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Homosexual rights downfall of churches?
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Teric
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PostPosted: Mon Aug 24, 2009 2:59 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I know there's a big divide there, Aslaug. I acknowledge that it is difficult or even impossible to "see eye-to-eye" on this issue, as you say.

I guess my point is, I hope that those of us on either side of that grand canyon will be able to walk the miles to the bridge and meet as friends. We cannot ignore that the divide exists, nor can we deny that it separates us. However, I am a personal participant in friendships that have succeeded despite the disagreement.

If we allow this issue to divide us, then we deprive ourselves of understanding, peace, and worst of all, friendship.

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Alexi
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PostPosted: Mon Aug 24, 2009 3:09 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Well spoken Teric.

I hope that it comes true.
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PrincessB
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PostPosted: Mon Aug 24, 2009 3:24 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

First, I think that in MOST cases, yes, sexual orientation is part of the mental make up that comes about during the body's first forming in the womb. HOWEVER, in teens now days it has become "sexy" and "cute" for a girl to be bisexual. So more and more teen girls are quick to jump on the "cool" bandwagon and say they like doing things with girls because it will ehm, "make men stand at attention". (There is always exceptions to every rule)

Sin can often easily be explained as something that one considers wrong. Look at laws: In my state it is legal to make a right turn on red after stop, in other states that is illegal. So while one person can see something as being a sin, another does not. I'm not going to go to another state and tell someone they are wrong for not turning right after they stopped at the light, just as someone shouldn't come here and tell me I was wrong for turning. (That of course leads into how I don't think that just one religion will be in heaven, as long as you are leading the best life you know how then you are fine. But that is another discussion)
So "Love the sinner, hate the sin" can be looked at as, hate that someone broke a law but still love that person. I had a good friend that did drugs, she knew I didn't like drugs and would prefer if she didn't do them, doesn't mean I stop enjoying her friendship. I disliked that she did something that I thought was not good but I still cared for her and enjoyed our friendship.

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South_Munjoy
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PostPosted: Mon Aug 24, 2009 3:43 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Mike Regan wrote:
The THOSE group is the one that is 'in your face' with their religion. The ones that are never without a bible on their person, a Christian symbol prominently displayed on them and consigning everyone they meet to Hell.
Yes even other Christians because they are not their kind of Christian.

Big problem is they are the most vocal and therefore best known so it looks like ALL Christians are that way.


What I think is also a bit problematic is that the 'other' Christians who do not hold the views of 'THOSE' Christians are oftentimes either too complacent or too forgiving to stand up to 'THOSE' and tell them where their cheap fundamentalism stands. --If the 'other' Christians did this more frequently I think it would be better for that religion as a whole.

Also incidentally, same goes for Muslims as well, though that's a whole new can of worms.
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Concolor
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PostPosted: Mon Aug 24, 2009 6:24 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

[quote="The Silver Coyote"]
<snip>
Personally, I feel that as long as any so called Christian church preaches a doctrine of hatred, segregationism, exclusionism, or any other dogma or policy that promotes an "us versus them" attitude, then that church has missed the point of Christ's teachings and isn't really a church at all. It's just a group of like-minded individuals who are trying to promote their own beliefs and political agendas as "normal."

<snip>[/quote]

YES! Thank you. Misinterpretation or misapplication of scripture seems to be the stock and trade of so many churches ... or entire denominations. It's a crying shame.

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Aslaug
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PostPosted: Mon Aug 24, 2009 11:46 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

That's not a bad explanation, PrincessB. But as I said, intellectually, I know what "sin" means. It's not that the term is unknown to me (that would be weird, since I've had people shout it at me in the street in the past). What I meant is that it is something I can't bend my head around. I disagree with people breaking the law too ... naturally ... but the entire concept of religious law or even religious strictures saying "you OUGHT to behave like this" is so different from what I believe in myself that it's very, very hard to come to terms with a concept like "sin" where divine rules state that you must behave in a certain way or you're acting contrary to the will of God.

I don't believe there is such a thing as "the will of God". Even if I play along and assume that God exists in the Christian sense, then I don't see that particular divine being as a micromanager, and I certainly don't see Him as someone bothered with the behavior of human beings. I know the Bible states that he is, but the Bible was written by human beings. One of the fundamentally GOOD things about Christianity in relation to for instance Islam or a number of other faiths out there, is precisely that Christianity works on the premise that its holy book is in fact not divinely given.

Let me explain what I mean. In Islam and other faiths working from the same principle, the divine scripture was dictated, verbatim, by some divine being. This goes for Hinduism as well to a certain extent. In such faiths, you can't debate the content of scripture, because that means to doubt the divine entity behind it. In Christianity, the Bible is acknowledged as having been written by men. There is an outstanding example I can make of this:

Of the four Gospels, for instance, only one of them can actually have been written by the person whose name it carries, namely the Gospel of Mark, which was written somewhere between 60 and 70 A.D. The gospel of John, the latest of them all, was written somewhere in the late 200's A.D., almost certainly by a disgruntled monk on some Greek island who ... like so many others at the time ... attributed his work to someone famous to get people to read it. All four Gospels tell essentially the same story, however, the gospel of Mark (easily the most beautiful of the four that are represented in the bible in my opinion) consistently refers to Christ as "the son of man" and shows him as a very, very human person in many ways. In Gethsemane, he almost begs God not to let him suffer what is going to happen. And on the cross at Calvary, the most amazing line in the entire bible ... "Eloi, Eloi, lama sabahktani?" ... "God, God, why hast thou abandoned me?". Even Christ can doubt, which to him makes him far more believable. In subsequent gospels, this story is presented in a very, very different way.

Furthermore, the legal process that goes before Christ being handed over to the Romans is also described in different ways in the four gospels.

This begs the question: which of the four gospels is telling the truth? They all tell the same story but in four different ways, so they can't all tell the truth. Only one of them is written at a time where the person writing it could have been an eyewitness which means that the gospel of Mark, when applying Critical Thinking, is lightyears ahead of the others in believability ...

But here's the trick ... that doesn't matter. Because the bible is not dictated by God. The contents are meant to be read but the real meaning is meant to be gleaned from between the lines as much as anything else, and consequently, AT MOST these writings are divinely inspired. They are not divine in themselves.

This, in my opinion, is one of Christianity's greatest strengths, because it has allows people to read the bible and make up their own mind. Of course that also means that absolute kooks can say "God says I'm meant to rule the world and it says so in Leviticus!" ... but one can't prevent nutjobs from saying such nonsense anyway. One can just choose not to listen.

This takes me back to the whole "will of God"-thing. How can we know what the Will of God is? Without God coming down from on high to personally point out "look, this is what I mean", there can ONLY be interpretation.

HUMAN enterpretation at that, and damned we're a fallible bunch. So even if we assume that the Bible was written by people inspired by God, that inspiration was still filtered through human fallibility, and yet their 1500 to 2000 year old morality still forms the basis for the concept of "sin" today?

We don't know what God would think of as sinful, and consequently ... the reason why I find "sin" so hard to grasp and bend my head around, is that the way I see it ... "sin" is nothing more than the extension of human prejudice.

"I don't like that. And God loves me, so that must mean what you're doing is wrong."

I'm not saying it's willful prejudice, because Christianity has been so infused with it for so many years that it's become an integral part of the whole belief-system ... so please don't think I'm sitting here saying "oh you're all a deliberately and willfully prejudiced bunch". I'm saying you've been brought up in a faith that has, for hundreds of years, perpetuated concepts of right and wrong that there is no basis or proof of whether God thinks is wrong ... not even in scripture, because God is not, even according to the most basic Christian theology, in the Bible.

God is in everything. That's what Omnipresent means.

That means God is in us. In the rocks. In the sky, the ground, the television set, the plastic bottle on my table. In my laundry-hamper and in the Mona Lisa at Louvre.

Omnipresent!

But that also means God is in those people who do things we don't like or agree with, and that means that if we say that is a "sin" we are accusing something divine of being against the will of itself.

We are tiny specks of dust in the universe. Teeny tiny little insignificancies. How can we even BEGIN to think we know what the will of an almighty being or several almighty beings is? How can we even BEGIN to claim that we know what is morally right or wrong in relation to a being that encompasses all there is?

Please still bear in mind that I'm not Christian myself, but if I still follow the line of reasoning that Christianity is "it", then God simply is, and then "sin" becomes a purely human invention ... because all things are part of God, and therefore cannot be contrary to Him.

These are the kinds of thoughts I have on theology on a regular basis. I'm just trying to share them to let you understand why I sometimes have such a difficult time understanding monotheists ...
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Syrius
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PostPosted: Tue Aug 25, 2009 1:05 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Aslaug wrote:

God is in everything. That's what Omnipresent means.

That means God is in us. In the rocks. In the sky, the ground, the television set, the plastic bottle on my table. In my laundry-hamper and in the Mona Lisa at Louvre.

Omnipresent!



Sorry, that's pan-theism.

Omnipresence means he's around everybody. For the sake of simplicity: Just like someone can see my face in a video chat, but I am not in the computer. (Canis Ex Machina, anyone? Razz )

Just had to point out the difference.

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Aslaug
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PostPosted: Tue Aug 25, 2009 4:07 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Fair enough, although I have heard that -exact- line of reasoning used by lutheran ministers around here, and it is very close to the thinking of the early enlightenment philosophers who tried to match the budding knowledge of nature and how it worked to God. Baruch Spinoza springs to mind ... "God and nature are one and the same".

So while it's true that is pantheism, it does not mean it isn't used by Christians and in many christian denominations. That the spirit is divine and that since it is within us all we are all, in a sense, part of God. May not be your branch of Christianity, of course Smile
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Howellfan
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PostPosted: Tue Aug 25, 2009 6:45 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Oooohhh boy...*takes a deep breath* well - here goes. *ulp* Anxious

Let me say first where I come from with my comments. I'm the son of two conservative christians - Southern Baptists. Right now, I'm...well, I don't actively hold with their ideology, but I'm really not sure what I truly believe, right now. No, it's not a happy place. Confused

I'll also say this:I'm afraid. For those with beliefs like my parents. If Evangelicals often seem defensive, well, there is a least some cause for it. Unless you hold or were raised on those beliefs, you simply cannot understand how hostile the world has begun to seem to them. Hardly a week, sometimes even a day goes by when I don't happen across some blog post, read some editorial, or see some talking head(such as Olberman)say something that feels precisely like a knee to the groin. It feels real enough that if I let myself fall into that frame of mind I could talk seriously of 'persecution' in ten or twenty years, and not feel in the least foolish or paranoid. Whether it's justifide or not, the point is that the feeling is very, very real. It feels like the public is hardening itself against people like my parents and those they associate themselves with. It feels like a picture of Evangelicals is taking root in the public mind that is of a type held before a society slowly begins doing 'very bad things' to the targets of such feelings. It _feels_ as if parishoners could be arrested(on grounds of public disturbance or some such)or fined for handing out pamphlets or witnessing on street corners, or pastors legally barred from declaring homosexual behavior sinful from the pulpit and agree or disagree, the public at large would tolerate such measures without much resistance - and perhaps even ridicule conservative spokesmen for their outrage. This board is in a unique position to answer; even when fears spur patent absurdity(Burnt Furs, anyone?), do they arise from nothing? Regan, I don't doubt many Christians are like the ones you describe, but how many in the U.S.(at least)have chosen to equate conservative, Evangelical views on Homosexuality or stem cell research as being 'those type' of Christians, the one _defining_ the other? How many take for granted that as issues such Christians oppose appear trivial or harmless to others, therefore only a fool or a hypocrite - or better yet, a hypocritical manipulator of fools - could oppose it with tenacity and passion? _I_ fear as a pastor's kid...do I fear for nothing? The most radical group of conservative Christians in the United States are...the Amish. Quite an example of ingrained, extremists ideology in practice we saw a couple of years ago following the Amish schoolhouse shooting, wasn't it? Wink

I must also say that if I eventually find my way back to the faith of my parents, part and parcel of it must be an acceptance of Homosexual behavior as 'sin'. I see no way around it; I would be accepting the authority of Scripture, and Scripture says nothing in it's defense, and a great deal against. The silence speaks volumes and I'd love to see those who would soften the 'opposing' passages explain how 'forsaking their natural' mates, so men slept with other men, etc. as described and condemned in one passage could mean anything except the act itself. Confused This isn't pride, ignorance or bigotry, only an acknowledgment that once one thing is accepted as 'truth', others must of necessity follow. If it seems an unfairly stark, dogmatic 'either or' choice to demand of myself, then consider the extreme peril of bowing to a God shaped in your own image, instead of one that demands conformity to theirs'. Now that's dangerous!

So having blabbered on for all of that. how DO I feel about that choice, where I am right now? First, I strongly feel that simply saying people are 'born' with one sexual orientation or the other is a gross simplification. A person may be born with a predilection for alcohol but never have a drink in their life; are they then an alcoholic? (I'm not equating sexual preference to an unhealthy addiction here, of course) I suspect most of us are actually on a spectrum, with a fungible setting(our actions, experiences and thoughts do shape us in deep and profound ways). I'd suspect that Kennedy's or, more recently, Obama's charisma, for example, includes a sexual aspect that spans gender or sexual orientation.

As for the matter itself...I am literally, and painfully torn. I feel my feelings ferociously split between the 'public' aspect and the 'personal'.

On the 'public' side...what's happened to 'brotherhood'? To our understanding of platonic love that transcends simple friendship? The sort of thing that veterans mean when they speak of their bond with fellow soldiers during war as almost 'romantic'? We've lost our concept of friendship that is deep and personal, so much that it misses the object of it's friendship when they're not together, yet remains 'only' friendship. We don't CONNECT with people, I think, the way we did even two or three generations ago, not that deeply; we've lost something. And I just can't shake the sense that in at least some measure the advance of 'Gay culture' has come at the expense of(or perhaps the road was smoothed by)that loss. *shrug*

But. On the personal side....

On the personal side, I picture a pastor and his wife walking through the front door one day - theyre good parents, this couple. Loving, supportive. Conservative Christians, but always ready with a clear, nuanced answer for their views and always willing to hear you out first. If their child told them he was gay, the'd respond with compassion and support. They would respond with precisely the same compassion and support if he were addicted to crack. These are GOOD people - but all the same they walk through the door one day, and find their teenage son swinging from a noose. They never knew he was gay. And some things even love can't smooth over.

So I suppose the only thing I can say for certain on the subject - and the thing to take away on this board - is that if we're sharing a table at a convention none of this'll matter a wit. Wink Smile

Any of that make sense? Confused
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Alexi
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PostPosted: Tue Aug 25, 2009 10:26 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Howellfan wrote:

On the 'public' side...what's happened to 'brotherhood'? To our understanding of platonic love that transcends simple friendship? The sort of thing that veterans mean when they speak of their bond with fellow soldiers during war as almost 'romantic'? We've lost our concept of friendship that is deep and personal, so much that it misses the object of it's friendship when they're not together, yet remains 'only' friendship. We don't CONNECT with people, I think, the way we did even two or three generations ago, not that deeply; we've lost something. And I just can't shake the sense that in at least some measure the advance of 'Gay culture' has come at the expense of(or perhaps the road was smoothed by)that loss. *shrug*


I sadly suspect that you are right. But it isn't totally dead. Long before i joined the military, I made a friend. He is still my best friend in all of the world. I love him. I couldn't love the man more if he were my own flesh and blood brother. I would happily die to protect him and readily kill to save him. I wouldn't hesitate in either case.
It doesn't mean I am romantically or physically attracted to him. And remember from an earlier post, my preferences.

Maybe it's because i grew up in an older generation than my own. I don't know.
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Aslaug
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PostPosted: Tue Aug 25, 2009 11:46 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Howellfan wrote:
If it seems an unfairly stark, dogmatic 'either or' choice to demand of myself, then consider the extreme peril of bowing to a God shaped in your own image, instead of one that demands conformity to theirs'. Now that's dangerous!


Sorry to bust a bubble here but ... no it isn't.

My creed of faith (which we had to write to become an acknowledged faith in this country, though none of us actually use it for much except a good giggle) specifically says:

"None know the face of the Gods.
We create an image likened to ourselves."

I bow to Gods shaped in my image because I don't know what shape or form they truly take. I may turn around and the old man in the seat behind me on the bus may be one of them. Or the firefighter on TV, or the duck on the pond. The sagas and edda teaches me that they take a multitude of forms at many different times, so when I imagine my Gods I imagine them as something I can relate to because that makes things easier, but I don't really think that's how a divine being truly looks.

And no one is going to convince me that a single Christian anywhere in the world truly thinks he knows what his or her God looks like either because while the "old man with the white beard on the cloud" may be a general impression there are THOUSANDS ... even MILLIONS of variations on that very general description. So even Christians, when they imagine their God, imagine a being specific to them alone.

That said ... I truly hope you will not return to a set of beliefs like those of your parents. Because if you think they feel persecuted, then let me let you in on a little secret:

We were persecuted by people with that kind of faith for -centuries-.

People were put in jail, humiliated, put out of homes and jobs and even killed for it, simply because they were homosexuals in a world dominated by rigid faith.

Guess what? It still happens. In Saudi Arabia. In Iraq. In Iran.

Just to name a few places.

It doesn't matter if those are Islamic countries because the same kind of thing happened in Christian areas not even all that long ago. You don't have to go back more than what ... forty-odd years to find that homosexuality was illegal and punishable by long prison sentences. A good example of how absurd that could get comes from England, where Alan Turing ... the man most directly responsible for breaking the German codes during the second world war, and by extension a man responsible for saving countless thousands of lives, both military and civilians, was found guilty of "gross indecency" in 1952, because of a homosexual relationship. The law under which he was accused and convicted stemmed from 1885, and was the same law that was used to convict Oscar Wilde. But in Turing's case, the "punishment" was treatment with estrogen injections to "control his libido".

Two years later, Turing was dead from suicide. He died a broken man.

His story is just one of tens of thousands from all over the world. People were convicted under laws set down by people finding justification for their hate in the bible.

Pardon me if I don't feel particularly sorry if they feel a bit of heat nowadays, when the majority of the world around them no longer wish to live according to morals that dictate the mistreatment of people simply for falling in love.

I would, however, never support any kind of witch-hunt against them. But I maintain the right to hope that their morals will wither and die out. And I maintain that political correctness is wasted on people who would deny me simple basic rights based on a holy book no more proven as fact than any other holy book out there. I see no reason to be polite, courteous or "correct" towards such people and as a general rule ... I'm not.
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Sigurd Volsung
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PostPosted: Wed Aug 26, 2009 2:34 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

There is something I feel that I should and must point out at this point in the conversation. In the USA (I'm talking about the US simply because of the churches that have been affected by this) we have "Freedom" of religion (though many people seem to believe that it only counts if you're talking sects of Christianity). Any country that has no official religion should also have the reverse of being free FROM religion. We have many laws that are only based on religion, such as blue laws which prohibit the sale of alcohol on Sundays. Another is that the arguments against gay marriage are entirely based on religion, we have no official religion so we must be free from those teachings. We do not need religion to tell us that theft, murder, and a whole host of other things are bad, so religion has no part in those laws. Religious organizations should not have given money for anti-gay marriage organizations, neither should they have preached from the pulpit. If a church does not condon gay marriage than they should simply tell the couple to go somewhere else, but they should not forcibly block churches that would be more than happy to preform such services.

Here's another take on the matter. In many countries in order to have a legally binding marriage you must get a civil union through the government, the church has no right to give you one. There has been talk in the US that we could give homosexuals the same rights as straight couples by giving them civil unions, well wasn't it in Brown vs the Board of Education that stated separate is not equal. If we have civil unions for homosexuals then we should make heterosexuals get the same license and then let the individual churches make the call on whether or not they are going to let two people get married.

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Aslaug
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PostPosted: Wed Aug 26, 2009 3:26 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Indeed Sigurd.

But you have to understand something here ...

*turns on scathing sarcasm-mode*

Seperate is not equal in matters of RACE. Brown vs. Board of Education stated that. But homosexuals, of course, should not have the same rights as others because while God created man in a variety of skin-colourations, he couldn't possibly have created something as vile and unclean as sodomy.

*turns off sarcasm*

So seperate is too much even for the religious fringes, let alone equal. However, I agree with you. I personally feel that all weddings should be done as it is in, I believe, Italy, where you start by going down to your local town hall where you get a piece of paper stating you are now a married couple and then, should you WISH to involve religious ceremony in the whole affair, you go to your local church, mosque, temple, synagogue or stone circle to get blessed under the name of whatever you choose to call your god or gods.

All religion must be taken out of all legislation and ALL public life in my opinion. Everywhere in the world.

"One nation, undivided" would be better than "one nation, under God" because frankly ... that God is already one of many sources of division. "In God we trust" off the coinage. Swearing on the bible or other holy book in court or to take public office should be abolished since it's practically a license to lie for an atheist (not thereby saying that Atheists WOULD, but why would they be bound by an oath to a God they don't believe in? Make an oath that binds everyone regardless of religious beliefs please) and so on.

Here in Denmark we ought to abolish the state church and let it go off on its own. We ought to remove the teaching of Christianity from classrooms as well and instead introduce tuition in religion and ethics, including the ethics of non-believers.

Religion has ABSOLUTELY no place in public life. None whatsoever. It is and should always remain a private matter what people pray to, if anything. It is no one else's business and does not make a person better or worse either way.
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PostPosted: Wed Aug 26, 2009 3:40 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Ding... I think we have 2 winners with solid valid points. I do agree completely with Sig and Asluag but for right now, we the younger generation that want change in the USA are taking large stride steeps against the worn fundamentalist of the elder politicians whom like keeping everything status quoe for the time being (their is my 2 cents, but personally I am happy just waiting for old politics die out... I mean no offense to any fur who disagree).
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Howellfan
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PostPosted: Wed Aug 26, 2009 7:58 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Oh Aslaug - don't be so litteral! Razz

Obviously, no Christian would make claims on what God looks like(and the old man with a beard has about as much to do with the God of the bible as little winged infants do with angels!) *LOL* Clearly what I meant was a someone claiming service and allegiance to a 'God' tailor-made to suit their desires and wishes. That way lies hypocrisy covered in bombast. That way lies, 'the historical dialectic'(often, at least), 'God wants you to be rich!(so send us money)', and a thousand other varants of manipulation and deceit cloaked in self-styled righteousness. If that makes my point any clearer.... Confused

*Pulls up short at Sigurd's post. Just looks at it for a few moments.*

GodsDA**IT Sig, 180 degrees bass f'in' ackwards!!!

*Takes a breath*

Apologies, friend. Smile But raised in an evangelical household, I'm kinda staring down the other end of this(at least vicariously). And from here it looks far less pretty than it probably does to you.

Sigurd, if the goal is to separate religion from public life and policy to the point where one is never affected or impinged by consequences of beliefs not shared by them - Sig, you can't do that. I don't mean 'shouldn't' or 'ought not'; I mean that it's impossible, and nothing short of tyrrany can accomplish that end.(And tyranny almost invariably simply replaces 'many beliefs' with one). So: you get 'under god' removed from the pledge and 'in god we trust' from our currency. Very well. Then what? Strike down laws banning the sale of liquor on the Sundays, perhaps. But not laws mandating operating hours for Bars? why? That one was motivated by practical concern, the other by religious? Our assessment of the motive behind it's passing as the key criteria for declaring it illegal? *Leans in closer* Are you sure that's safe? Are you quite certain that there's no danger here?

Or perhaps laws forbidding stores from opening one day a week? *shrug* Put it to a public vote then. Or did you have a more judicial tack in mind? After all, however many in the community might happen to agree with the principle, the rights of the shop owners who wish to open seven days a week would invariably outweigh the rights of employees who feel they should rest on that day...wouldn't they?

Of course, people vote based on religious motives, votes that affect the rest of us. We can't help that - but y'know...maybe we could make it illegal for religious groups to hold politically focussed meetings. Or to lobby on political issues important to them. That would go a long way toward accomplishing our goal wouldn't it? Yeah....

No? Too much like a witchhunt? But then HOW are we supposed separate religion from policy and public life? After all, many of these religious folk care about their country. And they see that their good book strongly suggests that a country that opens itself to homosexuality is acting self-destructively. So what if those looking from the outside see them imposing the words of one book among many, no more proven true than any of the others? THEY know it's true. They know, and will act toward their country and their fellow man in accordance with that truth. They won't quietly stand silent while their country(in their thinking) marches headlong toward catastrophe. It's unfair to expect them to. Like it or not, when persons of conviction and character hold to opposing principles(and it is of such believers that I speak), right sometimes bends back against itself.

And a pastor of a conservative church, appointed by them to teach and expound on the 'word of God', spokesman and representative of the doctrine of that church body and that denomination, with a responsibility and(if he is at all a christian who 'gets it')accountability before almighty God to proclaim the truth, and boldly, does not have the moral right to get up on the podium before his own congregation, in their own church building, and propound that their own holy book speaks clearly against a practice that the world around them is putting on ever-increasing pressure to accept?(????) Institutions of faith don't have the moral right to hold doctrinal creeds, to oppose teaching radically opposed to those creeds WITHIN THEIR SELFSAME ORGANIZATION, and to tell churches within the body to either reflect those articles of faith or remove themselves from their association?(Or do I mistake your refference here?) C'mon Sigurd; think about it! Only in the context of religion and sexuality would these claims sound reasonable! Pastors and churches do have a right to do these things, and legislation or measures to restrict them from doing so(Not that you proposed any such thing)would be persecution. Period. And that's what people like my parents fear may be on it's way - a day when those of their beliefs will be legally mandated to stay silent about things on which they can not, and they then must choose between hypocrisy and legal repercussions.

I'm sorry Sig. I'm SORRY - I think I made the point as vividly as possible in my earlier post that I understand that in effect if not intent even the most sincere and lovingly meant rejection of homosexual behavior can end up anything but loving. I'm sorry - but that's how it figures to me; they have the right to, legally and morally.

Quote:
We do not need religion to tell us that theft, murder, and a whole host of other things are bad, so religion has no part in those laws


Ah! But...why are they wrong? Why ought I not rob from my brother? Or kill? Or betray for my own advantage? Do you simply accept that they're 'just wrong', always, as Axioms or articles of - dare I say it - faith(albeit of a very universal sort)? Or are they conditionals, rape, murder or willful betrayal in theory permissable under the right circumstance? (Personally, I hold with the first one.) Confused In any case, in point of practice most people treat their morals and principles as articles of faith whatever their creed, so there really is no escaping it in society. Razz And for many people of faith, their morals and their faith are welded together, insepperable. A good Evangelical isn't good despite his 'narrow-minded' worldview, but because of it. The love that would send them to Sudan, or Zimbabwe, or whatever war-torn hellhole you can name that nobody else's crazy enough to risk going to, or help them find their way to forgiveness for the killer of their child(again, remember the Amish schoolhouse shooting a few years ago) is exactly the same love which would compel them to tell a homosexual they are living a sinful lifestyle. It's all of the same well; they know what they are, and where they stand with God, how they ought to conduct themselves toward their fellow man in not only word and deed but thought and heart, and they know from where the obligation comes. And they know that obligation includes feeding the hungry, protection the weak, helping the needy, spreading the good news to all who will hear and speaking the truth boldy, but also in love.

Look;religion aside, it's a general truth that living in an open, pluralist society means being affected by the beliefs of others. If someone believes the world to be flat, they have every legal and moral right to promote that belief, and to join with others to form organizations to attempt to pursuade others that it is so. It's patent foolishness, and were they at all successful the consequences would likely be significant and significantly negative, and very possibly affect thee and me, but nonetheless the right, legal and moral, remains. My view of well-functioning democracy isn't a bunch of people sitting around a table making polite conversation. It's more a tense dialog, the participants calmly leveling the gravest insults and accusations at their opponents, but voices are never raised, nobody leaves the table and while nobody perhaps goes home fully satisfied, they find a way to agree on a path forward. Organizations as much as people, and religious ones as much as any other, have the 'right to be wrong';publicly, persistently, passionately wrong, if such be the case.

You can't just drew this little box with a thick border and a little circle inside labeled 'public sphere' and in the center of the circle write 'as ye harm none, do as thou wilt' then proclaim "None else may enter!" For better and/or worse, democracy doesn't work that way.


Wow....I sure say a mouthfull when I post.... Shocked [/i][/quote]
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