“Persecution complex”? So you’re saying that I and every other gay person here, is imagining the fundie assault on gay rights? We’re imagining Lon Mabon, Fred Phelps, Donald Wildmon, Jack chick, James Dobson, and Jerry Falwell? We’re imagining the fundie-backed wave of anti-gayreferenda?
The SDMB fundies are firmly on the side of people who want to circumscribe my rights as an American citizen–I have a right to resist this in any way possible and to make my anger known.
Joe wrote
When you call my relationship with the man I love “sin,” I find THAT reprehensible. You have no right to hurt feelings when you hurt me and mine by regarding us as evil and inferior because you disapprove of my mate’s gender.
This is probably the most humorously ironic thing I have read yet this week. Gay-hating fundies and Republican-hating liberals make fabulous bedfellows.
I would personally like a specific example of how I “verbally raped” His4ever.
Unless, by “verbally raped”, you mean quoted the Scriptures that show one is not supposed to judge their fellow man and tell that person they are going to Hell.
Or by saying Jack Chick is an evil bigoted scum. (Funny, YES, though.)
Okay, Joe. FWIW, I don’t consider you to be an obnoxious or evil man. I think you have exactly the wrong slant on why I do what I do – I’m not interested in “watering down” the Gospel, as you alleged over in GD, but in presenting the Good News of God’s love and forgiveness to mankind, and in combatting those who appear to be trying to restrict His Atonement to “just their kind of people.” And, to be blunt about it, the posts that have come from you, Jersey, and His4Everdo seem to be trying to do just that. I strongly suspect that is not your intention; I’m reporting to you my impression from their content, for your information and eventual correction.
I’m confident that you, Jersey, and His4Ever see the posts of gobear, Kirkland, and some others as being totally unjust and calling you names that you do not deserve. However, I do not know whether you have ever been on the receiving side of prejudice, but I can vouch for the fact that it makes you angry. And that is exactly what is happening to them, and the people committing the prejudicial acts against them are founding their “reasoning” on the sorts of arguments you three are using as regards homosexuality and Scripture.
Over in the His4Ever pit thread, I had this to say to her, just before she said she was stopping posting to it. She never answered me, and I don’t know if she read it. But it’s something I feel very strongly about, and I’d welcome you reading it and reacting.
Polycarp, bear in mind that I opened this thread to blast Joe_Cool for his racial bigotry and his casual use of rape as a metaphor. There’s no point to rehashing his abhorrence of people like me and Kirkland because Joe and his droogs won’t listen.
He thinks it’s OK to refer to the person I love as an abomination and our relationship a sin, yet he is infuriated when I mock his gf as Eva Braun. He is free to dish out as much hate as he pleases, but I’m not allowed to retaliate.
Number 1: its not there in black and white in the scriptures.
gobear, i am glad someone called them out.
Joe_Cool and JerseyDiamond are so sanctimonious and condescending that I started to wonder last night if maybe…just maybe…they are really satanists, and by acting and posting so stupidly, are actually trying to make everyone hate their religion (suppodsedly chrsitianity).
Pretty clever, if true.
If not, it seems to be working that way, doesn’t it?
“Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by ignorance.” – A quote I love and would welcome knowing the source for
Gobear, my apologies for the hijack, but in my mind that’s right at the core of the problem. From my personal contacts I don’t think Joe intends to be condemnatory or any such thing in what he says, he’s merely operating out of a worldview that says he needs to “stand for what the Bible says” and that anything contrary to that is R-O-N-G wrong. (In my opinion, I am standing by what the Bible says, and he and his cohorts are selectively quoting to make a particular case presumably based on their own tastes, but that’s a whole different argument.)
It’s my hope that rephrasing your message:
…in words that evoke exactly what the Man whom He and I both call Savior and Lord had to say about fair and compassionate treatment of others, and show him, through the person of Kirkland, what his words can lead to, will inspire him to…
Well, I don’t know what. He’s apparently bound into the concept of “the Bible says it, I believe it, that settles it.” But I would hope that he would have kind and generous words for you and Kirk, and perhaps an apology, if not for his own words and actions, then for what those who speak as he does have done to you and others like you.
We’ll see. I’m not going to prejudge him on that basis, that’s all.
Ok, after rereading all the His4ever threads, it appears an apology is in order.
Guinastasia, I was wrong to include you in that list. I must have been thinking of something else, but to be honest, I don’t know what. You do tend to be a little hot under the collar sometimes, but though I disagree with your views, I understand your need to defend them. I am sorry.
Vanilla, you also were not hateful to H4e. Mocking, dismissive, and rude, but not hateful. I was wrong to include you as well.
Finally, cjhoworth, while I believe that your words were inappropriately sharp, you also did not say anything on the level of the garbage that gobear and MrVisible have spewed. And as she has already accepted your apology, what business is it of mine not to?
Of course, Joe will not apologize for his “verbal rape” comment. He doesn’t have the character. And even if he did, he wouldn’t mean it. People like him are nothing more than walking lies.
It’s called Hanlon’s Razor, and sorry for the nitpick, but it’s actually, “Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.” — Robert Heinlein (Logic of Empire, 1941)
Lib – I knew Heinlein used it (that’s where I first learned it) – but he was quoting it from somebody else. I was wondering the source.
Besides, I paraphrased slightly, since I’d much rather call Joe “ignorant” (meaning, he doesn’t know or understand a particular point) than “stupid” (meaning, his intelligence is not such as to be able to understand that point).
As a board, we’ve “been combatting ignorance since 1975” – Joe included. And it’s often been our own that we fight against.
My MIL and FIL are wonderful loving examples of what a true Christian life can be.
So is Polycarp and posters like him.
If I ever convert to Christianity, it will be exactly because of these people. What role models for a good life
The judgemental attitudes of posters like Joe Cool and His4ever towards my gay brothers and sisters are one of the many reasons that I run screaming from the church. As long as folks like this can preach the doctrine of hate and call it love, I will remain forever on the outside.
Well, I was able to vent my anger at Joe and I’m willing to cut him some slack now, especially after he made the, for him, magnanimous gesture of apologizing to CJHoworth, Guinistasia, and Vanilla. That impressed me.
See, I don’t want to be like Kirkland either, who is rapidly turning into a reverse-color copy of everything I dislike about fundies.
for me, the thing that depresses me most about Joe_Cool, JerseyDiamond and His4Ever is that they have turned their faith into a walled fortress of fear, rigidity, and prejudice and locked themselves inside. They keep themselves safe form alien thought by keeping close to their church and shunning books, art, and science.
It seems odd to me, for example, that all three cling to the 19th-century concept of young earth creationism, fearing to learn about the wider world of science. The Christian tradition has been that exploring the mysteries of the natural world is paying homage to the beauty of God’s handiwork. some of the greatest scientists, like Isaac Newton and Michael Faraday, have been beleieiving Christians.
Further, they seem completely unaware of the world of Christian literature. No, not the insipid and trivial Left Behind books, but A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life, by William Law, The Seven Storey Mountain by Thomas Merton, the fantasies of Charles Williams, where the armies of God struggle with the forces of darkness, The Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer*, or The Imitation of Christ by Thomas a Kempis, to name a few.
It’s such a shame that I can’t take them to Chartres Cathedral, where they could be enveloped by the beauty of its rose window. I wish I could show them Byzantine icons and Frankish reliquaries and open their minds to the complete panoply of Man’s capturing his devotion to God in wood, metal, and stone.
I guess my anger has burned out, and now I just feel sorry for them, trapped as they are in such a stunted, drab, joyless worldview.
I resent this characterization of my opinion. I may not have been a Christian as long as you have, but I did not trip over a tract in the gutter just yesterday, and I did not blindly swallow opinions that were fed to me by the first wacko that I met.
My views regarding the Bible are the result of being a Christian for nearly 22 years, and about ten years of study. You can feel free to disagree with me all you want, but please do not condescend and dismiss my views as mere ignorance, as though you were chuckling at a four-year-old’s amusingly vivid imagination.
Incorrect. I am selectively quoting to make a particular case, but it does not have anything to do with my tastes. I am making a particular case because that is evidently all anybody wants to hear about my (and JD’s and H4e’s) views, because it is their little pet complaint with the bible and the “bad Christians” who accept it as the word of God. Not to mention the fact that it is one topic that can dependably produce a pile-on when one of us is baited (you might prefer to say “challenged”) to defend it.
But you are correct in that I’m not condemning anybody. I have only been a messenger. Jesus himself is the one who will judge the living and the dead, not I.
Had I met gobear in person prior to this entire debacle, I would have treated him with the same kindness that I would show anyone else, gay or straight, Christian or not.
However, given that I have had the opportunity to witness the way he treats anyone who does not coddle him and his views, reassuring him that everything he says is right and true, and especially given the way he spews personal insults at my fiancee in a pathetic attempt to hurt me, I wonder whether I’d have the strength to treat him with the respect I would have previously.
However, keep in mind that my opinion of and dislike for him spawn not from his atheism and not from his homosexuality, but from the fact that he appears to be an incredible jerk.
It’s a shame that he has been mistreated in his life, but hey, I have yet to meet a human being who has not. In that respect, his sob story is no different from anybody else’s, except for the fact that most people do not feel the need to persecute the rest of the world for their problems, and accept it as simply part of life.
Vanilla:
Please be clear on the fact that I apologized to you for one specific offense in which I was wrong. Don’t take it as a blanket admission of guilt or a plea for you to like me. I don’t appreciate at all your consistent mocking tone, and I find it ironic that you can make comments like this:
And only 3 posts later tell me to work on my humility.
Now surely THAT is what you meant by humble, and an appropriate way to treat your fellow Christians.
gobear:
Neither Jerseydiamond nor I, in contrast to vanilla, has ever claimed to be a literal six-day young-earth creationist. I am certainly open to the possibility, but I am also an avid student of science. Once more, for the record, I do not think there is sufficient evidence to support either a literal creation in six days 6000 years ago or any of the current models of the universe’s origins, but I don’t think that it is by any means beyond God’s power for either to be true.
I am absolutely freaking sick of your stupid claims that I have said this or that, when they are NOT TRUE. Such as your claim that I said all homosexuals hate themselves or whatever garbage that was. Quite a clever response to your lack of evidence: “It must have been lost in the last board crash, along with my response.”
Are you on drugs, son? You’re so desperate to pin your persecution fantasies on me that you are willing to stoop to that level? Pathetic. Utterly pathetic.
