In an act of international solidarity to defend the institution of marriage, over 100 pro-family leaders from around the world signed a petition this week to defend efforts in Romania to outlaw same-sex “marriage.”
“We applaud the Romanian people for taking this courageous step in defense of a divinely ordained institution which predates governments and on whose health the future of society depends. And we encourage Romania’s Chamber of Deputies and others in the government to fully codify the proposed definition of marriage and, eventually, to so define marriage in Romania’s Constitution,” the petition reads.
Earlier this year, efforts by the pro-family Alliance of Romanian Families to gather 650,000 signatures to ban gay “marriage” and the Romanian Senate’s vote to amend the country’s constitution to define marriage as a “union between a man and a woman” came under attack by pro-gay groups who attempted to block the measures.
Boris Dittrich, advocacy director of Human Rights Watch (HRW)’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender/Transsexual (LGBT) Rights Program, was among those who criticized Romania’s efforts to ban gay “marriage” in an open letter addressed to its legislators.
“The European Convention of Human Rights, one of those treaties to which Romania is a party, provides specific protection to families under Article 8, and the European Court of Human Rights is very clear that the legal definition of family should neither be discriminatory nor unduly restrictive…The right to marry is a basic human right,” he wrote.
“Civil marriage is not an exception to the protections against unequal treatment, and Romanian legislators should not write their country into a trap of preemptive and discriminatory prohibition,” he added.
In response, pro-family groups from around the world have rallied to Romania’s cause to protect the institution of marriage.
Allan C. Carlson, international secretary of the World Congress of Families, spoke of the petition backing Romania as part of a world wide effort to save marriage.
"This (the petition) shows the willingness of pro-family groups to stand in solidarity," he said, according to a released statement. "It is a recognition of the reality that a threat to the natural family anywhere is a threat to the natural family everywhere.
"We will continue to build the international pro-family movement to protect the natural family and advance our common values, wherever they are threatened," he added.
In February, the Senate of Romania voted 38 to 10 to change its Family Code to define marriage as a union “between a man and a woman.”
In order for the measure to become law, the country’s Chamber of Deputies will have to decide on the issue in June.
According to a 2004 study conducted by the Eurobarometer’s Targeting Social Need (TNS) Opinion & Social, Romania “had the lowest level of backing for same-sex marriage,” among eight different European Union countries.
According to the study, only 11 percent of Romanians said they supported same-sex “marriage.”
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To fauxboheme
I thought this was a Christian website. Why are you so scandalized when people tell you what is in the Holy Scriptures? God in the Bible does condemn sodomy, prostitution and adultery, that is a fact. But it is a fact also that God is good and merciful and God love each one of His creatures as it is said in Isaiah 49, 15, 16:”Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee. Behold, I have graven thee upon the palms of my hands !”
How could you put upside down what is normal?What is normal is the marriage between a Man and a Woman. God made the Man and the Woman, different and complementary, that's the way it is, that's the reality, that's the norm. Homosexuality is the exception it's not the norm.
Is homosexuality a disease or a genetic defect or a choice? I don' t know. What I know is that in our western civilization, homosexuals are not stoned, nor are they thrown from high windows nor are they shot like it happens in Islamic countries. In our society they are respected but marriage is not for them. They can invent another contract but not marriage, matrimony is between Man and Woman, I'm sorry but it is the way it is, that's reality.
"Matrimony, as defined by the Church is a sacrament"
It is today. It wasn't before 1215. Before then the church required blessings only when priests married. Tell that to the Catholics!
yup - take care
take care of yourself d. The tenor on here seemed to have changed.
you are doing your cause a great disservice with your rant.
I have peace. Knowledge and freedom of inquiry to you. I live in a trailer too.
LOL, good stuff dam. or should I say dam that's good stuff.
So what's the problem? I will crawl back into my trailer, look at my GED certificate which came yesterday, read scripture and pray for YOU.
I hope you are having a good chuckle. Take care of yourself and though you will dismiss my intent. Grace and Peace to YOU.
This too: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=glRAN_8CkvQ&feature=user
Yes - you should watch this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkhQLt1vbWU&feature=related
Hey dam, do you sport a sense of humor?
Putting the "free will" in my hands, eh? You have to wonder why God gave us free will to begin, don't you? There's a book I strongly recommend for the self-deluded: God's Problem by Bart Ehrman (a former fundie-turned-agnostic). And don't pity me: I take great pride in knowing that this our only shot at life and we should make the joyous most of it. Pity yourself for adhering to factually-devoid absolutes.
I guess I'm outside the camp...but you're in! Which reminds of one of my favorite Christoper Hitchens passages: “One of the very many connections between religious belief and the sinister, spoiled, selfish childhood of our species is the repressed desire to see everything smashed up and ruined and brought to naught. This tantrum-need is coupled with two other sorts of “guilty joy,” or, as the Germans say, schadenfreude. First, one’s own death is cancelled - or perhaps repaid or compensated - by the obliteration of others. Second, it can always be egotistically hoped that one will be personally spared, gathered contentedly to the bosom of the mass exterminator, and from a safe place observe the suffering of those less fortunate. Tertullian, one of the many church fathers who found it difficult to give a persuasive account of paradise, was perhaps clever in going for the lowest common denominator and promising that one of the most intense pleasures of the afterlife would be the endless contemplation of the tortures of the damned. He spoke more truly than he knew in evoking the man-made character of faith.”
on this point we agree. "Somehow, you think your religion is for everyone and its not."
Quite right on that one.
Are you equating absence of Christ with anger? Is therefore 2/3 of humanity "damned" with a lack of truth and abundance of anger?
like I stated dam. By your admission, you are outside the camp. No big deal. You have clearly rejected Christ. All the best to you. No anger here as you are filled with enough already.
I know what your "truth" is (most definitely more so than you). And I wholeheartedly reject it. My truth is based on real answers gained through real knowledge; knowledge we all benefit from. And it wasn't the actions and brain-power of your local pastor or rabbi who helped extrapolate those benefits (guaranteed). The point of this exchange is as follows: We do not live in a theocracy. Our self-correcting and continuously-evolving democratic laws are based on a on-going accumulation of facts, knowledge, and experiences. Somehow, you think your religion is for everyone and its not. By a long shot. If it works for you, congratulations. Personally, I find it repulsive you need to be incentivized to serve others through heavenly rewards and divine favors rather than motivating yourself to do what is right because it is right.
my screen name is based on scripture and is in reverance to the Truth (Christ). You assume early and often and then lodge protest based on limited fact.
Really no point in debating you. You are outside the camp and cannot hear Truth.
Lip - what do you expect? Did you expect a free-flowing exchange of opinions on a religious website? At least today, all the religious can do is flag or delete posts deemed "inappropriate." When church had absolute authority, it typically murdered those who asked inconvenient questions (so for us non-believers, I guess we are making progress). I'd still like to you address faux's point. And speaking of condescending: your screen name is lip of truth; as if somehow you were divinely granted a monopoly on truth. It's both insulting and condescending to assume so.
faux, take a measure of your own medicine.
You state:
"you could at least not add insult to injury be being condescending."
"I'd like to take a poll and see how many of you live in a trailer park ... I bet its a high percentage. And I shudder to think how many of you never went to college."
someone is having a field day with the flag button. Kind of a shame to limit our free speech.
It always baffles me when people use God or religion as an argument for a legal matter. Did you all forget about separation of Church and State? No one is asking a law to force churches to marry same-sex couples. All we're asking for is the ability to be legally bound and receive all the LEGAL benefits heterosexual couples receive.
Even if you do believe that God doesn't approve of homosexuality that has absolutely NOTHING to do with a law. By that logic all other religions should be outlawed because the bible says not to worship other gods.
Separation of Church and State people ... look into it. Its not a made-up Liberal concept. Its very real.
And what's with the putting marriage in quotation marks? If you're going to be a biggot you could at least not add insult to injury be being condescending.
I'd like to take a poll and see how many of you live in a trailer park ... I bet its a high percentage. And I shudder to think how many of you never went to college. That's the only thing that would explain this ridiculous level of unintelligence.
no debate here. Just curious. Very glad I have the faith and promise I hold fast.
Matrimony, as defined by the Church is a sacrament, and its goods are “the birth of children and their education, the fidelity which one spouse must render to the other and its indivisibility that shows the indivisible union of Christ and His Church, “according to St Thomas Aquinas. So matrimony is a serious matter!God made Adam, a Man and Eve, a Woman. He didn't made Adam 1 and Adam 2 or Eve 1 and Eve 2! How could it be otherwise? And He told Man to marry a Woman.“ Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife and they shall be one flesh”-Gen. 2; 24 . God in the Holy Bible, condemns sodomy, prostitution and adultery so if you are a Christian you must know that, for sure! In our western society you don' t see, as in other countries, homosexuals be beaten, stoned and hanged, so we tolerate them... but we can never admit, as Christians, that their union equals the matrimony as God made it, between male and female. There is no freedom without Law ,so Freedom has limits and matrimony is one of those limits.
dkek, you seem to carry considerable anger and paint with a broad stroke. Where have you been damaged?
Same sex marriage should be written without the quotes.
But these aren't "pro-family" groups, they're anti-gay groups.
Nothing like lining up behind the backward Balkan Romanians!
dkef, do you serve the god of science or perhaps academia? Your question and statment:
I wonder if there is a scientifcally-based reason for this discriminatory idiocy?
There's no Harvard in Alabama!
Is man's reasoning and intellect your god?
dkef,
What do any of your points have to do with the article? Marriage is between one man and one woman-this is GOD's will regardless of the country. Your attempts to ridicule Romania is a shallow effort at best, sorry for my harshness but I will alway's stand by GOD'S HOLY WORD, IN JESUS name.
I wonder if there is a scientifcally-based reason for this discriminatory idiocy? Probably not in an embarassingly superstitious-heavy country such as Romania. In 2005, an Orthodox monk was sentenced to 14 years in prison for chaining an innocent woman to a cross while denying her and food in an very unscientific attemtp to "exorcize a demon" out of her. She died as a result. No wonder Romania is poor. Ignorance = Poverty. Just look at the pious American South! There's no Harvard in Alabama! Worth reading the story: http://www.usatoday.com/news/religion/2007-02-19-exorcism_x.htm