' rights be extended to the narried couple.

Also, I don't think that this would pass the Lemon Law. What's the secular purpose in creating a 'narriage,' and giving selfish superstitious people a monopoly on the secular legal partnership of a 'marriage?'

I didn’t say we could build Rome in a day, but if we could .... besides, lawyers are creative, and with the support of legislature acceptance and a few committees to hash out some particular not so easy situations, we’d be left with a few scant outliers. Overall, a move in the win-win direction.

Anyhow, it was an idea —with a seriously strong suspicion that what is purportedly wanted is not the entirety of what’s sought after.

 

[Keith&Co.]

I didn’t say we could build Rome in a day, but if we could .... besides, lawyers are creative, and with the support of legislature acceptance and a few committees to hash out some particular not so easy situations, we’d be left with a few scant outliers. Overall, a move in the win-win direction.

Except not a win-win.
People like Kim Davis will seize any chance to insist that the terms used to provide a given right, responsibility, preference or access to a 'spouse' was intended for Man/Woman situations ONLY and force the city, state, business, federal agency, church, or partnership to spend money in court to 'hash out' that a narriage equals a marriage in each instance. And establishing it for Beth Israel Hospital in Boston will not necessarily set a precedent that Boise's St. Benedict's hospital has to accede to.

More of a 'take away the win you have and post-date it to some time in the future.'
And a lot of these rights are going to be time-critical. Imagine if a case like Terry Shaivo's was complicated by the parents insisting that her wife's status as medical proxy was not the same as a husband's medical proxy....

Or, one fell swoop, extend 'marriage' to include 'same sex couples' and all the hundreds of instances just fall into place like eggs in a carton.

Anyhow, it was an idea —with a seriously strong suspicion that what is purportedly wanted is not the entirety of what’s sought after.

Well, if they get what they're asking for, and are still not satisfied, then they need to make clearer signs before marching on the capitol.

You still haven't offered a secular purpose for the legislation.

 

[Keith&Co.]

Or, maybe we could offer two levels of marriage, but instead of being samesex/oppsex split, make the split grown-up and petulant.
"Marriage" being a legal term for the partnership recognized by the state with specific rights and responsibilities associated with the status, licensed by the state, witnessed by any of several legally qualified individuals, including church authorities, secular authorities, and legal experts, and able to be dissolved by the state under certain circumstances;
and
"Tantrage" being the church-recognized union that invites God to the wedding, further specified by the specific church that officiated the union.
The two states are not exclusive of each other nor dependent on the other.

A hetero couple could have a Baptist Tantrage without a civil Marriage, meaning that God looks well on their union, though the state would consider any kids bastards.
Or a gay couple could have a Unitarian Tantrage along with their civil Marriage.
Or any couple could have a justice-of-the-peace Marriage, and put off the Tantrage until their family can get together or something.

 

[hurtinbuckaroo]

How would each side feel with a compromise?

Religious fanatics don't compromise.

 

[fast]

You still haven't offered a secular purpose for the legislation.

I’m not at the moment even sure what an answer to that would look like.

I’m not even exactly sure why it still matters to Christians. The term has already been bastardized—by heterosexuals marrying outside a religious context.

Part of the warm fuzzy congratulatory feeling Christians give to newlyweds is born out of a couple being brought together under God to live as one. So, when any Joe and Jane can hop on down to a local [place] and get married, I somehow don’t find the same warmth being as forthcoming when Christians are told that the only eyes on their marriage were the eyes of the law and not the eyes of the Lord.

Heterosexuals have already scarred the term. Once the impurity’s of dirt has intermixed with the purity of cleanliness, i’m not so sure it’s worth the effort of stopping the downward spiral. (and i’m restricting this expoundment to words)

Once there was a time when a teenager would confess to having had sex. “Sex” was used and “coitus” was heard. Now, today, there’s no dang telling what is meant. Is phone sex, sex? Does oral sex constitute a loss of virginity?

I’m just talking about words.

Language.

It gets so terribly twisted over time and interpretted in contrary fashion.

Oral sex is sexual in nature, but etymologically, what it once meant (like many, oh so many, terms) wasn’t to convey the kind of something it was but to identify it in opposition to something. For instance, day 1) mom, listen to me close, I did not have sex. What I did was sexual in nature, but it wasn’t sex. What I did was regarding something oral.

Moons later) there is this thing, which is both oral and sexual in nature (but not sex) called “oral sex.”

Moons and moons later) and with nobody having any recollection that it was a two-worded term serving as a descriptive label and not meant to be taken as an adjective describing a noun gets flopped around. Now looky looky, it’s an etymological fallacy to consider the current meaning having any function of original usage.

The point is that term has already rolled down the cliff. It wouldn’t surprise me if shaking hands will one day be just another form of sexual harassment. Heck, even the most gentlest of tactile touching for punitive measures in elementary school is now engulfed by the ever expanding scope of “abuse.”

The overarching point is why in the world are Christians even trying to save the term? It’s already been corrupted. And, with the levels of tolerance and even acceptance of anything that doesn’t poke a hole in the beloved harm principle now-a-days, trying to save the term feels like a cause that can only doubtfully be won.

People say, “they don’t make cars like they used to.” Some ‘clever’ one will say “I’m glad for that.” Lots of improvements, yes, but the good things we can only cherrish in memory are now gone. So clever but can’t see that!

With all this widespread change for the better, what once was meaningful to hear the phrase, “they just got married” is slipping away IN LANGUAGE. Got married eh, with a smile. Yep, had a romantic stroll by the beach where we met up with a constable and his pet spaghetti monster that flies. Even the trees wilt a bit.

Shoot, with so much social betterment and advancement, we don’t even know what to call a transgender shot in a mass shooting. At any rate, I’ve rambled enough.

 

[Keith&Co.]

With all this widespread change for the better, what once was meaningful to hear the phrase, “they just got married” is slipping away IN LANGUAGE. Got married eh, with a smile. Yep, had a romantic stroll by the beach where we met up with a constable and his pet spaghetti monster that flies. Even the trees wilt a bit

which may be true and may be tragic, but does not change that what was being asked for was not to be treated as second-class citizens, either in point of fact, or by LANGUAGE.
Such as letting hets have 'marriage,' and homs get a hand-we-down 'civil union' or a `narriage' (which was clever, have to give you that). Such that even IF all the same rights were granted, they would be ostracized.
Much like, it was the same water at the Colored People fountain, or flushing the Coloreds' toilet, but the meaning of the distinction could not be missed.

 

[Keith&Co.]

So, Jean Cramer, a City Council candidate in Marysville, Michigan, made headlines a few days ago saying that she wants to keep Marysville white, as much as possible. No foreigners.
What I just read, though, was that she's also upset about interracial marriage. What blew me away though, was that she acknowledges that 'they love each other,' she just doesn't think that such people should marry. They can live together, she says. She says her stance is biblical, so it's not racism.

So would this be another form of narriage? or would we need yet another term? Miscegarrige? A non-marrying union formed against the official stances of certain religious fucknuttery?

 

[J842P]

To the homosexually tolerant, I would ask, does the word mean so much that you’d restrain from taking the compromise and at best severely delay gaining all the rights and privledges sought? If so, what explicitly more are you after?

Yes, absolutely. This is not an area where compromise is possible. Explicitly, homosexual relationships need to be recognized by society as equivalent to heterosexual relationships. You are a person who often writes long meandering posts about subtle differences between the meaning of words, so I think you'd be the first to appreciate why the word matters.


Of course, I am very much a fan of the United States Bill of Rights. As an atheist, the First Amendment right to freedom of religion is important to me, and I would never dream of forcing a church to recognize any marriage for their religious purposes, and indeed, would fight vociferously against any such attempts by misguided who may agree with me on gay marriage.

 

[fast]

Okay, okay. No compromise. Geez.

 

[steve_bank]

Christian groups have also been active in Africa supporting harsh anti gay laws and punishments.