Quote:
Originally posted by FlamesAddiction@May 27 2005, 04:21 PM
I don't really understand the concern though. Why worry about what others are doing? I think people should worry about their own relationships and not try to be so involved with other people's personal lives and trying to ruin their happiness. Seems to me that it would be the Christian thing to do.
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Ah, now we get down to the meat of it (in my opinion anyway).
If everyone lived in such a way that their actions or inactions had no impact on others then everyone could do as you say and leave everyone to pursue their happiness.
But everything we do does impact others in some way or another, so we try to restrict the freedoms and impose the resulting obligations on everyone through things like laws to restrict freedoms and the constitution to define rights.
And we (society) try to seek that balance to minimize the amount of limitations while allowing the most amount of freedom, since it's society that defines those things in the first place.
But of course everyone has different opinions on what causes harm to society, how to measure that harm, etc etc... Let's take a more extreme case, say polygamy (note to conclusion jumpers, I'm not equating homosexuals with polygamists!!!). Why is polygamy illegal? Shouldn't consenting adults be allowed to pursue their happiness as they see fit? In that case no because society at some point decided that the harm caused by it was too great so the practice is outlawed.
So we have governments that hopefully try to represent the will of the people and create a society that best fits everyone.
Rather than looking at is as "Christians trying to ruin other people's happiness", why can't it be more like "people trying to express their opinions through the system as they should".