Mr./Ms. "grapevineriverside":

The vast majority of this world's inhabitants don't subscribe to the Bible - let alone the outdated Old Testament. We live in a secular nation (as the Founding Fathers intended). Religious texts cannot be taken at surface value, and deeply embedded evangelical tenets certainly shouldn't be imposed on individuals of other faiths. In effect, you are placing your "bet" on a book that has far less social value than in did 2000+ years ago. Morality is relative, and it's foolish to ignore it.

Why deny individuals the right to marry? You can't group homosexuality with "kidnapping, pedophilia, and murder" - nobody is being harmed in the process. And "consensual sex among heterosexual unmarried adults" is simply a fact of society. Adultery has been around for centuries, and people aren't just about to become 100% chaste because a small national minority wants them to. The consequences of legalizing same-sex marriage are only positive: better mental health and increased happiness for a significant fraction of the population, lower STD rates, and general equality in benefits and social status. Any "cons" are simply figments of the imagination (or homophobic discomfort).

The problem with the Bible is not its "jurisdiction"; it's its inflexible, obsolete qualities that continually intrude on personal liberties and social progress.

Jesus told the woman caught in adultery to "Go, and sin no more," not "party on." He forgave her, but did not condone the isin. Having spent a lot of time a liberal, I realized their were consequences to certain actions -- that there is right and wrong. But why do we have a sense of right and wrong? Costalgal responds for religion to "stay out of politics," her sense of whats right and wrong. The Bible is not outdated -- if so, why is it the NUMBER ONE BEST SELLER EVERYDAY, EVERYYEAR? Whay does it have such a great alumni of subscribers including T.S. Elliot, C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkein, Beethoven, John Locke, Blaise Pascal, Abraham Lincoln, Florence Nightingale, William Booth, Chrstipher Columbus, etc.,, men and women who have founded universities, hospitals and even America? What about men and women who have change their homosexual addiction through Christian organizations like Exodus International or Desert Stream? The Bible is proven to be reliable. True Christians will be held accountable to God if they don't legally protest the legiislation of same-sex marriage -- a lifestyle which is not gay (check with police departments about gay- lover crimes) and has caused teh spread of AIDS. Christians are demonstrating God's love by saying no to same-sex marriage. "We" would have saved a lot of lives and misery from AIDS had we stepped up to the plate 30 years ago..

Mr./Ms. "grapevineriverside":

I never claimed that the entire Bible is outdated. I'm Christian myself, and many fundamental aspects of our faith - love, charity, humility, compassion (many of the Beatitudes) - should certainly be more widespread in society today. However, I personally feel that some parts of the Bible ought to be open to interpretation. We don't stone people for crimes anymore; most of us don't marry solely for the purpose of procreation. The fact remains that the Old Testament was compiled with specific sociocultural conditions in mind - monarchy, the need for a small religious minority to "go forth and multiply," primitive technology, etc.

Just as there is no way to effectively make a heterosexual individual gay, there is no "treatment" to remove homosexual feelings. Please understand that religious practices aimed at suppressing feelings often result in terrible consequences for the individuals being "cured." I encourage you to read through the following:
http://www.apa.org/pi/lgbc/publications/therapeutic-response.pdf
Ultimately, many attempts at altering sexual identity with aversion therapy or the like result in disaster or distress to the individual - more so than the homosexual "condition" itself.

Homosexuality can't be called "immoral" or "sinful"; it's like banning left-handedness, or condemning all those with peanut allergies to hell. I am already familiar with Exodus International: regrettably, it serves only as a pitiable representation of a radical brainwashing project. The mind is a complex, delicate organ - the chemistry within it is the determining factor in sexual preference. Genotype determines the encoding of pheromones of the same gender. Consequently, you have homosexuality, a simple variation in (more common) human sexual patterns - a phenotype. The fact remains that "ex-gays" are in denial. Their interneurons have formed new synaptic pathways, but they function essentially the same way; these cells are prone to return to their original positions at any time. This is the postulated physiological process.

Long-term relationships can mitigate the spread of AIDS. Marriage does reduce promiscuity - if nothing else, it encourages couples to enter into monogamous relationships with the promise of governmental benefits. By your reasoning, the best policy is abstinence - a solution which will never be practical for fully grown adults (and such a high percentage of the nation's population). The word "marriage" is a powerful one: it signifies caring, commitment, and true love. Many individuals (including yourself, I presume) place great value in it; this isn't any different within the homosexual community.

The Consitution guarantees freedom of religion (religous plurality) not freedom from religion (atheism as the defacto national religion.)

Morality is not relative. Basic human characteristics, no matter the 'progressiveness' of politics, or modern advances in science, medicine, technology, comforts and conveniences, have not changed. All men are created equal (and in the same way, and made of the same stuff) and all are born both with a conscience, and with instincts and animalistic tendencies. It's what we do with those, with discipline, restraint, and judgment that separate us from the animal kingdom, and are a gauge of how advanced we are. Morality is the dividing line, or the barrier. You would have those barriers moved, shifted, pulled back down the hill, by your assertion that morality is relative.
The only problem is, you don't have the power to do that. You cannot change morality; all you can do is break yourself before it. One does not truly break the law. They transgress against it, breaking and demeaning their own character in the process.

Your concept of liberty is corrupted. Your ideas of freedom are perverse. True liberty is being free from worry, doubt, and restraint. If you are committed to living a moral life, the questions of whether you do this or dont do that are already decided. You don't have to hem and haw, and you are not weighed down by guilt, sorrow, and physical and mental addictions or habits. Of course, we all make mistakes, choosing to indulge here or there, at one time or another. That does not make it right. It does not absolve us from the consequences, which can be public, humiliating, putting us in dire straits in relation to family, career, public opinion, or can be very private, but nontheless damaging, and putting happiness and contentment, confidence in our standing in question, and putting us behind or below where we were previously. Those are non-changing truths. Momentary satisfaction from indulging in base behaviors has never ultimately lead to happiness. You can say it as much as you like, with as many as you can gather together. While legal laws may change due to the numbers choosing one way, those laws have no effect on morality.

The facts that you offer, of millenia of years in which adultery and homosexuality occurred, has not changed that it is wrong. Nor has acceptance by vast numbers of people of such behavior changed the real facts that people are indeed harmed. It might not be visible. The real hurt and damage rarely is. Because it is not there to be seen, now, does not negate its reality. Your perspective and attitudes are immature, foolish, self-indulgent, and dishonest. Your statement that same-sex marriage is "only positive" is crass, and merely an opinion.

Morality is never obsolete. Liberty and real freedom is something you have a long way back to discover. Your ideals about man and happiness and redemptive pursuits are sorely misguided.

So, basically, one should remain in one's own home, paying no mind, nor lifting a voice of caution or a hand to dispel, mitigate, or turn back whatever happens in the street out front? That is a simplistic, stupid and self-serving, short-sighted attempt to say society has no impact on the home, and that whatever goes on there that leaves no marks is ok. Let me do what I want to do, and I won't say a word about what you do. Deal? That is the logic, perspective, and justification of an intellectual and societal moron.

No act or thought goes without a consequence, big or small, evident or not. Every act, every thought, every indulgence in secretive or supposedly private affairs effects one's attitudes, sensitivities, and reactions to subsequent acts. Every step over the edge makes the next one that much more easily done, and more quickly rationalized.

Again, shallow understanding of Christ's teachings, watered down to platitudes easily thrown out to self-justify.

You don't judge who your kids are going to spend time with? You don't make decisions about who you are going to spend time with, whether you will work for a shady employer, if someone is being honest with you, or if you yourself would do as you see another person do? Of course you do. The more permissive people may do much less of it, but that only points to their foolishness and lack of responsiblity (and morality.)

No, you cannot judge the full character of another's heart, their intent, or their standing before God in any given moment, or in deciding the worth of a person, or their fate or destiny. But you certainly can, and often have to make a judgment about whether you are going to get in the car, spend time, or entrust someone with knowledge, power, or possession and control of things important to you.

People cannot judge each other; they are not empowered. Neither do we judge so as to place ourselves above or beneath others. But surely you don't for a minute believe you are banned from making judgments about people's acts, behaviors, words or implied intentions? One may make an error in judging based on appearances, and another's past or situation in life, but by so doing no one is damning another (impossible) or forcing or impinging on the other's will. You can take all the offence at what other's think and say - they are not binding on you. Of course, if that offence that you take makes you defensive, perhaps you should give it some thought and examine why. Must be something else bothering you.

The secularist, who has given up the quest for truth and therefore moral debate and rational dialogue, is the greater danger to tolerance. Historically and at present, many (most?) people of faith have assumed that there is a trade-off between truth and tolerance. Forced to make a choice, the faithful opt for truth at the expense of tolerance, while the flaccidly liberal opt for tolerance at the expense of truth.

"It is our reluctance to make demands on each other, much more than our reluctance to help those in need, that is sapping the strength of democracy today." (Christopher Lasch)

We make demands on each other by subjecting ourselves to "impersonal standards impartially applied." Out of this comes the mutual respect and trust that forms the basis, strength and building blocks of good societies.

So, you, along with the immature and intellectually dishonest author of this article are part of the ignorant masses who espouse treating ???sexual expression??? as something that ought to be of no concern to society at large. The sexual privatizers imagine a society in which adults can seek their pleasures without interference and somehow children will get born and properly raised. It is a sheer illusion. A society that doesn???t restrict human sexual relations in effective ways is a society that doesn???t have much interest in reproducing itself. People left to their own sexual whims will sometimes form stable families, but that is the exception, not the rule. The more we treat sex as merely recreational, the less important we make procreation. De-mystifying procreation???making it just another event that may or may not require heterosexual married parents in a long-term relationship???leads to both low procreation and badly raised children. A society that abandons the effort to restrict and channel human sexual urges into approved forms loses control of the strongest emotional/biological force known to our species and invites a progressive dissolution into unconnected or randomly connected individuals.

The dream of unfettered sexual expression is very powerful. The advent of effective birth control and abortion on demand, along with a revolution in attitudes towards pre-marital sex and cohabitation, and the de-stigmatizing of out-of-wedlock birth, divorce, pornography, and homosexuality have gone very far towards creating a popular view that we can create a society in which sexual behavior has no public consequences. But, in the end, this is merely a fantasy. If we indulge the fantasy that ???sexual expression??? is only an individual matter of no valid concern to society at large, we choose our high rate of divorce, our ambiguous regard for motherhood, our unhappy children, and our poor schools. It doesn???t seem like an especially good choice.

Posted By: S2McH @ 11/01/2009 7:23:09 AM

So, morality should not be discussed?


What I was saying is: There is no accepted concensus of opinion of "what the hell morality is", period!

To establish that something is so important as to lament its' passing or even agree that there ever was enough of it to claim it existed (as you percieve it) in a majority of the people, there must be an agreed conclusion of what that "thing" looked like in the first place!

Mr./Ms. "S2McH":

You call me "misguided" and accuse me of failing to present factual arguments. Are you so blind that you cannot realize your own hypocrisy? Throughout your opinionated tirade, you yourself neglect to present a single fact. What I see in your feeble "rebuke," sir/madam, is sheer delusion; you make assumptions based only on the teachings of religion. There is absolutely nothing to support the "immorality" of homosexuality or the bland statement that recognized marriages will be "harmful" to anyone. Ad hominems and unfettered bias do not a coherent argument make.

It is you whose "concept of liberty is corrupted" and "perverse." Denying fellow citizens equal rights is, simply put, undemocratic. You repeatedly conflate homosexuality with crime, with perversion, with "indulgence" and "addiction." Where are YOUR facts? How does homosexuality cause anyone harm? Give me evidence. If the "real hurt and damage" are invisible, it is probably because there is none whatsoever. If anything, the discriminated minority is being hurt by folks like you - suicide rates among homosexuals (especially teens) are especially high, correlating with the amount of persecution faced from peers. Your discomfort has turned to hatred - how less moral can you get? Your assertions are entirely moot, and your lack of empathy undermines your credibility.

You can try to ignore it, but moral relativity is a truth of society - its "dividing line" is not always in one place. Your PERSONAL concepts of "right and wrong" may remain absolute, but extreme variations in moral definitions linger between individuals. That which is viewed as "immature, foolish, self-indulgent, and dishonest" differs greatly from society to society; imposing your beliefs on others contradicts your own "ideas of freedom" in every possible way. Neither of us has "the power to...change morality" - quit assuming that you do.

Certainly, few cultures condone adultery. However, it is impractical to expect it to instantly cease. Millennia don't make wrongs "right" - but they do prove that certain societal inconsistences are impossible to eliminate without authoritarian enforcement. Based on your arguments, am I right to assume that you value democratic, Western ideals? I might add that the Bible is not the only source of "morality," even if you follow its every (debatable) word to the letter. The world needs pragmatism - not your twisted, unjustified rhetoric..

Mr./Ms. "S2McH":

From a purely practical standpoint, people are animals - it's ridiculous (and arrogant) to turn away completely from that which links us to our single-celled ancestors. Would you have every individual in the nation become a monotonous drone, a machine existing only to procreate and follow limited, doctrinaire patterns unfailingly? Do you wish to smite individuality, creativity, freedom of expression? Conformity has few benefits; this has been proven countless times throughout the cycles of history. The only obstacles to "freedom" and happiness are intolerance and prejudice (which you so aptly demonstrate). This world needs compassion, acceptance, pragmatism - NEVER closed-minded ignorance.

Laws against gay marriage and smoking pot should go away. These acts hurt no one else except for those who are offended by some one else morality or lack of. What if we passed a law locking up grey haired blow hards who use the internet,.They don't bother affect my life in any way but I don't like their morals so lets get em.

"Why get in front of change when you can follow from a safe distance and end up with the same result?" For the sake of those living in very red states. That's why. States' rights concerning individual liberties are great when you live in California or New York. Not so much if you live in Louisiana or Oklahoma. Had the issue of abortion been left up to individual states to decide, then it would be illegal in red states. If left up to popular vote, the conservative majority in red states will continue to prohibit. We need leadership from the President and from Congress.

Mr./Ms. "S2McH":

I find it ironic that you criticize "sexual privatizers." Would you rather that sexuality were made more public? Considering your apparent homophobia, this seems more than a slight contradiction. In any case, there is no broader movement among "privatizers," no "homosexual agenda" - only a brave, stoic group of historically persecuted citizens fighting for its rights and for social acceptance.

Since when has procreation been the sole reason for marriage? We don't look at those we love and think, "Hmm...I suppose that if I copulated with that particularly compatible individual, I could create genetically optimal children [to add to an already overpopulated world]..." (At least, I hope that you don't; the majority of rational Americans would be chuckling at the blatant foolishness of that fictional scenario.) Marriage should be for love (whether heterosexual or homosexual) - for true caring and commitment. Don't you agree?

I understand completely that there should be certain restrictions on "human sexual urges" - I just don't see how homosexuality needs to be one of them. True love between two consensual adults ultimately harms no one, unlike pedophilia, rape, murder, bestiality, etc. It's not just "unfettered sexual expression." It's simply another natural tendency, another factor over which individuals have no control. True love and happiness should not have to remain "fantasies." There is also no "conversion" between sexual orientations, only psychologically damaging suppression encouraged by an intolerant society. Please explain how legalization of same-sex marriage will contribute to "our high rate of divorce, or ambiguous regard for motherhood, our unhappy children, and our poor schools." (Actually, I would argue that there are much more relevant and important factors causing all of the above than "sexual expression.")

You bring forth no evidence. You demonstrate no understanding of practical human behavior and its applications to social advancement. How do you expect anyone to succumb to your bigoted arguments?