EB:

Ask DB. He's the one who brought it up. Seeing how you've apparently read the discussion you should know where I stand on this matter.

I have a pretty good idea where you stand.

Then you should understand how "gay marriage" is not a "right". Or at minimum it's not a "fundamental right". If the state grants it, the state can take it away.

Do black people not have the "right" to vote, then, since the government granted them this right with the 15th Ammendment? Do people not have the "right" to live since the government, in certain circumstances, can take that "right" away?

I'm a human being and am therefore capable of abstract thought and can come to conclusions when presented with inconsistencies.

Are you ever wrong?

You seem to imply it when you accused me of being contradicting.

That's not what I meant. You are welcome to disagree. That doesn't mean you aren't contradicting yourself, though.

I don't really consider cutting-and-pasting what I "listen" to, sound advice or "fun" in any way.

Your loss. Allowing people their own thoughts is really a lot easier.

And you miss the point in how being overly-sensitive is not always appropriate.

No, I get the point. I just don't think we need to approach each situation in life as if the people we disagree with are Nazis out to kill us. I think it's possible for people to disagree and still treat each other with respect. You seem to think differently.

Again, it's that over-sensitive tendency, I don't really share. Some things are so blatantly ridiculous, they can only deserve to be mocked.

I understand that you believe this, but that doesn't answer the question. What do you hope to gain from mocking people?  What is your hope for the people you mock?

Interesting Sas. seems eager to jump on me for "not listening", when you seem to do the same in your assertion I somehow take homosexuality as  "more important" than any other sin.

Please see previous comments re: me not being your monkey. If you'd like my opinion, though, all you have to do is ask.

-Joe

I'm yet to see a single argument against same-sex marriage that is either logical or free of prejudice. Feel free to provide the first.

An uptick in the number of bad, wedding-related reality shows on TLC?

...welcome to the forum, btw!

-Joe

Whatever it takes to get less crappy shows on TLC.

And you're welcome!

EB,

With such a blatantly contradicting belief to what the Bible clearly and unambiguously says on the matter, it makes for room to doubt the legitimacy of claiming to be an 'adherent'.

Yet you have plenty of room to quibble or get around what the bible "clearly and unambiguously says" whenever it doesn't suit you.  You say homosexuality is sinful and wrong based on isolated passages in Leviticus, Paul and Revelations, and yet still somehow manage to post messages here on Sundays from time to time, despite the mysteriously less significant Exodus 16:23, 20:8-11, 31:12-17, 35:2-3, Deuteronomy 5:12-15, Leviticus 23:1-2, Numbers 15:32-35, etc etc.  Now i'm guessing that you might say that Matthew 12:1-14 negates those verses (assuming that you count your activities here as "doing good"), but some might also say that Matthew 19:8-12 negates all of the preceding anti-gay unpleasantness.  The point is, you are the arbiter of what you take from the Bible, partly because there is so much of it, and partly because there are contradicting messages.  For you to assert that the things which fit your needs and prejudices are "clear and unambiguous" and the things which do not are "isolated cultural rules", with no apparent metric for distinguishing between them apart from your personal say-so, you expose yourself as a man standing at a magnificent buffet table and demanding the right to decide what everyone else takes away from it, and then giving them the least appetising food, saying it was the only thing on offer.

Your criticism seems to miss the difference between specific conduct and universal principles.

And how do you distinguish between them?  What is the test?  There must be one surely - one might think that the ten commandments and the words of Jesus were fairly key, despite the fact that several of the things expressly forbidden on the alleged stone tablets are legal and freely practiced in both our countries, without you raising any discernable protest, and homosexuality is not mentioned in either.  Please enlighten me about how to tell the difference between specific conduct and universal principles.  i really want to know.

And Paul and John of Revelations were just as much canonical figures of authority as John the Baptist. Dancing a little, are we?

Again, given the multitude of 1st and 2nd Century Christian writings, i assume you have some extremely robust test to differentiate between personal opinions which can be discarded as worthless and personal opinions which we have to take very very seriously.  And i really hope that your test isn't whether or not a bunch of old churchmen thought them up to scratch 1700 years ago.

When the government is saying it's legal to steal, or one can only have a job if they curse God's name, THEN you'll see me take issue with them as vocally as I do with homosexuality.

  Where outside of your imagination can people only get a job if they are homosexual?  And the government not only says that it is legal, but actively protects the right of people to work on the sabbath, curse God's name, make graven images, worship other gods, commit adultery, etc etc etc.  So you're not making a great argument for your lack of hypocrisy there.

I'm not the one labeling nations based on "secular", "atheistic", "communistic", etc. I said 'nations that turn away from God (though these prominent adjectives have a tendency to do that more often than not)'.

Ok, so how does that support your theory that such nations suffer terrible consequences as God's punishment?  If we limit it to communist regimes then maybe you might have a case, but the most secular Western societies tend to have a higher quality of life than the most deeply religious ones.

I'd prefer the State to be out of all affairs as much as possible. The only reason I can concede involvement with married couples is because of the fact that married couples produce the next generation which is of importance to the nation. Which gay couples can't by their very nature. That's simply biological reality, though liberals have never cared much for it.

You make a great point.  i would certainly never even think about having babies with anyone if i knew that gay people had the same marriage rights as i do - it would totally put me off the idea![/sarcasm]  i think Timaahy covered this pretty well.

As for "making things up", I recall a few prominent examples of you saying Christ commanded to actively hate one's parents, or that an OT passage regarding the punishment for a promiscuous woman being married as if a virgin was somehow a command to kill rape victims. So yeah, I have little faith in your ability to actually know what's being said in regards to the Bible.

If you provide a link then i would be happy to discuss those (dimly remembered) statements in context.  It is always possible that i have made mistakes in my biblical interpretation, and i am happy to admit them if i can be shown that i have done so.  That's not quite the same thing as "just making things up" though, nor would i say that my mistakes (assuming they exist) are a licence for you to dismiss anything i ever say about the bible from then on.

"To suggest that treating people differently based on their beliefs is always discriminatory is just foolish.  Would you allow a couple who believed, as the OT teaches, that disobedient children should be killed to be foster parents?  And if not, would that be further evidence of the oppression of Christians?"

And you, again, justify the discrimination, even while denying it's going on.

i have no idea what you are talking about here.  i said that i don't think it is discrimination in that case, but i was amused to note that you appeared to think that beliefs should not have any consequences.  Beliefs do have consequences, and if people seriously represent beliefs which if translated into action (as beliefs have a way of being translated) would cause harm to people around them, then they should expect to be treated accordingly.  i assume that if you meet someone who tells you about their sincere belief in the heavenly pleasures awaiting those who die killing the enemies of Allah that your commitment to the inviolate right to consequence-free religious belief would start coming a little unstuck.

And I take your example of what the OT says of another example of you "making things up". Or perhaps it can be more appropriately called "being ignorant of how life was over 2000 years ago and thus what is actually being said".

Ah, so Deuteronomy 21:18-21 and Leviticus 20:19 are isolated cultural injunctions that we should ignore?  How can you tell?

So exactly how is this NOT an open door to genuine discriminatory/oppressive policies?

Nice to see both a sensible question and an (implied) admission that the case we're discussing is not "genuine" discrimination.

What next? Will simply being a Christian AT ALL "have consequences"?

It doesn't seem likely.  Most Christians i know would make great foster parents, but you might not consider them to be genuine Christians because in the main they have no problem with gay people, and certainly wouldn't tell their children that a biological state is morally reprehensible.  Equally, most Christians i know are not creationists, so with the right training they would make excellent science teachers.  Someone who is outspoken about their belief in YEC should not be allowed anywhere near a science classroom in my opinion.  You may consider this discrimination against Christian beliefs, but in fact the right to believe remains intact, and i will defend that right, on the condition that you don't demand that your religious dogma be taught to children in school, given a government subsidy, enshrined in law, imposed on me by violence, or any of these things which fundamentalists so often seem to want as well as the right to simply believe as they like. 

This isn't discrimination, this is equality.  And while it may be less than you are used to, it is all that any of us have a right to demand.

Yet you have plenty of room to quibble or get around what the bible "clearly and unambiguously says" whenever it doesn't suit you.  You say homosexuality is sinful and wrong based on isolated passages in Leviticus, Paul and Revelations, and yet still somehow manage to post messages here on Sundays from time to time, despite the mysteriously less significant Exodus 16:23, 20:8-11, 31:12-17, 35:2-3, Deuteronomy 5:12-15, Leviticus 23:1-2, Numbers 15:32-35, etc etc.  Now i'm guessing that you might say that Matthew 12:1-14 negates those verses (assuming that you count your activities here as "doing good"), but some might also say that Matthew 19:8-12 negates all of the preceding anti-gay unpleasantness.

You're dodging. And rather poorly, if you try to (not-so-subtly) quib about "isolated passages" (as if not being repeated 20 times makes it illegitimate), yet admit it's in multiple instances. You're grasping.

And I find it highly amusing that you site a passage that promotes (or at minimum gives no condemnation) to non-sexuality, and thinks that somehow promotes sexual freedom. It just goes to show that what "some might also say" is irrelevant. The Bible speaks for itself, again, rather unambiguously on this issue. That it says 'if you can't drive on the right side of the street, then walk' is hardly promoting playing chicken on the wrong side of the road.

The point is, you are the arbiter of what you take from the Bible, partly because there is so much of it, and partly because there are contradicting messages.  For you to assert that the things which fit your needs and prejudices are "clear and unambiguous" and the things which do not are "isolated cultural rules", with no apparent metric for distinguishing between them apart from your personal say-so, you expose yourself as a man standing at a magnificent buffet table and demanding the right to decide what everyone else takes away from it, and then giving them the least appetising food, saying it was the only thing on offer.

*yawn* No, I'm simply the reader of an Authoritative Source just as I am the reader of science fiction. And it's precisely because I don't put my needs and prejudices into my literary skills that let's me say it's "clear and unambiguous". Especially on the topics where it obviously is. All I see from you is a guy who, in contrast, let's his ideological bias affect his judgment on the historical context and literacy skills many of those "contradicting passages" are based upon.

1000 years from now, some dude like you is going to think you had roast colt, whenever reading the words "hungry enough to eat a horse". Or perhaps in your case think you are literally "twisting knickers". That's what your argument amounts to.

And how do you distinguish between them?  What is the test?  There must be one surely - one might think that the ten commandments and the words of Jesus were fairly key, despite the fact that several of the things expressly forbidden on the alleged stone tablets are legal and freely practiced in both our countries, without you raising any discernable protest, and homosexuality is not mentioned in either.  Please enlighten me about how to tell the difference between specific conduct and universal principles.  i really want to know.

Same reason Alex had trouble with his issue - you have to read the whole thing in context. Words like "O nation of Israel...." and such are there for a reason.

And if you have to appeal to "modern legality" you're just embarrassing yourself, or do I have to site the numerous atrocities in the numerous countries that were perfectly "legal", but don't mesh with the Bible's commands either?

Again, given the multitude of 1st and 2nd Century Christian writings, i assume you have some extremely robust test to differentiate between personal opinions which can be discarded as worthless and personal opinions which we have to take very very seriously.  And i really hope that your test isn't whether or not a bunch of old churchmen thought them up to scratch 1700 years ago.

It's the very fact that such writings didn't make it to the canon, that undercuts your protest. They were already tested by figures faaaaaar closer to the original sources and historical events than you'll ever be. You simply don't want to concede it because...well then you'd be wrong. And we can't have that, now can we?

Where outside of your imagination can people only get a job if they are homosexual?  And the government not only says that it is legal, but actively protects the right of people to work on the sabbath, curse God's name, make graven images, worship other gods, commit adultery, etc etc etc.  So you're not making a great argument for your lack of hypocrisy there.

More dodging. You seem to be following a line that if I don't explicitly protest every single problem I have with the government or the world, it somehow invalidates the one's I do explicitly protest. Frankly, if you think either of us have enough years to live for that, or that I'd come to YOU for such a thing, I'd say you've been drinking too hard.

As for my suppose "hypocrisy", that's a laugh. I challange you to find where I state the rights of homosexuals should be infringed. Anywhere.

Key difference between all those examples and homosexuality, that influences my being more vocal on the latter and not the rest, is because my culture is not currently trying to shove those things down people's throats as being "good" or even "ok". So perhaps, when you see headlines informing us that instead of swearing on the Bible in a court of law, one has to shout profanities and urinate on it, before testifying, THEN you'll see me be more vocal on such a thing. Trust me, I'll make your ears bleed.

Ok, so how does that support your theory that such nations suffer terrible consequences as God's punishment?  If we limit it to communist regimes then maybe you might have a case, but the most secular Western societies tend to have a higher quality of life than the most deeply religious ones.

Those same secular Western socities have also declined through the span of time. Or haven't you noticed that the UK was a more immenant world power than what it currently is today? That with the invention and ease of owning a refrigerator at this later date goes to "higher quality of life", doesn't really say much to anything about the suppose "success" of secularism. Nor on what those countries are going to look like in another hundred years.

If you provide a link then i would be happy to discuss those (dimly remembered) statements in context.  It is always possible that i have made mistakes in my biblical interpretation, and i am happy to admit them if i can be shown that i have done so.  That's not quite the same thing as "just making things up" though, nor would i say that my mistakes (assuming they exist) are a licence for you to dismiss anything i ever say about the bible from then on.

It is a license to take your views with a grain of salt. Especially if you confuse a passage that says marriage isn't for everyone, and think that is the promotion of homosexuality. So you really can't help, but give me more and more evidence for this.

i have no idea what you are talking about here.  i said that i don't think it is discrimination in that case, but i was amused to note that you appeared to think that beliefs should not have any consequences.  Beliefs do have consequences, and if people seriously represent beliefs which if translated into action (as beliefs have a way of being translated) would cause harm to people around them, then they should expect to be treated accordingly.  i assume that if you meet someone who tells you about their sincere belief in the heavenly pleasures awaiting those who die killing the enemies of Allah that your commitment to the inviolate right to consequence-free religious belief would start coming a little unstuck.

I'll make it more clear - you are indeed promoting discrimination, you simply won't come out and call it as such, because you have perhaps been taught that any discrimination is ALWAYS bad. So you do promote discrimination, but since you think the end result is 'good' this doesn't jibe with being discriminatory which you seem to equate with being 'bad'. Rather, why not just say discriminations is 'good' in some cases? It'd save you from this constant contradicting defense.

Problem I have with your reasoning is that the so-called "consequences" of things like holding homosexuality as immoral don't really follow. This is evidence by the fact we have one case of the "consequences" of a British couple, but wind the clock back (or give it to another judge) and the "consequences" would have been different.

Trust me the only people under the delusion of things not having consequences, are those holding on to the liberal and/or secularistic views that haven't learned anything from the last century and think it will be different THIS time around.

Ah, so Deuteronomy 21:18-21 and Leviticus 20:19 are isolated cultural injunctions that we should ignore?  How can you tell?

For Deuteronomy, I suppose you think there were things like psychiatric wards, and federal prisons 2000 years ago to deal with sociopathic individuals? For Leviticus, I think human relations are all the same across the globe. Seems a lot of the distinctions can be reached by using good ol common sense. Which perhaps isn't that common.

Nice to see both a sensible question and an (implied) admission that the case we're discussing is not "genuine" discrimination.

Not surprising to see a dodge. Though I think you confused my "genuine" remark as a response to your avoidance of labeling it as "discrimination" on any level.

It doesn't seem likely.  Most Christians i know would make great foster parents, but you might not consider them to be genuine Christians because in the main they have no problem with gay people, and certainly wouldn't tell their children that a biological state is morally reprehensible.  Equally, most Christians i know are not creationists, so with the right training they would make excellent science teachers.  Someone who is outspoken about their belief in YEC should not be allowed anywhere near a science classroom in my opinion.  You may consider this discrimination against Christian beliefs, but in fact the right to believe remains intact, and i will defend that right, on the condition that you don't demand that your religious dogma be taught to children in school, given a government subsidy, enshrined in law, imposed on me by violence, or any of these things which fundamentalists so often seem to want as well as the right to simply believe as they like.

So long as your dogma is taught, eh?

All you seem to show is that it's in fact very likely. Mainly because it seems the definition of "Christian" can just be swapped with anything, so you can tell yourself it's not really happening. So perhaps the correct question is: How is this NOT going to end up as full-on discrimination/oppression against those who adhere to teachings of the Bible as passed down and understood for 2000 years, and not suddenly traded in by recent secularistic notions that people have been indoctrinated by culture and peer pressure in the last 100 years?

Like I said to Joe, Germany and Russia couldn't REALLY take away the people's ability to believe something despite everything they did. And that's an incredibly foolish and naive defense for arguing that they weren't oppressive.

This isn't discrimination, this is equality.  And while it may be less than you are used to, it is all that any of us have a right to demand.

It's discrimination. When people start spouting about "equality", using words like "more" or "less" tends to show the lie to the notion.

So I guess the choice you made was to hide from the logical conclusion of your beliefs and it's inevitable outcome as ssen in the last century. Hardly surprising, most people who fancy themselves decent do when what they support is fundamentally wrong. That you have the temerity to call it "equality" while explicitly supporting the active supression of Biblical beliefs being taught in an equal forum, just shows how utterly blind by bias you are. And how it will insure things like gas chambers and gulags, will happen again in one form or another. And it will be conversations like this one, where you won't have any excuse to say you couldn't have known it was coming.

Oh what a mangled thread we weave, when first we practice to pretend to know what we are talking about.

• EB:
  You misunderstand my statement.

Sorry mate, but you've misunderstood your own argument. You said that:
(a) you prefer the state to not be involved in personal affairs; but that
(b) marriage produces the next generation; and
(b) the raising of that generation is important enough to warrant such involvement.

You have therefore made two claims, the first directly, and the second by implication.

1 - Married couples produce the next generation
This is, quite plainly, simply no longer a truism. Plenty of people have children without getting married, and plenty of couples marry without ever desiring, or having, children. Single women can go to a sperm bank (or a friend) and have a baby by themselves. Gay couples can go to one of their friends and "borrow" some sperm, an egg, or even a womb (like my uncle did).

True, the dominant Christ-ian (See what I did there? Clever, eh!) Churches once had enough power and influence to ensure that only married couples had children. Thankfully those days are long behind us (well, at least in progressive, secular countries).

The definition of a social institution can never be called a "fact", as you claim, because they're just that - social institutions. We're the ones that set the rules. It is a "fact" of nature that the King or Queen of England can't be a Catholic? Of course not. It's simply a law of our own that we are free to change whenever we like.

If you're going to claim that marriage produces the next generation, please explain why we should allow infertile couples (and couples that don't want children) to marry.

2 - The next generation is threatened if the state meddles with marriage
If you think that marriage, while a "wholely [sic] private affair", warrants state interference due to its role in producing the next generation, are you not saying that, should the state cease its interference, that the production of the next generation would be jeopardised? Why would the state interfere otherwise?

The obvious question, then, is how would the next generation be jeopardised? Fewer marriages? Fewer children? More broken homes? More people deciding, "You know what, I'll think I'll try gay..."?

Which leads us to this piece of grotesque asininity:

• EB:
  I think by indulging this notion that homosexuality is "good", it lessons a nation's capacity to reproduce.

How did you manage to cram so much idiocy into a single sentence?

Indulging? No one's "indulging" anything. We heterosexuals aren't some all-powerful guardians of tolerance, granting, in our mercy, our permission for gays to exist, as long as they don't cause too much trouble.

Notion? It's not a notion. It's an acceptance of reality.

Good? Who says it's good? It's no more "good" than heterosexuality, or sado-masochism, or a foot fetish is "good". They are "good" to those that enjoy those things, and they are "not good" (which does not mean the same as "bad") to those that don't enjoy those things.

Lessons [sic] a nation's capacity to reproduce? Yeah, because there are hordes of men and women who are denying their homosexuality because they wanted to be married to someone.

But I suppose I shouldn't expect too much from anyone who still clings to the antiquated notion that homosexuality is a "choice". Tell me, EB, if it's a choice, are you saying that you yourself could simply choose to be gay? And if you can, can you teach me how to choose to like brussel sprouts?

• EB:
  Not going to happen.

Yeah I kind of knew that already.

• EB:
  Is this prejudiced? You bet.

Of course it is. The question is, does it need to be? We invented marriage. We can define it any way we like.

• EB:
  Human's [sic] reproduce by sex between a man and a woman.

No, humans currently reproduce by combining a sperm and an egg. There are many ways to facilitate this; sex is simply the most common.

Besides, aren't we talking about same-sex marriage?

• EB:
  Hopefully you'll understand THIS biological reality better than you did the whole 'gender' issue.

Hahaaaa... sorry mate, I missed the part where you won that argument. Did it happen while you were ignoring the well established gender-theories of the Psychology and Psychiatry professions?

EB,

And I find it highly amusing that you site a passage that promotes (or at minimum gives no condemnation) to non-sexuality, and thinks that somehow promotes sexual freedom. It just goes to show that what "some might also say" is irrelevant. The Bible speaks for itself, again, rather unambiguously on this issue.

While i understand that for you any interpretation other than your own is "irrelevant", if you read a little more open-mindedly you would probably already know that there is some ambiguity on this issue.  Some rabbinical tradition holds that the Old Testament condemnation of homosexuality was applicable only to the nation of Israel at that time, and identify the Hebrew word usually translated as "eunuch" (saris) as being almost synonymous with the word "homosexual".  The Talmud discusses the characteristics of a "eunuch" which are in many respects similar to what we would today recognise as a "camp" or effeminate man, as some homosexual men tend to be.  What they do not mention is castration, because that was not relevant to their definition, just a man who had no sexual interest in women.  Rabbi Eiliezer even states that "congenital eunuchs" can be cured (i'm seeing him as a kind of Second Century Marcus Bachmann), and Maimonidies says that if a eunuch was "born in this way [then] he is fit to enter the congregation, because it was by the hand of Heaven" (same link).

And what does Jesus say - that some "eunuchs" are born that way, and are therefore exempt from his teachings on marriage and divorce.  So the picture, as usual, is far less black and white than you paint it.  Judging by rabbinical tradition from around the same era, Jesus may well have been talking about homosexuals when he mentioned "eunuchs who have been so since birth", and that would therefore be an example of an explicit acceptance of homosexuality by the man who you claim to be a modern disciple of.  Shouldn't you really know more about this kind of stuff if that is the case?

I'm simply the reader of an Authoritative Source just as I am the reader of science fiction. And it's precisely because I don't put my needs and prejudices into my literary skills that let's me say it's "clear and unambiguous". Especially on the topics where it obviously is. All I see from you is a guy who, in contrast, let's his ideological bias affect his judgment on the historical context and literacy skills many of those "contradicting passages" are based upon.

If you'll take the time to read the links i gave you above, you will see that i am drawing my interpretation from people who, if i felt the insecure need to belittle my opponent at every opportunity, i could describe as "figures faaaaaar closer to the original sources and historical events than you'll ever be".  So, let's discuss the ideological bias of Maimonidies and Rabbi Eiliezer shall we?

"And how do you distinguish between them?  What is the test?  There must be one surely - one might think that the ten commandments and the words of Jesus were fairly key, despite the fact that several of the things expressly forbidden on the alleged stone tablets are legal and freely practiced in both our countries, without you raising any discernable protest, and homosexuality is not mentioned in either.  Please enlighten me about how to tell the difference between specific conduct and universal principles.  i really want to know."

Same reason Alex had trouble with his issue - you have to read the whole thing in context. Words like "O nation of Israel...." and such are there for a reason.

That's weak.  Assuming your worldview, God is in direct communication with the nation of Israel throughout most of the old testament.  Almost everything he says is said to them or their representatives.  But the target of a communique does not necessarily reflect on its applicability to others.  God was talking to Israel when he condemned homosexuality, so why can't that be considered just a local guideline, other than your pressing need for it not to be one?

And if you have to appeal to "modern legality" you're just embarrassing yourself, or do I have to site the numerous atrocities in the numerous countries that were perfectly "legal", but don't mesh with the Bible's commands either?

You misunderstood me.  i was pointing out that many things forbidden in the Old Testament are permitted, legalised and even in some cases encouraged in Western society without any discernable protest from people like you.  Some consistency on your part is all i was looking for.

"Again, given the multitude of 1st and 2nd Century Christian writings, i assume you have some extremely robust test to differentiate between personal opinions which can be discarded as worthless and personal opinions which we have to take very very seriously.  And i really hope that your test isn't whether or not a bunch of old churchmen thought them up to scratch 1700 years ago."

It's the very fact that such writings didn't make it to the canon, that undercuts your protest. They were already tested by figures faaaaaar closer to the original sources and historical events than you'll ever be. You simply don't want to concede it because...well then you'd be wrong. And we can't have that, now can we?

That is an historically illiterate view of the bible.  If you choose to believe that these "figures" of the second to fourth centuries who decided what scriptures would and would not make up what we now refer to as the New Testament were divinely inspired then that is your perogative, but that would be an entirely faith-based claim.  The reality is that these decisions were made by fallible and biased human beings intent on preserving their budding church, and their choices will have been influenced by that.  Other figures who were also faaaaar closer to the events disagreed vehemently with their choices, so again, how do you decide who was right, apart from the intellectually lazy acceptance of the status quo which you express above?

"Where outside of your imagination can people only get a job if they are homosexual?"

More dodging.

Actually no.  You made an analogy to people only being able to get a job if they cursed God's name, and said that then you would protest about that as strongly as you do about homosexuality, as if that were equivalent to the situation in society with regards to gay people at present.  My pointing out that this is either a fantasy or a very very poorly thought-out analogy is not dodging.

You seem to be following a line that if I don't explicitly protest every single problem I have with the government or the world, it somehow invalidates the one's I do explicitly protest. Frankly, if you think either of us have enough years to live for that, or that I'd come to YOU for such a thing, I'd say you've been drinking too hard.

Now who's dodging?  The social issues that you are most agitated about by a long margin (judging from your activity on this forum) are sexual/reproductive issues and - recently - the perceived victimisation of Christians by the media.  Your lazer-like focus on these issues is fine, and not invalidated by your total silence on other (from a biblical point of view, equally important) issues, but what this shows very clearly is that your influences are not as biblical as you like to pretend.  In reality you are just taking up the cause of religious right wing culture warriors which has developed over the last couple of hundred years of secular human progress - the reactionary resistance to our welcome cultural development away from theocratic tyranny.

As for my suppose "hypocrisy", that's a laugh. I challange you to find where I state the rights of homosexuals should be infringed. Anywhere.

   i do love the fact that you ironically quote my accurate spelling of a word.  And it's "challenge" by the way.

And have i misinterpretted your stance on gay marriage?  If denying one christian couple the right to be employed as foster carers infringes on their rights, as you have claimed that it does, then i don't see how you can suggest that denying gay people the right to legally marry their life partner and benefit from all of the legal, social and practical advantages that marriage confers isn't infringing upon theirs.

Key difference between all those examples and homosexuality, that influences my being more vocal on the latter and not the rest, is because my culture is not currently trying to shove those things down people's throats as being "good" or even "ok".

Eating seafood is good or even ok.  Making graven images is good or even ok.  In truth, their are plenty of biblically forbidden things which your culture approves of and explicitly sanctions.  You just don't care about those things as much as you care about homosexuality.

Those same secular Western socities have also declined through the span of time. Or haven't you noticed that the UK was a more immenant world power than what it currently is today?

   Your god appears to be extremely erratic when handing out punishments for moving away from him.  "United Kingdom, you have sinned against me!  For this, i sentence you to the terrible fate of losing your colonies while still enjoying massively disproportionate wealth and prosperity!  Tremble at my punishment mortals!"[/b]  And yet the most heavily Christian countries in the world - mainly in Africa and South America - according to you get to enjoy the disease, poverty, conflict, high child mortality and low lifespan which are the blessings of being in a close relationship with God.  Most Christian country in Africa - Rwanda.  Do i need to expand further on how award-winningly stupid this is?

It is a license to take your views with a grain of salt. Especially if you confuse a passage that says marriage isn't for everyone, and think that is the promotion of homosexuality. So you really can't help, but give me more and more evidence for this.

i think you will now be able to see that the interpretation of Matthew which i mentioned is not my "confusion".  Perhaps there might be other examples of you prematurely proclaiming me to be mistaken and thereby negating, in your mind at least, any other point i had to make.

...you are indeed promoting discrimination, you simply won't come out and call it as such, because you have perhaps been taught that any discrimination is ALWAYS bad. So you do promote discrimination, but since you think the end result is 'good' this doesn't jibe with being discriminatory which you seem to equate with being 'bad'. Rather, why not just say discriminations is 'good' in some cases? It'd save you from this constant contradicting defense.

This doesn't seem like an especially useful tangent, but agreeing on terminology might be helpful.  Discrimination, as far as i am concerned, is the prejudicial treatment of people based on their membership of a certain group.  A court judgement could certainly be a result of discrimination against individuals, by way of individual or societal prejudice enacted against them in a legal framework, but it isn't necessarily so.  In this case, i feel that a quite legitimate harm vs benefit analysis was used to determine that this couple (not, please notice, all Christians) should not be allowed to be foster carers.  That is qualitatively different from banning all gay people from being able to legally marry their partner.

For Deuteronomy, I suppose you think there were things like psychiatric wards, and federal prisons 2000 years ago to deal with sociopathic individuals?

Sociopathic?  Not obeying your parents makes you sociopathic now, or at a minimum deserving of prison?  You're a strange breed of moral relativist - one who claims to have an absolute moral code but who will cravenly justify any obscene or evil action so long as it is written of approvingly in the bible, whether it be child murder, rape, slavery or genocide.  Despite all the arguments made in its favour as an ethical force in the world, it is quite clear from your example that fundamentalist religion turns people into moral idiots - essentially mindless "Yes men" for the actions of a bronze age tribe with delusions of religious grandeur.

Do you realise that if i could convince you that the actions of Hitler were actually performed by Joshua and his army with God's blessing three thousand years ago, you would defend them too?  Give me one reason to think that you wouldn't.

"You may consider this discrimination against Christian beliefs, but in fact the right to believe remains intact, and i will defend that right, on the condition that you don't demand that your religious dogma be taught to children in school, given a government subsidy, enshrined in law, imposed on me by violence, or any of these things which fundamentalists so often seem to want as well as the right to simply believe as they like."

So long as your dogma is taught, eh?

What is my dogma?  That homosexuality is a biological phenomenon occurring in a reliable percentage of all populations?  That evolution is the overwhelming scientific consensus?  That the Earth is round and orbits the sun?

How is this NOT going to end up as full-on discrimination/oppression against those who adhere to teachings of the Bible as passed down and understood for 2000 years, and not suddenly traded in by recent secularistic notions that people have been indoctrinated by culture and peer pressure in the last 100 years?

Was the civil rights movement an example of that "peer pressure"?

When people start spouting about "equality", using words like "more" or "less" tends to show the lie to the notion.

Not less equality.  Less privilege.

That you have the temerity to call it "equality" while explicitly supporting the active supression of Biblical beliefs being taught in an equal forum, just shows how utterly blind by bias you are.

Why should your beliefs be taught in an equal forum with science?  Your views are explicitly anti-scientific, so it seems odd that you would even want that to happen.  i have no objection to christian views (in all their diversity) being taught in a religious studies class, or in some sort of moral philosophy setting, along with Muslim, Taoist, Buddist, Jain, secular and Hindu views.  That would be "equal time", don't you think?  But i will not apologise for supporting a societal intolerance towards the application of religious views which are demonstrably harmful to minority groups within society.  When you cry "discrimination" at the sight of people with unrepresentative and potentially psychologically harmful views being prevented from undertaking the job of looking after children on behalf of society, you expose yourself as a special interest group apologist.  If anyone tried to prevent that couple from becoming married then they would have my full support in fighting against such unfairness, but you are happy to discriminate against gay people in precisely that way.  But that was not what happened here - they were fired, essentially, from a job for expressing views incompatible with doing that job well.  That is not discrimination.

And how it will insure things like gas chambers and gulags, will happen again in one form or another. And it will be conversations like this one, where you won't have any excuse to say you couldn't have known it was coming.

Since i presume that your ability to predict the future does not exceed your ability to understand the past, i don't feel too worried.  Religious conservatives have stood in opposition to every step of human progress over the last century and before that (slavery, civil rights, emancipation of women, availability of contraception), so it is no surprise to me that you oppose the next step - the widespread legal acceptance of gay marriage.

Addendum:

i just finished reading this book, and was struck by some common ground between the second KKK (the 1920s version) and the modern Tea Party.  Both strong constitutionalist movements, focused on "small town values", patriotism, collective action and immigration issues.  Both populist organisations concerned with economic issues and with strong ties to Protestant churches, which provided a variety of incentives for participation.  i would personally draw a line of continuity between the second KKK and the Tea Party that ran right through the John Birch Society.  Certainly the Tea Party similarities are even easier to see there - small government, the president is a communist (that was Eisenhower, the first time around), socialised medicine is all part of an evil plot and the civil rights movement was intended to create a "negro soviet state".

As i said with the KKK, i think there are a wide variety of reasons why people join such organisations, and not all of them bad ones.  But times have changed, and i would guess that the majority of people who join the KKK today are racially motivated.  But the KKK in the 1920s was only a little bit more racist than the societal baseline.  It wasn't even the most notable thing about them as a group, whereas it definitely is now.  The acceptability of racially-charged rhetoric has diminished, which is a good thing, but the sentiments that it would express still remain.  Different channels have to be found, is all, and i would say that the Tea Party is one of those channels, and that in the same way as the 1920s KKK it is probably a little bit more racist than the societal baseline.  Regardless of the occasionally revealling rhetoric of its spokespersons, just demographically this is likely to be the case since it is disproportionately composed of older white people.  The ability to look back with nostalgia to a time before the civil rights act is only found in a small section of society now.

Anyway, that's my further two cents to add to my previous two cents.  Hope this small change finds you well.

Dan