[WillowTheWhisp]

Originally Posted by garinda

I too would defend anyone's rights to their own religious beliefs, but if they happened to endager the freedoms of others, and by that I just don't mean homosexuals, then I would fight it every step of the way from happening in this country.

I totally agree with you - one set of rights should never be permitted to endanger or intrude upon the freedom of others.

Which again is why I see co-existence not being a problem. In fact I see it as the only way of allowing the tollerance of others. The Catholic church say "You do your thing your way and we'll do our thing our way." and I say. "OK I have no problem at all with that."

For example, the Catholic church will not perform marriages of divorced people. Our church has no problem with that. The law of this land says that divorced people are permitted to remarry but doesn't go to the point of insisting that the Catholic church must perform such marriages. Is the Catholic church flaunting the law by refusing to do so? My view is that Catholic should be allowed to have that restriction so long as they don't try to force it onto anyone else, which they don't.

The law has neatly sidestepped a potential problem with 'gay marriages' which could have caused confrontation with churches if gay couples had approached churches asking to be married and being refused. Instead of gay marriage what we have in fact is a 'civil partnership' and churches do not have the legal right to perform such unions so the law in fact was created in such a way that there was a built in exemption from the start. Yet I have not noticed that there has even been one complaint raised on this point. Strange? Well in my view not really - nobody from any church has tried to stop civil ceremonies between same sex couples even though they do not perform them - the couple is pointed towards a register office where the ceremony can be performed.