Liberal, NDP disturbed by their anti-religious colleagues

So... where is the reasonable evidence that abortion on demand(which I presume you support) is a good thing for society? Seems to me that's a policy that's based on morals. Either a moral belief in freedom of choice, or a moral belief that abortion is murder. I can't think of any scientific studies that would neccesarily support one position or the other.

And again, who gets to define what's nonsense? Religious beliefs might seem like nonsense to you, but they aren't to the believers. What makes you right and them wrong? Shouldn't it be up to voters to decide if they want a religious person crafting laws based on the morality that goes with whatever religion they are?

What part of priets refusing to marriage to you think needs to be debated? I presume you're talking about gay marriage although you didn't specify...

Actually when it comes to abortion there was a particular book that made a lot of anti abortion people rather angry when it came out years back. It was called freakonomics.

In it they quoted a certain study: http://pricetheory.uchicago.edu/levitt/ ... ed2001.pdf

Now I'm not going to hold up a single study here as some kind of absolute proof. What I am going to point out is that when you stop to think about it there is a lot of sense that less unwanted kids is going to result in less gangs and crime. More studies of this type should be done but people are just too afraid of the topic.

The important thing is to get this kind of discussion going. Your also right in that I stand by freedom before outlawing anything. I don't think it's a good thing to have a large government and the less they get their sticky paws in the better for us all. Don't outlaw something unless you have good proof of harm to more then just the individual making the choice.

To the second point we shouldn't allow laws based on religion or dogma to pass simply because a majority of voters align with a particular belief. I am going to say that when you are governing a large group of thousands or even millions of people it's irresponsible to base decisions on anything more then good evidence.

if we simply started passing "Christian" laws because the majority of voters are Christian what's to stop us from becoming a theocracy? We shouldn't do such a thing because democracy is a vastly superior system to theocracy.

Laws or motions that have no basis in evidence and are not demonstrable should be labeled as nonsense and left to rot. If something has a basis in good evidence or not is a discussion worth having in government.

Finally on to priests and marriage it's actually rather simple what I think. I think the legal end and the religious end of marriage are at an impasse and need to be separated. Simply have marriage commissioners handle the legal end and paperwork and let the clergy focus on the religious end. All current clergy who hold a commissioners license should be grandfathered in to the fact they can choose not to marry those who conflict with the faith. New commissioners would be told and held to a standard of universal acceptance out of the gates. No one would be placed in a situation they did not agree to at some point.

That way the priests who wish to avoid marrying gays can do just that while over time the issue becomes less and less relevant. It also means no church itself is forced to give a religious ceremony over a marriage it doesn't approve of. It's a way of respecting both sides while reestablishing the separation of church and state.

It's a rather simple fix that will make all sides happy over time and I don't understand how this has not been proposed up until now.

TO the marriage thing, why would you have to take away the priests legal authority? That just means adding an unnecessary step for people who now have to get a priest for the ceremony and a commissioner for the legalities. Seems pointless to me. Agree that commissioners shouldn't be able to refuse to perform any lawful marriage. Although I do think that out of respect older commissioners with opinions can informally recommend other commissioners to anyone who comes to them with a marriage they're not comfortable with. As long as they're not dicks about it anyways.

If Priests are open with performing all marriages there would be zero stopping them from getting a commissioners license. This just allows an ability for say the Catholic church to perform marriages without having to worry about the legal end as well since that causes such a sore spot with them having to be equal under law.

As for older commissioners I think that's why you grandfather in the "preference" rule for current license holders.

If you are working as a marriage commissioner, then to hell with your beliefs. You are a CIVIL servant. That's the job you chose, that's the job you do. If you can't do the job impartially then go to divinity school, become a clergy person and deny them in your own church.

It pisses me off how long a really badly translated word in the Bible has caused a particular segment of society so much grief, and I'm not even gay.

I prefer all religious types to keep their illusions private. We need far more secular humanism and far less religion of any stripe.