RELIGION AND SAME-SEX CIVIL PARTNERS

 
It makes no sense to exclude loving couples already doing the work of marriage in their daily lives – supporting one another, raising families, etc – from the legal structure intended to reinforce that dedication, those meanings, and – at its heart – commitment and love. From Marriage Equality Ireland website
 
The main reason that civil partnerships were established in law is so that the partners can have rights regarding property, inheritance and visitation rights and say in what happens to the partner who ends up incapacitated. Many say the state should provide for these rights but without setting up civil partnership. The Catholic doctrine that the rights may be given but not to couples because they are gay and in a same sex relationship but because they are people. This argument implies that civil partnership is nonsense and pointless.
 
Are loving and committed same-sex relationships unnatural and therefore evil? The Christians say they are. Dissenting Christians are said to prove that the Christians who condemn the relationships are right because the dissenters are only rebels and giving their opinion while the Christians who do not dissent are solidly based on scripture and reason and tradition. Dissenters need to consider then if they are really helping the cause of truth by staying in the Church.
 
Religion opposes same-sex civil partnerships which gives gay couples many rights similar to married couples. Civil partnership - same sex or not - is honouring something nearly as good as marriage. For many it is a good substitute. Atheists can be happy that it is easily confused with marriage and stops marriage being seen as a sacred and unique union.
 
Here is a number of other grounds:
 
The money spent by the state on civil partnership and the costs of the dissolution would be better spent on upholding marriage.
 
Gay sex is an abomination - ie intolerable according to God in the Bible.
 
Catholic teaching says gay sex is a grave sin. A Protestant just has the Bible condemnation of gay sex to focus on, but the Catholic has more than that. The tradition of the Church is said to preserve the teaching of Christ and that tradition condemns gay sex.
 
Civil partnerships can pave the way for the legalisation of gay marriage.
 
Civil partnerships are often called marriages for they are so like marriages. The distinction between civil partnerships and gay marriages is misunderstood or not taken seriously.
 
Gay relationships will not last for God designed the man for the woman and vice versa. So why should the state sanction them?
 
Civil partnerships implies legal approval for gay sex. The law may permit gay sex but approval is another step. If gay sex is a sin, then same sex civil partnerships are a sin. Why? Because they are only given to couples who are in a sexual relationship. The Church points out that if two friends live together but merely as friends for years, they will not get a civil partnership. It only happens if sex is involved. It is a reward for sex that is forbidden by the Church.
 
It is discrimination when heterosexual couples are refused a civil partnership. Civil partnerships should be available to same-sex and heterosexual couples. The Church fears that if this happens then civil partnership will wreck marriage and accelerate the demise of marriage. Marriage for Christians is based on the notion that the man and woman can have full sex. It discriminates against men and women who cannot have sex that way. Good riddance to it. The state should endorse civil partnership not marriage.
 
Some Christians who oppose civil partnership bills and laws claim that they do this not because they are anti-gay but pro-marriage. That is like hitting a wife-beater and saying you are not against him but his wife-beating. Christians imagine differences that don't exist - such is their hypocrisy.
 
Religion prefers to encourage the promiscuity it accuses gay people of by its opposition to civil partnerships - though it faints with horror and outrage at promiscuity. Oh the hypocrisy!
 
If civil partnerships are based on rewarding sex between two people of the same sex, then if you get civilly partnered it is a sin even if you never intend to have sex. This is because you are joining a system or scheme that is about endorsing such sex.
 
Civil partnerships that are like marriage in having a sexual side are sinful in the Christian scheme.