Blah, blah. Woof, woof.
You are a great deal of sound and fury signifying nothing.
Yet another way for you to evade answering any questions. Has this just been an exercise in how you could avoid answering anything while annoying everyone?
Ok, I’ll make one last attempt to see if you have anything significant to add.
What questions would you like answered?
Make up yer mind, Joe. Either it’s
or it’s
Your argument, as always, is specious.
Oh man, this is a trainwreck!
Look, at the risk of injecting a voice of reason into this Hindenburg of a thread, we’re dealing with two opposing paradigms.
A) People do believe homosexuality is immoral for any number of reasons, not all of which are religious. Whether any particular person believes those reasons are valid or not, such people are not, as a rule, interested in changing their beliefs.
B) Homosexuals are discriminated against at the current time. They do not have the same legal or social privileges with regard to loving someone that straight people do. Indeed, they can be branded immoral because they have the potential to love someone. Whether your ideal world is one where no one is homosexual, one where a marriage between two men is not seen as any different than a marriage between a man and a woman, or something in between, we must deal with the world as it is.
Joe_Cool, Jersey Diamond, while I’m willing to accept that you bear no ill will against homosexuals and would not discriminate against one yourselves, the reality is they are not full members of society. My own college, the University of Pittsburgh, currently refuses to provide insurance coverage for same-sex unions; the Boy Scouts of America will not allow homosexuals because they are inherently, because of one characteristic, less “morally straight.” While you personally may not approve of such things, discrimination against homosexuals is frequently justified because some people consider them sinful. Voices which say, a la Voltaire, “I disagree with what you are, but I will defend to the death your right to be it.” are few and far between.
Adultery is more common than homosexuality, and, in my opinion, more strongly prohibited against in the Bible (specifically, adultery is mentioned both in the 10 Commandments and by Jesus). Still, in Texas recently two men having sex together in the privacy of their own home were arrested because they were doing just that. A man having sex with his mistress would not have been arrested. For that matter, I’m not entirely sure an adulterer would be removed from a job as troop leader in the Boy Scouts for that offense.
I’m not gay, but I know what it’s like to be constantly told that I’m a lesser creature, that I do not deserve to love or be loved. After a while, it makes a person suspicious. In high school, if I showed an interest in a boy by smiling at him, that was an insult. I can’t imagine what it would be like to have that continue well beyond high school.
Joe_Cool, Jersey Diamond, as I’ve said before, you two have the great privilege of having your love and your commitment honored as a wonderful and glorious thing. You can refer to each other in public without wondering how people will react; you can hold hands in public and people will think it’s sweet.
If a good friend of mine does that with his partner, he is, in some people’s eyes, “flaunting his homosexuality” and rubbing his immorality in people’s faces. The reality is he doesn’t have the legal right to be at his partner’s bedside if he is hospitalized. I hope that will change in time, but right now, there are Christian groups working against such things because they believe homosexuality is immoral. The reality is my friend was afraid to tell me he was gay for fear I would reject him.
There are a lot of hurt feelings on both sides here, and I wish I could do something about them. Joe_Cool, Jersey Diamond I do wish you happiness. Thylacine, Hastur, Gobear, Mr. Visible, Esprix, and all those whose names I’ve forgotten, I’m sorry people who follow my religion have hurt you. Please believe me when I tell you we’re not all like that.
CJ
Why is it one or the other? The first amendment says what it says…surely that’s not up for debate. And laws certainly do exist based on the Christian morality (surely you understand the difference between having laws based on Christian morality and laws establishing the Christian religion, right?).
It appears to me that both statements are true, and I don’t understand your problem with the statements you quoted. You act like they’re mutually exclusive, somehow.
Lets try for another 14 pages…I really think someone is gonna win this.
Maybe a little more name calling will help…
Okay, **bdgr ** stinks!
(I am kidding)
Some where on the first page, I asked this question:
It’s still fucking valid.
Well, ideally, it would have caused certain people to realize that they were not without sin, and had cast the first stone. That they had judged, and were being judged themselves. And perhaps it would have led them to a new enlightenment.
I don’t think it worked very well.
Can you guys just fucking drop it? I don’t even find reading this thread slightly humorous anymore.
Is there a great cry from the teeming millions to harass Joe by asking him the same questions over and over again and insulting him besides? Ugly. That’s what it is. During this thread I managed to start a pit thread, have it go five pages, get my issue addressed, and then get the moderators to close it as it was a dead issue.
Homebrew, I strongly suggest you do the same.
I also emailed a mod. Apparently they thought there was more left to say.
I think it’s been cathartic.
Mind you, I also think it’s a good demonstration of why the idea that catharsis has a therapeutic value is one of the dafter notions psychology has ever inflicted on people.
Gracious, what an insightful reminder - thank you.
Esprix
Joe, at some convenient time and place, I’d like to see a debate, specifically putting homosexuality off limits, that discusses this “something that many Christians of the liberal stripe do” because from what I’ve been able to put together, people of your conservative bent do not grasp what people of my liberal bent are saying, and read it as a “watered-down morality” – which it is emphatically not. I’ll await your pleasure on this; if you do decide to open the discussion, I think it should be in GD, rather than the Pit.
For those of you who read and commented on my last post here, thank you. It apparently did not have any impact on where the discussion was going.
Lilairen, I did like your comment on Spong’s view of God. And gobear, may I commend your adherence to the behavior taught by my Lord even in the face of adversity. The last Beatitude, I believe, is applicable, for you certainly have had all manner of evil spoken against you in the name of Christ. May I express my heartfelt thanks for being a voice of compassion in the middle of a trainwreck of a thread?
I would like to take part in this as well.
Apparently, Joe, you really don’t see that passing laws just because they’re based on Christian morals is the government vesting a particular religion.
No, monty, you don’t see that
a) laws aren’t passed because they’re based on Christian morals. Laws are passed because a majority of Congressmen and Senators vote to pass them and then the President signs them into law (and the equivalent process at the state and municipal levels). This, in turn, happens because (usually) the Senators, Congressmen, and President know that the majority of their constituencies favor those particular laws.
Correlation does not equal causality. The fact that these laws are based on Christian morality does not mean that that is why they were passed.
b) Morality is not a religion. An establishment of religion would be the passage of a law saying that all places of worship are now illegal except for Christian ones.
Or requiring all people to make a statement of Christian faith.
The fact that the current laws regarding morality may have originated in Christianity does not mean that a religion has been established. Only a codified morality - Which is a far cry from a religion.
At least use your brain if you want to fight about this stuff. Sheesh.
Oh, drop dead with our last comment there, Joe. You have yet to prove that the current laws originated in Christian morality, as was your earlier assertion.
I’m glad you appreciated my reference, Polycarp. I’ll readily admit that I’m somewhat biased towards agreement with him, because that interpretation is the first I have ever encountered that provided me a context for Paul of Tarsus that allowed me to forgive him. (Also, I find that a god with that deepseated a sense of irony is entirely consistent with my experience of the divine.)
Some of the later ranting in this thread reminds me of the DOMA hearing I attended a few years ago – yet another one of those bills attempting to define marriage as between one man and one woman. I had attended in the hope of being able to speak, but it ran late enough that I had to go home.
At one point, a panel of local religious organisations who wanted to be able to solemnise marriages for their entire congregations was speaking to the committee. The head of the committee was grilling them on the separation of church and state, wanting to know how they felt justified in imposing their religious beliefs on his church by making those marriages legal. Apparently, it’s difficult for some people to grasp that there’s a difference between, “We don’t hold that ceremony here for people of the same sex on religious grounds” and “We’re not allowed to hold that ceremony here for people of the same sex, even though we want to.”
Where else do you think laws against sodomy (even the name comes from the bible) and gay marriages came from? Neo-paganism?
Anyway, I don’t give a crap where the f-ing laws came from. The point is that they exist and if you don’t like them fight to get them changed. Quit trying to sidetrack the discussion even more than it already has been.