Woooo, simulpost!
(Except matt even chastises folks more eloquently than I do. Freakin Canadians.)
Daniel
Lord, this is pretty deep shit.
I haven’t even read the entire five pages – just page one and pages four and five.
But I’d ask you all to be aware that not every Christian shares the opinions of Dobson, Falwell, or even bodswood.
Regarding the Bible passages, one can get into a really extensive discussion of what actually they mean – they’re not quite so obvious in the original Hebrew and Greek as might be presumed from the translations. However, in the overall picture of sin as envisaged in Christian moral theology, even if they specifically condemn the sexuality of jayjay, matt_mcl and spectrum, the bottom line for a Christian who follows Christ’s teachings is that he himself should refrain from gay sex and take such steps as are possible to eliminate or minimize his desires for gay sex, and leave the judgment of others’ sins to God, counseling them about it only with overt love and friendship shown up front and only either on request or when a friendship has grown close enough that he is justified in speaking up. And the Christians who take the “homosexuality is sin” stance are generally violating the commands of their own Lord (and mine) in the approach they take to the issue.
Regarding laws on the subject (whether adoption, gay marriage, and such, or the sodomy laws recently voided), I would have to ask first what one’s standards for governmental regulation of personal affairs is and how it is justified. There is a certain amount of “protect the social fabric” and “protect the children” that is inherent in any society but it occurs to me that in general any such laws go far beyond the reasonable use of those protections. And I’d have to see bodswood or someone produce a convincing argument for their need to make me think differently.
Yes, a red herring which I dismissed. What makes a parent a “primary” caretender. You know, when I was a kid, I saw my teachers in school far more often than I ever saw my father – he travelled a lot for work, worked late, and I spent most of the summer at camp. Yet I was not deprived of a male influence in my life.
Also, that doesn’t get around your scurrilous attack on every single parent in America.
You are so damn boring. You don’t respond to questions, you dodge calls for supporting evidence of your absurd claims, you toss around platitudes and “you know what I’m talking about” as if that’s support for your cause.
I can’t wait for your trial membership to be up. The Board will be a better place when you’re gone.
Nonsense. And surprising to read from one of the only people on this Board I would actually consider a real Christian.
There are millions of Chrisitans who “follow Christ’s teachings” and who are gay, and actively gay, with a partner or a family, and to imply that that’s not possible, as you appear to do here, is just as reprehensible as bodswhatever’s attack on the ability for gays to be parents.
A gay person can be a Christian just as well as any straight person.
A gay person can be a parent just as well as any straight person.
That’s a REALLY unfair elision from Polycarp’s post. Here’s what he said in full:
I bolded the part that you elided: that clause is crucial to Polycarp’s point. Your paraphrase does him an injustice.
Daniel
Left Hand of Dorkness already pointed it out to you; but you left out a pretty damn big IF statement from Polycarp’s post, spectrum. You might want to work on your reading comprehension skills a little in addition to your demeanor.
Well, that wasn’t my intention. I pulled that out of the quote because it read as an aside to me, as something not intrinsically related to the rest of the sentence. That’s a totally dependent clause that does not act on the remainder of the sentence. Take out the “even” and I see your point, but with it there, it reads to me as an aside.
I hope I’m misreading the sentence, because it didn’t sound very Polycarp-ish. But when you take the independent clauses and line them up, it does say what I took away from it. I only included the ellipses to clear out what reads, to me, as asides which don’t alter the meaning of the main sentence.
And it still flatly stands in that sentence, with nothing modifying it, that “the bottom line for a Christian who follows Christ’s teachings is that he himself should refrain from gay sex and take such steps as are possible to eliminate or minimize his desires for gay sex.”
I don’t see how an aside of “even if they specifically condemn the sexuality of jayjay, matt_mcl and spectrum” alters the plain text of the main clause of the sentence. Take out the “even” and I see it, but with the “even” there, it reads as just an aside.
But all things aren’t equal and you’re dodging the question. Both my ex-wife and I are homosexuals. Would you advocate removing our son from our custody because of that?
If not, then are you not acknowledging that being gay does not make us unfit parents? If so, then why prevent other fit parents from adopting just because they’re gay?
If you still continue to believe that gay parents are unfit, then the only logical conclusion is that I am an unfit parent and you should be calling for the state to terminate my custody.
Obviously Polycarp will have to say what he meant–but in general I think it’s very poor form to read someone’s words in the least flattering light, which is what you’re doing. Rather than tell him what nonsense he’s talking, rather than tell him he’s being as reprehensible as bodswood, you’d be much better off asking him to clarify first.
Frankly, I can’t see what purpose the “even if” clause serves in the sentence if not to make the sentence mean, “Even under most homophobic interpretation of Christianity, Christians oughtta keep their mouths shut about other people’s bedroom practices.”
Daniel
Except that’s not what the sentece says, not as written. Without straining English grammar, that clause does not modify the sentence to say what you think it means, and what I would like to think it means.
You’re right, I should have asked for clarification. I was just sorta shocked and dazed by what sounds like fundamentalist swill coming from the keyboard of Polycarp.
At worst, Polycarp made a mistake (and I’m not even sure he did that; the sentence reads perfectly fine to me). I think we can all agree that Polycarp would never say anything like what you thought he said, spectrum.
Yes. I read it as saying that the teachings of Christ require that beliefs about sin be applied to oneself only, not to others.
Consequently, the teachings of Christ require that, should a person believes that homosexuality is a sin, such a belief be applied only to oneself.
(If a Christian does not believe that homosexuality is a sin, there’s nothing that has to be applied to anyone.)
Then call him on a technical foul, but recognize that from his past, he’s far likelier to have misplaced an adverb than to have been claiming that there could be no gay Christians.
Anyways, I think you’re wrong: I think that phrase correct reads as a sentence adverb phrase: it appears at the beginning of the sentence (after another sentence adverb phrase) and modifies the meaning of the entire sentence.
Daniel
Take out “even,” and I agree with you, Left. But the “even” makes that whole phrase just a bonus of sorts. It creates a totally different relationship between that cluase and the main body of the sentence.
To wit:
A man, if he likes dogs, should never own a cat.
A man, even if he likes dogs, should never own a cat.
Those sentences have different meanings. The first, the fact that the man likes dogs is the reason he shouldn’t own a cat. In the second, the fact that he likes dogs is irrelevant to the fact that he should never own a cat. The “even” strips away the determinative factof of liking dogs and makes it tangental.
The same is true of the sentence in Polycarp’s post.
I agree that your reading is more likely. I only posted what I did out of shock, and it does not accurately reflect my appraisal of Polycarp’s position on the matter.
A man, even if he thinks cats are the spawn of the freakin’ devil, should stay away from cats, not shoot them on sight.
Does that mean the same thing as, “A man should stay away from cats, not shoot them on sight”?
Not to me it doesn’t.
I see how your interpretation is possible, definitely–but it’s a very uncharitable interpretation. I’m not sure we really disagree about anything here beyond an exceedingly nice grammatical point.
Daniel
No, we disagree very much.
You should definitely shoot cats on sight.
Dogs good. Cats bad.
What are you, some kind of KKK Nazi?
Daniel
No, just very allergic to cats. 
Which sucks, because one of my college roommates had a cat, and the thing loved me. But I couldn’t play with it, or even really touch it, without breaking out in a rash.
Can we drop this and instead start betting on whether bodswood’s next post will be a lie, a dodge, or a logical fallacy?