How about listening? And thinking? Please stop attempting to flip the issue around to make heterosexuals into the victims. He suggested nothing of the kind; inferring that is completely fatuous. Your rights are simply not at risk. No one is saying that you don’t have the right to say that homosexuality is wrong, or that you don’t have the right to teach your children that it’s wrong.
I believe you have the right to do this, but the moral obligation not to.
However, you have said repeatedly that I and other homosexuals should not have the right to adopt children.
Get back to us when conservatives are prevented from having children, prevented from marrying and being with the people they love, beaten up for being openly conservative, or shocked into liberalism. When you do come back, make sure you’re polite.
In my own defense, I would just like to point out that my boyfriend selects and buys my clothes.
And I do not claim to be a representative of all gay people. There are much better, much nicer, much more patient gay people on this board. I’m angry, and I do a very poor job of hiding it here, but it helps me to not be so brazen about it in the real world. It doesn’t excuse my behavior, which I would be the first to admit is often a bit harsh, but it’s in the real world where things matter. I’d rather tear into fundamentalist trash here, than in my real life. But I don’t think I’m a troll, because I do believe that I have made, perhaps not in these threads, measurable contributions to the board.
If everyone disagree, though, I suppose I could just go away.
Sol wrote: “I believe you have the right to [say that homosexuality is wrong, or to teach your children that it’s wrong], but the moral obligation not to.”
This is fine and dandy so long as groups do not take it into their minds to police an individual’s morals. And this is, I believe, another reason why it is important to remain civil and polite, and to discourage extreme language and extreme action.
There appears to be fine line between saying ‘You have the moral obligation not to do something’ and ‘We will take action to do our best to ensure that you meet your moral obligation’. Implicit in what such a group would also appear to be saying is ‘We know what is moral better than you do’.
I am reminded of a man who once said to me (in all seriousness and without being under the influence of alcohol or any other drugs) that someone who voted Conservative (this was in England in 1994, to give it context) couldn’t be moral.
I truly worried for those he would be teaching. Does his comment similarly worry any of you guys?
Scum like you are currently debating, in effect, whether I’m a human being, deserving of the same fucking rights you take for granted, and you have the audacity to claim the mantle of civility?
Conservative evil, conservative arrogance, knows no fucking bounds.
Did your school board dissolve your conservative club in high school? Because they did the gay and straight alliance club at mine.
Did kids beat up people and use “pubbie” as slur when you were younger?
Has the president, any president, called for the stripping of civil liberties from conservatives?
Has anyone’s child ever been taken away by the courts because the parent is a conservative?
Have your parents called you a “disgusting pervert” who will “die of AIDS” for being a conservative?
"No one is saying that you don’t have the right to say that homosexuality is wrong, or that you don’t have the right to teach your children that it’s wrong.
I believe you have the right to do this, but the moral obligation not to."
There is a measure of disagreement among homosexuals on this thread.
As the most prone to fanaticism gay person here, even I don’t disagree with Sol. You have the right to raise your kid to believe whatever hateful bullshit you want. That’s your right as a parent. It makes you a terrible parent, and a terrible human being, to do so. But it’s still your right.
However, the state also participates in raising your child, and through the educational system it has a moral obligation to teach all children that everyone is of equal value, that everyone is deserving of equal rights, and that homosexuality is not a perversion, not unnatural and not evil.
Who the child believes depends on whether or not the apple is as bruised and diseased as the tree from which it has fallen.
Policing an individual’s morals, how, for example? Like for denying them the right to have children? I’m still wondering when you’re going to get around to addressing this.
There are two ways to parse that sentence. “Scum like you” meaning, well, you. Or “scum like you” meaning conservatives, a label you so proudly affixed to yourself in the preceding post.
My sentence structure was unclear, and I apologize. I meant the second implication, not the first.
I have already addressed the issue of a homosexual couple adopting children. I oppose this as I believe that it is in not in the best interests of the child for him or her to be brought up in this way. To put it another way, it is not in line with their basic human rights.
Well, obviously if we disagree on a subject, I believe that my position is correct and yours isn’t. If I didn’t think so, I would not hold the position I do.
Does everyone see the incredibly blatant irony here?
Historically, over the last two millennia, who have taken it into their minds to police an individual’s morals? Who has definitely not remained civil and polite, and who has been guilty of extreme language and extreme action? And who has, for two thousand years, said, "We know what is moral better than you do "?
And I should point out, should someone attempt to put homophobic beliefs into practice, you’re damn right I’d try to stop them. Such behaviour happens to be against the law of this country, beyond violating the moral obligation to refrain from bigotry.
Your moral definitions have no place in defining who can and cannot be a parent, so what is your justification for claiming that gay parents will harm children (“not in their best interest”)?
What basic human right is it that you are asserting?
What if I and a lesbian get together and have a child of our own, and split custody. Should it be taken from us?
What, specifically, about being gay, makes me unsuitable to be a parent? (As opposed to the reasons that have nothing to do with being gay that would make my parenting skills suspect at the present time).
Isn’t that precisely what you people are doing when you say that I can’t adopt children?
Isn’t that precisely what you people are doing when you say that I can’t be married?
Isn’t that precisely what you people are doing when you say that I can’t be a public school teacher, or am with no other justification unsuited to military service?
Isn’t that precisely what you people are doing when you say that I can’t be a “real Christian”?
Isn’t that precisely what you people are doing when you say that I’m unfit to be a parent?
Isn’t that precisely what you people are doing when you say that I’m “unnatural”?
I won’t get into a discussion of that overused word irony, but…
Panache, you are responding to me, an individual with a silly pseudonym. (How I wish that this board followed one or two others and dispensed with the masks.) My history is probably a matter of supreme indifference to you, but suffice to say it’s only 45 years in duration.
Others will recall that I have fought my hardest battles not against homosexuals but against various churches I have been involved in.
Anyway, it’s me you’re talking to not the Popes who ordered the Crusades, not some pastor who’s shafting the verger’s wife while preaching against adultery.
I don’t pretend to have all the answers, but I do favour scrutinising the questions and “unasking”. And I do believe in accepting the world that we live in for the world that we live in, while trying to change it.
I also believe in never saying anything I don’t believe, whatever the pressure from peers and cool groups. Actually, if there’s anything I teach my 8 year old (and I don’t “instruct” her about much apart from manners from time to time), it’s never to say something that you don’t believe even if the whole world is saying it.
Kleenex in the bin, I’ll try and answer Spectrum’s questions:
Isn’t that precisely what you people are doing when you say that I can’t adopt children?
As noted, I see this as more of a human rights issue
Isn’t that precisely what you people are doing when you say that I can’t be married?
I’m okay with homosexual marriage, though not conducted by a minister of a Christian church, as it goes against the Bible.
Isn’t that precisely what you people are doing when you say that I can’t be a public school teacher, or am with no other justification unsuited to military service?
I’m okay with both of these.
Isn’t that precisely what you people are doing when you say that I can’t be a “real Christian”?
I have said that I believe the Bible says that homosexuality is unnatural and wrong (and a sin, if you want to use that word). Only God, however, judges who is a real Christian.
Isn’t that precisely what you people are doing when you say that I’m unfit to be a parent?
This is moot. What I AM saying is that the child comes first.
Isn’t that precisely what you people are doing when you say that I’m “unnatural”?
I’m just following the Bible - though, not I should add, against my will. I believe it too.