The argument has been decided in favour of equality in most of Ireland ,Scotland , England and Wales . Norneverland , true to it’s name, is the only naysayer.I suppose that is symptomatic of the pig-headedness inherent in the place that has kept the land seething in racism, bigotry and low-level…{and sometimes high-level } violence for years .There was someone on the radio banging on about some biblical tract and telling the interviewer that “God’s Law supersedes any other law”. Not one person popped up to stop him in his tracks.If he wants to believe this statement, I’ve no problem , but it’s up to interviewer’s to say that it is only his opinion that this god exists at all.This is not a factual statement and shouldn’t be treated as one.It would appear that he thinks that because he believes in this phantom that everyone else should roll over and accept it as a factual truth.It is not.
How can any rational person argue a case against the validity of a marriage bond for any person , no matter what sex they happen to be ,based on a belief like that.? Marriage is really only a civic construct anyway. Religious adherents may have added their stamp of approval to the joining in a social contract of two human beings, but it is the laws of the land that have to be cleaved to and unpicked when it comes to breaking that bond in the Divorce Courts . There is not another social animal on the planet which ritualises their connubial enjoinment as human beings do.Birds might display and dance around each other as they ritually mate Chimpanzees certainly have no complications of this kind, even though they might pair into mating groups. It has very little to do with gods or demons for most creatures and for most of humanity it is only a relatively recent social development anyway. It’s a good time to remember that women have only been given the right to vote a few years ago.
Some few years ago married women had very few rights of their own and were considered the property of the husband , just like his children and his animals. Wives couldn’t inherit property and had no real rights at all They had no legal redress whatsoever…Things only began to change gradually in the 19th century , giving the woman some legal status. ..and that was only in most Western countries. Elsewhere there were and still are child brides and forced marriages. So marriage wasn’t always like it is now. Things change. They also vary across the planet.
Many places obviously have their “norm” set now to allow couples of any sex to marry in civil law. It does not hurt anyone . It’s really to proclaim a shared love but it also bestows legal and civil privileges, constraints and crucially, protection in law to each partner in the agreement. None of this involves any kind of religious service or a reference to a god of any kind.If a couple wed in a church or religious setting , they are still obliged by law to register their marriage in law, which is how they receive their Marriage Certificate. The act of marriage creates a legal obligation and a set of rules between the individuals involved. That’s all. Most of what is being argued about in Norneverland , from religious perspectives ,have really little to do with the act of marriage at all but are more to do with promoting the worldview that everyone should cleave to biblical tracts or believe in a power beyond the earth . There are many people out there who believe no such thing and they want the freedom to do just that little thing.Recently ,a young ,gay neighbour of mine went to England for the weekend to marry his partner , quite lawfully. He has now returned , a married man ,with his husband to live back home as an outlaw.
What most of it amounts to is the freedom to believe or not to believe.
An excellent piece Harry.
I think though, that you answer your own question at the start of your second paragraph where you state:-
“How can any rational person argue a case against the validity of a marriage bond for any person , no matter what sex they happen to be, based on a belief like that.?” The answer, of course, is that they are not rational so there is no point expecting them to be so.
For a bit of a laugh and to counter all the religious fundamentalism that our kids have to face every day in primary school, we have sometimes taken to reading the Good News version of the Bible in our house. It somehow makes it even more ridiculous when it is written in modern English compared to the King James version which imbues it with an air of legitimacy as an “historical text”. For your amusement, I repeat part of Genesis relating to the creation of women and the religious basis for marriage.
“Then the LORD God said, “It is not good for the man to live alone. I will make a suitable companion to help him.” So he took some soil from the ground and formed all the animals and all the birds. Then he brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and that is how they all got their names. So the man named all the birds and all the animals; but not one of them was a suitable companion to help him.
Then the LORD God made the man fall into a deep sleep, and while he was sleeping, he took out one of the man’s ribs and closed up the flesh. He formed a woman out of the rib and brought her to him. Then the man said,
“At last, here is one of my own kind — Bone taken from my bone, and flesh from my flesh.
‘Woman’ is her name because she was taken out of man.”
That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united with his wife, and they become one.
The man and the woman were both naked, but they were not embarrassed”
They won’t teach Big Bang as a theory in the primary school our kids attend – won’t even acknowledge that it exists but they teach this nonsense as fact. The teachers (all religious nutters) say, “we know it’s hard to explain children – even we don’t really understand it but you just have to believe it – you just do”.
And you expect these people to be “rational”?
Well said, Harry. It’s only a matter of time. I’ve always felt some embarrassment about coming from this little state of god fearing and Wicker Man burning. The Republic have really put us fully in the shade. It’s great to see the bigots in our society being ineluctably marginalised. The Orange order being held to account and all the Shibboleths being challenged on a daily basis. They will be dragged kicking and screaming to an Age of Enlightenment.
Well George and Freddy…many thanks for your input .My feeling is that nobody will be dragged kicking and screaming into an Age of Enlightenment anytime soon. The information has been out there for many years…centuries in fact… but a huge tranche of people either do not read any of it , hear it on their radios or see it on their televisions or on the internet screens.They would rather not accept it , much as Darwin was not accepted in certain quarters right into the 20th century.
That includes many people who claim to be otherwise educated in many other facets of life. Many still have a need for “magic” and a fear of the great unknown. Many have never allowed themselves to think too hard about it or are possibly not able to put all the information together and sort it out in a rational way because it would go against their childhood teachings and their parents’ and church’s teachings…
..I’d be cynical simply because none of it is really so difficult to understand , yet there are many in powerful places who are still prepared to gull the public with this nonsense for reasons of supposed social stability. In other words …what would the poor wee dears do if they had to accept that actually we are all alone in a thoughtless universe and we will probably all disappear at some point and be forgotten and gone for an eternity….Every bit as gone and unnoticed as we were before our brains ever developed conciousness at all..I’m thinking of world political leaders …of kings and queens who think they have been rightly ,divinely ordained into that position or religious leaders who control the actions of millions throughout the world , even though many of those they control have not got the access to education other than that of the church. Indoctrination seems to be the game afoot….Not enlightenment…and there is much money and power to be gained by it.
Celibacy was introduced 1139. The women had tea ready at 1200.
I see that Harry is trying to stir the pot again by sniping at people of Faith who hold sincerely held and rationally argued views on what constitutes marriage i.e. it is the sacred union of one man and one woman (admittedly polygamy existed in certain lands but this was very much an exception to the rule)which is open to procreation. This understanding of marriage has been the organizing principle for innumerable global societies over 2 millennia. They detected that this is the natural order of things and consequently constructed their societies on it. Right-minded people of course are for equality and compassion when it comes to the treatment of their fellow men and women but these concepts can only be truly realized when they respect genuine differences between the sexes. A “one size fits all” approach, with regards to the legal redefinition of marriage, does not respect this reality but rather reduces marriage to a simple arrangement of convenience between two people, regardless of sex, that is based upon a sentimental notion of love. I think it is perfectly rational to believe that a family built upon the selfless and life- giving relationship between a woman and a man, which has been blessed in the form of a marriage,, creates the optimum conditions for children to thrive in. This in turn contributes to greater social cohesion and demographic stability.for countries. Thus a mother and father should not become optional, to be replaced by the anonymous, gender-less “parent A” and “parent B” designations, but rather recognized for their indispensable nature.
I wouldn’t agree that Harry is ‘sniping at people of Faith’ rather he just seems to be calling for secularism in Irish society. The whole God argument just doesn’t work when you’re dealing in matters of other people’s lives. Norneverland moreso than anywhere is a perfect case study of the damage that religion can do to a society. Let us not forget that the Orange Order consider themselves to be a ‘Christian’ organisation.
As soon as folk start trying to justify their arguments using notions such as God or Faith, then the only way is down. ‘Faith is not against reason, but beyond it’ as they say. Faith is an intensely personal thing, and to try and mould society’s rules using Faith as your justification is prone to failure. It is possible to have moral and ethical arguments without recourse to the Divine. When it comes to matters of Faith, all we know is that we know nothing. Logic and reason are our friends.
Secularism is not the same as atheism, and the militant atheists get on my wick just as much as the militant Christians. Fundamentalism is never fun whatever corner is comes from.
Well RJC that’s about it …My point really is that a marriage to be viable as a societal norm does not have to be blessed by anyone or anything. That should be left out of the argument entirely because the nature of this kind of thinking excludes perfectly fine citizens from a sense of civic and civil responsibility. Why should that be? “Faith” in anything is a personal thing in any case and really should be a private thing held between the ears…especially in a divided society like Norneverland.
So no, I’m not simply stirring the pot Gearoid .I’m just pointing out that these beliefs are not “facts”. They are very abstract notions that groups , large and small wish to be true.They are no more true than UFO believers desires.I wouldn’t want to spoil anyone’s dreams of a better day in some other paradise and they are quite right to hang on to their dreams if they need them but I am quite happy with the world I enjoy in the here and now and i do feel it is not an infinite state in any respect but it’s worth working to make it as fair a place for us all to enjoy and leave the dreaming and the faiths out of it.
One has to recognize what marriage is before one can argue about the merits/demerits of extending it’s boundaries/radically redefining it. Societies across all continents for 2 millennia knew instinctively that it was based on the union between a man and a woman although each may have differed in their ritual celebration of it. The procreative potential of marriage was very highly regarded and children were seen as a blessing. Thus it was not simply an institution that one could change on a whim as it has it’s own unique and specific criteria as I have earlier alluded to.
Science does not have the toolkit to disprove the existence of God, KJC as the remit of the science extends simply to our materialist universe and can only speculate about the prime cause of it. The scientist can only theorize about the source of the terrific force which brought our cosmos into being e.g. multiverse theory which deals with the very remote possibility that our universe was just one of many created back into infinity. So you see this theory and others like it e.g the string theory are even more preposterous than the belief in a Divine Creator. The latter belief has remained consistent across innumerable cultures for thousands of years. Even Einstein, hardly a believer in a personal creator, was of the opinion that an intelligence could be detected behind the components and physical laws of our universe..
Faith, KJC and Paddy, is indeed a personal thing and without it, there is only an abyss which mankind faces into which can be filled by any ideology that is going. Nazi Germany and the communist Soviet Union tried to destroy religion by brute force and soon their promises of man-made utopias turned into hellish diystopias. Christianity regards each man and woman with equal dignity and offers hope with a rational basis for mankind which goes away beyond the limits of our materialist horizons.
Whaddaya mean an abyss,Gearoid ? There’s no abyss. There’s just life on earth and that’s it . No point in worrying about any of it and twisting your head out of shape .Earth is a mighty fine planet to live on for most creatures .It appears to be unlike most others but it contains much diverse life and interconnected species, which delight in killing each other for sustenance.That’s the way it spans out.The human being of all of those creatures abounding is the only one which wants a bit more. It wants another bite at the cherry even after death. Well that’s what you’d call wishful thinking , isn’t it?It’s a great idea until we can figure out how to live forever, but that’s that’s about all it is.I wonder did Neanderthals or Denisovans worry about a life after their death.It’s a curious notion when you think about it..