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Old 07-26-2013, 11:02 PM
 
Location: NE Mississippi
25,344 posts, read 16,993,182 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by LindavG View Post
In most Western countries, the age of consent is around 16. In the US it's 18, so I guess that puts the US at the same level as countries like Uganda in terms of oppressing sexuality

I don't think even you believe your own posts.
Age of consent in some states is 16.. Georgia; Alabama
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Old 07-26-2013, 11:07 PM
 
Location: Cumberland County, NJ
8,631 posts, read 12,924,145 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by LindavG View Post
Do you believe that the murder or life imprisonment of consenting homosexual adults, the genital mutilation of children, the oppression of women, and child marriages are not objectively wrong?
First of all that is none of your business as to what my answer to those particular topics are but since you will probably keep on nagging me about it my answer is "no, I do not personally support those actions."

Quote:
Can you give me any rational reasons for why these should be considered moral practices?
All I'm saying is that societies pick and choose what they want to consider immoral when they are criticizing another society but at the same time ignore other human rights issues because that nation is beneficiary to them.
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Old 07-27-2013, 07:17 AM
 
Location: The Netherlands
2,920 posts, read 5,221,115 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by jtur88 View Post
Most countries in the world think a "woman" is one who has reached biological child-bearing age (puberty), and is considered eligible to consummate marriage, and a "child" is a person who is pre-pubescent.. There is absolutely nothing intrinsically immoral about that, your personal and culturally-loaded opinion notwithstanding. It has been that way in nearly all the world for thousands of years.
It is a fact that children - and that includes children who have reached puberty - are not fully developed mentally and physically. Children are not able to estimate the consequences of their actions as well as adults do, so it is irresponsible and immoral to tie them to lifelong commitments such as marriage and motherhood at such a young age. It is especially immoral when children are forced into these commitments against their will. In the past, this may have been necessary because people had much shorter life spans but this is no longer the case, even in third-world countries.

Girls can enter puberty when they're as young as 9 years old. Are you really saying that there's nothing intrinsically immoral about forcing a 9-year-old to get married and have children (if she even survives childbirth), that this is just my personal and culturally-loaded opinion? Wow.

What about genital mutilation? Am I also culturally biased for saying it's wrong to cut off a little girl's clitoris and stitch up her vagina (without anesthesia, of course) so she can never have sex? After all, it's an age-old tradition. Actually, I'm not sure if I even want to know your answer because you would probably defend this kind of barbaric child abuse (as long as it doesn't happen to your child, of course).

Go ahead and tell this little girl that she should just accept the cultural traditions in her country. Women and children don't deserve basic human rights because their patriarchical and misogynistic society has decided that way.

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Old 07-27-2013, 09:33 AM
 
Location: Victoria TX
42,618 posts, read 86,604,351 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by LindavG View Post
It is a fact that children - and that includes children who have reached puberty - are not fully developed mentally and physically. Children are not able to estimate the consequences of their actions as well as adults do, so it is irresponsible and immoral to tie them to lifelong commitments such as marriage and motherhood at such a young age. It is especially immoral when children are forced into these commitments against their will. In the past, this may have been necessary because people had much shorter life spans but this is no longer the case, even in third-world countries.

Girls can enter puberty when they're as young as 9 years old. Are you really saying that there's nothing intrinsically immoral about forcing a 9-year-old to get married and have children (if she even survives childbirth), that this is just my personal and culturally-loaded opinion? Wow.

What about genital mutilation? Am I also culturally biased for saying it's wrong to cut off a little girl's clitoris and stitch up her vagina (without anesthesia, of course) so she can never have sex? After all, it's an age-old tradition. Actually, I'm not sure if I even want to know your answer because you would probably defend this kind of barbaric child abuse (as long as it doesn't happen to your child, of course).

Go ahead and tell this little girl that she should just accept the cultural traditions in her country. Women and children don't deserve basic human rights because their patriarchical and misogynistic society has decided that way.
Children who have reached puberty do fine as caretakers of their own children, as long as the extended family remains intact and grandparents, aunts and uncles are present to assist. Even in the USA, up until the last century, women were very often married by the age of 16, many of them even less. Child care and housekeeping do not really require a great deal of emotional maturity, and if it did, the USA would be in deep doodoo even with women waiting until they are 25 to have children. Women in America get married at 20, and by 25 they are single moms with par-time jobs to pay for childcare and get foodstamps and are filing for bankruptcy and watch Judge Judy on 55-inch screens and eating Xanax like candy. Where is the "fully developed mentally", even in their 20s? But they are happy, right?

"Against their will" is a cultural construct, and generally, everyone regards their own cultural values as the norm (present company included, obviously), and trying to force them out of those cultural mores is what goes against their will. What happens in America to a girl who "against her will" is forced to play with dolls and wear makeup and frilly little dresses and dot her I's with little hearts? They grow up thinking that is perfectly fine behavior and embrace it as "normal" girlhood..

First you say 11-year old girls are "not fully developed mentally", and then you want us to listen to one who is objecting to the cultural values of her society as though she is revealing some great wisdom of the ages on us. How long would it take in New Jersey to find an 11-year old girl who wants to run away from home, abused by her mother's boyfriend, pointing to anecdotes about an aunt whose life was destroyed by a sociopathic husband and who became suicidal? She wants to run away from home in a civilized country that respects girls and women,getting off a Greyhound bus in LA to become a drug addicted porn star whose 20 year old body will be found in a dumpster..

Consider your source: "Memri aims to portray the Arab and Muslim world in a negative light, through the production and dissemination of inaccurate translations and through selectivity in choosing extreme views to publicize." Criticism of MEMI is widespread, and no legitimate news media takes anything from MEMRI seriously. How do you suppose they found this beautiful wide-eyed educated and highly articulate girl with clean clothes and hair, filmed in an expensive car in an unknown place (maybe London?) , to say exactly what the producers wanted her to say? Hmmm -- no answers to the above questions coming from MEMRI. Just because a video goes viral does not by itself make it genuine.

Last edited by jtur88; 07-27-2013 at 10:21 AM..
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Old 07-27-2013, 11:02 AM
 
Location: Milwaukee
1,999 posts, read 2,458,490 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by jtur88 View Post
Let me restate what you just said, and just change a few words.

This is hilarious. You are equating acceptance of Blacks as a by-product of "education." I am absolutely certain that highly educated Americans( in the early 20th century) viewed Blacks in the same way that illiterate Americans viewed them.

Are you sure you are aligning yourself on the side you really want to be on?
"Blacks" are not a behavior. Murder and drunkenness are.
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Old 07-27-2013, 11:05 AM
 
Location: Milwaukee
1,999 posts, read 2,458,490 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by InsaneTraveler View Post
Africans tend to hate each other, but they are for the most part united in their hatred of gay people.

Pretty hypocritical considering that they have no problem mutilating their women's vaginas to the point that vaginal sex isn't even possible, so they have to resort to anal sex. For Africans, it is okay if straight people rape women in their ass but if two consenting gay men do it than GOD FORBID. My god that whole continent is so effed up.
I hope this is not coming from an American.

The United States leads the world--and some developing nations--in social pathologies. Child abduction and child rape are near epidemic in the United States.
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Old 07-27-2013, 11:37 AM
 
Location: Milwaukee
1,999 posts, read 2,458,490 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by LindavG View Post
This is cultural relativism taken to the extreme. Certain things are objectively right or wrong.

Consensual sex between adults in the privacy of their own bedroom should not be punished by lifetime imprisonment or death.
I'm not one into moral relativism. I'm not sure if that is connected to cultural relativism or not.

But under the concept of positive liberty (as opposed to negative liberty) there is reason to punish or incarcerate two adults that consent to sex in the privacy of their own home if it is deemed as a result of a lack of self awareness and therefore a lack of freedom.

The United States punishes and incarcerates consenting adults shooting heroin up in their arms for this vary reason.

Libertarians are the harbingers of negative freedom. Basically, libertarians would support the right of individuals to snort coke or have sex with members of their own sex.

Democrats and Republicans believe in using both positive and negative freedoms to legislate laws. Because feminists and gays are such a strong lobbying power Democrats support negative liberty for abortion and homosexual sex. Because drug addicts are stigmatized and have little to no lobbying power a multi-billion dollar war is waged and in the name of positive liberty Democrats support using the force of law to send addicts into either jail, prisons, or reeducation programs called rehab.

Democrats support positive liberty for many things. They don't care about 16 year old girls having sex and aborting their children but they don't want 16 year old girls getting tattoos on their ankles or drinking a glass of wine.

I don't think homosexual sex should be outlawed anywhere in the world. But I understand under the concept of positive liberty (a conception of freedom) it's as justified as arresting people for smoking marijuana.

Negative liberty is a much simpler concept than positive liberty. Negative liberty is concerned with freedom from external forces/restraints outside the person. Negative liberty is basically: Free from X to do Y.

Positive liberty views freedom as something internal, it views it as "self awareness," and does not believe an individual can know if he or she is free, but rather society or a group of elites must determine for that person whether they are free.

Religions and the Democratic Party and Republican Party are all harbingers of positive freedom. And no one preaches morality from public pulpits more than a Democrat or liberal, especially when it comes to 2 men 69'ing each other or 2 women screwing each other with strap-ons. They (liberals) are Popes-for-the-strap-ons. I find it about as ridiculous as shooting heroin in your vein. Especially, if the woman has a butch girl friend that looks like teenage boy (which means she has similar attractions as an adult male pederast).

[quot]
Genital mutilation of children is wrong.
Women should not be denied the right to an education or access to their own resources.
Forcing little girls to marry strange men old enough to be their grandfather is wrong.[/quote]

Agreed.

Quote:
I don't care if these things are "tradition", that doesn't make them moral or right. Slavery used to be tradition in the US too (justified by the Bible) so do you think the abolitionists of the North were wrong to impose their morality on the South? This a matter of human rights. I do not think the gay man in Uganda or the little girl in Yemen should live their life in oppression just because this is the culture they were born into.
I know the average American is led about like a zoo monkey but let me inform you of a current situation: The United States of America incarcerates more of its people than any other nation on earth. More than those nations you claim are violating "human rights" for incarcerating gay men banging each other. But it's not gay men the U.S. is incarcerating or sending in armed Gestapo kicking down doors in knock-and-raids.

It's a "human rights" violation to incarcerate some adult using drugs and not bothering anyone.
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Old 07-27-2013, 02:06 PM
 
Location: The Netherlands
2,920 posts, read 5,221,115 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Supine View Post
I'm not one into moral relativism. I'm not sure if that is connected to cultural relativism or not.

But under the concept of positive liberty (as opposed to negative liberty) there is reason to punish or incarcerate two adults that consent to sex in the privacy of their own home if it is deemed as a result of a lack of self awareness and therefore a lack of freedom.

The United States punishes and incarcerates consenting adults shooting heroin up in their arms for this vary reason.
The difference is that shooting up heroine negatively affects the mental and physical health of people, which makes them less productive members of society. Consensual sex between adults in the privacy of their own bedroom, on the other hand, has no negative effect on anyone.

Quote:
Libertarians are the harbingers of negative freedom. Basically, libertarians would support the right of individuals to snort coke or have sex with members of their own sex.
I guess that makes me a libertarian then. If it were up to me, all drugs would be legalised and regulated. Not because I would ever try drugs myself (I don't even smoke or drink alcohol) but because I don't believe the government should act as a moral police in matters that don't affect anyone but the individual. Besides, it is hypocritical to allow alcohol and tobacco (which are classified as hard drugs) but to criminalise marijuana (a soft drug). These laws are also based on tradition, they have no basis in rationality.

Quote:
Democrats and Republicans believe in using both positive and negative freedoms to legislate laws. Because feminists and gays are such a strong lobbying power Democrats support negative liberty for abortion and homosexual sex. Because drug addicts are stigmatized and have little to no lobbying power a multi-billion dollar war is waged and in the name of positive liberty Democrats support using the force of law to send addicts into either jail, prisons, or reeducation programs called rehab.
Not true, many Democrats support drug legalisation. In fact, several states in the US have recently legalised marijuana under Democratic leadership.

Quote:
Democrats support positive liberty for many things. They don't care about 16 year old girls having sex and aborting their children but they don't want 16 year old girls getting tattoos on their ankles or drinking a glass of wine.
Democrats don't care about 16-year-old girls having sex and having abortions? Remind me where teen pregnancies in the US are by far the most common? Oh that's right, the holier-than-thou Conservative states (same goes for watching porn btw).

Quote:
I don't think homosexual sex should be outlawed anywhere in the world. But I understand under the concept of positive liberty (a conception of freedom) it's as justified as arresting people for smoking marijuana.
Neither are justified in my opinion. Again, I don't want an overbearing government telling me what I can and cannot do with my own body, in my own home, when I'm not bothering anyone.

Quote:
Religions and the Democratic Party and Republican Party are all harbingers of positive freedom. And no one preaches morality from public pulpits more than a Democrat or liberal, especially when it comes to 2 men 69'ing each other or 2 women screwing each other with strap-ons. They (liberals) are Popes-for-the-strap-ons. I find it about as ridiculous as shooting heroin in your vein. Especially, if the woman has a butch girl friend that looks like teenage boy (which means she has similar attractions as an adult male pederast).
This is hilarious. Democrats preach morality more than Republicans? Which politicians want to outlaw abortion, gay marriage, oral sex between married couples, teaching the theory of evolution in public schools, etc. based on nothing more than their personal, "Christian" moral beliefs? They're all Republicans. Democrats believe in allowing people to make their own moral decisions, rather than imposing it on them.

How on earth can you compare homosexual sex with shooting up heroin? Who does it harm? And why are you so concerned about how people are having sex anyway? That's what I find ridiculous. Oh, and no, women who are attracted to "butch" women are not pederasts, just like men who are attracted to feminine men are not actually heterosexual.

Quote:
I know the average American is led about like a zoo monkey but let me inform you of a current situation: The United States of America incarcerates more of its people than any other nation on earth. More than those nations you claim are violating "human rights" for incarcerating gay men banging each other. But it's not gay men the U.S. is incarcerating or sending in armed Gestapo kicking down doors in knock-and-raids.

It's a "human rights" violation to incarcerate some adult using drugs and not bothering anyone.
1. I'm not American.

2. Why is it that whenever someone criticises another country, the first reaction is to randomly bash the US instead of actually addressing the criticism? Yes, the US is also guilty of human rights violations and I agree with you on the sentence in bold.
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Old 07-27-2013, 02:22 PM
 
Location: Twin Cities
5,833 posts, read 7,659,535 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by LindavG View Post
I specifically mentioned the US, where slavery is no longer practiced ...
This statement is false. Slavery continues to be practiced today in the United States where three out of four victims are women. It simply goes by different names. One of the reasons that slavery can continue today is that people remain ignorant of the types and causes of slavey today, and are in denial as to it's existence.

Slavery Today | National Underground Railroad Freedom Center
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Old 07-27-2013, 04:14 PM
 
Location: Milwaukee
1,999 posts, read 2,458,490 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by LindavG View Post
The difference is that shooting up heroine negatively affects the mental and physical health of people, which makes them less productive members of society. Consensual sex between adults in the privacy of their own bedroom, on the other hand, has no negative effect on anyone.
That's not entirely true. There are health risks associated with oral sex and anal sex. This is what I learned in a college course on STDs. You have what used to be derogatorily termed as "gay bowel syndrome."

Gay bowel syndrome - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Also, in the City of Milwaukee, statistically, close to 50% of black males that have sex with other males supposedly have HIV.

That's pretty statistically significant.


Quote:
Not true, many Democrats support drug legalisation. In fact, several states in the US have recently legalised marijuana under Democratic leadership.
Most Democrats don't. And most want to force addicts into rehabs. Drug rehabs pretty much follow the methods used to get homosexuals to reform their lives. The problem is that drug addiction is a stronger compulsion and obsession than any sexual orientation.

I'm not against rehabs. I just think it ought be up to the persons choice. As it is in Portugal.

Quote:
Democrats don't care about 16-year-old girls having sex and having abortions? Remind me where teen pregnancies in the US are by far the most common? Oh that's right, the holier-than-thou Conservative states (same goes for watching porn btw).
I should have worded that that Democrats don't care about 16 year old girls getting abortions. They're don't much about them engaging in sex either unless its with a man over the age of 17.

When I was a teenager the City of Milwaukee had the highest black teen pregnancy rate in the country. And many intentionally had kids--and more kids--to get on welfare. Being an ethnic Black-American I would here some of the girls explicitly state this.

But teen pregnancy is one thing and abortion is another. The latter is homicide but not legally murder. Unless a man kills the unborn child by beating the woman's belly as that Castro fellow in Cleveland did to one of the women he impregnated. Then the state will charge said man with murder for the homicide of that unborn child. If the unborn was a tomato then you couldn't be charged with murder. But the state recognizes it as human life just as the life sciences do. Just life in its early developmental stages.

Quote:
This is hilarious. Democrats preach morality more than Republicans? Which politicians want to outlaw abortion, gay marriage, oral sex between married couples, teaching the theory of evolution in public schools, etc. based on nothing more than their personal, "Christian" moral beliefs? They're all Republicans. Democrats believe in allowing people to make their own moral decisions, rather than imposing it on them.
I've voted Democrat my entire life (voted for Obama) except for one time. And I was reared around Democrats.

Democrats preach morals from public pulpits unlike anyone in the United States. They are always telling others what to think and believe and they are always yapping about how legalized abortion, homosexual marriage, and anything else they believe in are moral goods.

A lot of Republicans are atheists. Sorry you don't know that. And they really don't preach morals as much as they constantly complain about the almighty tax dollar which they raise to the level of idolatry. They also are severely judgmental persons. Atheist Republicans of this type. They'd have no problem marching to the gas chambers all those they regard as unfit in life.

Then there are Republicans that are part of the so-called "Religious Right," and they are the ones you are talking about. The atheists Republicans tolerate them because they provide money for the party plus they are against most government programs just as the atheist Republicans are.

You have Catholic Republicans too. They're a blend between the atheist and Religious Right Republicans.

Democrats like Obama used the Protestant Black Church to get supported by Black-Americans and helped elected. Almost all Black-Americans are Democrats and the seat of political power in Black-America resides in the Protestant Black Church. You have black preachers than run for political office (e.g., Sharpton, Jackson).

Look at the video of the former Illinois state senator that's a Democrat and preacher: 2 Pastors May Run For Mayor « CBS Chicago

Another video of him.


Pastor James Meeks-Chicago,IL.wmv - YouTube

For the record, the Popes have forbade priests from holding political offices in nation-states outside Vatican City. In the cases where some have run for political office they have been given dispensation by the Pope to leave the priesthood. Context here is important. Especially as it applies to U.S. separation of church and state and not taxing churches. "No taxation without representation."

So long as no church endorses a particular candidate, so long as churches do not allow candidates to campaign within their church services, they are not taxed. Protestant (many times Democrats) break this Federal law all the time.



Quote:
How on earth can you compare homosexual sex with shooting up heroin?
I sense you have been indoctrinated with a moral view about IV heroin use. Perhaps from images?

Quote:
Who does it harm? And why are you so concerned about how people are having sex anyway?
I'm merely pointing out the hypocrisy as well as pointing out that I find shooting heroine up irrational and and I find a woman picking a butch woman that looks like a teenage boy, to use a strap-on on her, less rational than her choosing a grown man that looks like a grown man and that's equipped with a real penis.

Quote:
That's what I find ridiculous. Oh, and no, women who are attracted to "butch" women are not pederasts, just like men who are attracted to feminine men are not actually heterosexual.
No, I stated butch women that look like teenage boys share the same attractions as men that are pederasts. I'm speaking more of the Hip Hop phenomenon of female "studs" some of whom (not all) look like teenage boys.


Quote:
1. I'm not American.

2. Why is it that whenever someone criticises another country, the first reaction is to randomly bash the US instead of actually addressing the criticism? Yes, the US is also guilty of human rights violations and I agree with you on the sentence in bold.
My bad for getting your nationality wrong.

I'm pointing out that U.S. has its own flaws, so, its standards or society is not so perfect to stand in judgment of every single nation on earth that may not approve of homosexuality.

I live in the U.S.

I'd live in the UAE if I could afford it. Better yet Qatar.
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