@Suseonline
-If you mean it's a long story (my email: breadofthepresence.at.gmail.com) otherwise no, it's just that I identify.

-Biblical faith is more than seeing, in the Bible it does mean loyalty based on reasonable probability, like the trust you give a friend. Miracles don't necessarily effect it. Israelites - golden calf, Gospels -“astonished at their calloused earts”.Mark 3:5 – Judas - disciples fled Holy Thursday night - Jesus expressly executed for them John 11:45-53. The God of the Bible wants to make creatures like Himself, so like Jesus, with the things that make relationships work, sharing, understanding, sacrifice. Love.

Having said that, and given love, friendship and thoughts are invisible themselves, the Bible is mostly history – memory is essential - Christianity is false if Jesus didn't rise from the dead. youtube NT Wright or William Lane Craig debates. Christianity is an historical religion and uniquely susceptible to disproof.

-Suffering is horrific, God provides Jesus on the Cross, also ultimate victory. [words are thin in the face of suffering but God acted in Jesus] Love requires freedom, God thought it valuable enough to preserve, and and provide rescue from sin.

-These things I know from the inside too, and its humiliating, but when I repent he always returns and my trust grows

Disestablishing marriage, redefining it to be agnostic to the reality of the sexes! [45 y.o man can use girls changerooms] http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2013/10/10976/ ,and blind to children http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/jun/10/study-children-fare-better-traditional-mom-dad-fam/ is to at a stroke make all marriages gay 'marriages'.

-Yes they would be elite, homosexuals are disproportionately wealthy and highly educated and in position of cultural influence. Not my point, they are 2% as you say, our cultural elite want an excuse to continue their transgressions – http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/2013/08/the-elite-project-of-gay-marriage/rr-reno gays want their sexual norms accepted and heterosexuals of privilege largely want the same thing. "

Michelangelo Signorile, a prominent gay activist, urges people in same-sex relationships to “demand the right to marry not as a
way of adhering to society’s moral codes but rather to debunk a myth and radically alter an archaic institution”. They should “fight for same-sex marriage and its benefits and then, once granted, redefine the institution of marriage completely, because the most subversive action lesbians and gay men can undertake … is to transform the notion of ‘family’ entirely”.

Marriage is now a status marker for the upper class "Sociologist Charles Murray argues that the great divide is less a matter of race than social status. “In 1960,” he wrote last year, “just 2% of all white births were nonmarital. When we first started recording the education level of mothers in 1970, 6% of births to white women with no more than a high-school education … were out of wedlock. By 2008, 44% were nonmarital. Among college-educated … less than 6% of all births were out of wedlock as of 2008, up from 1% in 1970.” http://pjmedia.com/spengler/2013/03/04/looking-for-marriage-in-all-the-wrong-places-a-must-read-book-on-marriage/

So called wealth of the church http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/firstthoughts/2013/03/19/harvards-budget-ten-times-that-of-the-vatican/

I don't expect the sexual revolution ideologues to accept the negative aspects of their legacy, but if we told them to stop warring and retire we could heal our families, lower dependency and divorce, and give kids a chance at marriage.

Martin, I admire your deep faith in your subject.

However, having known several gay couples, I just don't see this conspiracy to change the notion of family, or to destroy any church.
They just want to be able to marry each other legally.

Can't the churches just marry heterosexual people, like they always have, but leave the state alone to marry homosexual couples legally?
Why does the church have to worry about that?

No one is asking religious people who object to gay marriage to marry a person of the same sex, or to agree to marry a gay couple in their church.

The state should be separate from the churches.

Dear Suse,

<<Can't the churches just marry heterosexual people, like they always have, but leave the state alone to marry homosexual couples legally?>>

Why should churches marry only heterosexual people?
Some churches already marry homosexual couples - it's so beautiful!

More will come. In time, more churches will recognise that gender and sexuality are merely superficial issues, that a true bond of love has nothing to do with it.

Marriage is a beautiful thing: it should not be spoiled by legal matters. The concept of "legal marriage" is rotten to the core, self-contradicting and should be done away with. If two or more people want to have legally-binding arrangements between them, regarding their finances and custody of children, then let them sign a contract to that affect, yet this is in stark contrast with love and should have nothing to do with the act of declaring a couple's bond of love before God and those they wish to share their happiness with.

Yuyitsu, you can be confusing at times.
Are you saying that you are ok with gay marriage, as long as it isn't legal?

People get married so they can have the legal papers saying they are married.
Others also want to marry in their church of choice, supposedly in front of their god.

If they don't get married legally, then they are de-facto couples, which is not enough for many couples.

I am of the opinion that if you are really dedicated to each other, then legally marrying each other, whether that be in or out of a church, is a strong statement of your commitment to each other.

Gay couples naturally want the same choice...

Dear Suse,

Of course - why on earth should I not be OK with gay marriage?

What I'm not OK with is government's involvement in our personal relationships. There should be no link between marriage and the state, between marriage and legal matters.

In other words, I support marriage equality: nobody should be married by the state, regardless of their gender and sexual orientation. The state must not register marriages, nor should the word "marriage" and its grammatical derivatives appear anywhere in its volumes of legislation.

If you personally feel that your marriage-commitment should include legally-binding financial/custodial arrangements, then by all means go ahead and sign a legal contract of your choice as part of your wedding. Perhaps invite a notary as well to witness and register it, or perhaps even some private company or non-profit body that specialises in providing this service, and if you want a piece of paper then they could provide it as well - that's all your private decision, just that the state should have nothing to do with it.

Yes, gay couples must have exactly the same choices as heterosexuals, same for intersex people or anyone else, even while the titles they give themselves change faster than my spell-checker. I really don't believe that people should define themselves by gender and sexuality or make a big deal out of it: when two people love each other and honestly commit to nurture and support each other faithfully for the rest of their life, what else should one ask of them? why bother checking their anatomical bits?