"Sorry, I forgot that I was speaking to a saint."
Nice.
"The reality is that God was created in our image, including his bad parts"
I'm sure your objection to my statement can equally be applied to this line of reasoning. Anyway, I wouldn't expect an atheist to agree. I would expect an atheist in America to respect my right to act on my belief.
"Just keep your actions on private property, where they belong. Government is for everybody, not just your special group."
And not just your special group, either, which is my point. If you deny me my right to propose or support policies merely because they are driven by my religious principles, the only difference between you and Stalin is that you aren't in power. :)
"Since you are on the side of the shovers, you see nothing wrong with it."
I am a Constitutionalist-Libertarian. The only side I'm on is of making sure that all sides have their constitutional rights... and that includes Christians.
"There is no "and yet". Democracies should not be theocracies,"
"When a democracy starts to force the majority's opinions about such things on minorities, then that democracy itself becomes a tyranny."
I'd rather have a tyranny by a majority over a tyranny by a minority. You are cutting with some pretty broad strokes here. We don't have just any democracy. We have a constitutional democracy, a republic, as you well know. There is a free exercise clause and you're just going to have to get used to it. If you don't like it, change the law. If you can't change the law, tough. But don't work through the courts, because that has the effect of removing power from all of us.
"I am very much afraid of that, and I have good reason to be. So do you."
I am perfectly prepared to operate on such terms. I trust the people and allowing things to fall along the lines of the majority allows us all to bicker with each other and attempt to persuade each other to think like we do. I do not believe it is wise to turn to the courts to enact our policies, granting that it is easier to persuade 9 men then 90 million. On the other hand, we don't all get a crack at persuading those men, do we?
"In practice, those in power tend to look for excuses to misuse government property for religious purposes. That's what all the lawsuits are about."
Well that's a rosy view. Some of the lawsuits, perhaps. Most come across just as they are: merely petty.
"I disagree."
That's the kind of thing that should be hammered out legislatively.
"You are not disenfranchised just because you cannot use the state-operated school system"
That's not what I'm talking about. I am disenfranchised if I am prohibited from promoting my preferred policies locally because of the declarations of 9 men acting on the Federal level whom my only hope of 'influencing' is merely to try to get my choice of President- and even then that hope is flimsy at best.
"We've already seen that this issue was not as cut and dried as you made it seem."
I'll grant I left out the finer details. The raw summary is correct, though. The precedent that would have been established was precisely my point, and Dan Barker would have absolutely exploited it. I have no confidence that the FFRF will stop with eliminating references to 'religion' in the public square. It is the FREEDOM FROM RELIGION FOUNDATION. And they mean it.
"That sexual revolution was brought on by advances in birth control methods, not permissiveness or liberalism."
That's nonsense. You're out of your mind if you think that. They clearly moved in lock step.
"I agree with you that the sexual revolution probably aggravated the spread of STDs,"
Probably?
"but your reactionary policy of returning to repressed sexuality is simply not going to solve the problem."
I don't think of it as repressed sexuality at all. It is liberating sexuality. Every time I have sex with my wife I don't have to be worried that I'm going to get out an STD out of it. It's nice. Honest.
"As for "free-bootin' policies of hippies", you have no idea what you are talking about."
Speaking from experience?
But I do have an idea, because I was raised in that context, minus the college scene.
"I don't know, and I don't think it relevant here."
Of course its relevant. On the one hand, you're going after abstinence only programs that have been around for what, 15 years maybe at the most? And that's just a few of them. On the other, you've got your comprehensive sex ed programs that come out of what, the 80s? 1980. You've got a good 1980 years of potential data to mine as opposed to a mere 25-45, depending on how you count it, to measure the effects of these other programs and draw your conclusions.
"We can't return to an fantasized version of the "good old days"."
I don't think of it that way, at all. There have been numerous times in history where we see fluctuations in views on sexuality. The effects can be viewed today. The hope, I think, was that technology would permit people not to have to endure the consequences of the past... alas, that was not the case. We've got condoms, but we still have all these diseases, and AIDS.
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Topic: Interesting David MacDonald quote: (Read 10998 times)