Kris Mineau, President of MFI has changed the language from "tradition" marriage to "natural" marriage:
A few points must be made regarding Ethan Jacobs’s article “Inner-circle Jerks,” which seeks to discredit the organizations and leaders who have worked to protect natural marriage, children and families in a way consistent with our values.Ok, first off, there is NOTHING natural about marriage. What I mean by this is that marriage is a civil union that two adults choose to do. It just doesn't sprout from the ground, love is natural, marriage is not. Do we have to teach Marriage 101? The history of marriage includes women becoming the property of men. Traditional marriage also included men with many wives, but then again marriage has evolved with time hasn't it? I'm sure all these things were considered natural too.
He also makes a comment that the over 130,000 signatures on the anti-gay amendment were gathered by volunteers. Well, if that's the case then I wouldn't want MFI handling my money since they paid an organization to go out and collect signatures. Are they telling us that they paid out thousands of dollars and got nothing? Isn't Kris Mineau supposed to be a businessman?
Here's his last comment:
Finally, in spite of everything, our movement has never resorted to the name-calling and personal attacks that are found in this article. We may disagree philosophically and politically, but let’s not forget that in the end we are all God’s children — worthy of respect.Of course, Bay Window's Editor tells it like it is:
To complain about name calling when Dr. Roberto Miranda, chairman of VoteOnMarriage.org, has compared lesbian and gay couples who wish to marry with the terrorists who killed more than 3000 people on September 11, 2001 betrays a telling lack of self awareness.
14 comments:
If all Bradley and his colleagues are fighting for is their ability to vote on "state-sanctioned homosexual marriage" why have they spent their entire existance fighting against gay rights?
That they're also anti-abortion and anti-sex education doesn't make them any less anti-gay.
And, while Mr. Bradley may "believe that we still live in a democracy" we don't. We're a federal republic.
The "Tyranny of the Majority" remains a concern. Look it up.
I think what Kris means is marriage set up in Genesis 2, where a man shall cleave to his wife and they shall become one flesh. So whenever there has been polygamy, or any sort of ownership by one of the other rather than being equally complementary, those have been deviations from natural marriage as well.
Hey, this is the poster of the last comment, and I just noticed the first comment; First, who is Mr. Bradley? and Second, although you are correct when you label the current condition of the United States with the word "federal," lets be reminded we are supposed to be a constitutional republic, not a federation. It seems our national constitution has practically been rewritten ever since Roe v. Wade, and I personally think the dismantling of states righs over this past century is largely responsible for the divisions we have in this country. Just wanted to throw that out there....
This is the first anonymous. No, we're explicitly, and always have been, a federal republic. Being a federal republic does not preclude states rights.
Robert H. Bradley is the founder of MFI and the funder of most of the anti-gay marriage activity in this state. It's one of the major points of the article. He's also the author of the second letter to the editor.
If you read the article, he's the source of the following quote, which makes his "MFI is not anti-gay" comments a total lie:
Bradley would only speak briefly with Bay Windows. Asked about how he got involved in the efforts to oppose same-sex marriage, he said that "if you read the history of Rome," homosexuality was responsible in part for the downfall of the Roman Empire and he said he was determined to avoid the same fate for Massachusetts."
I also think Adam & Eve had a natural pairing. I would not call it a marriage either. Furthermore, if you want to take the Bible literally then we are all products of incest? The Bible talks about Adam and Eve but makes no mention of any other people in the beginning. So Adam & Eve's children reproduced among themselves. Do that make incest ok since Adam and Eve's children did it? What do these people say who interpret the Bible literally?
I think anonymous 2 is confusing "natural" marriage with "biblical" marriage.
I also think the division in this country comes from confusing "biblical law" (sometimes called "natural law") and the constitution. There is no state religion in this country.
The other major factor is this whole "to argue with me is to injure me" BS (practiced by both sides, but brought to an art form by Article8 and their ilk) and the systematic reduction of arguments to emotionally charged sound bites.
Article8 and MFI are credible only because most people slept through logic, civics, and history.
Does homosexuals being responsible for the downfall of Rome mean the early Christians were all gay? How about the Germans?
It is surprising that homosexuals are supposed to be the downfall of the Romans, the bird flu in Israel (recently), house break-ins in Acton and just about everything else that goes wrong in the world. Yet we are only supposed to make up less than 2 percent.
How are homosexuals responsible for the bird flu in Israel? That one's new to me.
Read it here:
Rabbi says wrath of God behind Israel bird flu
Anonymous 2:
I personally think the dismantling of states righs over this past century is largely responsible for the divisions we have in this country.
Right--because goodness knows that there were no "divisions" in the country prior to 1906. And certainly no divisions where one side marched under the "States' Rights" banner. Especially a side that invoked that phrase so that they could, say, own human beings as property. Which they claimed, um, was "God's will." And "natural." And there were plenty of Bible passages supporting it.
No, I'm sure nothing like that ever happened.
Anyway, I'm sure that a staunch supporter of "State's Rights" like Anonymous 2 was furious in December 2000 when the Supreme Court installed a president by brushing aside Florida's state rights to have its own courts interpret its election laws. Surely Anonymous 2 couldn't just be adopting the "State's Rights" mantle when it happens to suit her prejudices, now, could she?
The words natural and marriage are being put together for religious and political purposes only. Kris Mineau invented the term natural marriage to imply that same-sex marriages are unnatural, and therefore morally bad. Objectively this is a ridiculous pairing of words, mainly because the word natural is so poorly defined. Does natural mean everything in the universe not invented by people? Or should the word be defined as everything that exists in the world, including humankind's creations?
If you use the first definition of the word, then all marriages are unnatural, because all marriages are a human invention, defined by in Massachusetts by the laws and court decisions of the State, all human creations. I think all religions are also human inventions and therefore unnatural, suing this sense of the word natural. You also cannot use natural as a synonym for good, because some very nasty things not made by humans are natural. Plutonium, promiscuity (as exhibited by DNA studies amongst birds formerly thought to "mate for life"), homosexuality (seen in many birds and mammals in the wild as well as in captivity), HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases, pathogenic microorganisms, are all natural under this definition. Meanwhile many human innovations are good and benefit people, and, in rare instances, the rest of the world (nature).
If you use the second definition, where humans and their inventions are part of the natural world, then same-sex marriage is equal to heterosexual marriage in its naturalness. Again you cannot equate natural with morally good.
You can only equate natural marriage to the marriage of one man + one woman by using an illogical religious standard, by ignoring science and reason. To impose this on our state would be an act of Theocracy, and goes against the spirit of the establishment clause in the First Amendment to the US Constitution. It would be no different than if Muslims gained control of a US state and legislated traditional polygamous marriage, and defined divorce as the husband repeating of the sentence "I divorce you" three times to his wife before abandoning her.
Did you see the article about the man who divorced his wife in his sleep!
http://www.boston.com/news/odd/articles/2006/03/28/man_accidentally_divorces_wife_in_sleep/
I happen to know that Kris Mineau is tha Assistant pastor at the Trinity Evangelical Church in North Reading. I think that Kris ought to examine what he calls immorality, going on in his own church before he starts pointing fingers at everyone else. Example, I do know that on March 24th the pastor of that church will marry two people male and female,that carried on an affair for three yrs. destroying two families,so if we're going to uphold family values what kind of message does this send. So another words as long as your male and female it's alright to do as you please and we'll marry you anytime. If Kris is going to call homosexuality a sin and gay marriage wrong. What does he call adultry? Last time I read the bible it was called sin, forgiveness or not, how can he put his blessing on aduterors getting married.
Post a Comment