Rhrosty. Why is it that the progressive component of the debate insist on it being a parliamentary, political amendment to the act? Why is it that the proponents of change advocate against a plebiscite I wonder?
I would have thought that 'marriage equality' means that I undertake an equal share of the vaccuming, clothes washing, cooking and child rearing? I guess that after the passage of the act I will need to take equal responsibility for pressing the 'start' button on the wonderful magic Rhoomber cleaner ;)

This will be brief...

I wonder if this adds/subtracts/ or merely meets the "seal" of approval from those that militate for change:

http://www.wnd.com/2014/11/court-told-humans-could-marry-animals/

:-)

Sells,

>> This is significant because it emphasises a common reality, at least in non-Catholic churches, that people in general regard marriage not as a theological reality but a legal reality. Marriage for many is no longer a matter of faith but of law. <<

I think you are right to take the Catholic Church out of this. For a Catholic, at least in theory, there are three concepts, or rather ways of looking at marriage: as (a) a sacrament, as (b) a civil legal contract, and (c) as a social concept, its usefulness - and possible predictions about long time consequences of departures from a traditional understanding of it - to be discussed in the context of sociology and psychology.

The difference:

The Church (e.g. Canon Law)

(a) decides about marriage as a sacrament;

(b) cannot influence more than any other lobby group - some more some less powerful than the Church - what, and under what conditions, the state recognises as marriage;

(c) can offer recommendations (“teachings of the Church”) on the importance (or not) of preserving the traditional concepts of marriage, family, education etc, often forgetting that not only ethicists, psychologists and sociologists have their say in this but increasingly also geneticists, and biologists in general.

I repeat, this is in theory. In many countries, even in the former Communist ones, the priest could marry you only after you had been married civilly. A complete separation, that the Church should strive for, would mean mutual independence of the two.

Unfortunately, in (Catholic) practice the above three meanings and competences are often confused. So also the reaction they get is guided more by emotions than rational assessment of the pluses and minuses of the alternatives. This could be seen in the case of the Irish vote, where the local Catholic hierarchy (not so much the Pope) thus overplayed their hand turning the referendum to a large extent into a vote of no confidence in the traditional (Irish) understanding of Catholicism as an absolute moral authority, which the issue at stake was only marginally related to.