First: I'm going to agree to disagree on the existence of an afterlife because if I don't this conversation will just go in circles.
Are you talking to me? I don't believe in an afterlife. We're not disagreeing and I'm not seeing where we even dosey-doed around the circle once.
However the fact still remains that two gay people having sex and getting married hurts no one. Stating your disapproval is fine. Telling them your heartfelt belief that they are in danger of hell is also fine. But when they tell you that they appreciate your concern but don't share your beliefs that is where the conversation should end.
It's always about homosexuals. Damn, this mindvirus is pervasive. For a group which constitutes only 1-2% of humanity, their drama consumes 80% of the public dialog.
Here we go again. Yes, homosexual marriage has effects which permeate society outside of the participants of the marriage. It's a losing argument to declare that no effects exist. The action is on whether the effects are harmful enough to warrant action. The debate should be focused on thresholds or even on principles. To base it on sociological influence opens your side up to having to recant and repudiate when it is shown that effect is created for you've assured everyone that no effects exist.
Your position is refreshing in one respect. You declare that it is actually fine for people to act on their concern and try to save homosexuals from hellfire. Most non-religious and most liberals and even some conservatives don't go that far, likely because this introduces awkwardness into the situation and modern life seems to be focused on reducing awkwardness and never appearing as judgmental. This change in mores is a victory for liberal values.
And you made it seem in your closing statement that giving "well-intentioned advice" was all Christians were doing to gays.
Societies pass all sorts of laws. If I'm an employer I can't forthrightly declare "I will never hire blacks or women." That's a direct infringement on my right to free association. I would be forced to work alongside blacks and women when my preference is to avoid those associations. Society discriminates against high income earners by charging them a higher rate of income tax, what we know as progressive taxation. This sure isn't equal treatment.
Christians pass laws against gays, radical groups like the Westborough church protest funerals and make vulgar signs and some people go so far as to resort to violence. If "well-intentioned" advice was all Christians were handing out, you and I wouldn't be having this conversation.
Christians don't pass laws, that's the job of legislators. Aversion to homosexuality is not a Christian invention, it predates Christianity. It likely even predates recorded history. The fact is that homosexuality is a dangerous practice from a health standpoint. In eras which predate modern medicine, there were no pharmaceutical remedies for the consequences which arise from engaging in homosexual sex. This would make homosexuals walking disease factories. Aversion to homosexuality would give significant health benefits to people.
As for Westboro, why is that up to Christians to defend? Westboro was run by Fred Phelps, a mover and shaker in the Democratic Party, and a renowned civil rights leader, so why aren't Democrats and the black community hung with that albatross?
As for violence, again why is it the community which is held responsible for the actions of the individuals? Since when is it just to punish the son for the crimes of the father? This community punishment logic is what liberals use all the time with respect to gun violence. One criminal uses a gun to kill someone and all gun owners are deemed responsible.
These seem like incoherent arguments to me, at this stage at least. If you want to advance them you'd probably do well to flesh them out some more.
Second: No I obviously don't think bestiality is acceptable. I don't condone animal cruelty of any sort.
By chance are you a vegetarian?
But I do disagree with your assertion that it defames what it means to be human by lowering us to the level of animals because WE ARE animals. We just evolved differently than other animals. We are capable of speech, complex thought, and self awareness whereas not all living things are. That does not make us a whole different kind of being though. We are still mammals and part of the animal kingdom.
So if I understand your position bestiality would be peachy keen if we could just eliminate the cruelty to animals aspects, like say screwing DEAD goats. They're dead, so what does it matter. Am I on the right track?
Third: I have never heard of a case of incest between two immediate family members (Ie: Mother and son, father and daughter, brother and sister,) that started when both individuals were adults.
You realize that you're dodging the issue by trying to define it away. Secondly, you're employing the gambit of "I've never heard of that so therefore it can't exist."
Let me help you out:
''I BELIEVE severe punishment is required in this case," the judge said at Allen and Pat's sentencing in November 1997. ''I think they have to be separated. It's the only way to prevent them from having intercourse in the future."
Allen and Pat were lovers, but a Wisconsin statute enacted in 1849 made their sexual relationship a felony. The law was sometimes used to nail predators who had molested children, but using it to prosecute consenting adults -- Allen was 45; Pat, 30 -- was virtually unheard of. That didn't deter Milwaukee County Judge David Hansher. Nor did the fact that the couple didn't understand why their relationship should be a crime. Allen and Pat didn't ''have to be bright," the judge growled, to know that having sex with each other was wrong.
He threw the book at them: eight years for Allen, five for Pat, served in separate maximum-security prisons, 25 miles apart.
If this had happened to a gay couple, the case would have become a cause celebre. Hard time as punishment for a private, consensual, adult relationship? Activists would have been outraged. Editorial pages would have thundered.
But Allen and Patricia Muth are not gay. They were convicted of incest. Although they didn't meet until Patricia was 18 -- she had been raised from infancy in foster care -- they were brother and sister, children of the same biological parents. They were also strongly attracted to each other, emotionally and physically. And so, disregarding the taboo against incest, they became a couple and had four children.
When Wisconsin officials learned of the Muths' relationship, they moved to strip them of their parental rights. The state's position, upheld in court, was that their ''fundamentally disordered" lifestyle made them unfit for parenthood by definition. Allen and Patricia's children were taken from them. Then they were prosecuted for incest and sent to prison.
I wrote about the Muths' case shortly after their conviction, asking why social liberals were not up in arms over it. Where were the people who always insist that the government should stay out of people's bedrooms? That what goes on between consenting adults is nobody's business but their own? That a family is defined by love, not conventional morality? Patricia and Allen Muth were one ''nontraditional" family it seemed no one cared to defend.
But then came Lawrence v. Texas, the Supreme Court's decision in 2003 that the Constitution protects the freedom of Americans to engage in ''the most private human conduct, sexual behavior," when it is part of a willing relationship between adults.
''The petitioners are entitled to respect for their private lives," Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in striking down the Texas law under which John Lawrence and Tyron Garner had been convicted of homosexual sodomy. ''The state cannot demean their existence or control their destiny by making their private sexual conduct a crime. Their right to liberty under the Due Process Clause gives them the full right to engage in their conduct without intervention of the government."
Armed with Lawrence's sweeping language, Allen Muth appealed his conviction.
The taboo against incest may be ancient, and most Americans may sincerely regard it as immoral or repugnant. But Lawrence was clear: ''The issue is whether the majority may use the power of the State to enforce these views on the whole society through operation of the criminal law." If the Supreme Court meant what it said, Muth argued, his and his sister's convictions for incest were every bit as unconstitutional as the Texas men's convictions for sodomy.
No, I would not condemn that father and daughter as long as they didn't produce children because such children would almost always be deformed.
This is illustrative. It establishes a hierarchy of principles. At the top of the heap is consent. So long as adult consent is present, everything is permissible. Fathers screwing their daughters. No problem.
Those who oppose you have a different hierarchy of principles. They see that there is a lot of harm arising from fathers screwing their daughters and no matter whether that is a consensual act they're prepared to bring the hammer down on father and daughter in order to police the moral underpinnings of society. They see the harm that ripples outwards from individual couples to other families. These types of people are not afraid to appear judgmental, for they're serving a higher goal than that of projecting an image of self-enlightenment to their peers.
Third: Yes you do need to spell out all the negative consequences to society because where I'm from if you make a claim, you back it up.
Let's start with fathers grooming their daughters for a future relationship. Waiting until she is of legal age to strike.
Next, even absent grooming, we're still dealing with the dynamic of family break-up but now with the added complication of the mother competing with her daughter to be the mate of the father. When families break-up due to divorce, the children are always bystanders - the father is never choosing the daughter as the other woman.
Next, we get the liberal effort to normalize this behavior. Once we can't criticize and ostracize in order to police moral boundaries, then the boundaries become meaningless. Look at what happened after liberals got their hooks into single motherhood. The shaming and ostracism these women endured for having children out of wedlock worked to control behavior in young women, and men too. This resulted in a fairly low rate of bastard children. But this was so mean said the liberals. Now came the sympathy brigade offering up all sorts of goodies. Now we tolerated out of wedlock birth. It now became declasse to criticize and ostracize and lo and behold, the bastardization rate began to increase. Presently 73% of all black children born in America are born to single-mothers. The consequences of this are staggering, for the mothers and for the children. Other racial groups are seeing increases too. This is destablizing to society,.
Four: Yes the old system of bigotry and violence worked so well. I sure do miss the days when people with non Christian beliefs knew their place.
You say tomatoe, I say tomato, you say bigotry, I say moral standards. Policing moral standards is never pleasant work. Liberals like to project a self-image of being pleasant and tolerant and the best way to do this is to not engage in policing moral standards. Without moral standards, all bets are off and human wreckage follows, ie, black bastard rate.
"Religion is the opiate of the masses."
