Here’s a not-so-subtle reference to “Dr. Laura” by West Wing. I’m posting as my personal protest to the passing of Prop 8 in California.
I suspect that all of those California Bible-thumpers who successfully voted in favor of bigotry are resting content tonight. And no, you don’t have to be consciously and intentionally bigoted to be bigoted.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHaVUjjH3EI[/youtube]
Here’s more on Prop 8 from Wikipedia:
Religious organizations that supported Proposition 8 include the Roman Catholic Church, Knights of Columbus, Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a group of Evangelical Christians led by Jim Garlow and Miles McPherson, American Family Association, Focus on the Family and the National Organization for Marriage. Rick Warren, pastor of Saddleback Church, California’s largest, also endorsed the measure. . . . About 45% of out-of-state contributions to ProtectMarriage.com came from Utah, over three times more than any other state.
If only the Roman Catholic Church would have spent 1% as much effort on rooting out their own rapist priests as they did trying to prevent gays from having their long-term committed relationships recognized by the state.
An elephant in a room is not a point of endless converstion. They are either acknowledged or not.
The nature of an elephant may be open to different interpretations as are the meanings of various human actions and relationships.
I have no personal reason to want to condemn anyone by their sexual orientation, I wish I could drop all references to morality that seems to lack empathy towards the circumstances of specific individuals.
The actual circumstances are that God doesn't condemn anyone based upon their sexual activity. He doesn't condemn anyone for being a murderer, a thief, a republican, a democrat, a conservative, a liberal, a naturalist or a skeptic. People aren't justified by any of those designations either.
His unconditional love is not an experiential kind of here today and gone tomorrow option.
It is the nature of individual human response to His offer of unconditional love that creates the elephant in the room syndrome. People do not want to acknowledge that they are accountable to Him, so they stand condemned by their hearts lack of love for the one they should love at least as much as themselves and their fellowman.
Unconditional love is many spendored relationships with many people including one's creator. It is not something to be confined to only those who approve of your opinions and activities. God desires a relationship with men, women, boys and girls but He doesn't force submisson to His authority, will or righteousness.
He is not some attention seeking potentate that would really like to see us all suffer and fry in our own juices. He simply asks that we not lose sight of the reason why any of this world and life exists, to reveal those who are to become the sons and daughters of God at the marriage supper of the Lamb.
It seems from the history of the Christian Church that the way to let the Spirit of God shine through you is to keep trusting in God in the midst of all of the circumstances of ones life.
I admire those who still get the message that there is nothing people can do to make God love them any more or any less than He already does.
Dan Klarmann wrote: "Hank seems to feel that universal fairness and equality is some sort of manifest destiny. History shows clearly that such conditions are hard-won and temporary rights peculiar to materially rich cultures. A civilization has only those morals that it can afford. When it folds, even those "unalienable" rights disappear."
I didn't mean to give that impression. All our rights have indeed been hard-won, often over decades or even centuries. I was just trying to illustrate that, especially in the examples of the US and my own country (Australia), both first-world democracies, that historically we've always tended toward freedom & equality and have gradually reduced and legislated against unfair discrimination. Quite possibly because our basic needs are more than met and we're indeed prosperous enough to pursue such things as societal equality, not just for our own team but for everyone, purely as a matter of principle. I believe that in all humans there's an innate desire for fair treatment (there even is in some of our primate cousins), but clearly not all groups in all societies have the luxury of being able to look beyond personal survival needs and extend that need for fairness to everyone.
– – –
Karl, "Marriage supper of the Lamb"? OK, now you've lost me. Perhaps you could just steer away from cloudy theological metaphors so we're all speaking the same language. Apart from your large slabs of preaching and numerous religious off-topic tangents, there's not really anything in your comments resembling concrete, logical arguments against equality for gay people.
Here's the logic I'm looking for Karl: first, just tell me, in clear sentences or paragraphs, why my gay neighbour shouldn't be allowed to marry the man he's been in love with, living with and faithful to, for longer than my wife and I have even known each other.
I need to know why, even if some of these "civil unions" give gay people the same rights and status as a straight couple, why being able to call it "marriage" is a bad or undesirable thing. Appeals to tradition won't suffice here, considering it used to be traditional to burn "witches" and heretics and trade human beings like animals in some parts of the world. The point being that tradition, in and of itself, is not necessarily a good reason to continue to do anything.
I need to know why my gay neighbours getting married is any threat to your religion, your marriage, your freedom. If not a threat per se, I need to know how, if at all, it affects your and your life negatively. In fact I'd like to know how Barnaby & Peter next door being legally married would affect you _at all_.
I need to know how equality for gay people would constitute strongarming you into a point of view you don't subscribe to (or in any other way coercing you or impinging on your liberty). Bear in mind the acute irony here, considering it's well-funded conservative religious groups that strongarmed the vote on Prop 8 with their blatant misinformation and fear tactics, which helped to de-legalise (or at least left in legal limbo) thousands of legal Californian marriages.
I'd really like to hear a simple, direct answer as to how expanding the right to marry to ALL people can in any way diminish that right.
http://sfist.com/attachments/SFist_Brock/prop%208…
Sums it up.
Karl asked, "Again I ask why the need to change a religious denotation of a word into one that pleases those who prefer to not believe in the religion?"
I'm going back to this question of Karl's because the legal attack against so-called "gay marriage" often takes the form of legislation to define marriage as "a union of one man and one woman." Proponents of such legislation, like Karl, say they are merely codifying the long-standing meaning of the word. They argue that gay marriage would "redefine" the traditional meaning of marriage. Conspicuously, they give no reason why this would be a bad thing, and therein lies the hole in their argument. Let's now fill that hole.
Undeniably, the word "marriage" in the Judeo-Christian world has, for centuries, meant a union between one man and one woman. However, the reason why the word "marriage" has had this meaning is merely because our bigoted, homophobic ancestors were able to restrict the institution of marriage to heterosexual couples. Karl's argument is that we should continue this bigoted, homophobic tradition not for any rational or legitimate reason, but merely for the sake of maintaining this tradition.
My question is: why? What value is there in maintaining a vile tradition that glorifies prejudice, bigotry and ignorance? What value is there in maintaining a tradition that cruelly discriminates against a minority population merely because our long-dead ancestors established and nurtured this mean-spirited tradition? I say there is no value, other than to please today's homophobic, mean-spirited, sanctimonious bigots, most of whom wrap themselves in the Bible so they won't have to face the truth of what they are: just as wrong as our ancestors were.
Preserving a long-standing tradition is legitimate only if the tradition is morally justifiable. If it isn't — whether it is slavery, the stoning of women who are not virgins at marriage, or defining marriage to exclude homosexual couples — then it should be condemned and abolished.
Grumpy. Good point. The concept of stare decisis comes to mind when reading your comment. It is considered by many lawyers and judges to be the heart and soul of law, despite its abjectly amoral function. We do things in the law in X fashion because that is how we've always done them.
http://dangerousintersection.org/2008/03/03/dont-…
No self-respecting religion can embrace homosexuality and here's why. Not because it's inherently "wrong". But because a religion is an organism that needs numbers to survive.
The rules of a religion are its DNA. Any religion that would allow a practice such as homosexuality, which does not produce more members of the religion, is a religion courting failure.
ANY activity (contraception and abortion are more good examples) which does not increase the ranks of a religion is deemed "immoral" so that the organism (the church) will survive.
Mike: What about celibacy, which many religions embrace? And what about the no-sex-outside-of-marriage between opposite sexes. If they really wanted more members, wouldn't they encourage people to go out and have lots of sex without birth control?
I think that the problem is a ferocious discomfort with homosexuality, a disgust that they interpret as a dictate of "morality." http://dangerousintersection.org/2007/07/04/disgu…
You want some historical, sociological, anthropological references to label illogical as well.
British anthropologist J. D. Unwin,whose 1934 book, Sex and Culture, chronicled the historical decline of numerous cultures. Unwin studied 86 different cultures throughout history and discovered a surprising fact: No
nation that rejected monogamy in marriage and pre-marital sexual
chastity lasted longer than a generation after it embraced sexual hedonism. Unwin stated it this way, "In human records there is no instance of a society retaining its energy after a complete new generation has inherited a tradition which does not insist on prenuptial and postnuptial continence."
Sociologist Pitirim Sorokin, in The American Sex Revolution,
found essentially the same thing when he examined sexual immorality
as it relates to cultural decline. Sorokin noted in the
late 60's that America was committing "voluntary suicide"
through unrestrained sexual indulgence. He observed that as
individuals began engaging in pre-marital sex unrelated to marriage,
the birth rate would decline and our nation would be
slowly depopulated.
Dr. Stanley Kurtz, a fellow with the Hoover Institution has
written extensively in recent years over the impact that homosexual
marriages will eventually have on our culture. In two
important papers published in The Weekly Standard in late 2003
and early 2004, Kurtz describes how the legalization of same-sex marriage in the United States will lead inevitably to the
destruction of marriage altogether. Homosexual marriage will
open the floodgates to other bizarre sexual arrangements including
polygamy and polyamory (groupings of males and females
into a “married” unit).
Writing in The End Of Marriage In Scandinavia, (The Weekly
Standard, 2/2/04), Dr. Kurtz notes, for example, that Sweden
has increasingly separated the idea of marriage from parenthood
and that the prevalence of homosexual partnerships has
only helped accelerate the decline in marriage.
Kurtz also observes that Sweden is probably the most secular
nation on the earth and that “Swedes themselves link the decline
of marriage to secularism. And many studies confirm that,
throughout the West, religiosity is associated with strong marriage,
while heightened secularism is correlated with a weakening
of marriage.”
“… the family structures of lesbians and gay men who have children
simply do not fit into the marital structure erected to envelope heterosexual, married couples with their children … every lesbian couple
with a biological child has an automatic third person—the donor/
father—who factors into the family. … Significant changes to
the legal rules of parenting would have to be made to accommodate
these families.” — Paula Ettelbrick
Religious freedom could die once homosexual marriage is legalized and Christians could be jailed for simply criticizing homosexual behavior.
Already hate crimes are declared against those who don't agree with a freedom from religion clause.
If we do not learn from history, we are doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past. And, once the moral decline begins as it already has, it will be very hard to turn things around. People decalre under the guise of civil rights that they do not want freedom of religion – they want freedom from laws and traditions they claim are related to religion.
William Bennett, in The Broken Hearth says it well: "My concern
is that we are now embarked upon an experiment that violates
a universal social law: In attempting to raise children without
two parents, we are seeing, on a massive scale, the voluntary
breakup of the minimal family unit. This is historically
unprecedented, an authentic cultural revolution-and, I believe,
socially calamitous. We may be under the illusion that we can
cheerfully deconstruct marriage and then one day decide to pull
back from the brink.
There is much more historical, sociological and anthroplogical support for this line of thinking.
Erich,
Come on, you know better. It's the dual requirement of greater numbers and control. And it's not all evil.
Just taking for the time being the Catholic Church as an example, celibacy evolved into something set aside for the priesthood, to set them apart. (Actually, the church law on celibate priests had little to do with "purity" and everything to do with inheritance—when a well off priest died, the church wanted the property. If there was a family he'd left behind, that complicated matters.) Consider the Albigensians. Christian sect in southern France, practiced equality of the sexes and other things that can be attributed to the practices of the Apostles, and they embraced universal celibacy even within marriage. The Albigensian Crusade wiped them out. There were many reasons for it, but they were roundly accused of heresy.
Marriage, however, has been a long-standing social control mechanism to guarantee the children produced are paid for by the producers. No sex outside marriage makes sense in subsistence economies.
The gay issue, I agree, is a question of disgust first and then there is the matter of it's ill-fit in hierarchical control structures.
Karl: These quotes do help me understand your concerns. I don't agree with them, but they articulated in such a way that I understand them.
On the other hand, I choked on this quote: "Religious freedom could die once homosexual marriage is legalized and Christians could be jailed for simply criticizing homosexual behavior."
I don't understand the basis for this assertion. We do have a First Amendment that ferociously protects free speech, unless that speech is aimed at instigating imminent violence. Are you asserting the right to say the kinds of things that will cause conservatives get so riled up that they injure or kill homosexuals?
Erich,
No Erich, I hope I am not saying things that might instigate people with low value or respect for those different from themselves to injure or kill anyone. That is fear and hate mongering.
Are you saying the kinds of things that will permit anyone who has a low value or respsect for those different from themselves to rile up others to fear and hate mongering?
Freedom of speech is constantly being threatened in this day and age by people who use their monetary status and social connections for influence
peddling. A fairness doctrine does not exist and shouldn't exist because it would be impossible to regulate. What needs to exist is common human courtesy and mutual civil respect. This does not mean everyone needs to think the same and posses the same values – mutual respect and self-control are what are called for.
I do not espouse retoric that pits man against man. I encourage people to use civil discourse and non-violent civil disobedience where necessary to let others know what you believe to be of the more important values that you will not compromise on.
I also believe that as a Christian I individually do not have an option to act entirely independent apart from others in the Body of Christ, His Church.
If Gay Marriage is legalized and teachers and preachers who trust the full message of the Bible find themselves having to speak against the laws of the land – will they be forced to stop?
No one in this land says people can't advocate for Gay Marriage. On the other hand, if Hank's and Dan's sure bets come to pass I can guarantee that Bible believing churches will be made examples of, using "fear and hate mongering" as their rationale. When a pastor then declares that the Bible says that homosexual as well as other immoral behaviors are not God's design, they will be held accountable for instigating some one to take action independently from the rest of the Church. Or worse yet, the entire situation will be accused of conspiracy and organized RICOH activities.
Open your eyes and don't over-estimate the fine character of either the liberals or conservatives you know.
OMG, It's Karl Rove!
Having had the smithereens kicked out of his "wedge" strategies in the electoral sphere, he's gone to DI to vent his spleen!
Hey, Karl, how does it feel?
Dude, you're pretty smart, stop pimping yourself for people who will flush you down the toilet as soon as you're no longer useful to them…..FLOOOOSH!….Oops, too late!
Whoaa, let's slow down and think about this. How does extending the right of civil marriage to same-sex couples interfere with freedom of religion or speech?
The facts:
Religious groups currently define who can be married, and what constitutes a marriage, according to their religious beliefs. For instance, the Catholic church does not recognize the right of divorced people to marry in the Catholic Church. The fact that divorced people can be married at City Hall or in a non-Catholic church does not remove the Catholic Church's right to define marriage or deny marriage rites to certain individuals. But the Catholic Church's teachings about marriage does not and should not deny marriage rights to divorced people who do not subscribe to those beliefs. The fact that divorced individuals have a legal right to marry does not interfere with anyone's right to say that divorced people who remarry are committing a sin according to some belief system.
I don't see how marriage rights/rites issue for same sex couples is any different. The idea that same sex marriage would somehow interfere with freedom of religion seems exaggerated.
Proposition 8, on the other hand, does directly interfere with freedom of religion. In my home town several churches and synagogues have been stripped of their right to marry same sex couples in accordance with their religious beliefs. Marriages solemnized in these places of worship have now been declared null and void.
"If Gay Marriage is legalized and teachers and preachers who trust the full message of the Bible find themselves having to speak against the laws of the land – will they be forced to stop?"
There's no basis to this assertion. Hysterical paranoia at its worst and most ignorant. Disagreeing with the law is covered in the First Amendment! If you were to actually break the law, that's different. But peoples' opinions are protected, even if they're odious, foul & hate-filled and based on nothing but years of ingrained prejudice.
This is exactly the kind of baseless fear-mongering that the Mormons (& others) spent so much money on when campaigning against equality (aside: if someone would like to tell me how they and their Christian comrades are able to remain tax-exempt after clearly engaging in political action, I'd appreciate it). If you seriously think gay marriage will end up with government stormtroopers breaking down your church door and arresting the pastor because he's vehement that gay people should not have equal rights, you aren't thinking very seriously. It's the USA in 2008, not Berlin in 1938! Plus, it's highly ironic to talk about your freedom being trampled now, considering the Bush administration's frankly disgusting record on civil & constitutional & human rights over the last 8 years.
Rest assured, if gay people are allowed to marry, pastors like the reprehensible Pat Robertson, that deluded, blackhearted wife-beating soldier-hating bastard Fred Phelps & any others who today rain down their vicious hatred on gays and anyone else whom they perceive as immoral will still be allowed to do so.
Your precious right to malign people & campaign to deny them their birthrights based on nothing but ancient prejudices & shaky, half-baked sociology will remain intact, no matter how many Adams marry their Steves.
Vicki said:
"Proposition 8, on the other hand, does directly interfere with freedom of religion. In my home town several churches and synagogues have been stripped of their right to marry same sex couples in accordance with their religious beliefs. Marriages solemnized in these places of worship have now been declared null and void."
Here we have actual rights to practice religion freely and marry the one you loved – stripped and trashed. People who are already married, unsure if they still are married or even if they have spousal rights anymore! And the anti-gays have the gall to pretend to quake in their boots about the gov'ment taking away their freedom of speech? Garbage.
Karl, how can this be justified? These temples exercised a right to marry members of their congregations and now it's gone. The marriages don't exist. The rights of the couple and the rights of those churches no longer exist. And you have the nerve to wail about _your_ freedom & _your_ rights while happily seeing such things denied to others. It's pure bullshit.
Vicki,
Are you really unaware of the climate that exists against Christianity in the secular world?
There have been hate crimes placed on the books in so many states it would make your head spin. All that is needed right now for the ACLU or any other liberal viewpoint to make someone's life miserable is to be able to link anyone's free speech with the actions of someone who they believe was incited by something spoken in a public setting.
This means if a person speaks up and says homosexuality is a sin and if this is heard by someone who decides to attempt a personal campaign of confronting others by direct offensive affronts to homosexuals, then according to hate crime legislation – those who spoke in such a way might be held responsible for participating in hate crimes.
Why do you think hate crimes are worded the way they are?
From Wikepedia:
The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously found that hate crime statutes which criminalize bias-motivated speech or symbolic speech conflict with free speech rights because they isolated certain words based on their content or viewpoint .[27]
Some have argued hate crime laws bring the law into disrepute and further divides society, as groups apply to have their critics silenced.[28] Some have argued that if it is true that all violent crimes are the result of the perpetrator's contempt for the victim, then all crimes are hate crimes. Thus if there is no alternate rationale for prosecuting some people more harshly for the same crime based on who the victim is, then different defendants treated unequally under the law, which violates the United States Constitution.[29]
Sorry, Karl. Not good enough. I challenge you to set forth specific laws to back up your claim that churches are being muzzled. Please, if you have the evidence, link to real-life hate-speech laws that have ever prevented any church from expressing disapproval of the gay lifestyle (unless that speech incited imminent violence against gays).
Churches aren't being muzzled, Karl. If they were, the Mormon, Catholic & Evangelical groups couldn't have spread their Prop 8 lies the way they did. If they were, bellowing bigots like Phelps & Robertson could never get away with the poison & filth they spread daily. You're really stretching now and it's pathetic.
Time to admit you just think homosexuality is wrong and drop this ridiculous pretense of giving a shit about rights & freedom. It's transparent and I don't think anyone buys it for a second.
"Are you really unaware of the climate that exists against Christianity in the secular world?"
More extremist paranoia. No one's out to get you people, so stop crying persecution! It's pathetic and it makes a mockery of people who are actually suffering at the hands of others. What people – religious & otherwise – actually get upset over is when some religious people, like in the example of Prop 8, use their religion to spread lies about people and deny them their equality. I don't want to destroy religion & I'm sure most realistic non-religious people don't want to either. What we would like is to see religion stay in peoples' temples and homes and stay the hell out of politics and out of other peoples' private lives. But for the religious fear campaign I think Prop 8 would have been squashed. You can't expect the electorate to cast an informed vote if millions of them are being fed pure lies by their churches.
Karl writes—"Are you really unaware of the climate that exists against Christianity in the secular world?"
Consider that it is not so much against Christianity, Karl, as against the intrusion of religious dictate of any kind into areas where in the past such dictate has been linked to oppression. Stop feeling picked on.
A very high-profile example are cases in which Christian Scientists have argued for the right to let their kids die rather than allow medical procedures that violate their religion. The irony, of course, is that members of different christian sects (and others) just see them as kooks rather than seeing that the problem is religion itself. Prayer doesn't remove tumors.
When Pat Robertson blames Katrina on homosexuality, it is clear that this is an absurd allegation, and yet many sympathize with the inanity.
Back in the 70s, the state of Arkansas passed a law designating the value of Pi as 3. Why? Because the actual value is an "irrational" number which the supporters of the law took to be immoral. Pi is not in the Bible. (It did not stand for long, but the damn thing passed.)
Perhaps it is not inherent in religion at its most basic, but the way it is practiced often runs counter to reason. Televangelists bilk people out of millions using methods that if it were simple a product like any other would get FTC down on them for consumer fraud. Did you know that the average cost of a bible purchased from a televangelist runs about $160.00? And this most often out of the pockets of people who have a hard time putting food on the table.
Joyce Meyers makes the blatant claim that practicing religion "her way" will make you successful.
For the rest of us, this is simply a litany of abuse, and the only way it passes is because of its affiliation with religion. This naturally prompts antipathy. "God said it, I believe it, that's the end of it." Remember those bumper stickers? Might as well put a label saying "Idiot driving." The inference that because it's in the bible renders all debate pointless is directly contrary to everything this country is based on.
It is unfortunate for the millions of practicing christians who do not subscribe to such nonsense, because the only thing that ties it all together is the supernatural mumbo jumbo at the heart of religious doctrine.
It is interesting, in this litany of collapsed civilizations that people use to suggest that abandoning god is a precursor to a fall, that no one seems to recall that Rome didn't fall until it became christian. It took 170 years after Constantine, but there you have it. They changed their social order which had seen them rise to dominance in the world at the time and things just started coming apart.
Interesting site: http://signingforsomething.org/blog/
Here, many LDS members are signing petitions & resigning from the church in protest over its actions regarding Prop 8. I was interested to read this excerpt from the Mormon Bible too:
“We do not believe it just to mingle religious influence with civil government …” (Doctrine and Covenants 134:9).
Neither did Jefferson & co when they wrote the US Constitution, though many seem to have forgotten that.
Hardly an ambiguous doctrine is it? If the prophets can't even hold to their own doctrines then their authority is rendered invalid. I applaud those LDS members who are making this stand for justice and speaking against the authority of their leaders and their arrogant presumption that all LDS members would feel the same as they do and support Prop 8. These defectors are choosing to honour to the words of their scripture and the spirit of their faith (and their own personal ethics) over the actions of the LDS leadership. I can imagine this may come at great personal cost to some of them – deconversion/defection from such a group doesn't often happen without consequence.
Nice as this is, I won't hold my breath waiting for a similar exodus from the other morally & ethically repugnant groups that campaigned dishonestly in favour of Proposition 8. Whatever happened to that commandment about bearing false witness against your neighbour? It seems you really can pick & choose which parts of scripture to follow and which to ignore, even if you're a fundamentalist.
Sorry for letting this get under the Larry Bates thread.
Mark asked:
So, Karl—in your opinion, what counts as “advocacy” and what as simple “transfer of information”? Or do you think any mention of a gay lifestyle that isn’t outright condemnatory is glamorizing it?
When ex-gays are treated the same as ex-smokers I would say advocacy is headed more towards a proper definition of tolerance.
Hollywood has done enough to glamorize gay lifestyles and thought processes to qualify as information overload. Then smokers quit they are now hailed as model citizens, but when gays repent and quit they are hated for the rest of their lives. If tolerance were real those who have left the lifestyle and speak about it shouldn’t be attacked and hated by the gay community.
Those who seriously consider the impact gay marriage will have upon a society should not be labelled as homophobes or prejudiced. Not everyone considers gay rights the same as civil rights believe it or not.
Tolerance crosses the line into advocacy when someone who is an ex-gay is shouted down as being less than human and doesn’t know what they are talking about. People can and some have left their gay lifestyles but they are condemned by gays who will not consider it as anything but hate speech and prejudice.
Religion and values clarification apparently can “brainwash” someone into a decision that they really have no right to talk about. These people have as much right to speak up and be heard as anyone else in this country but they are the real brunt of hatred for what they represent.
How dare someone make a declaration by a change in their lifestyle that others can change as well.
When repentance results in a changed life that is real change people should take notice of. Instead these “preachers” are labelled as antagonistic and lacking social understanding of the life style they once knew all too well. Go figure?
Since when does Hank believe that anyone's scripture means a cotton pickin thing. If he or the LDS in Australia knew anything about the Morman Church the Elders have fully control over the doctrines and teachings of the the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.
I doubt it would happen on a wholesale scale, but the body of ruling Elders could add or delete any portion of teachings or doctrines they decide is contrary to the actual work of the LDS in the day and age they find themselves. This means that if the family values they hold to were threatened, as they are being threatened in America currently, they are authorized to teach and act in manners that maintain their core values.
How do you think Utah even became a state? The ruling Elder(s) had to agree to monagamy – something that was historically not advantageous to propagating offspring which was the easiest way to propagate the faith as well.
So, Karl….it really is a plumbing issue for you? I mean, let's face it, smoking is just categorically bad for you, but no one, I think, is arguing that sex as such is bad for anyone. What we're debating is how and with whom. They are not equivalences.
(Oh, and btw, when one of these "cured" gays stands up at a Fundie rally and confesses to be cured, he or she most certainly does get applause, so even that is situational.)
There are many things in the Old Testament—we've discussed many of them here—that were LAWS that we don't do anymore. I believe it's because we realized somewhere along the way that they really are bullshit rules. This suggests that the ones we keep resonate on some other level. Either they really make sense or they confirm a prejudice. This is one of them, in my opinion.
But you have to go down the list here of Things You Willingly Do With Your Lover and see where the line gets drawn. If we have a wide, wide range of what we consider acceptable erotic behavior, then you have to start looking at why they would be any different based exclusively on gender.
Now before you wonder why I don't go and do a male if I'm so open-minded, let me say that that would miss the point. I'm not attracted to males. There are also some sexual practices I don't care for (tried 'em, didn't like 'em). It's a matter of taste. (There are actually a few sexual practices that frankly repulse me, but the repulsion is not based on gender but on the practice itself. Homosexuality, in this case, is not so much a practice as it is a proclivity.)
How does this equate to kicking smoking, which has demonstrably no "sub group" for whom exceptions might apply? But you're talking about the public reaction to the cure, of course.
This sounds like Rick Santorum and his "I have no trouble with homosexuals—only with homosexual practices." Sounds like a distinction, but it's a distinction without a difference.
Regarding the LDS and polygamy….
Mormonism was not founded with polygamy in place. Polygamy came later after Joseph Smith's first wife caught him diddling another woman. Joe couldn't keep it in his pants, so *pouf* he had a revelation that polygamy was the thing to do.
His wife, however, wasn't buying it. She proposed that if it was good for men, it should be good for women—she should be allowed to take on more husbands if this was the case. Naturally, Joe said No. It caused a schism, with his wife taking a splinter group off with her that rejected a lot of these After The First Revelation additions Smith had added.
I find this interesting, because there was then a rather striking progressivism in the LDS that took the rest of the country decades to catch up to. When Brigham Young finally conceded to the United States and allowed Utah to enter the Union, the first thing he did was give women in the state the right to vote. As far as I know, they retained it, although they were refused permission to vote in national elections. The way polygamy was practiced then was very different from these breakaway groups today, which seem to think women are no more than sex machines and shouldn't even be educated.
Before anyone asks, the reason I know a bit about the Mormons is because my father and mother used to be Mormons. My father was a Mormon minister for a time.
Says Karl, masquerading as someone with a point: "Since when does Hank believe that anyone's scripture means a cotton pickin thing."
Come on, you really need this spelled out to you? It's not a matter of whether _I_ believe LDS scripture. However, it should mean SOMETHING to people who profess to believe in and live by it. If a group like the LDS whose scripture says "stay out of politics" gets directly involved in politics, they've gone against their own doctrines for purely Earthly political reasons. It seems Holy Mormon Doctrine did not provide sufficient guidance in this case and the humans involved followed their own consciences (such as they were).
"Not everyone considers gay rights the same as civil rights believe it or not."
Of course I believe it – that people don't think gay people are humans, deserving full human rights, or even proper citizens, deserving full civil rights is the entire problem. Not everyone considered womens' rights and negros' rights worth thinking about either, not so long ago. Those people and their ideas are currently languishing on history's scrapheap, even though many still cling to them. Your ideas and those that subscribe to them will follow.
By the way, equating cigarette smokers and gay people – epic failure. You are losing this argument and you will lose this battle in the so-called "culture war" that your people have declared on equality and decency.