Louisiana judge denies marriage license to interracial couple

[Martinus]

I think this thread has moved me closer to the "Gays are horrible people" camp.  Also, anyone who says "frottage" deserves a barrage of stones.

Anus horribilis?

[Malthus]

Indeed. It's the same thing as with the sodomites.

It's one thing to base your morality on an interpretation of millennia-old fairy tales of illiterate tribesmen. It's another to base your morality on a clearly wrong interpretation of these, however.

Heh too true. 

[Valmy]

I haven't thought of that. This is like the ultimate Ann Coulter/Sarah Palin rebuke.

I'm surprised so many evangelicals wanted to vote for a woman as a Vice-President.

For people who demand everybody take the bible literally they freely ignore alot.  Only people they do not like have to take the Bible literally.

[Grallon]

For people who demand everybody take the bible literally they freely ignore alot.  Only people they do not like have to take the Bible literally.

And therein lies the ultimate hypocrisy of that lot; and why their arguments have to be dismissed out of hand.   Anyone using God to bolster their favored position is suspect.  As if what is transcendant could be circumscribed by mundane human considerations such as what to eat, what to drink and whom to sleep with. Pffff



G.

[Faeelin]

I didn't want to start a new thread, but this seemed relevant to the discussion, from the Episocopalian Bishop of Newark:

how the Bible condemns homosexuality, as if that point of view still has any credibility. I will no longer discuss with them or listen to them tell me how homosexuality is "an abomination to God," about how homosexuality is a "chosen lifestyle," or about how through prayer and "spiritual counseling" homosexual persons can be "cured." Those arguments are no longer worthy of my time or energy. I will no longer dignify by listening to the thoughts of those who advocate "reparative therapy," as if homosexual persons are somehow broken and need to be repaired. I will no longer talk to those who believe that the unity of the church can or should be achieved by rejecting the presence of, or at least at the expense of, gay and lesbian people. I will no longer take the time to refute the unlearned and undocumentable claims of certain world religious leaders who call homosexuality "deviant." I will no longer listen to that pious sentimentality that certain Christian leaders continue to employ, which suggests some version of that strange and overtly dishonest phrase that "we love the sinner but hate the sin." That statement is, I have concluded, nothing more than a self-serving lie designed to cover the fact that these people hate homosexual persons and fear homosexuality itself, but somehow know that hatred is incompatible with the Christ they claim to profess, so they adopt this face-saving and absolutely false statement. I will no longer temper my understanding of truth in order to pretend that I have even a tiny smidgen of respect for the appalling negativity that continues to emanate from religious circles where the church has for centuries conveniently perfumed its ongoing prejudices against blacks, Jews, women and homosexual persons with what it assumes is "high-sounding, pious rhetoric." The day for that mentality has quite simply come to an end for me. I will personally neither tolerate it nor listen to it any longer. The world has moved on, leaving these elements of the Christian Church that cannot adjust to new knowledge or a new consciousness lost in a sea of their own irrelevance. They no longer talk to anyone but themselves. I will no longer seek to slow down the witness to inclusiveness by pretending that there is some middle ground between prejudice and oppression. There isn't. Justice postponed is justice denied. That can be a resting place no longer for anyone. An old civil rights song proclaimed that the only choice awaiting those who cannot adjust to a new understanding was to "Roll on over or we'll roll on over you!" Time waits for no one.

I will particularly ignore those members of my own Episcopal Church who seek to break away from this body to form a "new church," claiming that this new and bigoted instrument alone now represents the Anglican Communion. Such a new ecclesiastical body is designed to allow these pathetic human beings, who are so deeply locked into a world that no longer exists, to form a community in which they can continue to hate gay people, distort gay people with their hopeless rhetoric and to be part of a religious fellowship in which they can continue to feel justified in their homophobic prejudices for the rest of their tortured lives. Church unity can never be a virtue that is preserved by allowing injustice, oppression and psychological tyranny to go unchallenged.

In my personal life, I will no longer listen to televised debates conducted by "fair-minded" channels that seek to give "both sides" of this issue "equal time." I am aware that these stations no longer give equal time to the advocates of treating women as if they are the property of men or to the advocates of reinstating either segregation or slavery, despite the fact that when these evil institutions were coming to an end the Bible was still being quoted frequently on each of these subjects. It is time for the media to announce that there are no longer two sides to the issue of full humanity for gay and lesbian people. There is no way that justice for homosexual people can be compromised any longer.

I will no longer act as if the Papal office is to be respected if the present occupant of that office is either not willing or not able to inform and educate himself on public issues on which he dares to speak with embarrassing ineptitude. I will no longer be respectful of the leadership of the Archbishop of Canterbury, who seems to believe that rude behavior, intolerance and even killing prejudice is somehow acceptable, so long as it comes from third-world religious leaders, who more than anything else reveal in themselves the price that colonial oppression has required of the minds and hearts of so many of our world's population. I see no way that ignorance and truth can be placed side by side, nor do I believe that evil is somehow less evil if the Bible is quoted to justify it. I will dismiss as unworthy of any more of my attention the wild, false and uninformed opinions of such would-be religious leaders as Pat Robertson, James Dobson, Jerry Falwell, Jimmy Swaggart, Albert Mohler, and Robert Duncan. My country and my church have both already spent too much time, energy and money trying to accommodate these backward points of view when they are no longer even tolerable.

http://secure.agoramedia.com/spong/34674.asp

[Grallon]

... The world has moved on, leaving these elements of the Christian Church that cannot adjust to new knowledge or a new consciousness lost in a sea of their own irrelevance. They no longer talk to anyone but themselves.

...

I will no longer be respectful of the leadership of the Archbishop of Canterbury, who seems to believe that rude behavior, intolerance and even killing prejudice is somehow acceptable, so long as it comes from third-world religious leaders, who more than anything else reveal in themselves the price that colonial oppression has required of the minds and hearts of so many of our world's population...

A bold stance for a churchman.  However what he claims in the first paragraph quoted is answered in the second one.  There are entire populations who haven't move on to XXIst century post-modern ethics and who still listen to that kind of rethoric.




G.

[garbon]

Those aren't bold words for an Episcopalian.

[MadImmortalMan]

Dunno if it's been mentioned yet but LA's Governor and Senators are all calling for the dude to get kicked out of his office.

[Barrister]

In my personal life, I will no longer listen to televised debates conducted by "fair-minded" channels that seek to give "both sides" of this issue "equal time." I am aware that these stations no longer give equal time to the advocates of treating women as if they are the property of men or to the advocates of reinstating either segregation or slavery, despite the fact that when these evil institutions were coming to an end the Bible was still being quoted frequently on each of these subjects. It is time for the media to announce that there are no longer two sides to the issue of full humanity for gay and lesbian people. There is no way that justice for homosexual people can be compromised any longer.

But the reason we no longer debate the issues of slavery, or equal rights for women, is because we have genuinely reached a consensus on those points - and that consensus only took place 100 or more years after the debate started.

Like em or not, an awful lot of people in this world, and even in his own church, have not reached a consensus.  So the tone of this little diatribe comes across as a schoolyard "well I'm going to take my ball and go home", rather than something noble.

[The Brain]

10%

[Malthus]

In my personal life, I will no longer listen to televised debates conducted by "fair-minded" channels that seek to give "both sides" of this issue "equal time." I am aware that these stations no longer give equal time to the advocates of treating women as if they are the property of men or to the advocates of reinstating either segregation or slavery, despite the fact that when these evil institutions were coming to an end the Bible was still being quoted frequently on each of these subjects. It is time for the media to announce that there are no longer two sides to the issue of full humanity for gay and lesbian people. There is no way that justice for homosexual people can be compromised any longer.

But the reason we no longer debate the issues of slavery, or equal rights for women, is because we have genuinely reached a consensus on those points - and that consensus only took place 100 or more years after the debate started.

Like em or not, an awful lot of people in this world, and even in his own church, have not reached a consensus.  So the tone of this little diatribe comes across as a schoolyard "well I'm going to take my ball and go home", rather than something noble.

It is certainly true that there is no consensus among the people in the world as to the status of homosexuality - but then, there isn't one on the status of women, either.

There is however a consensus among first-world types on both issues. The one on women predates the one on homosexuals, which is of very recent vintage (for example, the consensus on women predates my memory - one of the reasons I have little in common with my aunt, who belongs to the earlier generation, when that consensus was a-forming - whereas the one on homosexuals has definitely developed within my memory).

Even our Conservative gov't has essentially thrown in the towel and called it a day on gay marriage. It is true that the US is lagging on this issue, but there is I think about as much possibility of gays "losing" acceptance in the rest of the West as of removing women's rights; and the momentum is definitely moving in the direction of greater acceptance in the US. 

[The Minsky Moment]

Indeed. It's the same thing as with the sodomites.

It's one thing to base your morality on an interpretation of millennia-old fairy tales of illiterate tribesmen. It's another to base your morality on a clearly wrong interpretation of these, however.

A correct literal interpretation would have problems of its own.  just different sorts of problems.

Anyways it is inevitable that people will always interpret texts, or any facts about the world, in accordance with their own contemporary concerns and prejudices.  That is why the Catholic Church actually had a point when it resisted the notion that individual lay persons should be interpreting Scripture outside the guidance of the Church.

[The Minsky Moment]

Dunno if it's been mentioned yet but LA's Governor and Senators are all calling for the dude to get kicked out of his office.

Yeah I can't imagine his schtick went over well with Bobby Jindal.