homosexuality, women and the NT

[jimboston]

Women were expected to be silent in the temples and 1 Corinthians 14 is just stating that rule. Since the role of a modern church is to provide a place for people to praise and worship together sharing ideas instead of teaching them. That rule may not be relevant. Kind of like a 3000 kph speed limit. You could not break it if you tried.

... um I think your analogy misses the mark by like 3000 kilometers.

It makes no sense.

Please try again... cause I don't understand the point you are trying to make (if you are even trying to make one).

[dwilhelmi]

While the NT does a lot to cancel out a good portion of the OT restrictions...

How is that possible?

According to Christian beliefs... both the NT and OT are "THE WORD OF GOD".

How can God's "Word" cancel out God's "Word"?

Wouldn't it be more intellectually honest to admit that some people in the past have misinterpreted God's Word... and then revise the Book/Bible so that it only includes what we now believe to be the True Word???

No - the OT was given to us to show Absolute Perfection and Justus. something that we as humans are incapable of doing. When Jesus came, he did so to fulfill the requirements laid out in the OT on our behalf. The OT is designed to show us how impossible it is to be perfect, and how much we needed Jesus.

It's kinda like the letter of the law vs the intent of the law. In our legal system, the laws are all written out and defined. However, a lot of these laws have loopholes, ways to get around the actual intent of the law. Ways to misuse the law. Most rational people can look at a law and understand the intent behind it. There is a difference between the absolute letter of the law and what the law was actually designed to do.

The OT was God laying out the letter of the Law. It was His way of telling us all of the specific ins and outs of everything. Jesus and the NT is the heart behind the Law. So there are many things that we are no longer required to follow to the T from the letter of the Law, so long as we are still following the heart, the intent, of the Law.

[jimboston]

1. There is evidence that polygamy is often tied to child brides and, though this is a more modern finding, in a lot of young men who are "at loose ends" and thus more prone to violence, etc. Warren Jeffs an admittedly extreme example is known for pushing out young boys. Even when its not done so blatently, it happens in more subtle fashions. The child bride bit is similarly tied to a lack of adult women to go around. Smaller groups can maintain the "ratio" bey "recruiting" women from outside, but whenever polygamy becomes more widespread, it results in a mis-match.

Not entirely, but yes, close.

I refute your statements.

Polygamy (as practiced by religious sects that are often persecuted by the mainstream) does/has produced many instances of child-brides, rape, etc.

Polygamy does not (should not) be a religious issue.

Polygamy does not (should not) necessarily be a relationship where there is one husband and multiple wives. It can equally be a relationship where there is one wife with multiple husbands.

Polygamy (or Polyamory) recognized by law and practiced in a secular manner would not (necessarily) produce child brides and rape.

I have no problem with adults (men or women) participating in relationships that they want to participate in as adults.

If gay marriage becomes accepted as legal in a secular manner... Polygamous and Polyamorous relationships should also be recognized.
If two men can marry each other... and two women can marry each other.... where does that leave a couple (man/woman) who are bisexual??? Should they not also be allowed to have a relationship with their chosen partners? By definition a bisexual person could not be fully satisfied with either a man or woman 'partner"... he/she would need both a man AND woman.

Now... I say if... because I think no married should be recognized by law... but that's another debate.

[comic boy]

Well the obvious response is that thoughtful Christians recognise that social mores have evolved over time and disregard certain scripture as no longer relevent . There are of course those who insist that every word of the bible is literal and must be followed to the letter, the mennonite sects spring to mind , but even they are having a hard time these days holding on to such a standard.
By contrast an increasing number pretend a literal belief though in truth they are merely cherry picking scripture to further particular agendas , do they think that an omnipresent God might not notice the hypocrisy

So why don't these "thoughtful Christians" amend the Bible to acknowledge the fact that these writings where just the OPINION of St. Paul.... and NOT the intent and Word of God... and if so acknowledged... why not remove them from the Bible.

Oh... and yes... it's been done before.
(The BIble being amended to fit the social norms of the time that is... it was done by Emperor Constantine.)

Well you hit the nail on the head with Constantine , religion has always been as much concerned with the exercise of power as it has been with piety,devotion or morality.

So are you admitting the the Bible is not really "God's Word"?

That it is really a collection of writings by people... and that often these writings have been full of errors in the interpretation.

Now admitting this... is it fair to say we should revise the BIble to exclude what we now consider to be prior errors in interpretation?

Why would I think that anything is ' Gods Word ' , Im an atheist.

[jimboston]

While the NT does a lot to cancel out a good portion of the OT restrictions...

How is that possible?

According to Christian beliefs... both the NT and OT are "THE WORD OF GOD".

How can God's "Word" cancel out God's "Word"?

Wouldn't it be more intellectually honest to admit that some people in the past have misinterpreted God's Word... and then revise the Book/Bible so that it only includes what we now believe to be the True Word???

No - the OT was given to us to show Absolute Perfection and Justus. something that we as humans are incapable of doing. When Jesus came, he did so to fulfill the requirements laid out in the OT on our behalf. The OT is designed to show us how impossible it is to be perfect, and how much we needed Jesus.

It's kinda like the letter of the law vs the intent of the law. In our legal system, the laws are all written out and defined. However, a lot of these laws have loopholes, ways to get around the actual intent of the law. Ways to misuse the law. Most rational people can look at a law and understand the intent behind it. There is a difference between the absolute letter of the law and what the law was actually designed to do.

The OT was God laying out the letter of the Law. It was His way of telling us all of the specific ins and outs of everything. Jesus and the NT is the heart behind the Law. So there are many things that we are no longer required to follow to the T from the letter of the Law, so long as we are still following the heart, the intent, of the Law.

You are contradicting yourself.

Just like that Bible contradicts itself.

You don't see that as a problem for the Bible... so I'm assuming you don't see it as a problem for yourself either.

[jimboston]

Why would I think that anything is ' Gods Word ' , Im an atheist.

Touche'

I thought you were one of those Thoughtful Christians.

[comic boy]

While the NT does a lot to cancel out a good portion of the OT restrictions...

How is that possible?

According to Christian beliefs... both the NT and OT are "THE WORD OF GOD".

How can God's "Word" cancel out God's "Word"?

Wouldn't it be more intellectually honest to admit that some people in the past have misinterpreted God's Word... and then revise the Book/Bible so that it only includes what we now believe to be the True Word???

No - the OT was given to us to show Absolute Perfection and Justus. something that we as humans are incapable of doing. When Jesus came, he did so to fulfill the requirements laid out in the OT on our behalf. The OT is designed to show us how impossible it is to be perfect, and how much we needed Jes....us.

It's kinda like the letter of the law vs the intent of the law. In our legal system, the laws are all written out and defined. However, a lot of these laws have loopholes, ways to get around the actual intent of the law. Ways to misuse the law. Most rational people can look at a law and understand the intent behind it. There is a difference between the absolute letter of the law and what the law was actually designed to do.

The OT was God laying out the letter of the Law. It was His way of telling us all of the specific ins and outs of everything. Jesus and the NT is the heart behind the Law. So there are many things that we are no longer required to follow to the T from the letter of the Law, so long as we are still following the heart, the intent, of the Law.

Its a neat answer but any decent marketing executive can make a good case for a ( supposedly) newly improved product.

[comic boy]

Why would I think that anything is ' Gods Word ' , Im an atheist.

Touche'

I thought you were one of those Thoughtful Christians.

I am simply happy to side with anybody who does not wish to push a fundamentalist agenda , be they Christian , Hindu , Muslim or Atheist.

[dwilhelmi]

While the NT does a lot to cancel out a good portion of the OT restrictions...

How is that possible?

According to Christian beliefs... both the NT and OT are "THE WORD OF GOD".

How can God's "Word" cancel out God's "Word"?

Wouldn't it be more intellectually honest to admit that some people in the past have misinterpreted God's Word... and then revise the Book/Bible so that it only includes what we now believe to be the True Word???

No - the OT was given to us to show Absolute Perfection and Justus. something that we as humans are incapable of doing. When Jesus came, he did so to fulfill the requirements laid out in the OT on our behalf. The OT is designed to show us how impossible it is to be perfect, and how much we needed Jesus.

It's kinda like the letter of the law vs the intent of the law. In our legal system, the laws are all written out and defined. However, a lot of these laws have loopholes, ways to get around the actual intent of the law. Ways to misuse the law. Most rational people can look at a law and understand the intent behind it. There is a difference between the absolute letter of the law and what the law was actually designed to do.

The OT was God laying out the letter of the Law. It was His way of telling us all of the specific ins and outs of everything. Jesus and the NT is the heart behind the Law. So there are many things that we are no longer required to follow to the T from the letter of the Law, so long as we are still following the heart, the intent, of the Law.

You are contradicting yourself.

Just like that Bible contradicts itself.

You don't see that as a problem for the Bible... so I'm assuming you don't see it as a problem for yourself either.

How am I contradicting myself?

[crispybits]

The scope of the "discrimination" in question. Racial discrimination was a very far reaching problem. Homosexual "discrimination" in this case is regarding only benefits supplied to someone engaged in a particular contract. Nobody is saying that homosexuals can't ride in the front of the bus, or use the same schools, or eat in the same restaurants. It is the definition of the contract. Just like I, as a white male, cannot be considered for an ethnic or female based scholarship. That is not discrimination, just the definition of the contract in question.

So you're effectively saying "you are not being discrimated against because the society you accuse of discriminating against you defines marriage in a way that excludes you, therefore by definition it's not discrimination." To draw the parallel with the racial civil rights movement, the argument would look like "we can't be being racist, because we don't define you as people, therefore by definition we can't be breaching your human rights because you're not human." Do you not see the circularity in this argument? At best it's a legal semantic reason why gay people are not allowed to get married right now, rather than a justification to never allow it in future.

As the one claiming "separate but equal" never works, I challenge you to give one example other than racial segregation where it didn't work. Or even how it wouldn't work in this case. If the government says that anyone with a civil union be allowed to visit their partner in the hospital, how would that not work?

You argue that because "separate but equal" didn't work in the case of a wide spread epidemic of horrible magnitude, reaching down into just about every single walk of life and thing that everyone did on a day to day basis, that it obviously won't work in any other case?

You can't just shift the burden of proof like that. You are the one claiming that "separate but equal" is a viable solution. I bring up the only precedent I'm aware of, and show that it failed miserably. You either have to show that it has worked in other contexts, or explain how this time will be different and why. Also, saying "apart from this, show it never worked" is asking me to prove a negative, which is unreasonable, unless you want me to type out a multicultural analysis of every single civilisation in history and show in every case why something either wasn't a "separate but equal" policy, or how it didn't work.

Finally, the "apart from" qualification is a massive cop-out. It's like me saying "The Baltimore Ravens have never been a superbowl winning football team." and you saying "But they won the superbowl in 2000" and me saying "yeah, well, but apart from that, can you prove they've ever won the superbowl?" The racial debacle is my proof that it doesn't work, and you can't just dismiss is and ask me for more, you have to address it. Your justification that the racial one was a "wide spread epidemic of horrible magnitude, reaching down into just about every single walk of life and thing that everyone did on a day to day basis" seems to me pretty similar to the gay situation now. There are gay people in all walks of life, and by segregating them as not having the same rights to marriage as straight people is effectively saying that they are second class citizens. If they can be denied that right, then what other rights could they be denied? Biblically speaking we could just deny them the right to life, I mean why stop at marriage when you can just eradicate the "problem" entirely?

I didn't mean any relationship you want, obviously. I was still referring to an official governmental-recognized contract that could be entered into by any two individuals.

So how would most people react if you asked them for the one word, the definition of which would be "an official governmental-recognized contract that could be entered into by any two individuals" within the context of relationships? I think most people would jump straight for marriage. So I would contend that the same sex marriage argument, by popular definition, is legally sound as the majority would use your definition for the "other" system as being synonymous with marriage anyway.

I am all for freedom, liberty and equality for all. I just want to do it in the right way. Instead of the quick and dirty way that tramples on the deeply held belief of a majority of the people in this country, I want to work towards a solution that would make everyone happy. I think that is worth a bit of additional up front effort.

And what is the "right" way? The way that would force hundreds of laws to be modified and changed all throughout all sorts of different contexts from tax to medical permission to adoption to immigration to pensions to death in service benefits and hundreds of other things. At a conservative estimate there are around 1000 different benefits, entitlements and legal rights or advantages that married people receive (Source) A change that would take decades to properly codify.

Or, we could simply make something in law that is exactly identical to marriage, lets call it gayriage. But what would be the point in that? Why have segregation of two legally identical practices under two different names? To avoid trampling on deeply held claims to ownership over the institution of marriage by one particular religious sect? Claims which are unfounded and unjustified? Maybe we should have done the same back in the racist days, and defined black people as "beople" with all the same rights as white people. And because they have a different name for them that wouldn't still promote discrimination, it wouldn't make it even easier for them to be classified as "different to us" or aything like that. No that would have been the perfect solution, I'm amazed none of those black activists and white people who supported them never thought of that!

Or we could just say that gay people can have marriage just the same as straight people, change one law, and we get to the same point. A few religious / homophobic people get their knickers in a twist for a while, society moves on and in another 100 years time it's recognised as the same good and fair and just progress as the changes during the racial civil rights movement are viewed by the majority now.

The point of equality isn't just that you treat people equally, but that you classify them equally. A black person is a person, just the same as a white person is a person. A muslim place of worship is a place of worship, just the same as a christian place of worship is a place of worship. By the same principle a gay marriage is a marriage, just the same as a straight marriage is a marriage.

[2dimes]

Yo dimezz!

Hay hay hay. How wuz the Olympics?

So here homosexuality is a subcategory of sexual immorality etc, but it is ranked alongside jealousy, discord (??), selfish ambition... yet there are no demonstrations against these sins. The point I am groping towards I guess is that any bibe-based rationale for opposing gay marriage falls flat very quickly: point to the crazy. long-disregarded laws laid down in leviticus, and we are directed to the NT. But Paul defines gayness as a sin alongside the bizarre, the banal and the hopelessly vague. Can you imagine a campaign to cure people of selfish ambition in the US?

PS i know this isn't black and white, and that there are plenty of liberal xians who share a belief that gods ideal of eudaimonia - human fulfillment? flourishing? - can only be achieved through a stable, loving relationship, and that the sexual orientation of those involved makes no difference. (Gene Robinson's ordination proves that. Hell, a gay vicar presents Saturday Live in Radio 4 over here every week. Those are the two gay churchmen i know off the top of my head.) Galations again - 'There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.'

Add in the concept I believe to be fact that much of the Bible's content is affected by the context every particular person reads it in, and how it can change quite a bit even for the same person re-reading a passage. Depending even on their moods/emotional state. More than regular books.

This feature allows for a guy that is a teacher of a somewhat respected Church to switch up what was likely a direction to quit fighting with each other because Jesus is above the mere level of, "Boys are better than Girls and you need to be a Pharasee to get in to Heaven." to an idea that makes it Ok to have sex with your Jewish slave.

Which I might add are pretty tough to purchase in todays markets.

[2dimes]

... um I think your analogy misses the mark by like 3000 kilometers.

It makes no sense.

Please try again... cause I don't understand the point you are trying to make (if you are even trying to make one).

Well you see the Saducees may have had chariots drawn by land sharks capable of going 4000 kph. As you can imagine this would not be acceptable in some areas.

[heavycola]

Just because a sin "does no harm" does not make it not a sin. Stable and loving heterosexual relationships are part of God's plan. Deciding that you know better than God what constitutes sin, and living your life in such a way as to embrace that sin, can be very damaging to yourself. There are many other sins that don't hurt anybody, but are still sins and can cause damage to yourself. Gluttony, for example. It doesn't hurt anybody else, in fact it helps a good number of people who are selling you all of your food. It is pleasing to yourself, as boy golly does food taste good. In the long run, however, it is very damaging to yourself, and is still sinful. A greater test is required than "does it hurt anybody".

The 'greater test' must be whether the bible says it is OK, then, and like every atheist i'm deeply suspicious of outsourcing moral questions to a book written by desert tribes thousands of years ago. But that is by the by.

Look, obviously the dalai lama doesn't give a toss about biblical definitions of sin. I quoted him as a fairly dispassionate and wise dude who, to my mind, sums up the most important aspect of this issue perfectly. It does no harm. Would he have replied the same way about gluttony? What do we mean by gluttony - a love of food? Or obesity? The former on its own does no harm, and any god that decides loving food is a sin can keep his poxy afterlife. The latter does plenty of harm - it leads to disability, immobility, chronic disease, and all of those have wider social and familial costs.

How about a thought experiment: if you, or anyone else who points to scripture as the final say on this, could pretend the bible doesn't exist and you had to come to your own moral conclusions about homosexuality - and I am talking about stable, loving and committed relationships here, like a string straight marriage - what would those conclusions be? and how would you arrive at them?

[dwilhelmi]

The scope of the "discrimination" in question. Racial discrimination was a very far reaching problem. Homosexual "discrimination" in this case is regarding only benefits supplied to someone engaged in a particular contract. Nobody is saying that homosexuals can't ride in the front of the bus, or use the same schools, or eat in the same restaurants. It is the definition of the contract. Just like I, as a white male, cannot be considered for an ethnic or female based scholarship. That is not discrimination, just the definition of the contract in question.

So you're effectively saying "you are not being discrimated against because the society you accuse of discriminating against you defines marriage in a way that excludes you, therefore by definition it's not discrimination." To draw the parallel with the racial civil rights movement, the argument would look like "we can't be being racist, because we don't define you as people, therefore by definition we can't be breaching your human rights because you're not human." Do you not see the circularity in this argument? At best it's a legal semantic reason why gay people are not allowed to get married right now, rather than a justification to never allow it in future.

The problem here is that the government took an institution that was previously defined as a union between a man and a woman, and assigned benefits to it. If you look at the history of marriage, for pretty much the entire course of history until recently it has been an institution that involved at least one man and one woman. While there were instances of accepted same-sex relationships, marriage was almost always applied to heterosexual relationships. The few examples we have from the past of same sex marriages were usually reported in a critical or satirical manner. (Source). The word by definition excludes same sex relationships. It wasn't even until 2001 that a single country in the entire world recognized same sex marriage.

This is different than taking a word such as human, and trying to say that black people are not defined as human. That is who the person is, not the definition of a particular act.

The act of running, by definition, excludes certain handicap people. For me to say that a person bound to a wheelchair is not allowed to run is not discrimination, but a simple outcome of the definition of the act in question. Even though that defining of running excludes handicapped people, that is ok, because that is what running is.

As the one claiming "separate but equal" never works, I challenge you to give one example other than racial segregation where it didn't work. Or even how it wouldn't work in this case. If the government says that anyone with a civil union be allowed to visit their partner in the hospital, how would that not work?

You argue that because "separate but equal" didn't work in the case of a wide spread epidemic of horrible magnitude, reaching down into just about every single walk of life and thing that everyone did on a day to day basis, that it obviously won't work in any other case?

You can't just shift the burden of proof like that. You are the one claiming that "separate but equal" is a viable solution. I bring up the only precedent I'm aware of, and show that it failed miserably. You either have to show that it has worked in other contexts, or explain how this time will be different and why. Also, saying "apart from this, show it never worked" is asking me to prove a negative, which is unreasonable, unless you want me to type out a multicultural analysis of every single civilisation in history and show in every case why something either wasn't a "separate but equal" policy, or how it didn't work.

Finally, the "apart from" qualification is a massive cop-out. It's like me saying "The Baltimore Ravens have never been a superbowl winning football team." and you saying "But they won the superbowl in 2000" and me saying "yeah, well, but apart from that, can you prove they've ever won the superbowl?" The racial debacle is my proof that it doesn't work, and you can't just dismiss is and ask me for more, you have to address it. Your justification that the racial one was a "wide spread epidemic of horrible magnitude, reaching down into just about every single walk of life and thing that everyone did on a day to day basis" seems to me pretty similar to the gay situation now. There are gay people in all walks of life, and by segregating them as not having the same rights to marriage as straight people is effectively saying that they are second class citizens. If they can be denied that right, then what other rights could they be denied? Biblically speaking we could just deny them the right to life, I mean why stop at marriage when you can just eradicate the "problem" entirely?

I have already stated that I believe it would be different in this case, due to the scope of the "discrimination" in question. The separate but equal dilemma of racial discrimination failed because it was trying to keep everything about a particular race separate in everything they do in day to day life. That is trying to accomplish way more than having the same benefits for two different groups of people. There is also the fact that the racial separate but equal was referring more towards physical separation, not a separate group definition. Blacks in one building, whites in another. That is totally different from saying that marriage is different from civil unions, but both should be granted the same rights.

In fact, now that I think about it, here is a good example of separate but equal - race. Black is a separate race from white. Hispanic is separate from the both of them. Yet we treat all races equally in our laws. The government still recognizes that they are different, and is able to do so without providing them with different support or benefits.

I didn't mean any relationship you want, obviously. I was still referring to an official governmental-recognized contract that could be entered into by any two individuals.

So how would most people react if you asked them for the one word, the definition of which would be "an official governmental-recognized contract that could be entered into by any two individuals" within the context of relationships? I think most people would jump straight for marriage. So I would contend that the same sex marriage argument, by popular definition, is legally sound as the majority would use your definition for the "other" system as being synonymous with marriage anyway.

I think a good many people would not be able to provide a word for that, because there isn't one currently. Marriage doesn't fit the bill. Need a new word.

I am all for freedom, liberty and equality for all. I just want to do it in the right way. Instead of the quick and dirty way that tramples on the deeply held belief of a majority of the people in this country, I want to work towards a solution that would make everyone happy. I think that is worth a bit of additional up front effort.

And what is the "right" way? The way that would force hundreds of laws to be modified and changed all throughout all sorts of different contexts from tax to medical permission to adoption to immigration to pensions to death in service benefits and hundreds of other things. At a conservative estimate there are around 1000 different benefits, entitlements and legal rights or advantages that married people receive (Source) A change that would take decades to properly codify.

Or, we could simply make something in law that is exactly identical to marriage, lets call it gayriage. But what would be the point in that? Why have segregation of two legally identical practices under two different names? To avoid trampling on deeply held claims to ownership over the institution of marriage by one particular religious sect? Claims which are unfounded and unjustified? Maybe we should have done the same back in the racist days, and defined black people as "beople" with all the same rights as white people. And because they have a different name for them that wouldn't still promote discrimination, it wouldn't make it even easier for them to be classified as "different to us" or aything like that. No that would have been the perfect solution, I'm amazed none of those black activists and white people who supported them never thought of that!

Christianity is not the only group of people that oppose gay marriage. It is not about ownership of an institution. It is about the people of this society, the people of all faiths, defining a practice in the way we see fit. There is no discrimination in defining one particular act in one particular way, that makes certain groups of people not want to participate. The only discrimination would be in denying a different group the same government benefits for their proposed activity.

Or we could just say that gay people can have marriage just the same as straight people, change one law, and we get to the same point. A few religious / homophobic people get their knickers in a twist for a while,

over half of our country, as shown by the 31 states that have votes for traditional marriage

society moves on and in another 100 years time it's recognised as the same good and fair and just progress as the changes during the racial civil rights movement are viewed by the majority now.

The point of equality isn't just that you treat people equally, but that you classify them equally. A black person is a person, just the same as a white person is a person. A muslim place of worship is a place of worship, just the same as a christian place of worship is a place of worship. By the same principle a gay marriage is a marriage, just the same as a straight marriage is a marriage.

I'd be fine with classifying them the same - a marriage is a civil union and a gay marriage is a civil union. That's fine. But a sedan is not the same thing as an SUV, even though both are cars. It is possible to find common ground between two different things, and come up with common terminology, but that doesn't mean that all remotely-similar things are the same. A gay marriage is not a marriage, according to the majority of people in this country, in this world, in the history of this world.

[heavycola]

Yo dimezz!

Hay hay hay. How wuz the Olympics?

Awesome! I totally got three medals, could have been four but i was like soooooo hungover the race morning

So here homosexuality is a subcategory of sexual immorality etc, but it is ranked alongside jealousy, discord (??), selfish ambition... yet there are no demonstrations against these sins. The point I am groping towards I guess is that any bibe-based rationale for opposing gay marriage falls flat very quickly: point to the crazy. long-disregarded laws laid down in leviticus, and we are directed to the NT. But Paul defines gayness as a sin alongside the bizarre, the banal and the hopelessly vague. Can you imagine a campaign to cure people of selfish ambition in the US?

PS i know this isn't black and white, and that there are plenty of liberal xians who share a belief that gods ideal of eudaimonia - human fulfillment? flourishing? - can only be achieved through a stable, loving relationship, and that the sexual orientation of those involved makes no difference. (Gene Robinson's ordination proves that. Hell, a gay vicar presents Saturday Live in Radio 4 over here every week. Those are the two gay churchmen i know off the top of my head.) Galations again - 'There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.'

Add in the concept I believe to be fact that much of the Bible's content is affected by the context every particular person reads it in, and how it can change quite a bit even for the same person re-reading a passage. Depending even on their moods/emotional state. More than regular books.

This feature allows for a guy that is a teacher of a somewhat respected Church to switch up what was likely a direction to quit fighting with each other because Jesus is above the mere level of, "Boys are better than Girls and you need to be a Pharasee to get in to Heaven." to an idea that makes it Ok to have sex with your Jewish slave.

Which I might add are pretty tough to purchase in todays markets.

The limitations of the free market, writ large.

What do we want? DEREGULATION OF THE JEWISH SLAVE TRADE!
When do we want it? NOW!

[2dimes]

I don't think loving food is the sin part of gluttony. The issue is when, I am on my third meal of the day, I'm up for my third plate of Himalayan take out and get emotionally hurt because someone else has made off with the last shrimp. Meanwhile back in Africa...

[2dimes]

Yo dimezz!

Hay hay hay. How wuz the Olympics?

Awesome! I totally got three medals, could have been four but i was like soooooo hungover the race morning

I heard the Canadian women's football team had a similar issue with bad offishuls.

[crispybits]

I'm cutting out big sections, if I miss something you want a response on then say, but there's no point me quoting all of everything when I can just raise the points I find particularly (instead of just generally) wrong.

The act of running, by definition, excludes certain handicap people. For me to say that a person bound to a wheelchair is not allowed to run is not discrimination, but a simple outcome of the definition of the act in question. Even though that defining of running excludes handicapped people, that is ok, because that is what running is.

Yes it is, if that prohibition is put into law. If you make a law that says that black people are not allowed to fly (superman style) but white people are, the lack of practical application of that law does not stop that law being, in it's nature, discriminatory. By popular / dictionary definition discrimination is "treatment or consideration of, or making a distinction in favor of or against, a person or thing based on the group, class, or category to which that person or thing belongs rather than on individual merit". The word "consideration" in there means it's just as possible to discriminate theoretically as it is practically. And defining something in a way that excludes a section of society is not just a positive definition of that thing, it is a discriminatory philosophical position.

Your source there, if you go instead to this page, shows that in fact the President has instructed the courts to cease to defend DOMA's discriminatory definition of marriage (you'll have to scroll up slightly for that bit), and that there are numerous legal challenges to that definition still in progress from same sex couples and civil liberties groups. So while the definition may have majority popular support, that doesn't mean it is correct. Not that long ago the majority popular opinion was that black people were a different race entirely and were not human, and we know how that turned out.

In fact, now that I think about it, here is a good example of separate but equal - race. Black is a separate race from white. Hispanic is separate from the both of them. Yet we treat all races equally in our laws. The government still recognizes that they are different, and is able to do so without providing them with different support or benefits.

Have you not been paying attention? Separate but equal was applied to race - and it failed - horribly. Goverment does not recognise the different races separately, it recognises them as sub-divisions of people and in most cases (the exception that springs to mind is positive discrimination projects) it is bound to not consider the race as being relevant for it's decisions/actions. Everybody is just a person, not separate but equal, but instead integrated and equal.

Marriage doesn't fit the bill. Need a new word.

So if I go down to the supermarket right now, and write "an official governmental-recognized contract that could be entered into by any two individuals to form a stable romantic relationship" down on a piece of card, and then hand that card to random people and ask what it describes without any other context or prompting, you think that more people would be unable to put a word to that than would call it marriage? I can't prove anything, and I know you won't do this, but I beg you, please go and give this a try yourself because I really think you'll be shocked and amazed and how many go straight there without a second thought.

A gay marriage is not a marriage, according to the majority of people in this country, in this world, in the history of this world.

As stated above, a few hundred years ago the majority of people thought that blacks were sub-human. Did that make them right? Because a belief is widespread does not justify using that belief as justification for anything, or we'd all be forced to say that God(s) do(es) exist, because the majority of people in the country, in the world, in the history of the world believe or believed in him/her/it/them. Thankfully places like law courts use different methods to work out what is right and wrong....

[dwilhelmi]

If you make a law that says that black people are not allowed to fly (superman style) but white people are, the lack of practical application of that law does not stop that law being, in it's nature, discriminatory. By popular / dictionary definition discrimination is "treatment or consideration of, or making a distinction in favor of or against, a person or thing based on the group, class, or category to which that person or thing belongs rather than on individual merit". The word "consideration" in there means it's just as possible to discriminate theoretically as it is practically. Saying the handicapped person cannot run is fine, saying they are not allowed to is not.

How about saying they can run, as long as they find a way to get legs? That's basically what is going on with marriage - gay people can get married, as long as they follow the same rules as everyone else.

What makes one rule discriminatory, and another not? Why is it discrimination to limit marriage to opposite genders, but not discrimination to limit it to two people? That still excludes a group of people (married people) from performing this ceremony.

Your source there, if you go instead to this page, shows that in fact the President has instructed the courts to cease to defend DOMA's discriminatory definition of marriage (you'll have to scroll up slightly for that bit), and that there are numerous legal challenges to that definition still in progress from same sex couples and civil liberties groups. So while the definition may have majority popular support, that doesn't mean it is correct. Not that long ago the majority popular opinion was that black people were a different race entirely and were not human, and we know how that turned out.

Not sure what your point is here. The fact that the current administration doesn't agree with me means that I am wrong? I don't think many would agree with that.

Have you not been paying attention? Separate but equal was applied to race - and it failed - horribly. Goverment does not recognise the different races separately, it recognises them as sub-divisions of people and in most cases (the exception that springs to mind is positive discrimination projects) it is bound to not consider the race as being relevant for it's decisions/actions. Everybody is just a person, not separate but equal, but instead integrated and equal.

My point here was that the government still knows about race. When you fill out a government form, there are questions about what race you are. But yet people are still being treated equally, no matter what their race. I am not a black person. I am separate from that race. The government is well aware that I am separate. Yet they still don't consider me to be unequal with a black person. We are two separate races, yet we are equal. Marriage and Gay Marriage are two separate things, two different kinds of commitments, but I don't see why the government couldn't recognize both.

So if I go down to the supermarket right now, and write "an official governmental-recognized contract that could be entered into by any two individuals to form a stable romantic relationship" down on a piece of card, and then hand that card to random people and ask what it describes without any other context or prompting, you think that more people would be unable to put a word to that than would call it marriage?

No, because marriage is currently the only stable romantic relationship that the government recognizes. That doesn't mean it is the only possible one. If you removed marriage from the books entirely and just called everything Civil Unions, then people would answer Civil Union.

As stated above, a few hundred years ago the majority of people thought that blacks were sub-human. Did that make them right? Because a belief is widespread does not justify using that belief as justification for anything, or we'd all be forced to say that God(s) do(es) exist, because the majority of people in the country, in the world, in the history of the world believe or believed in him/her/it/them. Thankfully places like law courts use different methods to work out what is right and wrong....

Let me give you a for-fun example of my viewpoint here. Lets suppose, for just a minute, that there was some sort of government benefit applied to being Christian. Lets say that when the founding fathers formed this country, they decided that they were not going to force anybody to be Christian, but they still thought it was a good idea, so much so that they were willing to give tax breaks to anybody who listed that as their faith. They knew then that being a Christian meant, in simplest terms, having faith in Jesus Christ.

If faced with that law today, that would be a discriminatory law. Christians should not be given special tax breaks for being Christian. Would the appropriate course of action in that case be to change the definition of Christian to being "faith in something beyond yourself", so as not to discriminate against people of other faiths? Or would it be better to remove the term Christian from the law books entirely, and either do away with the faith-break, or replace it with a more generic, inclusive term? And in this case, would defining Christianity as anyone who had "faith in Jesus Christ" be discriminatory in and of itself?

The definition of the term, the action itself, is not discriminatory - it is our treatment of that action within the government that is. I don't care if you include multiple forms of recognized relationships, or a single generic term for an official relationship, or remove the benefits entirely. Definition of the activity in question is not the source of the problem.

[crispybits]

And to give a quick answer I'm saying that "marriage" can be that word.

Christianity has a claim on the term Christian, it is a descriptive that applies to it and it alone. No religion or tradition or philosophy has a claim on the term marriage, it's been around (evolving with language obviously) longer than just about any current religions or philosophies or anything. So to say you oppose the redefining of the word "marriage" to include more than it currently does means there is more than a semantic issue going on here. There is an issue that you believe, for whatever reason, be that religious or political or philosophical or whatever, that marriage is what we define it as right now and shouldn't be changed. I've been trying to get down to that underlying issue, and I'm constantly blocked by your insistence that its all about semantics.

Are you really THAT passionate about the meaning of a word, for no other reason than you are passionate about the meaning of the word, that you are willing to oppose some people being able to use the word which they recognise has legal and cultural significance as showing a lifelong, devoted commitment to the person you love, just because they happen to love someone of the same gender as them, and to get their relationships regarded as totally equal by society to those who love people of the opposite sex? The cultural bit is important, make up a new term and you're making a two-tier cultural system and not promoting equality at all, just the same as calling black people "beople" wouldn't have led to equality, but just more "them and us" division.

Let me try, one last time, before I give up, to ask one simple question and hope for an honest answer instead of an evasion about semantics. Why do you oppose allowing gay people the right to call their legal romantic commitment pledge to each other a marriage and achieve legal and cultural equality with straight people?

[dwilhelmi]

Just because a sin "does no harm" does not make it not a sin. Stable and loving heterosexual relationships are part of God's plan. Deciding that you know better than God what constitutes sin, and living your life in such a way as to embrace that sin, can be very damaging to yourself. There are many other sins that don't hurt anybody, but are still sins and can cause damage to yourself. Gluttony, for example. It doesn't hurt anybody else, in fact it helps a good number of people who are selling you all of your food. It is pleasing to yourself, as boy golly does food taste good. In the long run, however, it is very damaging to yourself, and is still sinful. A greater test is required than "does it hurt anybody".

The 'greater test' must be whether the bible says it is OK, then, and like every atheist i'm deeply suspicious of outsourcing moral questions to a book written by desert tribes thousands of years ago. But that is by the by.

Look, obviously the dalai lama doesn't give a toss about biblical definitions of sin. I quoted him as a fairly dispassionate and wise dude who, to my mind, sums up the most important aspect of this issue perfectly. It does no harm. Would he have replied the same way about gluttony? What do we mean by gluttony - a love of food? Or obesity? The former on its own does no harm, and any god that decides loving food is a sin can keep his poxy afterlife. The latter does plenty of harm - it leads to disability, immobility, chronic disease, and all of those have wider social and familial costs.

How about a thought experiment: if you, or anyone else who points to scripture as the final say on this, could pretend the bible doesn't exist and you had to come to your own moral conclusions about homosexuality - and I am talking about stable, loving and committed relationships here, like a string straight marriage - what would those conclusions be? and how would you arrive at them?

Here's the thing - I believe that the source of all morality, the very foundation of right and wrong, is God. Morality doesn't come from the Bible, that was just one way God attempted to reveal to us His morality.

At the end of the day, there has to be some ideal morality, some final goal of what is right and what is wrong - if there was not, then it would be impossible to have one group's set of morals be "more right" than others. It cannot be the group itself that defines this moral ideal, because then there would be no way of comparing them against each other. There must be some absolute right and wrong to point at and say "look, you guys are not doing what is right".

So to ask if something would be wrong if you were to take away the source of right and wrong? OK, then, no, if the source of right and wrong were removed then homosexuality would not be wrong. But I don't think that helps the conversation along very well .

Personally, I don't think the "do no harm" is a good measure of right and wrong. For one thing, it can be impossible to tell if something does harm. It could be that somebody gets into a homosexual, long term, committed relationship, and they lead a perfectly fine life. However, you can't know what "harm" might have been done there as compared to what that life would have been without getting into that relationship. If that person is now worse off than they would have been if they had chosen differently, then that decision did harm them. Without our handy dandy time machine, we can't know if any decision is harmful or not. So that in and of itself defeats using that as a test for right and wrong, in my opinion.

[dwilhelmi]

And to give a quick answer I'm saying that "marriage" can be that word.

Christianity has a claim on the term Christian, it is a descriptive that applies to it and it alone. No religion or tradition or philosophy has a claim on the term marriage, it's been around (evolving with language obviously) longer than just about any current religions or philosophies or anything. So to say you oppose the redefining of the word "marriage" to include more than it currently does means there is more than a semantic issue going on here. There is an issue that you believe, for whatever reason, be that religious or political or philosophical or whatever, that marriage is what we define it as right now and shouldn't be changed. I've been trying to get down to that underlying issue, and I'm constantly blocked by your insistence that its all about semantics.

Are you really THAT passionate about the meaning of a word, for no other reason than you are passionate about the meaning of the word, that you are willing to oppose some people being able to use the word which they recognise has legal and cultural significance as showing a lifelong, devoted commitment to the person you love, just because they happen to love someone of the same gender as them, and to get their relationships regarded as totally equal by society to those who love people of the opposite sex? The cultural bit is important, make up a new term and you're making a two-tier cultural system and not promoting equality at all, just the same as calling black people "beople" wouldn't have led to equality, but just more "them and us" division.

Let me try, one last time, before I give up, to ask one simple question and hope for an honest answer instead of an evasion about semantics. Why do you oppose allowing gay people the right to call their legal romantic commitment pledge to each other a marriage and achieve legal and cultural equality with straight people?

My personal reason for opposing gay people to change the definition of marriage for their own purposes does come from my faith. I believe that homosexuality is wrong, and that marriage is a gift from God. Each person can have their own reasons for or against something like this. The core reason behind my personal passion for it has no bearing on the secular debate at hand, and that is why I keep going back to the definition of the word. I have not seen how resisting redefinition of an existing activity constitutes discrimination.

The solution to racial inequality was not to change the definition of "white" to be "any person". The white people are still white, the black people are still black, and those terms are not discriminatory at all. The solution was to get the government to give everyone equal rights as "people". So it seems to me that the appropriate solution here is not to call marriage something that it isn't - it seems to be that the solution is to get the government to give everyone equal rights as "civil unions". If you want to call yourself married, that is fine, go for it. I shouldn't have any power to stop that, and I wouldn't. Perhaps in my church, marriage is between one man and one woman, while in the church down the street it is between any two people. That is fine. I just object to the discrimination argument, because it has far more consequences than the short term goals that you see.

If the government rules that defining marriage as being between one man and one woman is discriminatory, that does impact me. It is the government making a decision that says that my faith is wrong, that my faith is discriminatory. The government shouldn't do that- it should stay out of it. Let me have my version of my faith, and you yours, without validating one or the other. That would make me peachy happy.

Shy of that, if the government is going to validate anybodies belief, I would obviously rather it validate mine .

[natty dread]

At the end of the day, there has to be some ideal morality, some final goal of what is right and what is wrong

"Has" to be?

Sorry, reality doesn't take orders from you.

if there was not, then it would be impossible to have one group's set of morals be "more right" than others.

Point being?

It cannot be the group itself that defines this moral ideal, because then there would be no way of comparing them against each other. There must be some absolute right and wrong to point at and say "look, you guys are not doing what is right".

Even if there is an absolute morality, it has nothing to do with god or bible. If the "word of god" was the absolute source of morality, you'd be killing everyone who works on sundays, and stoning women to death for cheating on their husbands, and so on. The truth is, even your morality is independent from the bible. You just pick and choose what parts of the bible you believe or follow according to a pre-set morality which is independent of the bible.

Then you claim your morality comes from god, and is thus superior to the moralities of others, but it doesn't really solve anything. Everyone else can just as well claim their version of morality comes from any number of gods, and at the end of the day none of them can prove to be "more right" than any of the others.

So to ask if something would be wrong if you were to take away the source of right and wrong? OK, then, no, if the source of right and wrong were removed then homosexuality would not be wrong. But I don't think that helps the conversation along very well .

Basically, you just admitted you have no rational basis for your homophobia and bigotry, and you're using religion as an excuse for your own prejudices.

Personally, I don't think the "do no harm" is a good measure of right and wrong.

And I suppose some arbitrary text written by some crazy people 2000 years ago is a better one? Why should something be forbidden if it does no harm to anyone? Should the entire world make eating pork illegal, because Jewish people believe eating pork to be sin? What about the Hindus and cows? Should everyone in the world treat cows as sacred because the Hindus believe they are?

Actually, "do no harm" is the best measure of right and wrong. You're just not comfortable with it, because it actually requires you to think (gasp!)

For one thing, it can be impossible to tell if something does harm. It could be that somebody gets into a homosexual, long term, committed relationship, and they lead a perfectly fine life. However, you can't know what "harm" might have been done there as compared to what that life would have been without getting into that relationship.

So what? The same can be said of any decision you make. You can't argue that something is harmful because "it might be and you just never know". By that logic, we should all just stop doing anything. The next breath you take could cause a hurricane in africa! Stop breathing immediately!

[crispybits]

Finally we're getting somewhere.

I have not seen how resisting redefinition of an existing activity constitutes discrimination.

It depends if the existing definition is discriminatory. If the definition of people was "white human beings" then obviously that's a discriminatory definition, and people of other races have a case to say that the definition should be changed on those grounds, especially if the term "people" has legal or cultural significance. Resisting changing that definition to include people of all races would be discriminatory.

The solution to racial inequality was not to change the definition of "white" to be "any person". The white people are still white, the black people are still black, and those terms are not discriminatory at all.

No the solution was to recognise that black people were people. Replace the words "white" and "black" and "people" in your sentence there with appropariate terms for this debate and you get:

The solution to marital inequality was not to change the definition of "straight" to be "any marriage". The straight marriages are still straight, the gay marriages are still gay, and those terms are not discriminatory at all.

The soluton was to say that white and black people are all people. It's a solution that worked, that eliminated a lot of the bigotry surrounding race, and over time has provded a solid social and cultural foundation for equality. We didn't redefine "white" or "black", we redefined "people" from "white human beings" to just "human beings". Just like now we look to change the definition of marriage from "heterosexual union" to "union", and we're not at all interested in redefining straight or gay at all.

If that brings about a situation where a discriminatory faith system is found to be discriminatory then so be it. You can hold whatever beliefs you like, just like the KKK still hold that black people are inferior. The only thing you lose is the cultural acceptance of your discriminatory beliefs, and as far as I'm concerned that's a damn fine thing indeed...

[dwilhelmi]

if there was not, then it would be impossible to have one group's set of morals be "more right" than others.

Point being?

That all people, not just Christians, compare morality. You can look at pre-civil-war america and say that their morals were less right than ours because of slavery. We can compare ourselves to extremists (of any religion) killing people, blowing themselves and/or others up, and we can know that we are more right in our morals than they are. That comparison is only possible if there is some absolute Right to compare it against.

It cannot be the group itself that defines this moral ideal, because then there would be no way of comparing them against each other. There must be some absolute right and wrong to point at and say "look, you guys are not doing what is right".

Even if there is an absolute morality, it has nothing to do with god or bible. If the "word of god" was the absolute source of morality, you'd be killing everyone who works on sundays, and stoning women to death for cheating on their husbands, and so on. The truth is, even your morality is independent from the bible. You just pick and choose what parts of the bible you believe or follow according to a pre-set morality which is independent of the bible.

Then you claim your morality comes from god, and is thus superior to the moralities of others, but it doesn't really solve anything. Everyone else can just as well claim their version of morality comes from any number of gods, and at the end of the day none of them can prove to be "more right" than any of the others.

The absolute morality argument is not to attempt to persuade people that my God is right, as much as it is just to show that there is some sort of outside, authoritative source on right. I have other arguments for my God .

So to ask if something would be wrong if you were to take away the source of right and wrong? OK, then, no, if the source of right and wrong were removed then homosexuality would not be wrong. But I don't think that helps the conversation along very well .

Basically, you just admitted you have no rational basis for your homophobia and bigotry, and you're using religion as an excuse for your own prejudices.

No, all I did was say that if there was no right and wrong, then homosexuality would not be wrong. Of course, neither would anything else...

Personally, I don't think the "do no harm" is a good measure of right and wrong.

And I suppose some arbitrary text written by some crazy people 2000 years ago is a better one? Why should something be forbidden if it does no harm to anyone? Should the entire world make eating pork illegal, because Jewish people believe eating pork to be sin? What about the Hindus and cows? Should everyone in the world treat cows as sacred because the Hindus believe they are?

Actually, "do no harm" is the best measure of right and wrong. You're just not comfortable with it, because it actually requires you to think (gasp!)

For one thing, it can be impossible to tell if something does harm. It could be that somebody gets into a homosexual, long term, committed relationship, and they lead a perfectly fine life. However, you can't know what "harm" might have been done there as compared to what that life would have been without getting into that relationship.

So what? The same can be said of any decision you make. You can't argue that something is harmful because "it might be and you just never know". By that logic, we should all just stop doing anything. The next breath you take could cause a hurricane in africa! Stop breathing immediately!

That last bit is actually exactly my point. You can't argue right and wrong based off of the harm it may or may not cause, because that is an unknowable quantity. Therefore, you must use some other reasoning for determining right and wrong. My belief is that right and wrong come from God. That's not yours, and that is fine. I am perfectly fine disagreeing without feeling trembling rage and resulting to blatantly false, ridiculous attacks and instead trying to find some rational common ground for discussion on the matter .