04-02-2004, 12:43 AM
On the gay marriage thing, one big argument that I feel conservatives try is "our founding fathers woudn't have put 'in god we trust' on the dollar if they didn't believe." This is for you:
George Washington, the first president of the United States, never declared himself a Christian according to contemporary reports or in any of his correspondence. On his deathbed, Washinton uttered no words of a religious nature and did not call for a clergyman to be in attendance.
Thomas Paine was a pamphleteer whose manifestos encouraged the faltering spirits of the country and aided materially in winning the war of Independence:
"I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of...Each of those churches accuse the other of unbelief; and for my own part, I disbelieve them all."
John Adams, the country's second president, called the clergy: "pretended sanctity of some absolute dunces" Also, under his administration, the Senate ratified the Treaty of Peace and Friendship, which states in Article XI that "the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion."
Thomas Jefferson, third president and author of the Declaration of Independence, said:"I trust that there is not a young man now living in the United States who will not die a Unitarian."
James Madison, fourth president and father of the Constitution, was not religious in any conventional sense. "Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise. During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less in all places, pride and indolence in the Clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity, in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution."
Last, but not least, Benjamin Franklin was a Deist, not a christian.
Sanctity of marriage.... defined by the Bible and society's conservatism... not by the US constitution. Americans should be free to marry whomever they want to marry.
George Washington, the first president of the United States, never declared himself a Christian according to contemporary reports or in any of his correspondence. On his deathbed, Washinton uttered no words of a religious nature and did not call for a clergyman to be in attendance.
Thomas Paine was a pamphleteer whose manifestos encouraged the faltering spirits of the country and aided materially in winning the war of Independence:
"I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of...Each of those churches accuse the other of unbelief; and for my own part, I disbelieve them all."
John Adams, the country's second president, called the clergy: "pretended sanctity of some absolute dunces" Also, under his administration, the Senate ratified the Treaty of Peace and Friendship, which states in Article XI that "the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion."
Thomas Jefferson, third president and author of the Declaration of Independence, said:"I trust that there is not a young man now living in the United States who will not die a Unitarian."
James Madison, fourth president and father of the Constitution, was not religious in any conventional sense. "Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise. During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less in all places, pride and indolence in the Clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity, in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution."
Last, but not least, Benjamin Franklin was a Deist, not a christian.
Sanctity of marriage.... defined by the Bible and society's conservatism... not by the US constitution. Americans should be free to marry whomever they want to marry.
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2008 Felt F75 - Pedal Power
2008 Felt F75 - Pedal Power