At all times follow your heart.

Jesus is very, very clever in his response. Not only does he avoid falling into the trap of the Pharisees question but he SUPERSEDES the question.
We all know the Ten Commandments and churches and Christians everywhere still try to live by them.There are 603 additional rules in the old testament. If I had that many rules to follow I’d be trying to rank them too. So are we supposed to live by all these rules? In one beautiful moment, Jesus supersedes all these rules with two simple principles. Love God. Love others. Does this mean the law is gone completely? No, not really. but if I live by these principles, I fulfill the law. So to rephrase that, the law still exists but in a new form: it’s not black and white law anymore.This is a wonderful thing. LOVE is a principle. Living by a principle of love states no specific action (such as ‘do not murder’) – instead I have guidelines. BUT to someone living by strict rules and regulations, the person who lives by principles of love seems a bit wishy-washy, free-spirited, unclear – and so on. It’s why you hear the “you’re diluting the Bible” comment. It’s why you hear people say “but it says so in black and white in the Bible – how can you disagree?”. It’s why traditional societies like strict Islamic cultures find the West “loose”. But are we really “loose”? Is superseding law doing way with structure that we need? I’d say that living under principles not law is actually more effort. I have to think more. I have to take life on a “case by case” basis. I have to think from the other person’s point of view. And all this out of actively loving the other person, not merely following a rule that I was told to follow. This requires maturity!!! And that’s the kind of maturity that God wants to see grow in us. Part of this maturity is my freedom to interpret the Bible in a way that says “if the way I interpret this scripture is causing pain and hurt to someone else and it doesn’t stack up to Jesus’ principles, I need to reassess”. Some people talk about “reading the Bible through the lens of Christ”. Personally I like this approach and it gives the Bible remarkable consistency.
So – now down to the specific scriptures about homosexuality:
Is there only one way to interpret each one of them? no
Should I read, research and think for myself? yes
Is it ok for people to have different opinions? yes
Are ALL OF US required by Christ to interpret them in a way that loves an LGBTI person as ourselves? yes
If I move to a position that elevates principles and supersedes law is that a sign of weak theology? NO WAY!

“…I am not *worried* about anything and I’m not sure why you are turning this into some effeminate emotional discussion.”

Your ruminative intellectual behavior seems a tad disturbed on the psychiatric level. I suggest you make that friendly call to your local pharmacy as your meds seem to be running low. If you have no “horse” in this race, why are you asking Dough to ride yours? And why would you describe Dough as effeminate? Is he showing characteristics typical of women? He is homosexual as you well know. But he doesn’t betray it in his writings. You, on the other hand, are demonstrating characteristics typical of a closeted gay venting a tremendous amount of animus and hostility to someone who is going out of his way to show you deference and kindness. Are you thinking of joining the priesthood to keep it under wraps? Don’t.

You remind me of an errant computer with a bad logic board having a battle of wits with James T. Kirk just before the smoke starts coming out of your ears. Watch out for those closed logic loops. They can create a feedback cascade that will blow your circuits if you’re not careful. A right is a right is a right is a right unless you’re wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. And you are wrong. You are infinitely wrong. Demonstrably wrong. Thoroughly wrong. You are incorrectly wrong and wrongly wrong on the facts. Truth is not constitutional. It does not compute. Rights are not privileges, duty is not honor. Input is not outcome. Serendipity is not sausage. Error. Error. Now compute pi to the 10 millionth digit. I do….not…I…It….. *SIZZLE* *POP!*

“…As Jeremy Bentham noted, rights are nonsense on stilts.”

Jeremy Bentham is stuffed and preserved in a box. Who gives a quick, dirty coital thrust what he thought? He had no right to be stuffed in a box. Did he love the box? Was he married to the box? Are rights granted by the eternal taxidermist? Where is the chain of causality? Where is the ex nihilo proposition? Is there miscegenation in the box? Why would he need stilts? Where is the unitary stilt principle? Does not compute. Error! Error! God is a concept by which we measure our pain. Or our sentiment….but NOT both!! I’ll say it again. Error! Error!

Remember, Nietzsche spent much of his time being bat shit insane and talking to a horse in Turin, Italy before he was carted away. Is he your philosophical resource for all things squirrely?

“…It is an argument that the current political arrangement we call the US is unwieldy, ineffective and is just begging to be broken up.”

Is your mind following the example set by the U.S. or merely setting its course?

“…In one sentence give me the animating principle you envision for marriage.

Here’s mine:

To impose norms regulating the sexual relations between male and female.

Now that is NOT an ideal, it is a regulating function. What is yours?”

You can no more regulate the sexual norms between males and females than you can take a frog’s temperature by jamming your foot in a horse’s ass. Do you love the ass? Do you compute the ass? How many rat’s asses does it take to make a horse’s ass? Do you square the ass by the inverse of the surreal? Error! Error! Does not compute! Your “animating principle” seems to be doing wonders for Jeremy Bentham. He looks pretty good after 200 years. Formaldehyde would also do wonders for imposing norms on people. Providing you don’t mind them being dead.

“…The distinction between one person and multiple people is purely arbitrary. I don’t give a rat’s ass whether or not you are advocating one or many partners. Once you base marriage on subjective feelings and not on a regulating concern of society then personal, subjective feelings are the only concern and it is irrelevant whether or not is is one person or one thousand people.”

Wrong, Einstein. The distinction, as Dough has elucidated numerous times, is not to compromise the value of marriage but to enrich it and make it available to couples everywhere. If you want multiple partners, you can try Saudi Arabia or Utah. You apparently don’t give “a rat’s ass” about much of anything, so this concept shouldn’t bother you either: you can’t construct a society by ignoring the subjective feelings of its members, or claim that laws are only fair and just when they ignore them. Need proof? Go ask Pol Pot, Hitler, Stalin, whose animating principle is complete and unchallenged power and political control over everything and everyone.

“…Your definition was a purely legal one and simply meets your sentimental wants. It had nothing to do with a justification.”

I want the moral universe to reflect my own desires. Given the failure of that, I want to be sane. To love a person is to learn the song that is in their heart, and to sing it to them when they have forgotten. If that’s sentimentality or justification, I’ll take it in a heartbeat over anything you’re offering.

“…The distinction between male and female is biological and, thus, not arbitrary.”

No shit, Sherlock. The distinction between up and down is context, Mr. gravity.

“…What you want, what they want, what anyone wants is irrelevant. Once you establish a premise then you don’t get to pick and choose the implications of that premise. That is why your premise must be concise and unitary and the statement that relied on the Massachusetts law is neither concise nor unitary.”

Bullshit. Apparently your house of cards is collapsing right in front of you. Sorry to be the bearer of bad tidings, but we are human beings, not machines. Present company excluded. We carve our own fucking destiny because we have minds, hearts and feelings. You just carve minutia from rhetorical dead ends. We can be as sentimental, sloppy, irreverent, lazy, productive as we God Damned well please. We make and break laws when it suits us to do so. Got it? That’s how we diminish harm and enshrine value. That’s why we have a court system and a jury system and a legal apparatus. As dysfunctional as it can be, it is there to protect us and honor our evolving ideas of justice, clemency, mercy and life. It doesn’t rule US we rule IT. We created the concept of marriage and we can alter it if we wish. We’ve already done so. We are not beholden to an invisible force that demands we give an account for everything we do, or that we dot every fucking i and cross every t. You want to live under the law? Then die under it. It’s still your choice. Stop trying to cement everything into one inescapable conclusion. The rest of us have free moral agency, because love is not a penalty in the dance of life, it is the real function and sole meaning of living. We can abolish commitments to it or make them inclusive. Avoid marriage or support it. It’s not going to disappear or be damaged because some numbskull like yourself wants to sit up all night arguing convoluted crap through his ass just to be a contrarian. Stop imbibing the philosophical jargon for five seconds and try taking your pulse to see if you have one. If you don’t, go join Jeremy. The poor guy looks like he could use some company.

“….Too many gay men, certainly not all, are at the forefront of that crusade to undermine the masculine imperative for providing structure and order in the public sphere. There is probably a good reason for this which is that woman needs taming and gay men don’t have much experience in meeting that requirement for a masculine life.”

Yes, you’re right, Asher. I’ve been thinking about this problem since the gay commies started fluoridating our water supply. I first became aware of it during the physical act of love. It was followed by a profound sense of fatigue, a feeling of emptiness. Luckily, I was able to interpret these feelings correctly: loss of essence. An inability to meet the requirements for a masculine life. Asher, do you know why I drink only distilled water, or rain water, and only pure grain alcohol? It’s to counteract the Gay Plot. As a result, women sense my power and seek my essence. I do not avoid women, Asher, but I do deny them my essence.

Gay men are presently too busy actively and tirelessly participating in the undermining of society to be good masculine role models. It won’t be long until the typical marriage involves Donkeys, Sheep, Gerbils and Gummy Bears. Emmm! Gummy Bears, Asher, Gummy Bears! We should probably round all the queers up and put them in death camps before their subjective sentimentality and rights agenda brings down the kingdom. After all, that’s their main task as hounds of hell. They are exercising their corrupting skills through a number of organizations even as I speak, such as the Bilderbergs, the Trilateral commission, the Freemasons, the Illuminati, the Merovingian dynasty, the Carbonari, the Knights Templar, the Zeti Reticuli, the Reptoids, the Fibonacci sequence, cold pizza, gas station Sushi and the destruction of Sodom as well as the exhaust fumes that emanate from floundering democracies. Most importantly of all, the queers have robbed straight men of their testicles, their moral compass, and their Nikes.

And you’re absolutely right, Mandrake….er, Asher. Women definitely need taming. But stern discipline and a penal whip hand wont be enough. Once the gays have feminized the masculine world and conquered stem cell reproduction and cloning, the birth rate will drop to zero and we can finally be done with uppity women who will have taken over all the heavy lifting since our wrists will be too limp to carry our own weight. Thanks for the head’s up. in the name of Her Majesty and the Continental Congress come here and feed me this ammo belt, boy!