H4E, yeah. Some things will always get people angry, especially when you try to “dress up” a direct insult with condescending and gentle language. The fact that you’re telling us we’re too stupid to realize you’re right is insulting and presumptuous.
Tisiphone, it doesn’t matter exactly what caused the murder. The fact is that he was a murderer who essentially got off from being punished for his crimes.
I’m sure you are sincere in your intentions, His4Ever. I have tried to address this elsewhere in the past.
But precisely what exactly are you trying to do in stating “what you believe to be true” as you have? This is not a flame; it’s a request for clarification.
As I interpret your quoting of Scripture, your assertion is that there is in fact a quite real and quite active God who is identified with the deity of the ancient Israelites and Who spoke through the person of Jesus of Nazareth. (Let’s not get into Trinitarian questions here; the final clause of that statement is carefully phrased to allow for a wide variety of Christological understandings while making an affirmation of “In Jesus we see God” that is key to the Christian message.) With regard to the issue under consideration in this thread, you’re attempting to warn the gay people here that that God sees their behavior (and their attitudes and desires?) as sinful under any circumstances – and are mortally offended yourself that they consider such a warning to be offensive to them and their persons. Do I have your stance correct in this paragraph?
Okay, what I want to bring before you for consideration is a series of points, some Scriptural and some from common experience:
[ul][li]It is virtually impossible to grow up in America, gay or not, without being exposed to the Scriptural condemnation of gay behavior. They’ve heard it all before.[/li][li]“I am come that they might have life, and have it more abundantly.”[/li][li]“For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.”[/li][li]There is pretty clear evidence that no person who is exclusively gay or nearly so has ever been able to “change his orientation.” There are cases where successful repression of “sinful desires” has been accomplished through strengthening of will; there are cases where people able to desire both men and women have been able to focus their attention on one person of the opposite sex, and enter into a stable and fulfilling marital relationship with that person. But there have been no cases where someone whose exclusive or predominant desire has been for someone of the same sex has been transformed into a person whose desire is for the opposite sex.[/li][li]In consequence of the above, what your cites appear to be saying is that gay people are obliged to practice celibacy and self-loathing for their sinful desires. This conflicts with the promises of the Gospel.[/li][li]Many people have asserted that when read in the Scriptural context the passages quoted over in my GD thread on Christianity and gay people are to be understood as condemning homosexual lust rather than homosexual desire – I trust you as a Christian understand the distinction between the self-gratifying sin and the God-given sex drive.[/li][li]For almost nobody is the sex urge an independent, compartmentalized unit in which sexual gratification is the sole object of sexual behavior. For nearly everybody, sexual relations are desired as a part of finding a person with whom one desires to share virtually every moment of their life – hopes, desires, sorrows, pains, recreation, eating, sleeping, for better and for worse, in sickness and in health, until death them do part. This is, as I read the Bible, in accord with God’s plan for mankind.[/li][li]The last paragraph is as applicable to a gay person as to a straight person.[/li][li]The task of a Christian is to love God with every fiber of one’s being, to love one’s fellow man as himself, to not stand in judgment over them, condemning them based on God’s law, but rather to compassionately help them, to share with them the Good News of Christ’s transforming love both by word and by deed.[/li][/ul]
In view of the above points, do you feel that you have done God’s will in what you have said here? Why or why not? Since you feel you have been ignored, flamed, and marginalized for what you have said, what can you do to better get His message across without those results? And, BTW, what is His message in your own eyes?
I reiterate, I am not seeking to flame you or condemn your intent, but to establish a dialogue on what you’ve said and why it’s gotten the reaction it has.
Peace be with you.
Actually, I wasn’t speaking of H4E, I was talking about a specific post made (I believe) in this thread that got lost in the great power outage, but I guess the poster is too ashamed to admit they posted it.
Good.
Esprix
**
One good rule of thumb is that those who treat a collection of myths like a science book and a science book like a collection of myths are almost singularly ignorant of everything worth knowing in this world.
Kirk
Did this thread get lost in the shuffle of the board’s problems? I don’t see it…
Kirk
Esprix
I need to steal this for my sig!
Go right ahead. 
Thanks Esprix.
I don’t have much time so I can’t probably cover anything. Yes, I feel I’ve done God’s will in answering gobear question as to my thoughts on this subject. However, perhaps I’ve not done His will in the manner that I’ve shared my beliefs. I want to learn to be able to share what I believe is truth and not compromise yet at the same to do it in a gentle manner. I believe deep in my heart that if I compromise the truth, I’m definitely not doing His will. Maybe it’ll take me awhile to be able to do this. The whole Bible is God’s message to us but His greatest desire first of all I think is for people to be saved (by acceptance of Christ as Savior, the Way He provided). We’re to love people I believe, yet we must be truthful with them also. The Bible talks in many places of deception and warns about it and also talks about those who won’t inherit heaven. I don’t think we’re to judge people themselves but are allowed to say what they’re doing is wrong if God says it’s wrong. Anyway, I’m going to have to go. If there’s anything for me to be sorry for it’s perhaps the way I’ve shared what I believe. I hope I can get better at that. But no matter how gentle and loving you try to say something, there are people who will probably be angered by it.
No matter how gently you phrase bigotry, yeah, it’s gonna make some people angry.
I thoroughly believe you’re doing God’s will, H4E. You’re showing them how silly straight supremacists sound, how thin their arguments are, how indefensible a position of Bible-based hatred and discrimination really is. Your amazing ability to continue to ignore reasonable questions about your beleifs is remarkable, and infuriating. You’re making sure that people understand that no reasonable, caring person can hold these views. Your conviction that you, and only you, have the real scoop on God’s point of view, and your insistence on sharing that, but never explaining it, no matter how insane it sounds is doing more for gay people’s rights on this board than any impassioned pleas of mine have managed.
Keep up the good work.
Actually, I devoutly hope I will not go to your heaven–I can only imagine how desolate and boring a place it must be. You won’t have any art or music except droning hymns. You won’t have any sparkling conversation of decent decor. Your heaven will be filled with dour, humorless, dim heteosexual Protestants stuck together in an eternal church service.
Assuming an afterlife exists, Hell will have all the good times and fun people. Hell will be much less exclusive than your heaven–we’ll welcome Jews, Catholics, straights, and gays. Isaac Asimov and Carl Sagan will lead field trips into the hearts of stars; Cole Porter will be banging on the piano as Oscar Wilde and Gertrude Stein trade quips over cocktails. We’ll have Marcel Proust, Stephen Jay Gould, Dorothy Parker, Talullah Bankhead, Steven Hawking, and so on. Hell will be fun, vivacious, and immensely entertaining.
You, on the other hand, get to spend eternity singing “Oh, What a Friend We Have in Jesus” next to Jerry Falwell, Fred Phelps, and Jesse Helms.
I also notice that the fundies seem to think that God only cares about sex. You never hear a fundie talking about the iniquities of corporations that defraud their shareholders, like Enron. You never hear a fundie preach the social gospel, an end to poverty, alleviating homelessness, embracing AIDS patients.
Frankly, H4E, the religion you embrace is an arid, joyless Pharasaism that makes me very grateful that I am not a Christian.
… and I dearly wish that both you and she were! 
GoBear, that was a beaut!
H4E, you remind me of a Motown tune from the 70s. “Smilin’ faces… sometimes…pretend to be your friend.” You think that by speaking in calm tones that we can’t hear what you’re really saying. Well, it’s coming through loud and clear. You are a hateful bigot. Period. There are so many people whose rights and dignity have been trampled by your holier than thou opinions. And you refuse to apologize! Amazing.
:rolleyes: Look, guys, I’m more than willing to totally drop this subject. I didn’t bring it up in the first place. I was asked a direct question. I answered it, albeit perhaps not in the right tone or right way, but nevertheless everyone has been going on about it ever since. You keep putting question after question to me and some I can’t answer and some I try to answer. I don’t know what else to say or do. CJ has asked questions and I’ve tried to answer nicely. I’m perfectly willin as said above to completely drop this subject because it’s going nowhere. I simply can’t say what you want to hear, I’m sorry.
That’s to be expected. Modern day fundie-ism got its start in the late 1800s, and grew up as a reaction to the “watered down” nature of the Social Gospel.
Fundies don’t care if people starve. They don’t care if people suffer. They don’t care if people are mistreated at work, or at home (their own anti-female “submission” doctrines actually breed an environment where spousal abuse can flourish). Fundie-ism is a death cult, they only care about where you are after you die. They don’t give a flying fuck about how miserable you are while you are still here.
That’s one reason you don’t see many fundie colleges, aside from seminaries, and you almost never see fundie hospitals.
Fundie-ism isn’t only anti-intellectual, anti-science and anti-equality, it is downright anti-human.
This, of course, goes totally against the history and traditions of real Christianity, which in its history has produced many of the finest artists, intellectuals, thinkers, scientists and humanitarians the world has ever seen.
Kirk
But it’s not just your hatred of gays that’s a problem. There’s also the lies and hatred you spread about Catholics and Mormons. Everytime you open your mouth you defame another group of innocent people. The only way for you to totally drop all the subjects you’ve been a loathsome bigot when discussing would be for you to stop posting altogeather (this is not necessarily a bad solution, mind you).
Kirk
Now, personally, I’m going to give you some credit here, H4E. Notice all the phrases I bolded in the quote above? “I feel,” “I believe,” “I think?” This does wonders for your credibility, because you’re no longer speaking as The Authority On All Things About God (“The Bible says this so it is The Truth!”); rather, you are speaking as one person who believes something - and that’s ok. You should stick with this, because not only is it a “gentler” way of speaking the truth the way you see it, but it also gives people the choice of disregarding your personal opinion without calling you out in the Pit over it (and, in turn, you can do the same with them).
The only time you missed it was when you said:
I’ll make you a deal - I can accept that this is your own personal belief system if you can accept that there are many, many people who don’t share that belief system. And if you don’t go out of your way to discriminate in this world against those people who live contrarily to your belief system, then perhaps those people will extend to you the same courtesy.
How does that sound?
Esprix
Your comment is incredibly disingenuous, coming right after you call fundamentalists ‘anti-human’ and a ‘death cult’.
And for you to call for another person to stop posting? Holy shit, every other comment out of you is either “Fundies suck ass” or “Woe is me, my life is terrible because of fundies”. You actually add nothing to these debates.