Recently we’ve received some emails from those who are supportive of denying Oregon families of any rights. We here at Know Thy Neighbor Oregon want to ensure that the dialog remains positive and non-threatening, after all this is a big part of our mission.
To give you an example of one of these emails:
[I] have been Patiently waiting for hunting season to try out my new high powered rifle on a live target.
As Know Thy Neighbor Oregon forges on, we want to remind people of this part of our mission:
KnowThyNeighborOregon.com hopes to inspire respectful, civil, and honest community discourse and discourages with its fullest conviction the actions by anyone to harm a person or their property in retribution for exercising their democratic right to sign the petition.
You can read more about the project, our goals and mission on the about page.
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Here’s what I am positive and focused about: The first time anyone is injured (and you know, but clearly don’t care, that someone will be injured… or worse.) or you get their names or other information wrong; or someone’s name is falsely put on one of those sheets and, as a result of your publication of this information they get hurt; you and everyone involved in your effort will be sued into lifetime poverty for enabling such activity.
This entire effort is based on intimidation, and it will backfire.
Nothing, short of the moronic efforts of the law-ignoring Multnomah County Commissioners with their gay-marriage idiocy, could possibly galvanize people to act more swiftly or to unite more strongly to support the very things you oppose.
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Clearly, it may be time to put together a web site listing gay rights activists information; THEIR addresses; THEIR phone numbers… in fact, everything about gay rights activists. You know, purely in the interest of “advocating for the removal of governmental barriers to public information by providing meaningful access online.”
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In fact, in looking at your website, I fail to note the names and addresses of those who are behind it or operate it. Why is that? After all, if you put up a website that is entirely devoted to intimidating people to stop them from signing these petitions then you people should have the courage of their convictions, and take responsibility for what you’ve done. Right?
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Hypocrites.
And how many petition signers in Massachusetts and Florida (the only other states in which Know Thy Neighbor has done this) has this happened to, Hinton?
Oh, yeah: Zero. So enough squealing hysteria.
And to the extent my activities are public record, go ahead and post them. But you better have a damn good idea of what constitutes public record in Oregon (better than you seem to have now).
I doubt anyone will be physically hurt, but there may well be a price to pay for publicly declaring your bigotry.
I live in Massachusetts. I saw some names and businesses on the list. I no longer patronize those businesses and I have asked everyone I know to do the same.
Hinton,
You sound very upset at the prospect that you will have to be publicly responsible for your efforts to deny basic rights and protections to gay individuals, couples, and their children.
I have not one ounce of pity for you.
A petition is by definition a public document. And those signing are asking to be publicly recognized for their stance against gay rights. That is what a petition is.
If you truly believe in the importance of denying basic rights and protections to gay couples and their children… then, good for you. Go for it… sign away. This is a democracy and you are entitled to this activity.
But along with the benefits of democracy, come the responsibilities. And that means not shrinking from your duty to stand up behind your signature.
And why are you so surprised that the gay community is trying to protect itself? Wouldn’t you want to protect your family if someone was trying to hurt them by denying them basic rights and protections. Wouldn’t you want to do everything within the law to protect your family?
Now, Hinton. Why don’t you explain to us how you are protecting families by attacking the families of others?
[I] have been Patiently waiting for hunting season to try out my new high powered rifle on a live target.
This demented soul doesnt represent me. or that of most of the
people opposed to these laws. publishing my name among those who
signed the petition? im ok with that, as are all my friends who signed it. its about a vote people. ive met people who expressed
interest in signing this petition from both sides. so let’s just be
civil about this. ok?
So, to those claiming nothing has happened, the first question is this: how do you know?
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You don’t.
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Secondly, this effort is based entirely and completely on your efforts to intimidate people to keep them from signing these petitions.
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As I stated, “In fact, in looking at your website, I fail to note the names and addresses of those who are behind it or operate it. Why is that? After all, if you put up a website that is entirely devoted to intimidating people to stop them from signing these petitions then you people should have the courage of your convictions, and take responsibility for what you’ve done. Right?”
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If you people are determined to engage in these types of intimidating tactics, then you should feel free to put up the SAME information out there concerning you. After all, I’m sure the thought of any kind of double-standard never entered your heads, right?
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I repeat: why aren’t the names and numbers and address of those engaged in this activity readily available?
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Anything less is rank hypocrisy.
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This has absolutely nothing to do with my position on your issues or anyone else’s. What it has to do with are your efforts to pervert the democratic process for purposes of intimidating people into not signing these, or any other, petitions.
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That kind of thing smacks of Nazi tyranny. And if you’re bound and determined to play that kind of game, then remember: there are two sides on every issue.
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I’m sure that if you ever found the courage, lacking so far, to run a pro-gay marriage initiative to legalize the practice, you would be completely bent out of shape if an anti-gay marriage group threatened to do, or did do, the same thing you people are threatening to do.
There is one reason, and one reason only to sign this petition.
And that is to try to use your power to deny LGBTI people the dignity that their relationships deserve.
I’m a registered Libertarian in Oregon. Libertarians are the party most closely allied to the homo goals, I should think. We don’t believe the government should even be involved in marriage–let the churches handle it among themselves if they want, but the government should stay out. We also do not believe in punishment for victimless crimes.
Do people ask me to sign petitions other than Libertarian ones? All the time. Do I refuse to sign them? Sometimes if I have a strong position against it. But usually I sign all the initiatives. I sign the ones I more or less support. I sign the ones I’m ambivalent about. And I sign ones I don’t favor but which I think ought to be voted on to let those with a bigger stake than mine have a say. Just because I sign a petition doesn’t mean I’ll vote for it. Often I don’t.
What about the two in Oregon seeking to overturn the new gay-rights laws? Well, the law seeking to give gays many of the same rights as marrieds seems to me to conflict with the recently passed ammendment banning gay marriage. At least, let the people vote on it who voted on the other. And the one banning discrimination is a bit hazy on religious exemptions, it doesn’t spell them out in detail, it leaves the churches open to lawsuits. I think the people should get to vote on it.
So I’ll sign the petition to bring it before the people. And I’ll listen to what both sides have to say before I vote. Why do you want to post my landlady’s address (same as mine)? She doesn’t sign the petitions. And what do you have against a Libertarian who wants issues brought before the people, even issues he doesn’t necessarily go along with? It seems to me you assume too much.
Hey Hinton—
It may actually be entirely possible for you to get the names and addresses of the people behind this project, following the very same process that they’ll follow to get the petitions. They’ll file a public records request to get the petitions, and will presumably include their name and address for correspondence. I believe that request becomes public record, and you can file a public records request to get their request. Sound fair?
Hinton,
The names and home addresses of Know Thy Neighbor’s directors have been listed on their website for the last two years so enough with the “hypocrite” drama, ok:
http://www.knowthyneighbor.org/contact.html
The same info is available from a basic white pages search… we are “in the book.”
You will also notice that, unlike you, I always post to the blog using my full name.
You’re no Libertarian, Earl. Libertarians believe in equality of citizens under the law, and while allowing private discrimination as a function of property rights, do not abet governmental discrimination against any peaceful citizens. The government represents all of us, and must treat us equally.
No Libertarian would ever support putting essential civic equality to popular vote.
So, would it also be OK to post a list of names and addresses of local homosexuals?
Touché, Mad Dog. It was very unLibertarian of me to sign the stupid initiative petitions against gay rights.
I signed the one to ban smoking in public places too. That was unLibertarian as well. But, like, what ever happened to “Love thy neighbor”? I may be prepared to accommodate smokers, but what about everybody else? If a group of people imposes a health risk on the public as well as on themselves, I think the public should get to decide.
No, I didn’t vote for the ban on smoking in public places. I’m Libertarian, remember. It went down to defeat, that ban. Bravo, citizens! Show some moxie.
I went out to eat. The non-smoking section was full, so I sat down at the counter. The man next to me lit up, so I stood to avoid his smoke. The waitress asked me if I didn’t want my food. I told her I was waiting for the gentleman to finish his cigarette.
He finished. Then what did he do? He lit up a second smoke. He puffed away the goodwill I had for smokers.
I respect the initiative process. I sign most all of them whether I agree or not. Sure, my name goes into a public record but no big deal. It’s that second posting on the internet that gets my attention.
Chuck U. Farley says: “So, would it also be OK to post a list of names and addresses of local homosexuals?
Yes Chuck U, as long as those particular homosexuals signed a piece of paper to change the law forever, specifically and intentionally in order to ensure that the love of your life would NEVER EVER be legally recognized as anything other than nobody, and also that you could and should be fired from your job, or kicked out of your home for NO REASON AT ALL.
Then yes Chuck U. Farley, it would “also be OK to post a list of names and addresses of [those] local homosexuals.”
OK, Earl, I’ll play along: Explain to me how I am “imposing a health risk on the public as well as on myself.” Explain how my committed 12-year relationship directly threatens you or anyone (as a “Libertarian,” you only support banning things that cause direct, provable harm, right?). And explain how you’ll somehow be MORE threatened by all these things if domestic partnerships are enacted.
I’ll be waiting.
EARL SAID:
“I respect the initiative process. I sign most all of them whether I agree or not.”
RESPONSE:
There is nothing noble about granting legitimacy to repugnancy, under the guide of “LET THE PEOPLE VOTE.”
In doing so, in this case, you impose a further indignity on gay people and, in turn, exhalt an insidious effort to disenfranchise a minority group - something most anti-Libertarian indeed.
Earl, I suggest that by not being more discriminant in what petitions you sign, you are contributing to a multitude of social problems while thinking you’re merely acting as a proponent of democracy.
Oh my God are you all simpletons in this state?
You endorse a petition, you give just that YOUR ENDORSEMENT.
You can’t stand behind your beliefs if you don’t stand behind your beliefs.
End of discussion.
Please, Mad John, don’t take this personally. I’m looking at risky health behavior of a group; individuals in that group, some of them,
can be no threat whatsoever.
I used to rent a room in a house, sharing the bathroom with two other renters and the landlord. A friend of mine caught my landlord flagrante delicto with another man in a public restroom, but, hey, different strokes for different folks. He wasn’t any problem to me.
But what I worried about was the stream of young men he had over who also used the bathroom. I live in Oregon on the I-5 corridor halfway between Seattle and San Francisco. The book The Coming Plague
documents the homosexual activitiy in the those big cities. The researchers were astounded to discover the multiple partners category holding over 500 different sex partners in a year. Because of this, the homos (plying the I-5 corridor?) had a full alphabet soup of diseases which I list on my website if you click my name.
I would look in the open toilet bowl and imagine all those diseases swimming around in there. So, what did I do? I closed the toiled seat, what else?
Well. my housemate wanted me to leave it open as the landlord liked it open. We argued back and forth on this issue a great deal. Finally, the other renter implimented what I call the Nazi solution.
He removed the toilet, loaded it into his truck and took it to the dump. When the landlord complained, he told him to use his tax refund check to buy a new toilet.
Sure, I suppose there are those who would try imposing the Nazi solution, but I just wanted to close the seat. I work at a vegetable processing plant where if one worker got hepatitus (from the soup?),
the board of health could close down the whole plant.
It just seems to me that I should allow people to vote on their health matters.
Boy, I didn’t think I’d be that controversial. Or is it just that I am stupid?
I don’t sign every initiative petition, not even all the ones where I see both pros and cons. For example, universal health care for all Oregonians. There was a lot to commend it. I was contacted in person by the lady who came up with the whole idea. She spent a great deal of time talking to me, showing me its benefit. Hey, I don’t even have health insurance. Seems like a slam dunk.
But in the back of my mind I could see my mother–who is a registered nurse–find fault with it and ridicule me to no end for having signed it. I wouldn’t sign it so as not to embarrass myself. I suppose that’s what this site is about, to introduce an embarrassment factor. It might work for you, if you don’t make people mad by it.
My friends are really into “family values.” Our country’s founders didn’t talk about values so much as they talked of virtues. By virtue they meant doing what is good for the Republic even at one’s own expense.
I see our initiative process as a valuable tool of democracy, valuable but fragile. It’s sometimes hard to get enough signatures, so I like help out–with certain exceptions.
I suppose you could convince me not to do this, to only sign initiative petitions I endorse. In that case I’d probably follow my friends’ example and vote family values. You might rather have me stick with virtues of the Republic than family values, just like you’d rather embarrass more people than you get mad at you. I mean, where’s the percentage in it?
Earl said:
“It just seems to me that I should allow people to vote on their health matters.”
Domestic partnerships, same-sex marriage and anti-discrimination laws have nothing to do with public health matters.
“Boy, I didn’t think I’d be that controversial. Or is it just that I am stupid?”
Earl, I’ll leave you to conclude which conclusion I made.
EARL:
“Because of this, the homos (plying the I-5 corridor?) had a full alphabet soup of diseases which I list on my website if you click my name.”
Earl, you’re judging a whole minority group on the actions of only a select few members of that group. Not fair…especially when you callously refer to them as “the homos.”
Well, Earl, I do take it personally, because it affects me personally. I don’t get an exemption when you withdraw from all gays the special rights you keep for yourself.
Plus it’s worth noting when a “Libertarian” proposes a profoundly collectivist solution seemingly to punish all for the actions of a few.
So let’s be intellectually honest about this. Some gay men have lots of sex partners – certainly true. Some straight people have lots of sex partners as well. Should marriage rights be withdrawn from them? I mean, assuming you have sex only with straight people, and not with gay ones, they’re an even BIGGER threat to you, right?
Here’s the important question: How does overturning domestic partnerships reduce any putative health threat to you? How will it reduce promiscuity? How will it keep those germs from…jumping up out of the toilet, I guess, if you forget to close the seat? (This sounds highly scientifically dubious to me, BTW, but I’ll read the Garrett book before I pass that judgment.)
In short, how does encouraging and facilitating stable, monogamous, committed relationships increase YOUR risk? You have not answered that. Can you?
EARL, from his blog:
“But it’s also ambiguous to wear a T-shirt saying, ‘I’m fresh,’ especially in places where I’d meet women. But say none of my girlfriends is available and I’d like a little action and don’t have too much time to test the waters. A shirt like that would put a lot of women off, but a woman wanting some action herself sees an available man. If somebody complains about my shirt, I’d just say it means I had a good night’s sleep. But mostly I just wear it at the vegetable processing plant.”
Earl, you really have no place judging gay men on the stereotype based on promiscuity when you open the above with “But say none of my girlfriends is available and I’d like a little action and don’t have too much time to test the waters.”
Your website is beyond offensive, btw.
Good catch, Lula. I look forward to Earl explaining why promiscuity with multiple skanky partners is bad when the gays do it but OK when he does it.
That’s about the level of intellectual rigor I’d expect from a fan of the thuggish LaHayes.
And Mad John, this man does NOT understand Libertarianism.
This brand of Libertarianism is similar to that of Ron Paul. It is more properly called anti-federalism. Patrick Henry would be proud.
Earl,
Assuming that we’ve established that this is not about religion, you should make it a point to start saying that up front. That’s half your battle right there.
“Why do you want to post my landlady’s address (same as mine)?”
I appreciate your concern, I actually am thinking about it more, as you’ve been rather articulate. But what are they going to do, break in and decorate? And why target her? I’m being facetious of course, but what oppressed gay person do you know of that has a bone to pick with your landlady? Via you of course, but who’s fault is that?
You could make the claim that you weren’t ready to be found out. Ok, I’ll accept that. But is that the claim you’re making?
“And I’ll listen to what both sides have to say before I vote.”
So you’ve voted in support of voting on the freedom to suppress freedoms, but you don’t know why yet?
“it leaves the churches open to lawsuits”
Good point. I forgot about all those Muslims, atheists, Jews, Mormons, Catholics, et al, who are ALREADY suing the churches..
This was my favorite:
“I sign the ones I’m ambivalent about. And I sign ones I don’t favor but which I think ought to be voted on to let those with a bigger stake than mine have a say.”
That’s a priceless sentiment Earl, and I take it to heart. Upon much further reflection however, I’ve decided that I’m of the “School” that it’s the self-serving among us who tend to be the most motivated when it comes to voting.
People who think it’s ok to define me, Patrick, as this:
“the homos…alphabet soup of diseases”
Not cool Earl
“But in the back of my mind I could see my mother–who is a registered nurse–find fault with it and ridicule me to no end for having signed it. I wouldn’t sign it so as not to embarrass myself. I suppose that’s what this site is about, to introduce an embarrassment factor. It might work for you, if you don’t make people mad by it.”
Would she be right for doing so?
“You might rather have me stick with virtues of the Republic than family values, just like you’d rather embarrass more people than you get mad at you. I mean, where’s the percentage in it?”
How inconvenient for you.
I’m just going to have to get back to you guys on that. You’ve given me a lot to think about.
For now I’ll just answer the question on my landlady’s address. I have my own entrance, but I am allowed to use the main one if she knows the person. The only one I’ve
ever had violate that rule in my years of living there was a lesbian activist wanting to collect funds for her organization. We had a substantive conversation and she was polite and all. She probably just didn’t know about my landlady’s rule. I can just visualize a storm of protesters marching on my landlady. Or maybe not. You guys have been polite, so far, I’ll give you that. So for now I’ll reserve judgment on this matter.
I don’t mean to ignore the other issues, but time, you know.
I’m not sure why everyone’s so concerned about my comments, but I’ll attempt to answer some very good points. 1st of all, I’m an odd one in his own right as was my friend/
housemate. I’m a graduate in engineering and he in math. When we argued about the heat in the house, we’d use the actual thermodynamic equations. A couple of nerds!
Our landlord was “queer” in his own way. Only the other renter, an ethnic minority, could be called almost normal–whatever that means.
I’m not sure everybody understands me. When my current landlady complained about the electric bill one month, I wrote a page of calculations showing my new appliance and
my increased cooking accounted for a minor portion of the increase, most having come from the cold spell. I’m sure it was over her head, but she shows it to her son who can verify it.
One night I broke the toilet seat by flopping on it off center. So I bought a piece of wood the thickness of the gap between the seat and the bowl, glued the seat together, nailed the wood underneath, and taped any protrusions. Hardly the pride of a carpenter but an engineer would recognize that I’d changed a torque into a compression for safe use. Of course, I’m going to close the toilet seat if I
suspect disease in the bowl. Any number of accidents happen in the bathroom. Stuff falls in, water splashes out, and people have been known to sit on the bowl without having put the seat down.
When I walk down the street I take mental note of the dangerous sharp-edged new apartment mailboxes. The old ones had rounded corners. If I could change the design back to the safe one, I would. Sure, there may be an occasional box tucked away somewhere that’s actually no danger at all but would have to be upgraded with the rest. So what?
So my friend would be gone and his girlfriend would come over and he wasn’t there, so to be brutally honest …, no, I don’t think I’ll be brutally honest. He might read this. I want to keep him as my friend.
Okay, we’re talking about homosexuals in faithful committed relations. Are they being brutally honest? Maybe. How about their partners, do they know everything about what goes on? I mean, when I read such stuff, it isn’t like it’s being confided in the sanctity of a confessional. It isn’t even being told under oath. And for that matter Clinton showed us that we don’t have to tell the truth about sex even then.
The other housemate, one evening had a party in the back yard. He had the neighbor girl over. Then he went out for beer, and while I always knew my friend’s schedule how long he’d be gone, I didn’t know how long this guy would take,
and he got mad when he came back to find me and the girl he’d invited a little too cozy. I had ruined his plan to get her drunk and in bed.
I plainly told him I disapprove of people sleeping together who aren’t married. Then he invited another girl to spend the night. I knew her from way back and told her I disapproved of what she was doing. If you mean to criticize heterosexuals for sleeping around, bravo, I criticize them too. What about me? I may be a little on the promiscuous side, but I don’t have sex with them.
Then there was our queer landlord who had all these cats hanging around him who didn’t belong to anybody. I mean, at night he would throw food scraps out the back door to a bunch of waiting eyes, he didn’t know what was eating it.
We ended up with feral cats frequenting our yard. One had kittens. They would lounge on the steps.
One day in passing I petted a cute one who bit me, ouch! Drew blood. I should have known better. Domesticated cats get their affection from humans; we’ll call them heterosensual, animals that get affection from other species. Feral cats get affection from their own species, other cats. They are homosensual. I had just failed to discriminate between the two orientations. My fault.
I was worried about rabies so I called animal control who told me what I was required to do. First, I had to get a tetanus shot, ouch again. Then we had to trap the kitten so it could be put under observation.
We laid out the trap. We caught it the same day, and the right one. Its family hung around it even though it was in a cage. The animal control officer came to retrieve it
but its mother didn’t want him anywhere near it. He had to get a stick to defend himself. I just hung back. Wasn’t my fight.
Finally mama cat gave up and the officer put the cage into his trunk and closed the door. The cat let out a loud “Yeooww!” I suppose it was sort of like the Jews in Nazi Germany, after having suffered various indignities, some men in uniforms come and herded them into boxcars and closed the door. They must have been thinking, “This can’t be a good sign.”
You know, in a way I can kinda see your point. My saying that I’m just being patriotic to our republic by signing initiative petitions is sorta like the commander of the concentration camp saying he was just following orders, just doing his duty. We have since decided that there are certain orders, certain duties, so morally repugnant that we hold them personally accountable who obey.
I suppose the German commander’s best hope is to win the war. If I’m on the side that loses the culture war, I could find myself in big trouble. Not only did I sign the initiative petitions, but I saw to the almost certain execution of the cat after the quarantine period when nobody claimed it whose only crime was being a homosensual.
I can’t really think of any workable defense. We’ve eliminated religion, so there aren’t any moral absolutes, just whatever we decide, and I’m found on the wrong side.
What are my options? Well, I could change sides now. If, say, they re-route I-5 to go out and around Oregon, then I won’t worry about all the extremely promiscuous homosexuals from the big cities coming here, and perhaps I can support your cause. Short of that, I could avoid any overt cruelty to homosexuals, or even treat them well, and I may have that count to mitigate my crime.
I think, though, that I could defend myself against the misleading charge that I took part in the execution of a homo cat. That’s a misleading phrase because cat can mean a cool person, and homo can mean a homosexual person, but all I helped execute was a feral feline.
From my website which you can find by clicking my name: Ref. Michael Nava, The Burning Plain “The word queer is ambiguous; for decades it had been an epithet, but
many younger gays had co-opted the word and proudly described themselves as queer, in the same spirit that longhaired college students in the sixties used to call themselves freaks.”
Did anyone see an actual point addressed anywhere in that entire rambling discourse?
Re. the landlady: Do you oppose sex-offender registries for the same reason?
Once again, Earl: How does encouraging and facilitating committed monogamous relationships among gays increase any alleged threat to your, or anyone’s, health?
Is “your spouse might cheat on you” really the best you can do?
“We’ve eliminated religion, so there aren’t any moral absolutes, just whatever we decide, and I’m found on the wrong side.”
I’d like to know what happened to your religion. I have no problem practicing my faith. I have many moral absolutes, and I practice them to best of my ability. It is not that hard to do.
Earl, with all due respect…
Are you high?
Mad John, points:
1) The difference between normal promiscuity and abnormal promiscuity.
A renter buys an appliance and cooks sample foods from around the world. He can be said be doing promiscuous cooking. He is a fair cook but because he never perfects any single dish, his cooking is called promiscuous. The landlady questions him on his electric usage, but he isn’t using more than she can tolerate.
Another renter uses promiscuous heating. (This actually happened.) He turns on the heater and leaves the door open. He is heating the great outdoors. He is promiscuous with the heat. The landlady disapproved of that renter and told me about it.
Both renters were promiscuous; only one got rebuked. Doesn’t seem fair, but that’s how it is sometimes.
Or take wild and tame animals. I sport with dogs on the bike trail that are off their leash. But it was no laughing matter when I got chased down from the hills by a pack of wild dogs in Colorado. Here wild animals are presumed to be the more dangerous although sometimes the reverse is true.
2) Words like homo and queer can be good, bad, or
indifferent depending on context. I gave an example of all three.
3) A toilet seat left up can expose people to whatever disease is
in the bowl through various accidents. Someone who is nuts enough to
buy the materials and repair a broken toilet seat rather than buying
a new seat is probably nuts enough to habitually put the seat down. If he has a neurotic housemate with the opposing view, it is likely they will argue.
4) Just as I would if I could, recall all those sharp-cornered mailboxes to be replaced with round cornered ones, and not worry too much about the odd box that is situated safe, so I am in favor of good health rules even if the odd person doesn’t need it. Jesus allowed Himself to be baptized by John the Baptist to fulfill all righteousness even though John didn’t think it was necessary.
5) If you can imagine someone cheating on his housemate/friend, then you can probably imagine a partner cheating on his other. You may also imagine the other not finding out. This seems to be the one
point that got across.
6) Promiscuity in and of itself is not dangerous as long as one limits the degree of intimacy. What a couple does sitting on chairs in the back yard is not nearly as dangerous as what a couple does in
bed together. This to answer the criticism of my promiscuity which I place limits on.
7) I answered Emproph’s remark “How inconvenient for you,” in reference to what would happen if I chucked out my approach of civil virtue (people get opportunity to vote on matters) and so ended up following my friends’ family vallues. That does seem to be “convenient,” so I postulated a very inconvenient scenario in which hypotheticly speaking the world forsook all religious absolutes, and the so-called culture war had a definitive outcome in which I was held accountable by an alliance of homosexual activists and animal rights groups. However farfetchted it sounded, it was certainly not convenient for me in the end.
The suggestion of solving my concern about an influx of diseased homosexuals by re-routing I-5 so it goes out and around Oregon is an oblique reference to an issue the lesbian activist who visited my house brought up, so you don’t lose points for missing it; it’s like
extra credtit if you get it. Technically, it would solve my concern, but it would require an awful lot of commitment and work to accomplish. This touches on an issue the lesbian brought up when she claimed homosexuality was genetic. If indeed it is, then no amount of commitment and work and therapy will enable the homosexual to change his orientation. It would be easier for us to re-route I-5.
Mad John, with the exception of point 8–which addresses a related issue–all these points were brought to my attention in a series of blogs that I assumed the posters wanted answered.
No comment on sex offenders. And I’ve put aside my worry about
my landlady being bothered as it appears to me that those associated
with this site possess enough common courtesy so that it shouldn’t be a problem.
How does yada, yada, yada? Well, you remember the movie about this farmer out in the middle of Kansas who gets this great idea of building a baseball diamond in his corn field? Remember his critical insight: “If you build it, they will come.” Brother, I don’t know how they came, but in the movie, came they did. If we make Oregon too friendly for homosexuals, well, build it and they will come.
Is that the best I can do? You know the expression, “as American as apple pie”? Well, the Canadians decided to hold a contest to complete the phrase, “As Canadian as …” They got a gazillion entries. The winner? “As Canadian as possible under the circumstances.”
John, where is our religion?
You remember the parable the Lord told about this judge in a certain city who feared not God and regarded not man. There was a powerless widow who kept bugging him with her request, so he took her case even though it wasn’t in his character to help out, just to get her off his back. The point of the parable is that God who is ever so mindful of his creation should be approached with persistent prayer, even though we think he is slow to respond at times. The point of persistence is made stronger when in the parable a rather aloof judge is the one who comes through in the end. It doesn’t mean that God is callous, it just helps us understand that God who is attentive will come through
if we just hang in there, you can count on it.
I used the same kind of device by postulating a world in which there are no moral absolutes, it is devoid of religion. In this world I postulated, I showed that it is a good idea to be kind to queers. When we consider that there are in fact moral absolutes, and of the kind to love our neighbor, then how much more should we remember to be kind to … well, fill in the blank, I’m not being restrictive here.
Lula, am I high?
It’s probably just sleep deprivation. I really need to get a life.
What a very strange thought process: If we make Oregon more welcoming for gays who wish to settle down in committed, monogamous relationships, it will draw more who wish to eschew committed, monogamous relationships in favor of serial anonymous toilet trysts - is that it?
“Well, I hadn’t planned to drive from San Francisco to Seattle today, but damn, gays in Oregon have power of attorney! Let’s hit that truckstop!”
Any data to back up such an odd and counterintuitive theory? Massachusetts? The Netherlands? Or would you prefer to legislate my life based only on your fevered speculation?
Your implication, couched under that avalanche of verbiage, seems to be that be that gays are more promiscuous than straights. This is not supported in any scientific literature, but even if it were, would not justify discrimination against the entire class of people.
I also notice you, like so many of the anti-gays, conveniently avoid the entire matter of lesbians (who are, stereotypically, not promiscuous, and who, demonstrably, have lower rates of STDs than just about anyone). But certainly, focusing only on a subset of a subset makes it easier to justify prejudice.
Not surpised, also, that you ducked the point about the sex-offender registry. Principle is not what’s informing your arguments.
Mad John:
As Canada is part French and part British, they haven’t completed the melting-pot process, and so they were unable to come up with a “as Canadian as …” slogan that satisfied everyone. I believe gays and straights in America are not solidly united and so may have similar difficulties communicating in a way that just grabs the other. I doubt if there was anything I could say to elicit a response from you of, “Right on, brother!” But we should try.
Part of my problem is I’ve never had anyone respond to a blog message from me before and have been swamped now at this site and not knowing how to answer I responded with a rather promiscuous answer of trying to cover seven or eight points all at once which was a mistake.
I’ll try a different approach of taking on one point only in any one answer. I’ll try to explain me “very strange thought process” to start out with.
Granted, I don’t know why promiscuous Calif. queers would come if we immediate enact legislation giving benefits to
monogomous gays here, but it seems likely to me that they would. Let’s take an overview the civil rights hoopla concerning African Americans for an example. Back when they were called Negroes–or worse–they had a leader of their cause named Booker T. Washington. He advanced the plan that Negroes humbly serve whites in menial jobs, and eventually
their worth would be recognized and they would do better. He was very popular with both whites and Blacks–especially with whites.
Then another (more educated) black leader arrived on the scene named DuBois. He took a more proactive approach to civil rights. He thought they should agitate for advantage.
More recently we had Martin Luther King. Guess which camp he belonged to? He wrote a well-known letter from Birmingham jail in answer to the clergy, the community of faith, who criticized him for being in the wrong camp. They wondered why a minister was breaking the law.
His reply was both brilliant and impassioned. He quoted Augustine that there are both “just laws” and “unjust laws.” He was willing to submit to the just ones but not to the unjust ones, especially when breaking them would further his civil-rights cause.
Then he turned the tables on his detractors by asking them why they are themselves so slow in obeying Brown v. Board of Education, the school desegregation ruling. I mean, if they were so intent of following laws, why, there’s one. What’s the delay?
He then set forth a long list of indignities the Negro had been forced to suffer. You recall the list. It included being called nigger, and their women never being given the respected title of Mrs.
He answers their request to wait for benefits to somehow arrive on their own by his clarion call for the “imperative of NOW.” They had waited long enough. Equality should come NOW.
He stirred up enough trouble that he was assassinated becoming a martyr and now an icon of the civil rights movement.
I am a member of the community of faith. I’m actually an ordained minister with the United Congregation of Friends. But as the Bible calls Christians a kingdom of priests, I’m not saying I’m better than anyone else in the community of faith. I’m just required to be a servant.
In reading MLK’s letter from Birmingham Jail, I’ve noticed something odd from a looking-back perspective. Anyone can read in Lionel Hampton’s autobiography, Hamp, how Walter White, head of the NAACP, got President Eisenhower to pressure Earl Warren to take up Brown v. Board of Education. You can click on my name above to see where I’ve posted this material on my website. That pressure was technically a violation of separation of powers. That makes the school desegregation ruling less of a just law, at least in its speeded up hearing.
That wouldn’t be so bad in and of itself, but this hurry had
ramifications. In Robert H. Bork’s The Tempting of America, pp. 74-83, he argues that although “the decision was correct and could have been supported by an analysis that took into account the original understanding of the amendment’s meaning by those who wrote and ratified it, the Court’s weak and disingenuous opinion, by the
Chief Justice, indicates that the Justices believed they were departing from the Constitution in order to promote a desirable equality. The unfortunate result was that the Justices were encouraged to more adventures in egalitarianism that, unlike Brown, really did depart from the Constitution.” That quote from Bork, Slouching Towards Gomorrah. This approach gave us affirmative action. How about that for MLK’s “imperative of NOW”?
Bork goes on to mention, referring to Peter Brimelow and Leslie Spencer, “When quotas replace merit, everybody suffers, Forbes, February 15, 1993, p. 102.: “Peter Brimelow and Leslie Spencer estimated that affirmative action’s direct and indirect costs in 1991 were about $115 billion; opportunity costs added another $236 billion; the lowering of gross national product may have been about 4 percent. Worse, it all may be wasted. The authors quote Charles Murray: ‘There’s hardly a single outcome—black voting rights, access to public
accommodation, employment, particularly in white collar jobs—that couldn’t have been predicted on the basis of
pre-1964 trend lines.’ ‘That’s pretty devastating,’ the authors say. ‘It suggests that we have spent trillions of dollars to create an outcome that would have happened even if the government had done nothing.’”
It seems to me we don’t have any different outcome than we’d have had if MLK had stopped his troublemaking except saving ourselves all that trouble. Don’t I believe in civil rights? Not at the expense of the peace of the community if there is not net gain.
A friend told me about a job I’d qualify for. He had me wait in the background while he talked to the owner he knew. The message was they would call me if they needed me. He told me unofficially that they were looking for someone younger with “fast hands.”
It’s not my style to complain of age discrimination. I went looking elsewhere. I called one place that said they had an opening for the same job as the other place, but they wanted to meet me first. Oh, here we go again, I thought. The boss took one look at me and said, oh good, I’m “mature” and can be counted to get to work on time. I
got hired on the spot. I got the same job as the other one but without the hassle of filing a discrimination suit.
As for MLK’s impressive list of the Negroes’ troubles and indignities, well, that is a shame, but then when David was fleeing from Saul, he suffered similar trouble but quite deliberately refused to buck the system, to harm Saul even when he had opportunity. And it all came out okay for him in the end.
The city I live in hired a councilwoman from southern California to help with our diversity issues. One of issue was that as yet we hadn’t honored MLK by naming a street after him. The NAACP from another city suggested a certain street in our city as it was a major thoroughfare and there weren’t too many businesses on it that would be affected
by the address change. Public input was asked for.
There were the usual objections to the inconvenience. There were other objections that the street had been named at our Centennial celebration to honor our pioneers, and still another objection that there are other civil rights leaders to consider naming a street for. The businesses didn’t want the expense, the communities didn’t want the attention. And, of course, I put my objection in, that MLK was a poor character example: that he was a womanizer, a plagiarizer, and a troublemaker. The councilwoman got hot under the collar at that. MLK had a good character.
Well, the council took a vote. They decided to study the matter further. There had been some opposition, and the proposal had been given to them suddenly without having presented other options. They wanted to see first if there were not some better street to rename.
The councilwoman threw a tantrum (literally). “God will judge you!” she shouted. The council reversed themselves. They got the businesses to accept the cost of an address change, and then approved the new street name.
Didn’t entirely pacify that woman. She said she got the message loud and clear. She went back to California in disgust.
I don’t know why that is. You’re welcome to explain it to me. She was here to promote diversity. Other civil rights leaders’ names were suggested. That’s diversity. There are many other streets that could have been renamed. That’s diversity too. Even the option of doing nothing would be one more addition to diversity. But what got her to leave was we didn’t recognize the “imperative of NOW.”
The laws that were passed giving domestic partnership benefits and discrimination protection to homosexuals will be delayed a year if put to a vote. They’ll still go into effect, only a year later, if approved. If not approved, I expect they’ll be modified to take care of some reasoned objections and will come back again.
I’ve found that it is not necessary to even win some kind of delay, only to show some opposition. Californians use it as some kind of litmus test to decide whether to come here. It doesn’t make a difference that the domestic benefits aren’t set up for the profligate promiscuous. I mean, the name of a street doesn’t provide any tangible benefit,
and most Californians probably never heard of that street anyway.
I expect my answer hasn’t grabbed you as right-on but it’s the best I can do under the circumstancs.
Mad dog:
You’ve put me in sort of a catch-22 situation with the sex-offender question, although I can see your point.
I suspect that most sex offenders sort of slipped up, got caught, and are royally embarrassed, not a true threat anymore. Some, however, are quite dangerous.
If I come down hard on sex offenders, my blog entry here will be sitting there after our society decides not to be so paranoid about the regestry of low-risk offenders. If I go light, then that makes me look too lenient on the really bad ones. So I’m not going to say anything.
I’m just used to having to make sure my mail is routed to my p.o. box, and my friends informed of my private entrance so as not to disturb my landlady. I reacted poorly to the posting of my name on this site, and I apologize. It doesn’t seem to have been the intent of the site’s designers to get people to either send me mail, or to visit me; they only wanted to embarrass me, and that I can handle. Will you accept my apology anyone to whom my earlier criticism was directed?
They haven’t embarrassed me nearly as much as I was when a local rag ran an article on the opposition to the street renaming putting me second on their list, right below the skinheads. But I got over it.
Earl, I appreciate your long response and efforts to explain your perspective. Here’s the portion that, to me, seems key: “It seems to me we don’t have any different outcome than we’d have had if MLK had stopped his troublemaking except saving ourselves all that trouble.”
I mostly agree that the ultimate civil-rights outcomes would have been comparable either way, and would further agree that, as I think you’re implying, gays in Oregon and the U.S. will eventually have some kind of civil union/domestic partnership rights. But using the MLK example, how would that have happened? Fitfully, of course. Court decisions here, legislative actions there, protest marches and business policies and talking heads shaping opinion. Some states moving quickly, others slowly, others not at all, a few likely regressing under popular backlash. Generally acceptable, if you’re a strict constructionist/constitutional minimalist/libertarian type. States are the messy laboratories of democracy, etc.
So how does that process differ from what’s occurring now with gay marriage? The question is federalized; states grope for their own solutions and compromises – in other words, exactly the process one would expect without a federal mandate one way or the other. So it appears to me your problem is less with the process than the results. There are going to be advocates and opponents making their cases (and utilizing the full range of legal tactics) regardless of the process or pace; that’s not really the issue.
If you have religious reasons for opposing equal treatment of all citizens, I wish you’d be upfront about it. “I don’t know why … but it seems likely” is pretty weak stuff, compared to clear and demonstrable instances of harm suffered by posters like Paddy (see his posts in the Taft thread) and people like Charlene Strong.
Absent all the other issues, do you believe, at its core, that the committed love of a same-sex couple is as worthy, valid and valuable as that of an opposite-sex couple?
Mad John:
Okay, let’s look at the religious angle. My argument that allowing
benefits to domestic partners will incite promiscuous Californians to “hit that truck stop” in search of unfaithful partners seems to have fallen on deaf ears anyway. Maybe I’ll have better luck with my second objection that there wasn’t a blanket exception to churches (and such) on hiring practices. Sure, with respect to their “primary purpose” they would still be allowed to discriminate in their hiring, but they would have to hire promiscuously for jobs in other purposes, no matter what the sexual orientation of the applicant was.
Back in the sixties we had a song: “Walk a mile in my shoes.” It
went like this: “Walk a mile in my shoes./Walk a mile in my shoes./Before you refuse, criticize and accuse,/Walk a mile in my
shoes.” I have done that the best I am able, being heterosexual
myself. I once was engaged to a girl who seemed decent and a good
match. She broke up with me because I wasn’t “normal.” But I couldn’t be any other way than I am. I’ve paused a moment before
offering criticism and accusations, to think of the feeling I had
when I realized I wasn’t going to be entering into the expected
marriage because I wasn’t normal which I couldn’t change. Having
reflected on that I find that I’ve forgotten my criticisms–
except for the necessary health concerns.
You remember the scene from “I Now Pronounce You Chuck And Larry”
where they exit a gay party to be greeted by hecklers. I imagine
that if those self-righteous hecklers had taken a moment to put
themselves in their targets’ shoes, they wouldn’t have been so
critical.
There is a second side to my story. She and I were composing our
own prenuptial agreement, starting with a simple one. I was careful to follow the rules of political correctness. You may have noticed that I am not a big fan of political correctness, and you would be right. But such written agreements are only ever read in highly charged environments like a courtroom where you don’t want to be tripped up on details.
To be politically correct, according to feminist dogma, a guy
can’t just write it and give it to his intended to sign. No, they
have to write it together, which we did. Then there was the matter of God’s name. We are both Christians.
(Malachi 1:6) “A son honoureth his father, and a servant his master: if then I be a father, where is mine honour? and if I be a master, where is my fear? saith the LORD of hosts unto you, O priests, that despise my name. And ye say, Wherein have we despised thy name?” See, if we honor every group under the sun with a politically correct name, we should be so honoring God too.
According to feminist dogma we’d have to avoid all personal names, especially Father. Instead we’d have to use any of God’s more abstract names. Jesus’ statement in Revelation that He is the “Alpha and Omega, beginning and end, first and last,” is made to order: all abstract and several options to choose from.
Edwin Newman in a Civil Tongue points out that University
presidents are honored by rearranging the order of their titles and honorifics. He makes a big deal of this. To similarly honor God we’d have to mix the designations like “Alpha and last,” something like that. Thus we ended up with a politically correct name for God.
I wanted the church to handle the interpretation of that agreement when it was disputed, but she wanted the civil court to. The churches caved in to her with supreme confidence that the court could handle it.
Our disagreement hinged on the “Alpha and Omega” phrase in the document which would have meant one thing had it been referring to God and something else if not. I don’t see how I could have lost. As Linus once said in Charles Schultz, Peanuts, “How could we lose when we were so sincere?” The court forced me to disobey one of the Ten Commandments, the one about not taking God’s name in vain.
I hired a lawyer, she hired a lawyer, and we all came to an agreement, but I can still recall the shock of a court decision going against one of the Ten Commandments. (Click on my name at the top of this page to see a complete listing of the Ten Commandments.)
Now we come to the “walking in my shoes” part. The commandment
Thou shalt not commit adultery–which covers various sex sins–is covered by that commandment. The way the new ordinance on hiring is worded, we could end up with an incompetent secular court in judgment on matters of faith that would be forcing the parties into sex sin, as it is left up to the courts to determine primary and secondary purposes of a church who wants to be sin-free across the board.
I’m talking about, say, a church hires a gay janitor. As cleaning the building is not the main purpose of the church, they have to hire for it promiscuously, any orientation. Okay, so far. Then the janitor gets involved with the church, and he gets saved, and Jesus delivers him from his homosexuality. Now he is a heterosexual.
But his homosexual partner doesn’t like it and raises a stink. The oh-so-incompetent-in-matters-of-faith court will hold the church in violation of the non-discrimination policy unless they retain their gay janitor. But he’s no longer gay. So he has to act gay in order to keep them out of trouble.
The movie “I Now Pronounce You Chuck And Larry” was ever so sympathetic to gay rights, but it also contained the message that we shouldn’t be expecting straight men to act gay in order to rectify a bureaucratic blunder.
Would a secular court try to get a Christian to violate one of the Ten Commandments? I’ve had it happen to me. What assurance do we have that something like the scene above won’t happen? The only way to be really sure, I think, is to reword the law to except churches, for all their purposes, from promiscuous hiring. But my reasoning here has nothing to do with gay rights. As far as I am concerned you can have all the gay rights that you want, as long as your aren’t making anybody sick. I’m concerned about a situation a heterosexual may get caught in with the
ordinance worded as it is now.
Mad John
Promiscuities. I think the difficulty in comparing homosexual
promiscuity with heterosexual promiscuity is thinking only in terms of one’s own orientation. I’ll describe what a heterosexual faces, and let you draw your own conclusions about a homosexual comparison.
I cite from Orhan Pamuk, My Name is Red, page 148: “We embraced. This so pleased me that I felt no guilt. I let myself be borne away by sweet emotion. I hugged him tighter. I let him kiss me, and I kissed him back. And as we kissed, it was as if the entire world had entered a gentle twilight. I wished everybody could embrace each other the way we did. I faintly recalled that love was supposed to be like this. He put his tongue into my mouth. I was so content with what I was doing, it was as if the whole world were engulfed in blissful light; I could think of nothing bad.” Almost any Christian will accept this level of intimacy between boy and girl even though they be not married. It’s like love is suppose to be.
On the following page, though:
“… Shekure furrowed her brow and began raving that I might easily stick the monstrosity I held in my hands into the mouths of Circassian girls I’d met in Tiflis, Kipchak harlots, poor brides sold at inns, Turkmen and Persian widows, common prostitutes whose numbers were increasing in Istanbul, lecherous Mingerians, coquettish Abkhazians, Armenian shrews, Genoese and Syrian hags, thespians passing as women, and insatiable boys, but it would not go into hers. She angrily accused me of having lost all sense of decorum and self-control by sleeping with all manner of cheap, pathetic riffraff–from Persia to Baghdad and from the alleyways of small hot Arabian towns to the shores of the Caspian–and of having forgotten that some women still took pains to maintain their honor. All my words of love, she charged, were insincere.
“I respectfully listened to my beloved’s outburst, which caused
the guilty member in my hand to fade, and though I was thoroughly
embarrassed by the situation and the rejection I was suffering,
[it] pleased me that … I discovered Shekure’s particular awareness of my travels, proof that she’d thought of me much more than I’d assumed.”
She was suggesting he’d been as promiscuous in his sex life as
he’d been in his travels, “by sleeping with all manner of cheap, pathetic riffraff.” He gives us a rare insight on page 153:
“Consider a perfect painting–the image of a horse, for instance–no matter how well it represents a real horse, the horse punctiliously conceived by Allah …, it might still fail to match the sincerity of the talented miniaturist that drew it. The sincerity of the miniaturist, or of us humble servants of Allah, doesn’t emerge in moments of talent and perfection; on the contrary, it emerges through slips of the tongue, mistakes, fatigue and frustration. I say this for the sake of those young ladies who will become disillusioned when they see that there was no difference between the strong desire I felt for Shekure at that moment–as she too could tell–, and, say, the dizzying lust I’d felt for a delicately featured, copper-complexioned, burgundy-mouthed Kazvin beauty during my travels. With her profound God-given savvy and jinnlike intuition, Shekure understood both my being able to withstand twelve years of pure torture for love’s sake as well as my behaving like a miserable thrall of lust the first time we were alone.”
Yes, he’d felt lust for any number of women on his travels, but he’d not succumbed to it and was therefore all the more horny when he got back to her. That’s how it works for heterosexuals. I live in Oregon, but I’ve traveled to San Francisco and to Seattle. In Seattle a cult-chick gave me an open offer to join their group that seemed not above sexual enticements. In San Francisco a motorcycle moll thought I was cute and wanted to take me home with her. As a heterosexual the desire I felt for these women wasn’t any different from that I’d feel towards a girl back home. If I succumbed “by sleeping with all manner of cheap, pathetic riffraff,” I could end up bringing who knows what diseases back home.
When I go to the yearly Restore America conference in the Portland Metro area, I use a plan. I have a girlfriend in my town whose birthday is right after that, so I bring her home a gift from the big city. Lugging around a present for my girlfriend helps me focus my mind when other temptations come along. Such a ritual helps a heterosexual.
Same way with marriage. Wearing a wedding ring helps a heterosexual focus his mind when he is abroad. It’s a narrow God-given institution that promotes a healthy society in many ways. Now, if I bought a gift for her I knew she considered an “abomination,” it would cheapen the relations considerably. Wouldn’t have the same power of inhibition. I didn’t want marriage to include homosexuals because of the effect it would have on heterosexuals by cheapening it. I don’t care what you do with each other, just so it isn’t called marriage. You can see on my website if you click my name at the top, that I’m more concerned with what it’s called than what you do.
“Homosexual domestic partnership.” So, what? But if it’s a “domestic partnership” then a male and female are given an option besides marriage that doesn’t stick in the mind so well. In “I Now Pronounce You Chuck And Larry,” it was only because the fireman didn’t know any women he could trust that he picked his fireman buddy. My objection was to all these rights for heterosexual domestic partnerships.
If you look at it that way, it’s a step down instead of a step up, which could naturally increase promiscuity. Gay and straight look at it from different directions.
An elder in my church gave me a gift from a woman who said I’d taken her to a movie once. He didn’t say whom it was from, so I told him I’d taken any number of women to a movie once. That earned me a funny look, and a mention that he has a wife, but there was nothing to rebuke. If I’d done nothing more with them than the pleasing embrace described at the start, it didn’t matter that I’d had a promiscuous selection of movie dates.
I would have earned a rebuke, though, if I’d been sleeping around with them, or even sleeping with just one out of wedlock. One kind of promiscuity is tolerated, but not the other kind, like my landlady tolerating promiscuous cooking but not promiscuous heating. Promiscuous heating would be bad whether one leaves open the door or the window. That kind of promiscuity is bad be it hetero- or homo-, but a sexuality that limits itself to a pleasant embrace is tolerated be it with one girlfriend of with several during the month–which is all my website was talking about which brought me criticism.
Mad John:
Instead of “Hey, let’s hit that truck stop on our way through Oregon,” I think more along the lines of one gay trucker telling his gay trucker partner to empty the piss-bottle and fill up the rig so they can drive straight through to Washington. His partner asks why they don’t plan to make any stops in Oregon.
“Haven’t you heard what happened to the homosexuals in Oregon?”
“No, what?”
“Let me put it this way: they’re not calling them gay anymore.”
I don’t know how homosexuals pick up other homosexuals or where
they meet–but after a news story I’m being careful not to tap my
foot in the toilet stall. I do know something about guys picking up girls. When in college a friend and I were cruising when we noticed some good-looking ones pull into a nursery. We pulled in after them, but then they left. The proprietor asked us what we wanted and my friend made up a story about being poor college students who were just looking. The man gave us each a plant.
I’m not sure how it works when you follow a couple hunks
into the truck stop, but my instinct tells me they won’t be helping you decorate your apartment to ease your recuperation while your bones mend. I suppose there is some kind of grapevine “Know thy neighborhood” network to clue you in on what’s safe and what’s hot. In that case homosexuals in adjacent states will be monitoring closely the opposition and outcome of these drives.
This is to the California truck drivers: please don’t take it
that my opposition to those two laws is directed at homosexuals. I am opposed to them for the effects they’d have on heterosexuals. If the laws are struck down it will impact the homosexuals, sure, but I told them not to take it personal, that it was just collateral damage, yet they insist on taking doing so. You can subtract my name from the opposition list, at least (I can’t speak for anybody else.)
Please do whatever you need to do to be safe, and I won’t stay up
nights worrying about the sexual orientation of truck drivers going down the street.
mad john:
Lesbianism is relatively safe. Point granted, but since we have
equality for sexes, they get lumped in with the men. This could be problematic.
I refer you to George F. Gilder, Sexual Suicide which you can find quoted by clicking my name. “Judge Smith … added the words ‘or sex’ to the bitterly won civil rights laws of the sixties. Smith thought that the thicket of sex discrimination would ultimately confound and discredit all the antidiscrimination efforts of government—in fact all the highest egalitarian impulses of liberalism. And he may have been right.” What this means is that the civil rights edifice is unstable and can be broken by too much stress on equality of sexes. As things stand the feminists would get blamed for causing it, but if the break is started by hammering on the difference between lesbians and male homosexuals, then the gays would get fingered for being the straw that broke the camel’s back. That would mean that the “gays” in Oregon would be extremely unpopular with the other minorities who’d had their special rights stripped from them. I don’t see how it directly affects the discussion of the petitions to overturn those two laws, but you brought it up.
Mad john
I’ve been called in to work which will keep me busy.
I’m also on my way to change my party registration. I’m not as Libertarian as I once was. I’m changing to Constitution party.
I’ve dealt with “equality” issues on my website which you can access by clicking my name.
Lot’s of churches will talk about God and homosexuality, and so does the Bible. I’m not going to say a lot at this time, and I don’t know when i can get back.
E: You trying to bury me with quantity?
I’ll peruse and respond as time permits. I do think the Constitution Party is probably a better fit for you.
“Now he is a heterosexual”
hehehe
Mad John, NO, it’s just that my work schedule will keep me away from the computer maybe for weeks so I left enough material to occupy you.
Mad John:
(On any site that posts one’s address, it behooves him to use
some misdirection about his schedule. Burglars have computers
too.)
I had an epiphany right after I posted my last blog message. My next stop was the bank, and you know how sometimes you’ll walk up to the ATM machine at the very same time as someone else. “You go,” said the lady. “No, you go first.” And one thing led to another and we ended up together when we were finished.
It is so easy for straights to pick each other up, we can do it at the most unlikely places, even where people are normally suspicious of strangers. I got to thinking, man, it’s not that way for gays. They have certain places.
My one landlord was spotted in the men’s room by a friend of mine. I myself have walked in on homosexuals in a men’s room in a park. That park is notorious for gay liaisons. I’ve hung out at that park a lot over the years, but I never pay them any mind, and they’ve left me alone once they figured out I wasn’t one of them.
I had a chess player friend tell me he kept getting beat up there for being gay. I suggested that he take a girl with him; then he wouldn’t have that problem. From the look on his face I took it he was thinking, “That’s easy for you to say.”
The only time I was ever struck for being with a girl was when it was my assailant’s girl. You know, and there was nothing I could have said to pacify him. “But it was her idea.” No, that wouldn’t have worked.
But that’s what I got for being so geographically promiscuous in my dating. She was from Yemen and turned out to be more than I could handle. Yemen, you know, is ancient Sheba, the queen of which tried to put one over on wise Solomon who turned the tables on her. A Solomon I ain’t, but I found a new respect for the man.
That park is right on the end of an expressway that connects to the interstate. No problem at all getting there from the highway. When I was hitchhiking with a friend in another state, we had a sweaty-faced driver tell us how much money boys made for a BJ in such and such a park. The homosexuals who try to get action from hitchhikers also know where the active parks are.
I walked out to the interstate the other day and asked a hitchhiker how easy was it to get rides. He said that there are some drivers who will cross three lanes of traffic to pick him up.
You don’t have to be an Einstein to figure that Oregon will get more homosexual pickup traffic off the interstate if we pass laws as promiscuous as those of the states on either side of us.
Mad John:
Your objection to having to go without some legal benefits just to stop an influx of disease into Oregon is reminiscent of Kant’s philosophy that it cannot be just to punish the innocent for somebody else’s crime, much less to punish him as a preventative
measure for somebody else. That philosophy has a wide appeal, but
Morris Raphael Cohen challenges it in Reason and Law:
Punishment as a Means of Preventing Crime
“Why should we not inflict pain on A if that is the only
way of securing the safety of the society of which he is a part,
or preserving the general conditions of desirable life on which
he depends for all his goods? We tax an old bachelor for the
support of the education of other men’s children and we conscript
our youth and put them in positions where they will be killed in
order that others shall be able to live. Consider the case of the
typhoid carrier Mary who spreads the germs of that dreadful
disease wherever she goes. Do we not by detaining her and
limiting her freedom in effect punish her for her misfortune
rather than for her fault? We are at all times inflicting pain on
innocent people in order to promote the common good, in time of
peace, as well as in war. When we need a road or a bridge do we
not order a family to abandon the house which has been its home
from time immemorial, and for which there can be no equivalent
restitution or compensation? The fact is, that the lives of
individuals are not independent atoms which can be treated in
isolation. We are all members of a common body and the health of
the entire body may demand inflicting pain or even the cutting
off of some member.
…
“While it would destroy the basis of all that we hold dear in
civilized life to make one man suffer merely that another be
advantaged thereby, no society under present conditions can
achieve the good of the whole without causing more suffering to
some than to others. … The actual choice that life presents to
any society is seldom a clear issue between absolute good and
absolute evil but generally a choice between alternatives, all of
which are imperfect embodiments of justice or of the highest
good. Wisdom consists in such a balancing of rival considerations
that the total amount of evil is minimized.”
It seems to me that the two laws these initiatives seek to
overturn were enacted without the necessary balancing of other
goods, so that there needs to be some public debate to achieve “a
balancing of rival considerations” in order to minimize the total
evil.
Mad John
“homosexual love”
A letter to the editor in a local newspaper once asked what was wrong with homosexual love. I wrote a single line reply: “The world’s most popular book calls homosexual love “vile affections” (Romans 1:26)” [KJV] which brought a deluge of response, much of it criticism of the Bible as a whole. I’m afraid that if I were to attempt a discussion here of the biblical acceptance or rejection of homosexuality, we’d get so swamped with other opinions that we’d be unable to carry on a discussion. For the purpose of discussing here the rejection of the two laws, I’ve limited myself to stating that there is a long religious tradition on these matters whose churches should be respected without telling them to hire promiscuously.
If you are really wanting my take on Christianity and homosexuality,
you are welcome to go to my website and find my e-mail address and pursue it in a private forum. But I’m not going to say anything different than a lot of churches, or the Bible itself, for that matter.
The point is, Earl, you have not established that there will be “an influx of disease” should DPs stand. It has not happened in Massachusetts, it has not happened in Scandinavia, it has not happened in Canada. There is simply no evidence for it. You cannot demonstrate any risk to health, public or individual, from allowing gays legal recognition. And until you can do that, you are merely hiding behind a smokescreen, attempting to paint a veneer of acceptability onto naked bigotry.
Everything else is blather, including, in this secular society, your choice of ancient superstitions.
For those who are interested in the biblical case FOR same-sex relationships, it would behoove you to check out the work of the Rev. Dr. Jerry Maneker.
http://www.christianlgbtrights.org/
Mad John
No, I haven’t established any outcome, just the possibility. If there is no danger, then my objection will fall to public debate, the laws will go into effect, and we’ll all sleep a little easier.
I frankly disgusted that you or anyone feels the need to “debate” simple fairness.
Earl says: “No, I haven’t established any outcome, just the possibility. If there is no danger, then my objection will fall to public debate, the laws will go into effect, and we’ll all sleep a little easier.”
To which John appropriately replies:
“I frankly disgusted that you or anyone feels the need to “debate” simple fairness.”
So Earl, we’re back to our original point.
“I sign the ones I’m ambivalent about. And I sign ones I don’t favor but which I think ought to be voted on to let those with a bigger stake than mine have a say.”
Which I covered here by saying:
..it’s the self-serving among us who tend to be the most motivated when it comes to voting.
People who think it’s ok to define me, Patrick, as this:
“the homos…alphabet soup of diseases”
That being your description of every same-gender attracted person on the planet, whether or not they are an “alphabet soup of diseases,” perfectly demonstrates my point.
Given the climate of lies in the establishment of “public debate,” for you to consciously hand over “just the possibility” of that ‘ideal’, in regard to other human beings - being able to work and live and take care of their children, shows the direction of your heart. You WANT to see every same-gender attracted person as an “alphabet soup of diseases.”
So be it. All I ask is that you admit it.
Make no mistake, you lose either way. You just lose less if you admit it. Because at least at that point I know you’re being honest.
EARL:
“The world’s most popular book calls homosexual love “vile affections” (Romans 1:26)”
Sounds like a bunch of sexually ignorant, heterosexual, powerful, primitive men made their point pretty clear when they threw that in there, speaking for God.
“heterosexual”
Nah, Paul was gay.
HAHA! So now all the hetero bigots are back on their “gays cause diseases trip again I see!”. LOL! Isn’t it funny how no one in the hetero community wants to ‘fess up to the FACT that THEY actually CAUSED one of the most prolific, deadly plagues to ever hit the human race! And are STILL responsible for spreading it!
Geeeez and here I thought Jamieson was the online idiot! Where, oh where did this fuckin’ tard Earl come from? Is he one of the natives???
I couldn’t understand some parts of this article ng it Positive and Focused on the Real Issue at Know Thy Neighbor Oregon, but I guess I just need to check some more resources regarding this, because it sounds interesting.
I have to say, that I could not agree with you in 100% regarding ng it Positive and Focused on the Real Issue at Know Thy Neighbor Oregon, but it’s just my opinion, which could be wrong
Mad John I’ll discuss the religious issue with you a little here. In the Acts of the Apostles a big issue was setting aside the law of Moses, but there were some exceptions made: (Acts 15:19-20) “Wherefore my sentence is, that we trouble not them, which from among the Gentiles are turned to God: But that we write unto them, that they abstain from pollutions of idols, and from fornication, and from things strangled, and from blood,” repeated (Acts 15:28-29) “For it seemed good to the Holy Ghost, and to us, to lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary things; That ye abstain from meats offered to idols, and from blood, and from things strangled, and from fornication:
from which if ye keep yourselves, ye shall do well. Fare ye well.”
The fornication from which we are to abstain is described in Leviticus 18.
I refer you to The Jewish Study Bible figuring they know what the Old Testament is about: “18.1-30: The Abominations of the Canaanites. A list of prohibited sexual unions (vv. 6-23), including incestuous relationships (vv. 6-18) … These laws rather than merely
being proclaimed, are presented as part of a speech warning the Israelites not to practice the “abominations” characteristic of the peoples of Egypt and Canaan lest they suffer their dire fate. …”
The first one is about incest, (Lev. 18:6) “None of you shall approach to any that is near of kin to him, to uncover their nakedness: I am the LORD.” We eventually end up with other categories, (Lev. 18:22-25,27-30) “Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination. Neither shalt thou lie with any beast to defile thyself therewith: neither shall any woman stand before a beast to lie down thereto: it is confusion. Defile not ye yourselves in any of these things: for in all these the nations are defiled which I cast out before you: And the land is defiled: therefore I do visit the iniquity thereof upon it, and the land itself vomiteth out her inhabitants. … (For all these abominations have the men of the land done, which
were before you, and the land is defiled;) That the land spue not you out also, when ye defile it, as it spued out the nations that were before you. For whosoever shall commit any of these abominations, even the souls that commit them shall be cut off from among their people. Therefore shall ye keep mine ordinance, that ye commit not
any one of these abominable customs, which were committed before you, and that ye defile not yourselves therein: I am the LORD your God.”
It is a matter of note that the first application of capital punishment in our new country was for violation of one of the above prohibitions. A boy had intercourse with a horse. They killed the horse and then executed the boy–who showed sincere remorse.
From the study Bible “22: Biblical and ancient Near Eastern culture was not familiar with homosexuality in the sense of a defined sexual orientation or lifestyle (according to the biblical evidence David and Jonathan had no sexual relationship). It acknowledges only the occasional act of male anal intercourse, usually as an act of force associated with humiliation, revenge, or subjection. …”
A friend of mine was for a time having sex with his stepsister to exact revenge on his dad who’d raped him when he was a boy. That would be covered by the above. From the book Genesis Six Giants, it is brought out that indeed the giants in the land of Canaan prefered homosexual pairings which is why their numbers didn’t increase any
more than they did. They were part of the reason for that people being driven out, which example is used as a reason not to engage in those acts.
From (Tobit IV. 12-13) “Beware of all whoredom, my son, and chiefly take a wife of the seed of thy fathers, and take not a strange woman to wife, which is not of thy father’s tribe: for we are the children of the prophets, Noe, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Remember, my son, that our fathers from the beginning, even that they all married wives
of their own kindred, and were blessed in their children, and their seed shall inherit the land. Now therefore, my son, love thy brethren, and despise not in thy heart thy brethren, the sons and daughters of thy people, in not taking a wife of them: for in pride is destruction and much trouble, and in lewdness is decay and great want: for lewdness is the mother of famine.”
To apply this lesson here, we’d say that for a man (”my son”) to choose a sexual partner other than a daughter of Noah (any woman alive) out of lewdness or pride is a definite sin. Implicit though, is that “love” is not a justification as it would be assumed he would love his sexual partner whomever he chooses. They just didn’t have all the hollywood hype in mind when that was written.
I was talking to a woman who attended a Bible college in Florida. She told me there was a town on the coast that attracted a homosexual beach party every year; homosexuals from around the world would come. Well, a hurricane came and removed the beach. There was an example of the land spewing out the inhabitants for homosexual lewdness, just
as we were warned in Leviticus.
Then Katrina hit New Orleans right when they were going to have their “freedom days” gay celebration. Last I heard the city had not recovered. There was an example of the land spewing out the inhabitants for gay pride just as we were warned in Leviticus.
That’s pride and lewdness covered as we were warned in Tobit. By my
calculations next on the list of examples is a place hit as an example
of what happens to practitioners of homosexual love. Oregon is not
in hurricane alley, but we do have a fragile economy. I just don’t
want my Oregon to be that example.
I know I haven’t established any absolute truth about homosexuality
here, just that there’s a long tradition of prohibition, but then
our legal system doesn’t establish a religion, an absolute truth,
but respects others who have theirs.
Lula:
Yeah, I get a lot of flack for quoting the verse about vile affections.
Earl, your latest rant is just a bunch of superstitious nonsense. I especially like this:
“The fornication from which we are to abstain is described in Leviticus 18.”
Oh, really? And you know this, how?
If you believe that Katrina etc are examples of your God’s wrath, and then you try to convince me that you worship a God worthy of worship, then you’ve lost me.
I hate that God that you just made up; I hate him with a passion.
I can’t worship a God who can’t live up to my moral standards. And a God who punish your state because your legislature saw fit to treat a fair amount of his children with basic human decency is, frankly, an asshole.
Emproph: To some extent I can concede the points you made, but they lack perspective. Let’s look at some other civil rights we enjoy in America. A friend told me of a job opening in a field I have experience in. I went with him to apply. I was told to stand aside while the owner conversed with my friend. My friend told me they didn’t need me, but if they did, they would call. He explained that they were looking for somebody younger with “quicker hands.” This is called age discrimination.
What did I do? I called around for the same job until I found an employer with the same opening. He wanted to meet me first–here we go again. When he saw me he said, “Oh good, somebody who’s mature that we can count on to show up,” and I was hired on the spot. Age discrimination in my favor.
Here’s a better example. An employer of more than ten people is not allowed to discriminate based on an employee’s creed. Basic civil rights. I was brought up to have a Christian work ethic that values even manual labor, even repetitious work. Even the rhythms of such work are supposed to cleanse the soul. I like the sounds such work makes. I know, I’m weird.
Other workers, I’ve found, like to listen to a radio when they work, when they work with me. While I like to listen to the sounds our own work makes, they like to hear a different drummer, the ghetto blaster. Since I am set up to appreciate the same sound of my work when I’m working, I could be called a homosensual, and those who like to impose a different sound on top of their work tempo are heterosensuals. Homosensuality is not in and of itself protected by any civil rights act, but since mine was part of a creed, then mine was.
I was working at this job one day when somebody brought in a radio and turned it on. I went over and turned it off. Somebody said, “Hey! What happened to the radio?” Then the boss called me aside and yelled at me at the top of his lungs that only he was supposed to touch the radio, that if I didn’t like it, I could quit, which I did rather than defend my right to a creed. He said that most any industry allows radios.
So I went to work for another industry. Their younger employees with fast hands who liked to groove to the tunes while working, well, they let down the company by not showing up for work. The company appreciates my seriousness and so keeps the radio off for me.
An employer of more than ten people is not allowed to hire or fire somebody based on his religion. I once worked at a large plant where I started taking out a girl on lunch dates who worked there. I lived within walking distance so we’d sometimes go to my place. (I never went over to her place because of her jealous boyfriend who might come over.)
I grew up in the same denomination that she’d belonged to all her life. We’d had the same instruction on courtship, integrated well enough into society that I was just a “regular guy.” She was loving it. One day a supervisor observed us returning from lunch and interpreted my playfulness with her as perhaps sexual harassment, so I got called into the plant manager’s office to explain. The plant manager wasn’t from our denomination. He was a Mormon. He didn’t know how to appreciate being a regular guy, but as the supervisor had witnessed that the girl was enjoying it, they let me off. Her, they fired. Go figure.
Since she was my date, I felt she was under my protection, but rather than attack the company through the union–they are used to unions–, or through a violation of religious rights–they are used to civil rights issues–, I used my own methods. The main manager from a neighboring city–who was more of a regular guy having had a reputation as a playboy in his youth–called me to say he wasn’t there when it happened to influence it, but what I was doing was “hurting plant operations,” so he asked me to stop and suggested we just forget about it, which I went along with.
Since I am not one to insist on my “civil rights”–rights to religion, creed, age-blindness, and even sensual orientation–, you can hardly expect me to passionately promote the civil rights of homosexuals. You’re right, I’m pretty indifferent to that whole ball of wax. However, I’d choose a different phrase than “simple fairness.” Nothing wrong with simple justice. I’ve used it myself from time to time. It’s this simplistic justice through more categories to be given civil rights that I’m not all worked up about. I believe in the American system, that there is enough opportunity without all that.
From George Willison, Saints and Strangers (p. 334): “Enunciating the doctrine of popular sovereignty, declaring that ‘the people, under God, are the original of all just power,’ they appointed a High Court of Justice to try Charles I for high treason. Condemned to death, he went to the block in 1649 in the palace yard at Whitehall where he had long held despotic sway.” America in breaking away from England 125 years later was not more kindly disposed to despotic government. Many of our “people under God” consider being forced to employ homosexuals in their churches the sort of high treason for which Charles I lost his head. Is it a surprise they’ve come up with a petition to redress that despotic law?
Henry David Thoreau in his chapter in Walden on “Brute Neighbors,” to find a comparison to a fierce war of ants he witnessed, went to American history: “I was myself excited somewhat even as if they had been men. The more you think of it, the less the difference. And certainly there is not the fight recorded in Concord history, at least, if in the history of America, that will bear a moment’s comparison with this, whether for the numbers engaged in it, or for the patriotism and heroism displayed. … There was not one hireling there. I have no doubt that it was a principle they fought for, as much as our ancestors, and not to avoid a three-penny tax on their tea; and the results of this battle will be as important and memorable to those whom it concerns as those of the battle of Bunker Hill, at least.”
People are engaged in this battle over principles besides some simplistic notion of fairness. Look at how eloquent my respondents are waxing. Big principles are at stake. Me, I’m just a believer in the American system. If I sign more petitions than you think I should, tough. If I use a word or a phrase that offends you, well, there are lots of words in the English language; let’s just go on to neutral ground. If you find a word so offensive, why do you keep repeating it?
John Actually, Mad John asked me to discuss religion with him which I hesitated to do because of such hot reactions I get. Are there two Johns here or just one?
‘“The fornication from which we are to abstain is described in Leviticus 18.” Oh, really? And you know this, how?’
That’s from the context. When Christianity appeared, there was a big debate about whether Gentiles would have to keep the law of Moses which is in the first five books of the Bible, the Pentateuch: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. That is what was being debated in the book of Acts. The (very Jewish) apostles decided that, no, the Gentiles did not have to keep the law of Moses, with three exceptions. One of them was that they had to abstain from fornincation. Fornication is unlawful sexual relations. These are described there in Leviticus 18. That’s the place where what constitutes unlawful sex is listed. Any Jew would know that. You’re welcome to search the Pentateuch for some other list, but you won’t find anything different.
If you read carefully my quotation, you’ll note that it is not the wrath of God we are worrying about but the queasiness of nature. The land would spew out the practicioners of certain kinds of sex. It’s listed there, and we’ve seen twice it’s happened already.
Okay, you are not prepared to worship such and such a God, but then this isn’t a forum for proselytizing, and it’s not my intention here to convert anybody. Mad John seems to have found a book that says it’s okay with his God to be homosexual. There’s nothing stopping you from beleiving that or anything else you want to believe. Mad John wanted to discuss something with me and I accommodated him to some extent. I’m not going to get into any protrated theological debate here.
“If you read carefully my quotation, you’ll note that it is not the wrath of God we are worrying about but the queasiness of nature. The land would spew out the practicioners of certain kinds of sex. It’s listed there, and we’ve seen twice it’s happened already.”
It’s called coincidence, dumbass.
There are two Johns. I’m not interested in discussing religion, as it’s typically antithetical to rational discourse.
I am the other John. I too am not really interested in discussing religion.
I have been reading all the bullshit from fundamentalists for years, and all they do, especially with regards to homosexuality, is parrot the views of their favorite Medieval translator who said that Paul said that Moses said that God said that something for which the ancients had no word was a sin.
Amen, guys.
Okay, it was John who said “I’d like to know what happened to your religion. I have no problem practicing my faith.” Sorry, I got him confused with Mad John. Or maybe I’m just confused period.
Mad John was the one referring to my “choice of ancient superstitions.”
Lula remarks, “It’s called coincidence, dumbass.”
This idea of “superstition” has been coming up often enough that I
suppose I should address it. The following story from The Way of a Pilgrim will serve as illustration:
“The road led past a pond which had a stream running through it, whirling about and piling up on the edges with a horrible noise. All of a sudden, the leading driver, a young man, stopped his horse, and the whole line of carts behind had to come to a standstill too. The other drivers came running up to him, and saw that he had begun to undress. They asked him why he was undressing. He answered that he very much wanted to bathe in the pond. Some of the astonished drivers began to laugh at him, others to scold him, calling him mad, and the eldest there, his own brother, tried to stop him. The other defended himself and had not the least wish to do as he was told. Several of the young drivers started getting water out of the pond in the buckets with which they watered the horses, and for a joke splashed it over the man who wanted to bathe, on his head, or from behind, saying, ‘There you are; we’ll give you a bath.’ As soon as the water touched his body, he cried out, ‘Ah, that’s good,’ and sat down on the ground. They went on throwing water over him. thereupon he soon lay down, and then and there quietly died. They were all in
a great fright, having no idea why it had happened. The older ones bustled about, saying that the authorities ought to be told, while the rest came to the conclusion that it was his fate to meet this kind of death.
“I … went on my way … and came to a village … and met an old priest walking along the street. I thought I would tell him about what I had just seen, and find out what he thought about it. … I told him the story and asked him to explain to me the cause of what had taken place.
“‘I can tell you nothing about it, dear brother, except perhaps this, that there are many wonderful things in nature which our minds cannot understand. This, I think, is so ordered of God in order to show men the rule and providence of God in nature more clearly, through certain cases of unnatural and direct changes in its laws. It happens that I myself was once a witness of a similar case. … ¶ When I asked the doctors for a scientific explanation of what that was, … I could get nothing more out of them except that this was one of the secrets of nature which were not revealed to science.’”
Trying to fathom a secret of nature not revealed to science can be called dabbling in superstition, or it might be seeing evidence of the orderly rule of the providence of God in nature. My point is that the 1st amendment prohibiting the establishment of a state religion necessarily precludes having the state decide by dictate that such and such is a valid religious tenet while so and so is mere superstition. The legislature in passing a law to force churches to employ homosexual applicants in some–not completely defined–positions is asking for a fight because such associations go against established church practice and belief, be it superstition or no.
This forum is not the place to decide between true religion and mere superstition; it was made to shine a light on those who signed the petitions which bring the issues to a public debate. We have freedom of speech which can be used to examine the merits of this or that doctrine which can stand or fall on its own merits. Our American system is not supposed to allow the state to dictate religion.
I’m not going to here debate religious truth in an absolute sense but I wanted to show there is a long religious tradition of prohibition of homosexual acts. I think I’ve done that. The very fact that people want to criticize me on “superstition” shows there is something there to criticize.
Earl
Earl says: “Emproph: To some extent I can concede the points you made, but they lack perspective.”
My “points” being about…
People who think it’s ok to define me, Patrick (Emproph), as this:
“the homos…alphabet soup of diseases”
So, you Earl, are telling me Patrick, that I lack “perspective,” on myself?
I guess your reasoning makes sense though. I don’t happen to consider myself an “alphabet soup of diseases”
And since I am an “alphabet soup of diseases,” according to your website – not thinking that I am an “alphabet soup of diseases” would automatically make me wrong about myself. Wouldn’t it?
But of course it took you over 1000 unnecessary words to cover all that up.
FYI, and for what it’s worth; when attempting to obfuscate via droning essay, never segue into the insult in the very first sentence. Otherwise it just LEAPS off the monitor. In order for you to be truly insulting, I’m not supposed to know that you’re TRYING to be insulting. Again, just FYI.
So anyway, I don’t feel that this is working out for us. I understand that you’re a game player. However, I, and I’m sure others, would very much appreciate it if you’d shorten your answers whilst playing. And I do like playing
GodBible. We’ll have to go there regardless.I’m not opposed to explanations, I just don’t like it when they’re routinely long, drawn-out, AND boring — or is that my “alphabet soup” talking?