I’m sorry, UnuMondo, but I simply cannot wrap my mind around that concept. “Yes, we know that we’re denying people basic human rights, but it’s for the good of society, so too bad.”
Interesting how “for the good of society” never seems to involve the people who take it upon themselves to make these decisions denying themselves any basic human rights, huh? I don’t see the Christian Ultra-Right realizing that their divisive, hateful brand of religion is damaging to society and outlawing it. Wonder why?
Oh please. I don’t just turn around and commit suicide because there are holes in my socks. Thirty percent of youth suicides are not composed of Queer youth because the last episode of Will and Grace wasn’t funny.
People commit suicide when what they have to cope with exceeds the mechanisms for coping. What has to be coped with? Homophobia, prejudice, discrimination. Why aren’t there more mechanisms for coping? Homophobia, prejudice, discrimination. As witness this entire damn thread. Gay kids are being herded to the edge of a cliff from which some cannot help but fall. To then turn around and say that succumbing to that despair is their own fault is the utmost in cruelty.
People always believe
that the victim deserves his fate
It is the most sinister of the little
judéo-christian jokes.
A consequence of a belief system which includes a god who takes credit for every good thing and refuses blame for any evil. Yet claims to have created all.
The point of religious teaching isn’t exactly to make people feel good, it’s to proclaim the Truth. It just so happens that most religions believe following the true moral path will make the individual and society better off. So, instead of trying to make gays seemlingly happy by telling them that homosexual behaviour is “okay”, I think it would be better to condemn it outside of schools and ignore it within schools. At the same time, it would be nice for parents to teach their children that mere orientation doesn’t make someone any less of a person.
**
[QUOTE]
Likewise, the standard teaching of Christians of any stripe is “love the sinner, hate the sin” – but it seems to me that the effective stance of most (not all) Christians who espouse this standard as it is perceived by the sinners in question is “Hate the sin, and the sinner too while you’re at it.”
Religions aren’t responsible for the wayward acts of some followers. This has been dealt with a gazillion times on the Board already, and I really hope, Polycarp, you won’t make that kind of argument.
[QUOTE]
**How do those who interpret Scripture to say that all homosexual behavior under any circumstances is unacceptable behavior come to make the rules of what will be taught? Is this not intruding a faith-based standard into the school curriculum?
You’re right, saying in school that homosexuality is totally unacceptable would be intruding a faith-based standard. However, because homosexual behaviour is a morally polemical issue, the vast majority of people on planet Earth think of it as immoral or at least abnormal (t.e. something therefore negative), and those who think it is okay are only a few, the issue should be ignored entirely to maintain neutral point of view. NPOV is essential in academic environments, and if some people, whose personal moral philosophy says homosexual behaviour is okay proclaims their beliefs in schools, that offsets the balance.
The last commentary I read on the Catechism plainly said that “homosexuals are called to God”, and thus “celibacy” was the right word. Because the priesthood doesn’t involve sex, it would seem a decent prospect for the Catholic gay male.
Compassion is indeed the virtue at the heart of Christianity. Gays should not be ostracised nor condemned for mere orientation, and those who choose to engage in homosexual behaviour should still be loved and appreciated, but nonetheless chastised. Chastisement is a big part of Jesus’s message, I guess you’ve noticed, but it doesn’t preclude love. I do know several Catholics who are gay - living lives of celibacy - and they too believe that the teaching of the Church is both just and compassionate.
However, some of the posters on the Board believe that being compassionate to gays requires telling them that homosexual behaviour is alright, and would never be happy with people who treated them like normal human beings but who keep in mind a moral code that looks down on behaviour.
Well, no I wouldn’t, because I can’t think of a single bloody reason for telling someone that the gender of the person they fuck is a sin. And, oddly enough, I’ve never heard a damn one except for tortured misinterpretations of archaic scripture, tribal custom, hatred, and disgust.
:rolleyes: Please, there’s no consensus whatsoever that homosexual behaviour is a human right. The idea of what exactly is a human right differs from group to group, which is obvious, but you act like it’s set in stone. Notice how most human rights proclamations are compromises with various proponents and oppositions.
So basically, your sexual behaviors are acceptable while mine are not. I have to assume you’re straight, because it’s really none of my business to ask (if only more people believed so…).
So why is heterosexual activity more acceptable than homosexual? Can anyone actually give a valid reason for this that doesn’t rest on a religious foundation? I know I’ve never heard one, other than “It’s icky and creeps me out!”
This is the problem with discussing gay teen concerns. You have several issues entwined: parental rights, gay rights, religious problems, and those who bemoan the moral degradation of society and lay all the blame at the feet of queer folk. Even though people have been bemoaning the moral degradation of society since the days of Hammurabi.
UM - how would you feel as a Christian if large numbers of people “treated you normal” but had a personal moral code that caused them to think that your love for God was evil and abominable?
Nobody’s sexual orientation really matters here, because as I just posted, there are gays who believe that the behaviour they feel urges to engage in is wrong, as well as straights who approve of homosexual behaviour.
It doesn’t rest on a religious foundation, but rather on a moral foundation generally. I’m sure there are plenty of atheists who do not approve of homosexual behaviour. But moral issues are essentially unexplainable. If you try to say why they are the way they are, you’ll eventually reach having to say “Because that’s just the way it is.”
**
Exactly, all the more reason that any action taken to comfort gay teens should not attempt to deal with morality and acceptability.
How are you afraid of it damaging society exactly? I’m just curious what the threat is. How is my desire to experience the comfort of a loving relationship going to bring society to its destruction.
I’m sorry that this is off-topic polycarp and I know it sounds horribly niave but I really am at a loss to understand this way of thinking and the threat that I am perceived as.
To a certain extent I have already been through that. As I’ve mentioned a few times during my years on the Board, I served in the US Navy before I asked for and received discharge as a conscientious objector. The officers who spent a year going over my case believed through their personal moral code that my actions were dispicable and that my desire to thus follow the teachings of Christ was actually diabolic. Also, I’m an Esperantist - as my Doper moniker makes clear - and a World Federalist. My Fundamentalist grandparents generally hate and fear what I believe and live for. Luckily I don’t live too close to them, but my father who does often has to sit through their attempts to convince him to “avoid hellfire”
No matter how you live, there are people who are going to disagree with you and possibly condemn you for it. Gays are in no way alone on that account, that’s just part of universal human experience.
There’s no consensus that people have the right not to be burgled, because burglars are people, too. That does not make them mofos for infringing on other people’s rights.
If things are right because people say so, then Christianity isn’t right. (Check the numbers). If things are right because it’s written in the bible, then why aren’t you out stoning witches and gay people. You were ordered to, weren’t you?
Cite? I’ve never seen any evidence to that effect, unless you count the desperate people who try to back up their religious prejudices with what they believe to be support from the natural world.
The question is whether they will be given the power, freedom, and tacit approval necessary to make your life hell over it.
Well, I wouldn’t put it quite like that, I suppose. But I mean, that would be my reaction, in general.
I’d probably be more like, “You are? Well, then, that’s fine. I’m proud and happy that you have the courage to tell me that.”
Of course, I plan on raising my kids with the attitude that sexual orientation is NOT something that we should discriminate against, it’s just something that people are, and some people are gay, some are straight, some are bi-etc, and it’s just the way things are. And it’s not a big deal, or bad, or anything to make fun of.
So, it would be like, I would hope that my kids would know me enough to realize that that kind of thing is a non-issue for me. That they would KNOW that they can tell me without my getting upset-other than worrying about the hardships they will face.
But individual rights – which are the point at issue here – are not decided by majority vote. If I could get a majority of members here to say that your POV is evil and does not deserve to be seen, would you therefore acquiesce in being banned for your beliefs? I think not – you’d be angry that your privilege to state your own thoughts here was being taken away on content-based grounds. And you’d be right in doing so.
You have the right 100% to advise anyone who will listen, including your children, that according to your beliefs God condemns anyone who engages in gay sex. That’s your right under the freedoms of speech and religion guaranteed you.
What you do not have the right to do is to enforce your own religious views on others, or to foster a climate in which they are subject to ostracism, violence, and being killed, to deprive them of equal access to housing, employment, etc., on the basis of their sexual orientation. Or, to stop waxing idealistic, you should not have those rights.
I think you might have misread me. Lemme try to rephrase:
Stereotypes generalize (and dangerously so, IMHO) and make individuals into one group that can then be denigrated, dehumanized, etc.
The belief that all gay people are flaming queens or muscle marys or in need of Tommy John surgery is a stereotype. It is a stereotype used for two reasons (and when I use “show” here, I mean it from the POV of those who espouse the belief):
To show that all gay people seem, and thus must be the same;
To show that they differ from what they (homophobes/straight supremacists) consider to be the norm and as such are a threat to the American way of life, or whatever term/phrase they feel like inserting.
Now onto some of the rest of this (couldn’t get online for 8 bleeping hours this afternoon):
Which is part of the argument that was used against “letting” people who are naturally left-handed do what comes naturally to them (hmm. Another topic whose opponents used the Bible to support their beliefs. Are we sensing a trend here?).
BTW, care to elaborate on this hypothesis that abnormal=negative? It’s not normal for a guy to have long hair. Here I am having long hair. Being left-handed doesn’t occur in a plurality of people on earth, and here I am being both left-handed and having long hair. I’m legally allowed to drink alcohol and haven’t done so since before I was allowed to. Last I checked that wasn’t so normal. My father is a monk. If that’s normal, there’s a lot more than just Catholic priests having sex with their robes on, so to speak;)
Adding my name to the list of people who are interested in seeing the factual basis for that. I have yet to see non-heterosexuality attacked absent a religious tenet/basis/argument. And that argument is usually made from the Bible.
Seems like a lot of people use that book to justify/create their negative opinions about anything that isn’t like they are. Handedness, gender, color, political views, car choice, eating preferences … pretty much the only thing it isn’t used for is bail money.
Yeah. Gosh, I remember in high school all my self-loathing came from me. I brought it all upon myself. Spat on myself, beat myself, called myself any number of names, even managed to throw snow at my own eyes from several feet away. None of the other people I knew had a hand in that at all. My suicidal thoughts were my own invention.
I find it quite telling that one of your two arguments against my loooong post is that it was a teary-eyes melodrama. Given that it qualifies for that status on 0 of the possibly negative definitions of that word and that saying positive things about it does little to bring it down, and also given that your other objection has been rather thoroughly refuted, do you have anything else to say in your own defense against it?
Lastly. UnoMondo, last page I asked you a question. Do you have your answer yet?
Okay, I have a sort of hijack, but it actually relates to the OP more than page 10…
My friend M was up all last night with a friend of his, A, who came out to is parents last night. Both M and A are in their 30s.
A’s parents are Orthodox Jews. He thought that they would be upset, but supportive.
Within MINUTES, A’s parents were on the phone with the rabbi scheduling shiva (like post-funeral mourning) services and told A they would say kaddish (funeral prayer) for him.
Look, you want to put God over your kid, I don’t like it, but it’s not my God. But to deliberately hurt a young man like that.
If you haven’t already, get involved with that man. He sounds like he could use some major support right now. As a priority, he needs to know that he has a network of supportive people around him.
And please convey my very best wishes and courage to him as he deals with this.
What matt said. He’s got friends here. He may not know us, and NotWithoutRage, you might not know us well, but any friend of yours (I feel safe in saying this) is welcome here.
Lack of parental support is not the end. Given the situation there are several people here who can attest to that.
As I said a couple of pages back, high school ostracism and disapproval is part of growing up and perfectly legal. If gay rights groups attempt to stop it, they are forcing their own moral viewpoint on many of the people in high school. Bullies suck, yes, but they are following their own beliefs and everything is fine as long as they obey the law. If a gay rights group tries to create a “Bully free” zone or whatever claptrap the nerds* a couple of pages back supported, then they are limiting the ability of some population of a school - usually the majority - to follow its beliefs and ostracise gays, nerds, and people who wanna be different.
UnuMondo
I call them nerds here not to insult, but just to categorise. If they were former cool students, they wouldn’t care about people getting picked on because they would have approved of it and engaged in it themselves.
