Good will to all men? Not from the grumpy atheists! (Thank God not all atheists are grumpy but there sure seems to be a lot of them)
Why is it that so many in the atheist community cannot bring themselves to get past their anger whenever they engage in discussions? The language of many of their contributions in public debate is laced with invective and dripping with sarcasm and bile. There are exceptions of course, but they tend to fall more into the category of being the 'exception that proves the rule' when compared to the hostility of many of today's atheist posters. Comment offered by the theists in the public square is often depicted as being 'malicious' or 'venomous' and intended to enslave the 'feeble minded and weak' by those who post. Nothing could be further from the truth. Venom is something that is oriented to death. Christians are oriented in a 180 degree different direction. We speak not to the culture of death that grips our world but rather for the culture of life and light which ends with the gift of eternal life. For example, the Catholic Church in its hum...
Here's the comment I left on Fr. Barron's article but they aren't showing comments (I assume he's getting a lot of negative one).
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Fr. Barron. A couple of points - First legal issues are not moral issues and we should all be glad for that because the last thing any of us wants, believer or not, is to legalize morality. There is significant overlap, to be sure, but the legal code is mostly what is not allowed, rather than what is allowed, what is the consensus of society, rather than the opinions of a few and most importantly in this era of rights, the preservation of rights.
I am an atheist and if it was up to me I would allow people to get married once and after that they have a civil union (like Prince Charles had to do in his marriage to Camilla). I treat my marriage very seriously and would want others to do the same. But it is not up to me and I can not demand that other follow my moral code.
Gay marriage is like that. Beyond the fact that many churches support and preach gay marriages, some do not and it is up to civil society to accommodate them all, within reason. It's a difficult task but the solution to to allow churches to make their own decisions (as they do on issues like divorce and mixed marriages) and to have the civil law be neutral.
And yes, preaching against homosexual marriage does raise eyebrows, but only because the Catholic Church is actively seeking to stop gays from marrying who are not even Catholic. The same reaction would occur if the Church were trying to stop all people from remarrying (as they did recently in Ireland and Malta but not in the rest of the West). People will accept you having your own rules within your church and atheists like me will strongly support your right to have them but when you seek to impose those parochial rules on society as a whole, then we object and we view that as you being intolerant of the rest of society.