Conservative Christian Broadcaster Changes Mind On Same Sex Marriage (Buddhist, America, myth)
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They were trolling my children's Facebook pages. My wife received an email saying "You know your husband is destined for hell." I was accused of being an adulterer, a thief, that I had a breakdown, that I was doing it all for money. I was surprised by the cruelty of people, who said they follow the son of God, but at the same time could be so incredibly ugly towards someone who disagreed with them.
LOL! And then they wonder why today's youth are abandoning Christianity in droves.
Don't these morons realize that kids see this? And then they go to school and tell all their friends? And their friends get disgusted? And pretty soon, none of them want anything to do with a religion that teaches a message of hate? A religion that churns out people who are that cruel and vitriolic?
I think it is very apparent even to the kids that such behavior is more than just being angry over homosexuality being a sin. Unfortunately for far too many Christians, they have decided to combine their own personal bigotry, their own personal phobias, their own personal hang-ups, their own personal small-mindedness, and their own personal immaturity with their religious beliefs ... and because all of these things mix together so well, thanks to the same small-minded mentality of the Biblical authors, today's youth don't even want to be bothered with trying to pull apart one from another.
I just look at it this way: The more these childish bullies thump their chests with their moral indignation, seemingly forgetting that they're adults and not kids on the playground, the more our youth will turn away from fundamentalism, become aware of fundamentalism's incompatibility with a modern and peaceful world, and take an active stance against it -- both here AND in the Middle East.
Religious fascism? Tell me, are we forcing you to read the Bible? Go to the church? In your world, having to see a Christian billboard is being fascists. If anyone is being fascist, it is the atheists and secularists who demand that everyone embrace an immoral standard of society or be punished.
No, Jeff, you're simply trying to tell everyone who is and isn't allowed to get married based on what the Bible says whether we read it or not.
Naturally, you simply don't understand what fascism is, which is why you're so quick to accuse atheism of being the true fascists.
I would expect something better than an "I know you are but what am I?" response, but then, perhaps I shouldn't.
You see, no one is saying you have to "embrace" anything at all. You can still believe homosexuality is a sin if that's what you want to do. You are still free to choose not to marry someone of the same sex if that's what you want. Your church is not required to officiate over a gay wedding nor is anyone requiring you to sign a document or swear an oath claiming that you now accept homosexuality as normal, moral, or acceptable by your religious standards.
YOU are still free to go about your life EXACTLY as before ... because what gays can or cannot do simply does not affect you.
And you have repeatedly failed to demonstrate precisely how gay marriage affects you or interferes with your freedom to practice your religion.
UNLESS, of course, your religion demands that everyone in the country follow its rules and any freedom our country gives to people that contradicts those rules interferes with your religious rights. But, if that's the case, then you're being fascistic, as I said.
Bottom line is that, as a liberal atheist, I believe in giving people the personal CHOICE to decide for THEMSELVES how they wish to live their lives. If they want to run around sinning, that's their choice just as long as they aren't doing others harm (and no, "harm" does not include offending someone else's religious beliefs).
You, on the other hand, want to restrict choice, to take choices away. You want your religion to make everyone's choices for them with no questions asked ... and that is fascism. It is unquestioning obedience to the religion, where religion becomes the law of the land and one must respect it and obey it regardless of what you believe in your own heart, mind, and soul.
Now tell me, Jeff ... how is atheism restricting your choices? What choices are we taking from you?
Religious fascism? Tell me, are we forcing you to read the Bible? Go to the church? In your world, having to see a Christian billboard is being fascists. If anyone is being fascist, it is the atheists and secularists who demand that everyone embrace an immoral standard of society or be punished.
So when people on your side try to push to make same sex marriage illegal again, push to put religious things on official government documents and property, and push to teach intelligent design in science classes as a replacement to evolution, this is not also fascism?
I know you probably won't respond, but I sincerely want to know what the difference in your mind is between making same sex marriage legal as being fascism and making it illegal as being religious liberty.
So when people on your side try to push to make same sex marriage illegal again, push to put religious things on official government documents and property, and push to teach intelligent design in science classes as a replacement to evolution, this is not also fascism?
No, it's taking back what your fascist side gutted out of society for the worst. Marriage existed a long time and everyone accepted it as being an institution between man and woman. Then your side comes along and wants to rewrite what is normal and moral. You want to take away what already was in place. That is what fascism does. It takes away.
Religious fascism? Tell me, are we forcing you to read the Bible? Go to the church?
That is not where the fascistic nature of your belief system overtly resides at this time. Nor has it been suggested that it is. Right now you are focused on SSM, abortion and the like, and you want people's choices in these matters to be determined by your ideology rather than left to individual choice. THAT is what is currently overtly fascistic.
I qualify that because I suspect that while it hasn't occurred to most fundamentalists, the notion that god will bless or curse a nation according to how godly it behaves, suggests strongly to me that you would ultimately oppose anything you define as disrespectful toward god. Failing to give thanks before meals, or to pray before basketball games, to attend church regularly or refrain from premarital sex are all things (particularly that last, since it has to do with sex) that fundamentalists would legislate if they felt they could get away with it.
They were trolling my children's Facebook pages. My wife received an email saying "You know your husband is destined for hell." I was accused of being an adulterer, a thief, that I had a breakdown, that I was doing it all for money. I was surprised by the cruelty of people, who said they follow the son of God, but at the same time could be so incredibly ugly towards someone who disagreed with them.
LOL! And then they wonder why today's youth are abandoning Christianity in droves.
Don't these morons realize that kids see this? And then they go to school and tell all their friends? And their friends get disgusted? And pretty soon, none of them want anything to do with a religion that teaches a message of hate? A religion that churns out people who are that cruel and vitriolic?
I think it is very apparent even to the kids that such behavior is more than just being angry over homosexuality being a sin. Unfortunately for far too many Christians, they have decided to combine their own personal bigotry, their own personal phobias, their own personal hang-ups, their own personal small-mindedness, and their own personal immaturity with their religious beliefs ... and because all of these things mix together so well, thanks to the same small-minded mentality of the Biblical authors, today's youth don't even want to be bothered with trying to pull apart one from another.
I just look at it this way: The more these childish bullies thump their chests with their moral indignation, seemingly forgetting that they're adults and not kids on the playground, the more our youth will turn away from fundamentalism, become aware of fundamentalism's incompatibility with a modern and peaceful world, and take an active stance against it -- both here AND in the Middle East.
But our world is not becoming more peaceful. That is the fiction that you are spinning. Our society is more divided, more violent, more angry, more socially isolated, and less patriotic than ever before. School shootings certainly were not a norm when I was a kid.
You may succeed in driving youth away from church, but you reap what you sow and a black harvest is coming.
But our world is not becoming more peaceful. That is the fiction that you are spinning. Our society is more divided, more violent, more angry, more socially isolated, and less patriotic than ever before. School shootings certainly were not a norm when I was a kid.
You may succeed in driving youth away from church, but you reap what you sow and a black harvest is coming.
If you actually look at the numbers instead of your contextless subjective childhood recollections you will find that it is a fact that the world is more peaceful than it's ever been.
Now school shootings are nothing to sneeze at and as this list illustrates, they are nothing new although their frequency has gone up since the 1960s especially. But the question is why? Less patriotism and godliness? Or might it have something to do with gun control, or the lack thereof? Or might it be our evil Kenyan lizard president?
The truth though is that for all its horror, so far this year 3 children have died and 11 have been injured in 6 incidents. Considering that there are nearly 100,000 public schools in the US, attended by some 50 million children, the odds that any one child will be killed or injured in a school shooting are vanishingly small. So while this is an unacceptable problem that needs to be addressed (as to actual, not imagined causes) it is not an existential threat or proof that the world is headed into the toilet. Child labor and higher incidence of war across the world have accounted for more deaths and injuries in any one month of the 18th century I suspect than all the school shootings that ever happened in the history of humanity.
No, it's taking back what your fascist side gutted out of society for the worst. Marriage existed a long time and everyone accepted it as being an institution between man and woman. Then your side comes along and wants to rewrite what is normal and moral. You want to take away what already was in place. That is what fascism does. It takes away.
That is not even remotely close to an accurate definition of fascism.
Fascism is an authoritarian system of governance, using the power of the state to control industry and usually restricting basic freedom (such as speech), and most importantly using nationalist appeal to justify this. Nationalism rarely seeks to end tradition. It's usually about maintaining, and even more common, going back to what worked. There's a reason that every fascist state was born out of a suffering one.
Something having existed historically does not justify its existence. As a general rule, it's a weak argument to use something's existence to justify it's own existence. That argument just doesn't work most of the time. Slavery, monarchy, suppressing the rights of women; these all existed historically and were considered just and normal by most people for quite some time. God said the king can rule, so the king should rule; men are superior to women intellectually, so why should women have a say in political life? These were widely accepted and yet today, these ideas are nearly universally seen as being ridiculous. Point being, just because it was true yesterday does not make it true tomorrow. The idea that the sun circle the Earth was once accepted by a great many people; now we know that to be false. What possible reason is there for marriage to be an exception to this? Why on Earth would marriage be immune?
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