I personally have many opinions that I personally don’t want to see legislated. (For example, I wish the Catholics would all just shut up. But I do not want this codified into law.) Things I support but don’t want legislated, I don’t want the Catholics to impose legislatively either.
I also have opinions that I do want imposed; for example, I want it to be (well, remain) illegal to shove me alive into a meat grinder. However. I also have philosophical problems with people making decisions based on bad arguments. In practice, the latter consideration matters more. I do not want any laws made based on retarded logic. It’s a crappy way to run a government and society.
My preference of things:
Best: good logic supporting me
Grudgingly accepted: good logic opposing me
opposed: bad logic supporting me
extremely opposed: bad logic opposing me
Saying there’s a possibility for unmarried to have sinless sex is akin to saying it’s possible for a gay woman to get laid by a man. So? It ain’t gonna happen. If you can point to marriage and go “The marriage-hater can get married.” then I’m perfectly justified, by the same logic, to say “the gay man can marry a woman.”
Of course, the latter statement would be a stupid avenue to argue, as would be the former.
Option 1: the non-legally-enforced Catholic disapproval of premarital sex is as big a problem for marriage-hating heterosexuals as it is for marriage-desiring homosexuals.
Option 2: the legally-enforced Catholic disapproval of homosexual marriage is as big a problem for marriage-hating heterosexuals as it is for marriage-desiring homosexuals.
Option 3: the non-legally-enforced Catholic disapproval of premarital sex is as big a problem for marriage-hating heterosexuals as the legally-enforced Catholic disapproval of homosexual marriage is for marriage-desiring homosexuals.
Option 4: There is a disparity in the severity of the problems here, but that is somehow not a problem for the argument “if they’re not a hate group against marriage-hating heterosexuals, then by extrapolation they can’t be a hate group against marriage-desiring homosexuals.”
But you’re not comparing like groups to like groups. Break it down this way. There are four groups here:
Straight people who want to get married
Gay people who want to get married
Straight people who don’t want to get married
Gay people who don’t want to get married.
Groups 3 and 4 are treated the same. They’re not the issue here. Groups 1 and 2 *are *being treated differently. The difference in their treatment is due to the fact that people in group 2 are gay. That’s where the bigotry comes in.
As I said, I do have issues with the Catholic attitude towards 3 and 4, but in the ranks of moral wrongs, not being sufficiently sex-positive ranks pretty well behind naked homophobia.
If they support these things purely as a matter of doctrine, then no, I don’t.
Let me give you an example that doesn’t involve homosexuality or the Catholic Church. I make it a point to give money to various groups that help the poor.* I believe that in a perfect world, everybody who could afford it would do the same, but I know that this isn’t a perfect world and not everyone does as I do. As it happens, charity (zakat) is also one of the five pillars of Islam. So, somewhere out there is an imam exhorting people to give money to organizations that help the poor, because it’s what observant Muslims do.
The imam and I agree that it is good to give money in this way. Now suppose the imam gets his congressman to introduce a bill making it mandatory for every household and business to donate 2% of its gross income to a group specifically dedicated to helping the poor.** “Allah commands it,” he says, “and this will ensure that His will is done.”
I wouldn’t be able to support that, even if I already voluntarily donate more than that to the very same organizations, because it’s motivated by the desire to enforce the requirements of a religion.
*No arguing about the details, ethics, or efficacy of “helping the poor.” This is for illustrative purposes only. First, assume a spherical cow…
**No bitching about how the government already does this via taxation. This is for illustrative purposes only. Close your eyes and think of that spherical cow.
OK; you don’t like those sites. What do you think those photographs of starving, or dead, children are? Or the women with their eyes cut out? Anyway try (http://www.jerusalim.org/cd/index_en.html) or just Google Jasenovic or Jasenovac,
or Alperin vs Vatican Bank. You will get thousands of hits.
No, it isn’t. I see what you’re getting at - the idea that, a gay person cannot necessarily have sinless sex, but, neither can an unmarried straight person - but I still don’t disagree. The unmarried person might change their mind, as I said, and want marriage. They might conclude that marriage was still not what they wanted, but that they were willing to compromise for the benefits that also may come with it, even if it means the negatives, too. But a gay person cannot change their minds; they cannot alter their sexuality. And they can’t compromise; marrying a person of the opposite sex gets them nothing they want.
Too, the comparable groups in your point aren’t gay people and straight people, but gay people and straight people who don’t want to get married. That too is an inequality, in that the problem affects one group less specifically; that is to say, one group must fulfil additional criteria in order to be acting sinfully. It’s like if I say that all I think all Canadians deserve a kick up the backside, but only all American men deserve a kick up the backside. That i’m treating all Canadians and American men the same doesn’t mean i’m not treating them inequally, or that i’m being fair and reasonable to both groups; i’m not.
Of course, the latter statement would be a stupid avenue to argue, as would be the former.
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Uh huh. Panache asserted that the Roman Catholic Church is running “death camps” in the United States, right now, at the present time. What you’ve posted is a total non-sequiter, which my first impulse is to ignore. But since our board’s purpose is to fight ignorance, I’ll reluctantly swing into action.
Jasenovic was not staffed by Franciscan monks and priests. That’s a complete fiction.
I think the pope is calling the homosexual act the intrinsic moral evil that homosexcuals have a tendency towards. This tendency is called an “objective disorder.” As far as I can tell, the pope is saying homosexuals are sick, an opinion held by the medical establishment until recent decades.
Frankly, I stopped carting about homosexuality when I realized it wasn’t contagious.
Jasenovac existed, and Jasenovac was every bit as bad as any camp in the war, but Stepinac didn’t run it. One the other hand, he didn’t excommunicate Filipovic or Pavelic.
Stepinac was a bit of a bastard, but his greatest crime was tolerating pro-church fascism because the alternative was anti-church communism. He wasn’t Rudolf Höss.
I can’t really answer that because I don’t know what you mean by “as big a problem”. Do you mean “has as big a scope” as in “affects as many people” or do you mean “is as severely problematic to the individual”?
If you mean the latter, then I am arguing Option 1- the ban on premarital sex is problematic for both the marriage-hater and the homosexual, in equal proportion. If you define it as having as wide a scope, then I am arguing none of the above. I find the scope of the CC’s influence to be irrelevant to the discussion at hand, since religious decisions aren’t based on popular opinon. I can’t really expect them to change their dogma, attempting to influence or harm the least amount of people.
To restate Option 1 so that I perfectly agree with it: The ban on premarital sex is terribly problematic and vexing for a sex-desiring Catholic man (or woman) if he is a) repulsed by marriage, or b) gay. It makes no difference if the reason is a) or b), as both men are unable to live their lives sin-free without making drastic changes in their beliefs and lifestyles.
I think that if you believe that reason A is less problematic than reason B, it’s because you’re not giving enough gravitas to the man’s resistance to marriage. Like being gay, it’s not something you can just choose to change your mind on. It’s not something you can compromise on, nor should anyone expect it of you.
I mean, you can point to self-hating gays, but I can point to a bajillion people that hate their marriages. And if you stick with Catholic doctrine that says you can only have one marriage, forever and ever and ever, then it’s probably over 6 bajillion troubled souls.
That doesn’t work! If I’m a Doper, and you’re a Doper, it doesn’t make me you. -5 math points for you.
