LOL technically, it was the Roman government that said it about 1700 years ago.
And if there’s anyone you should trust, it’s the government :rolleyes:
Actually it’s a philosophical point that we get to embrace or discard. It doesn’t matter if it’s cloaked in religious language or not. What matters is whether we understand it , feel it, and work to promote it as a living working concept.
An analogy I like is the biblical one about the different cells in the same body. Very different but all part of the same living organism. The same can be said for mankind on this big blue marble.
My comment was directed at Voyager’s contention that he can tell what really motivates people:
That must be really handy on jury duty.
So if the Pope says, “I like cheese,” you presume he is motivated by religion? Does that strike you as a rather simplistic way of looking at things?
Perhaps a natural conservatism that resists sudden changes to long-established institutions? Perhaps the fear of reducing people into meat that can be bought sold, created and destroyed for monetary gain? Perhaps they simply have differing opinions than you do (hard as that is to grasp)?
We’re not really talking about sudden unexplained unreasoned change are we?
I’d say it isn’t always religion. My son is pretty non religious and has objections to SSM I don’t understand. Keep in mind memes can have religious origins without the individual themselves being overtly religious.
Perhaps it’s just uniformed ignorance as people absorb the opinions of those around them without actually looking for facts. Is that admirable when it regards important issues?
The problem is that those who actively oppose certain issues ignore the glaring contradictions and lack of sound reasoning in their arguments. It’s okay to have differing opinions but when you actively vote and get involved in issues that affect the lives of others and the welfare of society you assume some moral and ethical responsibility to weigh the facts and examine the contradictions.
If you have no real reasonable fact based arguments ,an emotional difference of opinion that translates into actively denying others their rights becomes a moral failing.
Perhaps not entirely, but for the most part the emotional unreasoned arguments are religious or influenced by religion.
Most people are, I suppose, uninformed about most things. Yet as small-democrats we trust them to rule themselves. People are flighty, inconsistent and prone to panic, yet over the long arc of history tend to generally be right. While you (or I) may be much better and better-infomred than the mob, that does not make our political opinion just. Only by educating the masses can we reach our political goals.
Would you have it any other way?
As to the subject of religious doctrine impacting non-religious people, I am told that in the Soviet Union shops could not sell milk product and meats in the same room. It sounds like something based in Jewish religious law, and there it was in a very atheistic state. Strange, no?
Living in California, I got the full brunt of the arguments. In the newspaper letter page the opponents write in without being censored by the leaders of the Prop. 8 movement.
As the recent testimony has indicated, there is a lack of arguments against SSM, especially when religious or religiously based arguments aren’t admitted. We can also tell where the money comes from, another good indicator.
Do religious people not have an equal right as everyone else to state their political views?
(Serious question, has SSM ever passed a popular vote anywhere?)
(I still say a book of crackpot letters to the editor would be great fun.)
Well, if he had said for years “verily, my flock, liking cheese is good, because, as Jesus said, blessed are the cheesemakers” and then suddenly found secular reasons for liking cheese, we might suspect it is based on religion. Ditto the total lack of a reasonable secular explanation.
Suddenly? Partner benefits have been around in California for quite some time. How many generations should they wait. The Southerners said that we were rushing into equality too quickly also.
But, even if it is rushing, who cares? It is not like SSM is going to hurt anyone’s marriage. And what does this have to do with reducing people to meat? If that concerns you, you should be yelling at the advertisers and marketers.
Stating views is a bit different from initiating and voting for a proposition that reduces the rights of others. Religious organizations, being tax exempt, are not supposed to get directly involved in funding one side of an election or another. As for votes, do you think a majority of Mississipians were for James Meredith being admitted to Ole Miss? The very basis of our Constitutional Democracy is that even a majority cannot remove basic rights from the minority. It works both ways - the state cannot and should not force any church to conduct SSM ceremonies, even if it is legal.
Is it a political view or a religious one? Should they be trying to legislate their religious views into law? Are they willing to deny others the same rights they want to claim for themselves?
What do you think this means? Look at the history of the fight for civil rights and equality and try to justify denying rights with “majority rules” It fails every time.
Claiming you like something isn’t the same as claiming that something is wrong and should be outlawed. Especially when there is no rational reason to do so. Opposition to homosexuality and same sex marriage is an act of pure malice; there is no rational reason for it, it causes nothing but harm. Cheese, on the other hand tastes good, and a matter of preference such as liking it is not something that requires a rational justification; “it tastes good” is enough.
In other words, religion.
Garbage. These people show no concern for the women they victimize, no concern for the children they force to be born. Or for the people they kill by lying about condoms. They don’t oppose reducing people to meat; they support it. With their opposition to abortion, their equating of a mindless piece of flesh to a person they by definition are treating people as just so much meat. And they have as much compassion towards other people as I do towards a slug or insect; perhaps less.
Such “opinions” are simply evil. Bigotry. A neo-Nazi also has different opinions than me.
Oh; and before someone creatively misinterprets what I said, I’m not saying that having an opinion different than mine is automatically evil or wrong. I’m saying that “it’s an opinion” is not an automatic justification for beliefs that are blatantly wrong.
How do you know one political belief (“Trash collection must be three days a week”) is benign, while another political belief (“No milk and cheese in the same shop”) are based upon religion and so a sign of bigotry?
It seems to me you are frustrated at you consistent inability to win over people of faith. Perhaps it is as a result of this that you call most people on earth ‘Bigots.’
So on your planet the march of human rights over the last couple of centuries came despite the endless opposition majorities? Were these rights then imposed on the evil majority by a noble philosopher king? Were unicorns involved?
Here on earth, minorities gained rights as majorities desired to include them in public and economic life.
Well, the fact that it’s an official part of that religion’s doctrine might be a clue. So would it having no other reason to be held. And of course, there’s not being benign; you keep bringing up morally neutral statements, which NOT equivalent to bigoted ideals like opposition to same sex marriage or segregation, or to factually incorrect, harmful ones like asserting that a fetus is a person.
It’s not the religiosity of the opinion that makes it evil; the Pope wearing a funny hat is a religious matter, but not evil. It’s the bigotry and the malice of opposing SSM that makes it evil.
By relentless effort, by the death of older generations, and by force.
So then you are retreating from the idea that majorities never expand the rights of minorities? Good, although I am alarmed by your tendency to appeal to force rather than reason and your celebration of death.
Civilization is built on force. And how is mentioning that people die “celebrating” death or anything else?
(You realize we are now having two discussions with each other in the same thread? That can’t be good.)
So when Andrew Sullivan proposed SSM donkey’s ears ago, and was called an advocate for assimilation, those gay people were evil? Or perhaps it is only when people yo don;t like say such things they are evil? Please explain.