@Ian. "In that context, being a slave or a king for your time on earth doesn't really amount to much." and that, right there, is the harm of religion. It makes you satisfied with injustice in the here-and-now with the promise of jam tomorrow.
Special privilege? We still have Sunday trading laws. Wearing a crucifix when there is a no jewellery dress code, yes that's special privilege. Faith schools? The very manifestation of privilege. Have you religious indoctrination paid for by the tax payer! Of course that is privilege.

@Ian. When two people love each other and want to declare their commitment to each other before their community there is a perfectly good word to use. That word is marriage. Why invent a new one? Unless you are trying to say that the union of two gay people is in some way inferior to our heterosexual marriage.

I myself a gay man strongrly agree that we should have the same rights as hetrosexual people. there is this big thing in the world that homosexual people are sick or its wrong .. isnt this a fragment of the mind , and morally wrong statement made by the general public ! BACK GAY MARRAIGE ALL THE WAY!

Ian,

Look at your comment and then ask yourself why should same-sex partnerships be excluded from something that heterosexual couples are entitled to? Tradition? It was traditional for a long time to persecute Jews, or burn witches at the stake. Just because something has been the same for a long time is not a good enough reason to keep it, especially if it discriminates.

@Nathan. You assumed that because I didn't mention the different weekday chosen as a "day of rest" by each of the faiths you mention, I didn't already know this to be the case. The truth was that in an already rather long post, it didn't seem relevant to the comment being made, as, being a traditionally Christian country, we already have Friday and Saturday trading for a great many years - so I left it out. However, I guess you needed to include it to justify your fun "fact" at the end?

Getting to the more substantive part of your post, I was wondering, if you might be able to give me some idea of just how many "starving" people have been prevented from "starving" since Sunday trading began? I could be wrong, but I don't think it would be many. I could certainly believe the gap between rich and poor has widened, if anything, in the years that we've been able to shop on a Sunday. Not that I'm directly linking the two, but if you can provide some authoritative figures I'd be interested to see them.

I'm also curious how a "majority" can (pretty much by definition!) enjoy a "privileged condition"? Either way, the term "persecution" is yours, not mine. I just want "marriage" (in the sense that it has been understood for hundreds of years) to remain a term meaning what it has, over those many centuries, become commonly understood to mean. It's only like when digital watches were invented, we had to coin the term "analogue" watches to differentiate between the two. I think "persecution" is, perhaps a bit of a strong term to use? Why do you seem to want the term "marriage" to mean the same thing for both types of relationship? If I "marry" my daughter (she does, after all love me very much!) I guess you wouldn't have a problem with that? It's all the same thing, basically. A relationship between two people who love each other!

I'm also not certain that my post suggests anything about my ignorance of my own religion either? In fact as "marriage" in the "religious" sense becomes less common, the state uses it less and less as a tool for recognising it as a partnership between people who want legal unity!

I think you might be more correct in stating that "you believe that" ... "any postulated deity doesn't like it is pure conjecture..." - which is fair enough. I choose not to. The truth is that neither of us will really know - at least until we die, or maybe, ever!

And what, exactly, in this case is the "necessity" of law?

jh, I don't have a problem if you want to have a same-sex marriage in a registry office either. What the State does is entirely down to the State (and in a democracy, one would expect, to the people living in it). I absolutely accept and respect your wish not to have anything to do with any particular religion too. All I'm questioning is why the State should want to change the meaning of a word that had that particular meaning for many hundreds of years when it would be just as easy to create some other term that recognised the differences?

@ Bob T,
If you research the topic of this debate, it has at its crux the demands of certain Gay people to have the right to be married in a church.

It might please the cardinal to remember that a couple of hundred years ago it was illegal to be Catholic in this country.
Leaving that aside as a gay man I really couldnt care less about organised religion however i dont see why gay couples cant have the same right to marry in a registry office as a hetrosexual couple .
Im not a local and i have always found the attitude to minority groups in this area shocking, Fortunately in the last few years things have caught up slightly with the rest of the country however this area really needs to give itself a slap and drag itself in to the 21st century .

Ian,

Actually, keeping Sunday as a day of rest wasn't universally accepted - Judaism considers Saturday to be the day of rest, not Sunday, and Islam goes with Fridays. It was switched to Sunday for political reasons and to distinguish Christianity as a separate religion and not just a Jewish sect. Other religions prevalent in the Levant at the time of Jesus didn't have any ay of rest at all; when you're scraping by on subsistence income, you don't shut shop for a day in case you starve.

As for the rest; when a majority that has enjoyed priveleged conditions find that others are getting the same rights, it's always deemed as 'persecution'. It's not. Get over it.

Your posts betray your ignorance about your own (I'm assumming) religion. Marriage isn't exclusive to religion and is a tool of the state to recognise an offical partnership between people who want legal unity. Any comments to suggest that any postulated deity doesn't like it is pure conjecture and is simply homophobia dressed up as religion belief. Religion is a choice and should always be superceded by necessity of the law.

Fun fact: Atheists have consistently out-performed any other group of people on their knowledge of religion in scientific conducted research. Even over and above those who should know more.

Lynn, do you really believe that minorities in this country should follow the line that the majority sets? Do you hold no regards to an individuals rights?
As a happily married heterosexual guy I'm happy for gay marriages to go ahead, if it makes them as happy as I am I'll applaud as they leave church and stand the happy couple a drink at the bar.
The church and religious types will soon be all in favour of gay marriage when the realize how much money the extra church marriages will bring in.
I see no reason though in all seriousness why the religious types should think they have a right to dictate what others should do. The bible and religion is an outdated concept which brings more war and misery to the world than anything else. Rather than stopping gay marriages lets put an end to religion and being dictated to by a few stuff old men in frocks and silly hats.