response 183 of 293:

Dec 15 16:56 UTC 2003

Re resp:181:
> I suppose the problem is that most christians do "not" want to deal
> with homosexuality.  They don't want anythign to do with it.
> they don't want to talk about it, they do not want to hear about it.

Funny, they sure spend an awful lot of time talking about it.  If they
don't want to deal with it, why do they spend so much time trying to
control homosexuals' behaviour? 

> Most christians also view marriage as a sacrament.  it is something
> the church puts a blessing on.  IT IS A RELIGIOUS CEREMONY.

But it's also a secular contract.  That's part of the problem here. 
There are really two different concepts, which are being linked
artificially.  Part of this is historic, and part of it is political. 
By linking secular marriage and religious marriage, it becomes much more
acceptable to try to deny marriage to homosexuals -- you're "defending
the purity of religion" instead of just discriminating against people
whose choice of mate you don't like.

> And down that slippery slope in the far, far future, is it possible
> that the law will say that a church cannot discriminate, and by doing
> so, will force the church to either change its beliefs, or penalize
> it? 

No, this is why we have seperation of church and state.  However, this
is a good reason for Christians to think long and hard about whether
they want to support things like "faith based initiatives."  If you
erase part of the boundary between church and state by letting
government money start funding religious activities, you may eventually
find there are strings attached and that the parts of that boundary that
prevent the government from dictating what religious groups can and
cannot do are getting hazy as well.

Re resp:182: Good question.  Not even all Christian denominations agree
about this.  I'm curious which Christian denominations bru thinks got it
right, and which denominations he thinks are going to Hell.

response 185 of 293:

Dec 15 17:56 UTC 2003

(This is just way too good to pass up.)

Great Moments in Sex Education by the Massachusetts Supreme Court

An alert (Opinionjournal.com) reader calls our attention to a footnote 
No. 23 in Goodridge v. Department of Public Health, last month's 
Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court decision declaring the traditional 
definition of marriage unconstitutional:

     It is hardly surprising that civil marriage developed
     historically as a means to regulate heterosexual conduct
     and to promote child rearing, because until very recently
     unassisted heterosexual relations were the only means short
     of adoption by which children could come into the world.

response 187 of 293:

Dec 15 18:18 UTC 2003

Mr. tweenex-
Go back and read it again.
klg

response 189 of 293:

Dec 15 18:23 UTC 2003

Is English your second language?

response 191 of 293:

Dec 15 19:33 UTC 2003

Way back there, bru said this:

>and down the slippery slope we go...
>
>We discriminate against immoral and illegal activities all the time.
>
>Thats why theft, murder, prostitution, drug use, rape, adn 
>child molestation are all illegal.  WE discriminate against 
>them.  Lets just make them all legal.

I really think that this fundamental misunderstanding is at the root of
much of the disagreement on this issue.  Bru assumes that we outlaw
murder and so forth because they are immoral.  IMO, this is completely
wrong.  We outlaw murder and child molestation and such because they
violate the human rights of the victim.  Protecting human rights is
pretty much the fundamental purpose of government.  

So the question becomes, whose human rights are violated by allowing gay
marriages to be recognized by law?  I think that's the real question 
that opponents of gay marriage need to answer before their arguments can
be taken seriously.  

response 193 of 293:

Dec 15 19:57 UTC 2003

That's it exactly

response 195 of 293:

Dec 15 20:26 UTC 2003

..and there's the wanna-be lesbian who mysteriously keeps getting knocked up.

response 197 of 293:

Dec 16 00:01 UTC 2003

(As I said in #165.)

Some homosexual couples reproduce/adopt even after coming out.

As for Jewish beliefs (in a nut-shell), there is no hell. There's not
much said even about an afterlife. When the Messiah comes, the dead
shall rise and we'll all figure it out.  There is a concept called
Sheol, more akin to Hades, where all the dead go. But it's not very
well defined.  Judaism is more concerned with this life.

Jews do not "recruit" (you know, unlike homosexuals (: ) but do
accept converts to the faith. (Moses himself married a non-Jew, as
did King David, Solomon and others). Converts are considered full Jews
in every sense. In fact, the line of David came from Ruth, a convert.

response 199 of 293:

Dec 16 00:32 UTC 2003

I think whether or not they do is pretty irrelevent to the argument.

response 201 of 293:

Dec 16 00:56 UTC 2003

Huh.  I think Middle Eastern monotheism and the general Judao-Christian 
moral principles which accompanied it, taken as a whole, surpass by far 
any other contribution to civilization which came out of that region.  
Or for that matter, any region.  I think it's the basis for modern 
nationalism instead of tribalism and industry replacing agriculture, 
for starters among things that I value in life.

response 203 of 293:

Dec 16 01:59 UTC 2003

Ahhh...but it is processed food!

response 205 of 293:

Dec 16 03:51 UTC 2003

There is a professional farmer that sends me e-mail here.....

response 207 of 293:

Dec 16 09:34 UTC 2003

Wow, lots of meat here.

I agree with jmsaul (#200) on almost every point except the last one.
As jep says (#201), the Middle-East provided us with cities, and at a
time when their organized religion(s) w(ere) not monotheistic Islam,
but polytheistic and usually variant from city to city.

Also, during the Dark Ages and Early Mediaeval period when the whole
of Western Europe was still persecuting witches and had descended into
feudal chaos, Muslims and Jews were making adfvances in medical and
the other sciences which seemed like witchcraft to the nearly
barbarian Christians; especially in the case of the Muslims, they are
also often our only surviving source for Greek scientific texts, which
they often studied and improved upon (lest we forget, the Greeks knew
that the Earth was round. It's the only possibly explanation for the
fact that you see the sails of a ship first when it comes over the
horizon.) The Turks, who at one time ruled almost the whole of the
Muslim world, and Palestine, allowed Jews to practice freely on
payment of a tax. I don't know about you, but I'd rather be taxed for
being X than be gassed for it (although, of course, it's not right or
fair to do either; it's the lesser of two weevils.).

Re: #206: I doubt that the internecine strife between Jews, Muslims
and Christians, or persecution by any of these religions against
"infidels", can be seen as the only, the first, or the last instances
of religious persecution. The recent rioting in Gujarat, an Indian
state where the majority religion is Hindu, is one example; further
examples could be provided by the Viking raids on Northern Europe,
taking no account of the fact that the richest pickings, which they
found in churches, were also religious relics, etc.

Furthermore, in respect of Islam, opne of its aims was to *prevent*
tribal warfare between different groups of Arabs, which, afaik, it
succeeded in for a large part of its history - and even now, Arabs
still see themselves as part of the same "nation"; many of the states
that exist now did not exist before the British Empire carved them out
of its Ottoman possessions. If you want other examples of "how the
mighty have fallen", just look at Russia after Catherine the Great,
moddern Italy, modern China, or modern Britain :-(.