What Is Marriage?

As you probably know by know, Minnesota votes this fall on a state constitutional amendment to define marriage as one man and one woman. Minneapolis’s First Universalist Church produced this ad, which features Albatross, whom you’ve probably seen in the comments around FtB now and again.

This is one of those cases where our liberal churches and our atheists are ganging up standing together on the same side of an issue. We’ll disagree about this or that again later, but for now, we work together.

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What Is Marriage?
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6 thoughts on “What Is Marriage?

  1. 1

    Thinking about the most liberal Christian churches I have known, I can’t remember any political issue I disagree with them on other than the more trivial aspects of the wall of separation between church and state (and even there, many of them would still be on our side).

    The real disagreements are over what is real and true about the nature of reality and their foundational religious texts and over what religious actions and beliefs are ethical (for instance, trying to get people, especially children, to believe in an afterlife is immoral, I think). Otherwise, we remain on the same wavelength.

  2. 3

    I wonder what the target audience is for this? Are there that many liberal theists who attend liberal churches and accept pastors of all genders and orientations, but are on the fence on gay marriage and just need a little shove?

  3. 4

    Just a suspicion on my part, but I’d guess the target audience is people who are connected to moderate to slightly conservative congregations without being ideologues on this particular issue. If they’re believers but their own pastors aren’t telling them what to think, another believer might reach them. Again, just a guess.

  4. AJS
    5

    What is marriage? A legally-binding, mutual declaration of honorary membership of each other’s families, thus permitting each to claim the benefits associated with membership of the other’s family.

    Ting! Next, please.

  5. 6

    For the record, at least one person in the embedded video is an (and probably more than one are) atheist(s). The First Universalist Church of Minneapolis is not a Christian church, it’s a Unitarian Universalist oneā€”and atheists are welcome in UU churches, in theory.

    I have serious concerns with how this works out in practice; in my experience UU churches play host to depressingly large amounts of gnubashing and general atheophobia (see for example UU Adam “Daylight Atheism” Lee’s discussion of the matter at http://bit.ly/szT7F4 ). Nonetheless, it’s clearly inaccurate to see materials published by UU congregations and conclude that they were created by Christians, or even theists.

    UUs, not incidentally, are overwhelmingly in favor of GLBT rights; indeed, a much larger proportion of UUs are GLBT than the North American population at large. (Very likely the same goes for “out” atheists on this continent.)

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