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Chapel in Idaho refusing gay couples


Firiel

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There is no comparison between skin colors and sexual choices.

Skin color cannot be changed, cannot be hidden except perhaps under a burqa. There is never a day that a black person can say "today I will abstain from being black."

A relationship is always a choice. You never have to enter a relationship. You can hide a relationship. It has nothing to do with who you are attracted to. Relationships can and do end. Skin color never ends.

There's no comparison between skin color and relationship choice. It is so completely disingenuous to try to co-opt a personal choice on the backs of people of color, who, as you may remember, have no choice about the color of their skin. Ever.

You know, while technically it is true that getting into a relationship is a choice, it's really disingenuous to use the fact that a specific relationship may be a choice as an excuse to discriminate. There is an interesting aspect to sexual politics in that most LGBT people could theoretically pass if they wanted to in a way a black person couldn't. A store owner could see a gay person and totally not know he is gay, but that won't happen with a black person (aside from the few that could "pass" based on different racial backgrounds). But that's beside the point because it's not relevant here.

Sexual orientation doesn't end. A lesbian will always be attracted to women and a gay man will always be attracted to men. A specific relationship with a partner may end, but they will end up with another partner that brings the same discrimination along with it.

Actually, your analogy resonates better with interracial marriage, as people don't tend to be SOLELY attracted to a specific race. Do you think that interracial couples in the '50s and '60s should have just broken up because their relationship was a choice? Do you think they shouldn't have fought for equality and the right to marry because, after all, the white person in the relationship could just choose to break up with his black significant other and find a socially acceptable white partner?

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But businesses want people's money. No matter what their sexual orientation is. If a person pays taxes and others willing take their money then they should have the legal right to get married where ever they feel like it.

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There is no comparison between skin colors and sexual choices.

Skin color cannot be changed, cannot be hidden except perhaps under a burqa. There is never a day that a black person can say "today I will abstain from being black."

A relationship is always a choice. You never have to enter a relationship. You can hide a relationship. It has nothing to do with who you are attracted to. Relationships can and do end. Skin color never ends.

There's no comparison between skin color and relationship choice. It is so completely disingenuous to try to co-opt a personal choice on the backs of people of color, who, as you may remember, have no choice about the color of their skin. Ever.

I met my wife at Pensacola Christian College. Neither of us had ever been in a relationship before (it wasn't allowed), and we were too naive and sheltered to recognize our relationship for what it was until we'd been together for more than a year. Neither of us had ever entertained the thought that we might be gay before, because attraction of any kind towards anyone was a big no-no, and because we'd both been taught all our lives that being gay was a conscious choice you make. I didn't choose my relationship; in fact, I didn't even realize I *was* gay until it finally dawned on me that I was already in a romantic relationship. With a woman.

I realize my case is a bit out of the ordinary, and that most people enter relationships consciously. But where my narrative merges back with that of others is that once I/we realized that we were in a relationship, I (well, both of us, really) had to decide what to do from there. I thought somehow I must have accidentally chosen this, and I could just...stop. I tried. We both tried, to just be friends and start being interested in guys. We don't talk about that time much, because it's too dark, so I don't know how bad it was for my wife, but it was literal hell for me. I don't remember sleeping for more than a year, although I assume I must have. I had horrible panic attacks over going to hell, and would stay up all night praying and crying and screaming into my pillow so that no one would hear me. I made a suicide attempt, my wife stopped me.

So that didn't go so well. I was clearly going to be gay whether I wanted to be or not (and I most certainly did not at the time), and gay is gay. There was no distinction in what I'd been taught between the attraction itself and acting on it. I thought about trying to be single and celibate forever anyway, but the looming specter of a future completely alone was dark and terrifying enough to send me into another suicide attempt. After that, I decided that if I was going to go to hell anyway, no matter what I tried, what was the point in being miserable on earth and in the afterlife? Might as well have a relationship as not.

That lasted right up until we both realized that choosing to be together was going to mean attempting to live in the closet forever, or losing all of our family and every friend we'd ever had. Yes, every single one of them, because we both grew up homeschooled and fundie so we had no friends outside of church. Starting over from scratch is a daunting prospect (seriously, stop for a minute and consider what your life would be like if you lost every single person you know and love in one fell swoop and tell me if it doesn't turn your stomach to ice), so we decided to do the whole closet thing instead. You know, the hiding the relationship bit that you tossed off so flippantly? We did it. And we pulled it off for a couple of years, but believe me, it's its own special brand of hell. It goes way beyond just not holding hands in public or whatever you think it involves. Think of the couples you know, and how their body language unconsciously turns them towards their significant other whenever they're around. The small, unthinking gestures like a shared smile, or a touch on the shoulder while walking by, winks across the room, or even the tone of voice you use when you talk about them. You have to watch those, when you're gay and in the closet, and it's exhausting. No leaving or saving little notes, they might be found. No dates, you might be seen. Don't walk too close to each other, that's obvious, but if you walk too far away that looks obvious too. You never get a single second "off", not one single one. The smallest slip up means the end of your entire world, like something out of a spy movie but with real world consequences. And that's not even getting into the big worries, like the worry that your love will be blocked from your hospital room if something happens to you, not because of discrimination, but because people don't even know that she matters.

And all this, by the way? This isn't even entering into the sexual side of a relationship. This, that I've described from my own life so far, is all about who I was attracted to. You can have an intimate romantic relationship without sex, and tons of people do it every day. Everything I've described above was what we were already dealing with long before our relationship included sex. I know relationships can and do end, but it's so disingenuous of you to act like they are somehow unimportant because some of them are transient.

If you were curious, in the end we decided it was killing us (and that sadly isn't much of an exaggeration) to stay in the closet any longer than we already had, and we wound up coming out. We lost our families, we lost our friends, and we started over from scratch and built our way back up. And for as hard as that was, and for a much as it hurt then and still hurts now, it was still easier than trying to hide any longer.

I shared all of this to say that it's nowhere near as cut and dried as you seem to think it is. I understand that in some ways I can pass in public in ways that my friends of color won't ever be able to, although it's not as easy as you make it sound. But the fact that I can pass in public if I really have to doesn't magically make discrimination against me somehow less of an offense that discrimination against a person of color because of their skin tone. Some people of color can pass too, and yet discrimination is still wrong whether than can pass or not just because it's still discrimination. Not only that, but your argument smacks of victim blaming. It comes across like you think it's the victim's own fault if they could pass but don't and therefore get discriminated against, instead of the bully's fault for discriminating in the first place.

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I met my wife at Pensacola Christian College. Neither of us had ever been in a relationship before (it wasn't allowed), and we were too naive and sheltered to recognize our relationship for what it was until we'd been together for more than a year. Neither of us had ever entertained the thought that we might be gay before, because attraction of any kind towards anyone was a big no-no, and because we'd both been taught all our lives that being gay was a conscious choice you make. I didn't choose my relationship; in fact, I didn't even realize I *was* gay until it finally dawned on me that I was already in a romantic relationship. With a woman.

I realize my case is a bit out of the ordinary, and that most people enter relationships consciously. But where my narrative merges back with that of others is that once I/we realized that we were in a relationship, I (well, both of us, really) had to decide what to do from there. I thought somehow I must have accidentally chosen this, and I could just...stop. I tried. We both tried, to just be friends and start being interested in guys. We don't talk about that time much, because it's too dark, so I don't know how bad it was for my wife, but it was literal hell for me. I don't remember sleeping for more than a year, although I assume I must have. I had horrible panic attacks over going to hell, and would stay up all night praying and crying and screaming into my pillow so that no one would hear me. I made a suicide attempt, my wife stopped me.

So that didn't go so well. I was clearly going to be gay whether I wanted to be or not (and I most certainly did not at the time), and gay is gay. There was no distinction in what I'd been taught between the attraction itself and acting on it. I thought about trying to be single and celibate forever anyway, but the looming specter of a future completely alone was dark and terrifying enough to send me into another suicide attempt. After that, I decided that if I was going to go to hell anyway, no matter what I tried, what was the point in being miserable on earth and in the afterlife? Might as well have a relationship as not.

That lasted right up until we both realized that choosing to be together was going to mean attempting to live in the closet forever, or losing all of our family and every friend we'd ever had. Yes, every single one of them, because we both grew up homeschooled and fundie so we had no friends outside of church. Starting over from scratch is a daunting prospect (seriously, stop for a minute and consider what your life would be like if you lost every single person you know and love in one fell swoop and tell me if it doesn't turn your stomach to ice), so we decided to do the whole closet thing instead. You know, the hiding the relationship bit that you tossed off so flippantly? We did it. And we pulled it off for a couple of years, but believe me, it's its own special brand of hell. It goes way beyond just not holding hands in public or whatever you think it involves. Think of the couples you know, and how their body language unconsciously turns them towards their significant other whenever they're around. The small, unthinking gestures like a shared smile, or a touch on the shoulder while walking by, winks across the room, or even the tone of voice you use when you talk about them. You have to watch those, when you're gay and in the closet, and it's exhausting. No leaving or saving little notes, they might be found. No dates, you might be seen. Don't walk too close to each other, that's obvious, but if you walk too far away that looks obvious too. You never get a single second "off", not one single one. The smallest slip up means the end of your entire world, like something out of a spy movie but with real world consequences. And that's not even getting into the big worries, like the worry that your love will be blocked from your hospital room if something happens to you, not because of discrimination, but because people don't even know that she matters.

And all this, by the way? This isn't even entering into the sexual side of a relationship. This, that I've described from my own life so far, is all about who I was attracted to. You can have an intimate romantic relationship without sex, and tons of people do it every day. Everything I've described above was what we were already dealing with long before our relationship included sex. I know relationships can and do end, but it's so disingenuous of you to act like they are somehow unimportant because some of them are transient.

If you were curious, in the end we decided it was killing us (and that sadly isn't much of an exaggeration) to stay in the closet any longer than we already had, and we wound up coming out. We lost our families, we lost our friends, and we started over from scratch and built our way back up. And for as hard as that was, and for a much as it hurt then and still hurts now, it was still easier than trying to hide any longer.

I shared all of this to say that it's nowhere near as cut and dried as you seem to think it is. I understand that in some ways I can pass in public in ways that my friends of color won't ever be able to, although it's not as easy as you make it sound. But the fact that I can pass in public if I really have to doesn't magically make discrimination against me somehow less of an offense that discrimination against a person of color because of their skin tone. Some people of color can pass too, and yet discrimination is still wrong whether than can pass or not just because it's still discrimination. Not only that, but your argument smacks of victim blaming. It comes across like you think it's the victim's own fault if they could pass but don't and therefore get discriminated against, instead of the bully's fault for discriminating in the first place.

Your story is heartbreaking and beautiful at the same time. Thank you for sharing.

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Actual minister chiming in:

We are never *forced* to marry anyone by law. When we sign a marriage certificate, it is as a religious official testifying on behalf of the state that these two persons are joined in marriage. We reserve the freedom of conscience to not sign. Many ministers refuse to sign but are happy to perform the religious ceremony to drive home the fact that we are religious folks, not state emissaries.

These folks being ministers is secondary in this case. Primary is that they have made a wedding business, and they have the authority to sign marriage certificates by their church. I think they should have their rights stripped by the clerk of court for being disingenuous : they are licensed to sign as religious officials, not as business persons to make a profit.

I get the right to sign marriage certificates by presenting my ordination credentials to the clerk of court and they register my signature. It can be taken away if I lied about my intentions to join people in marriage (for profit, not religious purposes).

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This whole thing makes me roll my eyes so hard I think they're going to be stuck. I live just across the border from this "chapel". I know half a dozen couples that have been married there, none of them at all religious. All had civil ceremonies. Four of those couples divorced less than five years into the marriage. One couple is still married, happily. The sixth is still married, but only because he desperately needs the health benefits her job provides. They live in the same house, but work opposite schedules and rarely see each other, intentionally. The notion that the Hitching Post has anything to do with "traditional" marriage is a real hoot.

Their lawsuit is likely to be thrown out, anyway. They converted to a religious for-profit (apparently that's a thing in Idaho) a few weeks back and the City of Coeur d'Alene has said they aren't bound by the anti-discrimination code in their new form. They're trying to make a lot of money and get the religious right all riled up. Because we all know conservative Christians are sooooo persecuted.

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I met my wife at Pensacola Christian College. Neither of us had ever been in a relationship before (it wasn't allowed), and we were too naive and sheltered to recognize our relationship for what it was until we'd been together for more than a year. Neither of us had ever entertained the thought that we might be gay before, because attraction of any kind towards anyone was a big no-no, and because we'd both been taught all our lives that being gay was a conscious choice you make. I didn't choose my relationship; in fact, I didn't even realize I *was* gay until it finally dawned on me that I was already in a romantic relationship. With a woman.

I realize my case is a bit out of the ordinary, and that most people enter relationships consciously. But where my narrative merges back with that of others is that once I/we realized that we were in a relationship, I (well, both of us, really) had to decide what to do from there. I thought somehow I must have accidentally chosen this, and I could just...stop. I tried. We both tried, to just be friends and start being interested in guys. We don't talk about that time much, because it's too dark, so I don't know how bad it was for my wife, but it was literal hell for me. I don't remember sleeping for more than a year, although I assume I must have. I had horrible panic attacks over going to hell, and would stay up all night praying and crying and screaming into my pillow so that no one would hear me. I made a suicide attempt, my wife stopped me.

So that didn't go so well. I was clearly going to be gay whether I wanted to be or not (and I most certainly did not at the time), and gay is gay. There was no distinction in what I'd been taught between the attraction itself and acting on it. I thought about trying to be single and celibate forever anyway, but the looming specter of a future completely alone was dark and terrifying enough to send me into another suicide attempt. After that, I decided that if I was going to go to hell anyway, no matter what I tried, what was the point in being miserable on earth and in the afterlife? Might as well have a relationship as not.

That lasted right up until we both realized that choosing to be together was going to mean attempting to live in the closet forever, or losing all of our family and every friend we'd ever had. Yes, every single one of them, because we both grew up homeschooled and fundie so we had no friends outside of church. Starting over from scratch is a daunting prospect (seriously, stop for a minute and consider what your life would be like if you lost every single person you know and love in one fell swoop and tell me if it doesn't turn your stomach to ice), so we decided to do the whole closet thing instead. You know, the hiding the relationship bit that you tossed off so flippantly? We did it. And we pulled it off for a couple of years, but believe me, it's its own special brand of hell. It goes way beyond just not holding hands in public or whatever you think it involves. Think of the couples you know, and how their body language unconsciously turns them towards their significant other whenever they're around. The small, unthinking gestures like a shared smile, or a touch on the shoulder while walking by, winks across the room, or even the tone of voice you use when you talk about them. You have to watch those, when you're gay and in the closet, and it's exhausting. No leaving or saving little notes, they might be found. No dates, you might be seen. Don't walk too close to each other, that's obvious, but if you walk too far away that looks obvious too. You never get a single second "off", not one single one. The smallest slip up means the end of your entire world, like something out of a spy movie but with real world consequences. And that's not even getting into the big worries, like the worry that your love will be blocked from your hospital room if something happens to you, not because of discrimination, but because people don't even know that she matters.

And all this, by the way? This isn't even entering into the sexual side of a relationship. This, that I've described from my own life so far, is all about who I was attracted to. You can have an intimate romantic relationship without sex, and tons of people do it every day. Everything I've described above was what we were already dealing with long before our relationship included sex. I know relationships can and do end, but it's so disingenuous of you to act like they are somehow unimportant because some of them are transient.

If you were curious, in the end we decided it was killing us (and that sadly isn't much of an exaggeration) to stay in the closet any longer than we already had, and we wound up coming out. We lost our families, we lost our friends, and we started over from scratch and built our way back up. And for as hard as that was, and for a much as it hurt then and still hurts now, it was still easier than trying to hide any longer.

I shared all of this to say that it's nowhere near as cut and dried as you seem to think it is. I understand that in some ways I can pass in public in ways that my friends of color won't ever be able to, although it's not as easy as you make it sound. But the fact that I can pass in public if I really have to doesn't magically make discrimination against me somehow less of an offense that discrimination against a person of color because of their skin tone. Some people of color can pass too, and yet discrimination is still wrong whether than can pass or not just because it's still discrimination. Not only that, but your argument smacks of victim blaming. It comes across like you think it's the victim's own fault if they could pass but don't and therefore get discriminated against, instead of the bully's fault for discriminating in the first place.

Thank You for sharing that story, it is a beautiful story. I am greatful that laws are changing. I think you have the right to flourish as a loving couple and really believe that as more states change their laws, more hearts will change over time. I also think your relationship is an expression of God's love.

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Actual minister chiming in:

We are never *forced* to marry anyone by law. When we sign a marriage certificate, it is as a religious official testifying on behalf of the state that these two persons are joined in marriage. We reserve the freedom of conscience to not sign. Many ministers refuse to sign but are happy to perform the religious ceremony to drive home the fact that we are religious folks, not state emissaries.

These folks being ministers is secondary in this case. Primary is that they have made a wedding business, and they have the authority to sign marriage certificates by their church. I think they should have their rights stripped by the clerk of court for being disingenuous : they are licensed to sign as religious officials, not as business persons to make a profit.

I get the right to sign marriage certificates by presenting my ordination credentials to the clerk of court and they register my signature. It can be taken away if I lied about my intentions to join people in marriage (for profit, not religious purposes).

Thank you for the clarification. I was thinking along those lines too. As a Catholic my marriage is not valid because I eloped and married in a courthouse. Because I was an atheist/agnostic (well not really sure) I did not want it in any church setting. So legally I'm married and spiritually I'm not. Same hoes with the church and divorce. They determine if your marriage was valid in the first place. You can be civilly divorced but still considerd married by the church. I was wondering if ministers could have that mindset. To officiate over a civil Union I stead of a "spiritual" one.

Also don't FLDS use spiritual marriages for the extr wives?

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