Quote Originally Posted by thir View Post
I am thinking, is this a matter of freedom of speech?
It should certainly be a violation of the separation of Church & State (which you do NOT have in England, I believe). I should think that any preacher who makes such statements, in Church, regarding a political issue, should risk forfeiture of the Church's tax-free status. Of course, I think there should not be such a status for churches anyway.

Or is it a matter of one set of people trying to determine what others can (or, in this case, cannot) do?
That's pretty much the gist of it. "We don't like it, so YOU can't do it." It's the Churches screaming over their loss of the ability to decide what's best for everyone, even those not in their Church.

If the gay people gain the right to marry, will hetero marriages loose in validity?
I don't see how! Thousands of gay couples have been married, legally, in the US, and my marriage is just as strong and stable as ever.

If you have a cherished tradition, and others use it differently but with the same name, would you loose something? Or, if different people than your group use the same tradition, would you loose something?
These people are only afraid that they will lose the right to denigrate, bully and torment gays. Just as they fought tenaciously against civil rights for non-white males, they now fight against civil rights for non-heterosexual persons. It's almost comical to hear how secularists are destroying the rights of Christians by not allowing them to oppress another group of people.

Would it be intruding on your tradition or, or maybe watering it down, or would it be enlarging it?
I'm not much on tradition to start with. Doing something just because it's the way it's always been done strikes me as rather silly. But I don't see how someone else, for example, celebrating Easter, or Christmas, or Thanksgiving, lessens your traditions. And I don't see how allowing gays the same privileges as hetero couples diminishes those privileges. Letting a gay woman make medical and legal decisions for her spouse does not in any way lessen my ability to do so for my spouse. The "War on Marriage" is only a war in the minds of bigots.