Half the time, I suspect that people are visiting other blogs where the conversations are either vile or nonsensical and then come here and unload.

Eddie, you have a point. Sorry about that. I hang around the CARM messageboard, and it can be quite a nasty place at times (though it’s also strangely compelling). I shouldn’t be taking my frustrations out on you lot.

You suggest that Ann and I are basically in agreement about equal rights. It seems we are. I’m just not sure what strange definition of morality Ann is using whereby equality is not deemed a moral issue. I think it’s a fundamental moral issue.

And our morality should, of course, flow from evidence-based thinking.

Would you be willing to respect the person’s belief about their religion?

Well, Ann, I suppose it depends on what you mean by respect. I don’t see how I can, or why I should, respect a belief held in the teeth of the evidence, as the vast majority of religious beliefs are.

I’m not sure about the difference sometimes between a ridiculously held religious belief and science that has not fully discovered the DNA and all of it’s components. In fact, we are all (on any notion scientific or otherwise) a few cards short of understanding everything.

I’m not sure what you mean by this, Mary. You seem to be suggesting that we cannot know everything (true) and that therefore all ideas are on equal footing (false). There is a difference between incomplete knowledge and the “Here be dragons” thinking of the religious.

TRiG.

There’s a difference between respecting a person and respecting that person’s religion. To do the first is right; to do the second is ridiculous

Timothy (TRiG),

Would you be willing to respect the person’s belief about their religion?

I’m not sure about the difference sometimes between a ridiculously held religious belief and science that has not fully discovered the DNA and all of it’s components. In fact, we are all (on any notion scientific or otherwise) a few cards short of understanding everything.

If you think that respecting a person’s religion is ridiculous – then respecting a person’s ideas about himself, where he comes from etc… is ridiculous?

Just pointing out that.

Trig–
It would help greatly if you were more specific in your charges. This is a blog so we can’t see who you’re looking at when you speak. A number of people are speaking so when you don’t cite specific individuals or comments, it’s very difficult to determine who or what you think embodies those nonsensical beliefs.

Half the time, I suspect that people are visiting other blogs where the conversations are either vile or nonsensical and then come here and unload. Boo, for example, speaks of debating fundamentalists. But, in this topic and its comments, we’ve had very few comments from people who hold to the mindset she details in her comments that follow that statement.

(On another thread, I’m taking a verbal beating for my support of President-elect Obama. In numerous threads I’ve challenged Christians for trying to legislate their own morality. I’ve cited that many are disguising their personal sin of selfishness by hiding behind Christian beliefs…this goes to my belief that many don’t want to extend equal rights primarily because they don’t want the extra expense added to their health and insurance plans. They have no trouble with the fact that gays are paying taxes to support schools when the majority of them have no children; they have no trouble with the fact that gays aren’t given a break on their insurance premiums based on the fact that they are unlikely to need pre-natal and maternity coverage. Yet they scream about the injustice of having to extend health care benefits to the life-partner or spouse of a gay person. To me that’s both selfish and hypocritical.)

TRiG.

I might suggest to you that gays have taken the bad action of any christian and blamed the whole group.

I am a conservative (maybe not a fundamentalist the way it is defined) but am certainly more conservative. I have felt the the rude comments, hateful comments etc… by gays … especially since I am considered ex gay – for lack of a better word.

So…. the bad press swings both ways. And some of your comments about voitng republican (btw I am a democrat), I do beleive in evolution – but do also beilieve God is behind all of it (and I do not subscribe to all evolutionary theories), I abandoned my faith as a teenager – because that is what many young people do etc….. are just as bias and damaging to the discussion.

Your comments were certainly meant to hurt someone. They hurt me. And yet, I am not republican, not a creationist, and did abandon my faith at one time. And I KNOW what it is like to be gay and be mistreated by christians. Funny thing is, I also know what it is like to be christians and be mistreated by gays. Who would have ever thought that would happen?

And I’m the one who made the snarky comment about Mary K not looking beyond her faith to where others are really at. Snarky and inappropriate – but nonetheless the underlying tone was that her mini-sermon was out of place and lacking compassion and understanding of others.

Can we , those who see homosexuality as a sin and those who do not see homosexuality as a sin find a way to talk? One unlike Mary K and one unlike some that choose to insult my faith?

I’m one of the sincere Christians who take issue with the hate message Fred Phelps delivers and the judgemental message of folks like Mary K. As to whether Fred Phelp’s name is written in The Book Of Life, no one this side of eternity can say with any certainty. But like it or not, he professes a version of the Christian religion which is a lot closer to historic Christian orthodoxy than the Mormons all the “Bible-believing Christians” were so eager to jump in bed with against The Gays.

The thing is, and I see this over and over when debating fundamentalists, they take any bad action on the part of any gay person as proof of The Evil Of The Gays, yet when you point out the bad behavior of str8 Christians, they rationalize it away with the “not a true Christian” thing. And bad as this is as far as gay rights, it’s much, MUCH worse for the church. There is a cancer infecting the church in society. One study estimates that as many as 96% of evangelical teens will abandon their faith by adulthood, and is it any wonder when they can see with their own eyes that the gay people they grow up knowing aren’t the evil disease ridden perverts painted by their pastors? Or when they get into a biology class and discover that their pastors lied to them about evolution? Or when they get sick of the bunker mentality that says the minions of Satan are hiding under every nook and cranny and they’ll go to hell if they don’t vote Republican?

Of course, as a Christian I believe God’s promise that the church will never be extinguished, but if we don’t start calling out this problem in our midst, we’re headed in the direction of Europe’s near-empty churches.

I also have personal thoughts about marriage, however, they are my thoughts and must never impede on the equal rights of others.

Ann thinks it would be wrong (read: immoral) for her to enforce certain behaviour on others. I agree. it is right (read: moral) to restrict other people’s rights only when we have a pressing need to do so. It is wrong (read: immoral) to restrict other people’s rights without a very good cause*.

Some people seem to have a bizarre disconnect between “right” and “moral”, when they mean basically the same thing. Perhaps it’s the idea some religions seem to promote that morality is all about sex, when in fact morality concerns all our dealings with other people. Affording equal rights to minority groups is certainly a moral issue. How could it not be?

TRiG.

* In case you’re wondering, I don’t count My imaginary friend doesn’t like it as a good cause.