Answered Questions Re: Miss California

[AFPheonix]

Eye color and handedness usually doesn't cause any kind of major social impact.

Flyn already beat me to it, but as a lefty, if I had been born earlier, I would have been forced to use my right hand even though I wasn't wired for it.

What you would consider harm, I probably don't have anything that would satisfy you. I would consider putting a child into a situation like that would be harmful in itself.

This article talks about how lesbian couples raising children have a feminizing effect on boys and a masculinizing effect on girls:
http://www.narth.com/docs/does.html

I don't think that's ok in the least bit, because I think boys should be masculine and girls should be feminine. That's the kind of thing that I would consider to be harmful, but other people wouldn't.

Again, others beat me to it, but actually read the article. Girls being empowered to do what they want regardless of their gender and boys feeling free to be more nurturing and compassionate is a GOOD thing.

If you really think that a lack of a head covering is equivalent to homosexual behavior then I really don't think I can explain it to you. The level of severity is completely different. Also some of those things might be different in a modern church. For one thing families sit together in a modern church, whereas in the earliest churches, men and women would have sat in separate sections and calling across the aisle to ask questions would have been disruptive.

You've missed my point. Romans 1:26-27 was not a direct command against homosexuality.
Paul very specifically commanded women to cover their heads and not speak in church.
I would say that ignoring a direct command over a non-command is worse than the other way around.

We're just going to have to disagree on this one, because it looks like one to me. It certainly seems pathological to me when an otherwise healthy man is flouncing around with a purse as if he were a woman.

Is that what you think gay men do? I can assure you that is not part and parcel of being gay. Maybe think of gays and lesbians as actual, normal people and not some oddball caricature.

It was very important that Christians helped each other out because they weren't going to be liked by anyone outside their community.

And yet, they were still a commune that lived in a very monetarily liberal way. There wasn't any boot-strappin' in the early church.

[Rapscallion]

It's my opinion that Islam took a lot of things from Judaism and Christianity and made them more extreme. The early Muslims lifted a lot of things from the Bible and then claimed the Bible was corrupt and that they had the true last testament.

Opinion? There's probably some truth in what you say, since they all base themselves off Abraham/Ibrahim. However, as mentioned elsewhere, there's no shortage of elements that those Abrahamic religions borrowed from others. Try looking up mithraism and parallels with christianity.

In practice, Jews and Christians in the modern world don't engage in those types of brutal things for the most part,

If they don't partake of the instructions of the omnipotent deity they claim to worship, why do they still adhere to condemnations of homosexuality? If you cling to the condemnation of homosexuality, why won't you follow the other commands of the omnipotent deity you claim to believe in?

It's pick'n'mix religion without that much thought behind it.

at least not on a religious basis. You might hear the occasional story of a lunatic or strange cult though. Islam seems to have these things as part of its mainstream.

Mostly because the media focuses on the extremists - they want viewers or to sell copy. Same reason they concentrate on the posing pouches at gay pride parades, instead of conventially dressed people just walking down the road.

Rapscallion

[Nyoibo]

at least not on a religious basis. You might hear the occasional story of a lunatic or strange cult though. Islam seems to have these things as part of its mainstream.

Timothy McVeigh, David Koresh, Eric Robert Rudolph (fighting his war against the "homosexual agenda"), Bruce Edwards Ivins.

Guess what they all had in common?

[iradney]

I know many gay people. If they want to get married (which is legal in my country), I say go ahead. Them being married has NO IMPACT on the status of my relationship. Them having children has NO IMPACT on how I will raise my children. I fail to see how a loving couple adopting a child, loving and educating them and raising them as well as they can, can be detrimental to them.

Gay people being allowed a legal marriage in my country has had no effect on any of the marriages that I personally know of. None. Whatsoever. This whole "OMG gay people can't get MARRIED!" smacks very much of a "it's OUR club! OURS! WE'RE the cool kids and YOU aren't ALLOWED! NYAH NYAH NYAH!" attitude. Honestly, it's terribly childish.

Saying that a completely external event is going to have an affect on your marriage is ridiculous. That's like saying because women are now allowed to wear trousers, they will all become sexually promiscuous. If your marriage is that deeply affected by non-personal external events, I would seriously recommend counselling.

I've heard too many stories about foster children being abused by their straight caretakers to believe that sexual orientation has anything to do with your parenting ability.

In fact, one of my cousins is gay. She is in a happy, stable relationship with her partner. Her ex-husband and her child see each other regularly. Her child is one of the happiest, outgoing kids I have ever met, and has all the makings of a great little artist.

How can you reliably make statements about that a subject that you have no first hand knowledge? As per your own admission, you have no medical or psychological background. I doubt you know any homosexuals, given your extreme reaction to them.

You say you are "taught" to think like this. Just as you are saying that by allowing homosexuals to adopt children, they are "forcing" their views on them, you are being "forced" to adopt certain views as well. You are also attempting to do the same to us.

I have always believed that God is a kind and loving God. He gave us free will for a reason. He made ALL of us in his own image - and that includes people with mental and physical disabilities.

I find it interesting that you seem to prefer concentrating on the "Don'ts" in the Bible. What about the "Dos"? Surely, the commandment "Love thy neighbour" doesn't have a footnote saying "Except for aethiests, homosexuals and penguins." It simply says - "Love thy neighbour."

It ALSO says "You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor." That means giving false testimony, or lying. If you have no qualifications or experience about the subject you speak about, then anything you say could very well be construed as false testimony. You cannot say "I saw Bobby at the park at 10:00 am on the 1st of July" if you were at work the whole day. That is a lie.
So you cannot make sweeping assumptions about homosexuals, their lifestyles etc without having observed it.

[Nyoibo]

"Except for aethiests, homosexuals and penguins."

Well of course except for them, you can't trust Penguins.

[Rubystars]

Nyoibo, it all goes back to the fact that I think feminizing boys and masculinizing girls is harmful in its own right. Other people don't see that as necessarily harmful. Also I don't think people "choose to be gay". I don't think gay people can help their feelings but I do think they can control behavior.

Amethyst, I said I'd answer one more post per person, and you've flooded me. It'll take me a while to read back through what you wrote and try to respond to the gist of it. I don't really have time to keep up with this thread right now so I'm just trying to chip away at it as I have time.

[iradney]

Nyoibo, it all goes back to the fact that I think feminizing boys and masculinizing girls is harmful in its own right. Other people don't see that as necessarily harmful. Also I don't think people "choose to be gay". I don't think gay people can help their feelings but I do think they can control behavior.

The sexual preferences of the parents have nothing to do with that. My parents raised me to believe that just because I'm a girl it doesn't mean I should settle for what society thinks is good enough for me. I was a helluva tomboy as a kid, and I preferred playing with my dinky cars to my Barbies. As an adult, I do not play into the societal role of "Good girl, type up this memo, good girl, don't get a degree etc etc." I know many children who were raised the exact same way - in fact, my BFF is a very highly respected *profession* in a male-dominated job sector.

In fact, 200 years ago, having any sort of education (beyond that of music, art and reading - to make you a good "companion) was seen as a purely male domain. You have at least a high school education, no? You did math and science and bio and all of that. 200 years ago, you would have been treated like a pariah for trying to be a man.

Your last sentence applies to EVERYONE: Male, female, gay, straight, black, white, religious, atheist, on the fence, pierced, non-pierced etc. NO-BODY can help their feelings, but EVERYBODY can CHOOSE to control behaviour (the idiots of Westboro "Church" are a great example of how not choosing to control your behaviour works)

[Flyndaran]

That's an interesting point iradney.
As an atheist in many muslim chountries I would be forced to attend relgious services. I can't help how I feel, but I can help how I act.
As a christian, Ruby, do you believe I should be forced to attend christian services as well as not allow gays to live thier lives?



I am male, and my father made sure that his sons would be given toys normally given to girls to make us well rounded. He grew up with a homophobic, racist, macho obsessed, religious bigot of a father, and made damn sure his kids wouldn't suffer as he did.
Guess what? All three of us are completely hetero and happy in loving equal relationships.

[smileyeagle1021]

There are other people who can explain this a lot better than I can. I think everyone has certain challenges they need to face though. They have the choice to remain single.

forgive me if this has been responded to already... but I'd like to point out... you too have the choice to remain single.
Could you do that? Stay single your whole life?
Do you want to know how I define hell? You probably don't, but I'll tell you anyway. Hell is a state of being where you must be eternally alone. Not having anyone to share your life with. Being only able to define yourself as what you do and not also as who you do it with (I personally think the second one is more important)
So, when you say that I have the choice to remain single, you are saying I have the choice to live in hell.

Being gay as in having same sex attractions isn't the problem, but acting on it does harm the person. Being openly gay affects others in the community to a degree. Their behavior is perverse, deviant, and sinful. I've already addressed this "proof of harm" thing in several posts. What else do you want me to say about it?
.

I'm going to have to call you on this one. In the other thread you had said that I was a good guy for caring for my family and doing volunteer work. Now you are telling me that I am perverse, deviant, and sinful. That I am harming the community. So which is it... am I the good guy who is helping out or the deviant harming the community, because I can't be both. Right now, I'd be willing to bet the person who gets the emergency aid kits that I assemble are going to say I'm harming them... if I were to volunteer in a food bank like I want to if my schedule ever allows it, I'm pretty sure the people I would help feed would say I'm not harming them. My boss definitely doesn't think I'm harming him and I'm out on the job. The only people who have been harmed by me being out is the LDS church... they've lost my tithing income.

After a while it's starting to look like your argument boils down to "for the Bible tells me so" and "I think it's icky"
To the first, this is a secular republic, the Bible has no place in law.
To the second, I could always point out that I think the idea of sticking my penis in a vagina to be 'icky'. Statistically roughly 10% of the population has same sex attractions... some of those are bisexual, for sake of conservative numbers I'll say up to 50% of the people who have same sex attraction are bisexual, meaning up to 5% of the population is purely homosexual. So, if you ask 100 people, 5 of them will say that they think the idea of a man and a woman is 'icky'. Extrapulate that to the national level, with 300million people, you will find 15million who agree with that stance... there are 12 million mormons in this country. I bring up mormons because a lot of people think what mormons do in the temple is 'weird'. If being 'icky' is enough to tell 15million people that they are deviants and sinful and shouldn't be granted the same government protections, why shouldn't the fact that they are 'weird' be enough to outlaw mormon temple practices? After all, according to strict Biblican interpretation the Mormon church doesn't have any grounds to exist anyway.
If I allow myself to slippery slope your argument it wouldn't take much to justify the forced disbanding of the Mormon church or at the very least the removal of their tax exempt status. After all, isn't giving them tax exempt status the government 'condoning' their beliefs and rituals?

[Wingates_Hellsing]

I think we've basically run ourselves aground here.

Ruby has no proof backing up her position other than:

The bible says so, which has absolutely no place in law whatsoever. That's something we as citizens are required to accept from our constitution.

Ruby thinks it's harmful. Little more than an extrapolation on 'the bible says so' without any actual proof that homosexual behavior is harmful in any way.

And for the record, bothering people because they want to deny that something exists or offending them by being your own person does not count as harm. Everyone has a basic right to do and say as they wish in this country regardless of whether or not the people around them approve of it. The kind of harm we are talking about is physical, fiscal, or legal.

I don't see why you don't admit, Ruby, that what you want is a nation defined entirely by your morals at the expense of the 'sinful' or 'deviant'. We aren't on opposite sides of the coin here, or at least not in the way you choose to see it. You want to through the government impose your morality on the nation, we want a religiously, morally, and ethnically neutral government. You're not upset because your morals would be less pervasive than others, you're upset because your morals will no longer be more pervasive, something this country simply cannot allow.

[Nyoibo]

forgive me if this has been responded to already... but I'd like to point out... you too have the choice to remain single.
Could you do that? Stay single your whole life?
Do you want to know how I define hell? You probably don't, but I'll tell you anyway. Hell is a state of being where you must be eternally alone. Not having anyone to share your life with. Being only able to define yourself as what you do and not also as who you do it with (I personally think the second one is more important)
So, when you say that I have the choice to remain single, you are saying I have the choice to live in hell.

It's not so bad once you accept that it's how it's going to be, if nothing else it's more incentive to improve what you do.

[smileyeagle1021]

It's not so bad once you accept that it's how it's going to be, if nothing else it's more incentive to improve what you do.

well, that all depends on whether you believe is more important, what you do or who you do it with. If you believe that what you do is more important, then yes, it isn't a bad thing, because you have more time for what you do... if however you feel like I do that who you do it with is more important, then improving what you do is meaningless and that is still the definition of hell.

[Slytovhand]

I find that when I get rejected, it helps me focus more on me and the things I should be doing... thus, improving my life. At those times, I actually feel better about being single....

Of course, this is now turning into the 'Single' thread

[anriana]

I believe that homosexuality causes general moral decay, simply by the fact that it's something immoral that's openly flaunted now instead of being discreet like it was in the past. Now parents have to try to explain to their children why that man is giggling and swinging a purse around, when parents didn't have that particular challenge a few decades ago quite so often. I think this is unfortunate.

Why is a giggling man with a purse immoral? Are non-smiling women who wear pants immoral? What if they have short "dyke" hair and no make-up? A star tattoo (old-school marker for butch lesbians)? And what exactly do you think the exchange between the parents/child is going to be like? "Mommy, why doesn't daddy have a purse like that man does?" "Because daddy is not an evil hellbound sodomite." ?

Nyoibo, it all goes back to the fact that I think feminizing boys and masculinizing girls is harmful in its own right. Other people don't see that as necessarily harmful.

I am female. My parents are hardcore gender essentialist conservative Christians and I would like to know exactly what type of actions they must have done for me to turn out as masculine as I am. Was it when they told me not to giggle so loudly and didn't insist I carry a purse everywhere I went? You seem to think that women are naturally feminine and men are naturally masculine. We/they are not. That's why we have words like gender, or sex, or whatever term you want to use.

Is it harmful to society for me to wear men's pants because their sizing isn't arbitrary and I like their fit better? To wear shorts in public with visible leg hair? To change my car's tire by myself? To do _insert masculine activity here_? If so, please explain how. If not, please explain why it is harmful to allow children to express their natural gender instead of the narrow one you think everyone should naturally have.

I think anal sex happens more often between straight people because there are just a heck of a lot more straights than gays.

Not all gay people have anal sex.

Anyway to answer your point, yes all kinds of sex carry risk, but I do think that anal sex is riskier than vaginal sex.

That depends on several things. Anal sex is riskier for the penetratee but less risky than vaginal for the penetrator. And of course, anal sex with a toy or finger is less risky than vaginal with a penis.

If there is a basic right to marry, I think it would only apply to couples with opposite genders.

Then you're okay with butch women marrying femme women?

Men and women complement one another but homosexual relations are like trying to put two like poles of magnets together. It just doesn't work the same way.

Then how do you explain successful same-sex relationship? It obviously isn't like putting two poles of a magnet together or those wouldn't exist.

350
Well the Romans aren't around anymore. What I would consider harmful to society you probably wouldn't though. I consider homosexuality being accepted as normal as being harmful in its own right. However much of the damage may be yet to occur, so I guess you'll find my argument to be invalid, because it's hard to prove something that hasn't happened yet.

I'm assuming you're using "society" to refer to "American society," in which case your argument only works if you don't include queer people as part of society. That may be what you want but it is not accurate. If not, then what society are you arguing for?

I think it's important for kids to understand how things normally are before they learn about the variations, if at all possible. It's not ignorance I'm promoting but just a chance for them to get an understanding of hetero couples first. Thus the prince and princess stories, etc.

And if those children are not strictly hetero- they shouldn't be allowed to encounter any characters who are actually like them because they're abnormal?

What do you mean by they should be exposed to prince and princess stories? That they should only encounter women who are weak and passive and wait for a man to show up on a white horse and rescue them?

Yes I believe that the 50s were in general a safer time than decades after the 50s. However if crime is going down again, then that's of course a good thing. I hope it stays that way and goes even further down. I don't really trust the idea that it is just as safe now as it was then though.

Who was it safe for? White housewives and businessmen?

I think in this sense it could be a mother and a father that were adoptive parents. I do think it's interesting however that it specifies a mother and a father, and not two fathers or two mothers. It acknowledges that children will generally have a mother and a father.

Probably because all of the practicing homosexuals were being stoned to death.

When I was in left wing college classes, they told me sex is your physical sex and gender is your sexual self-identity. I always thought they had those terms backwards, but I've tried to stick to using them in that way.

Curse those lefties and their definitions! They get their propaganda straight from Merriam-Webster!

I seriously doubt that. I've never heard of an atheist hombophobe.

I've heard of plenty. They are either "Omg butt sex is icky and if gay marriage was legal I would have to be anally raped!!!!" or "men and women are complementary."

Parents can't even take their kids to Disney World without having to worry about the gay days that they aren't even warned about, when homosexual doms and submissives are walking around with leashes on.

BDSM is by no means exclusive to the gay community nor are overt displays of it.

There is even a large number of people who practice it as a form of the heteronormalcy you've been advocating. (warning: the rest of this paragraph is another crazy left-wing definition) Heteronormativity is when people oppose same sex relationships and advocate for strict adherence to gender roles, especially in the interactions between the sexes, usually by saying things like "women are just naturally submissive!"

Links:

http://www.takeninhand.com/ They even have a testimony on the front page from someone praising them for the "focus that marriage is between one man and one woman."

http://www.christiandd.com/

http://www.christiandomesticdiscipline.com/home1.html.

TRICK QUESTION:

Do you have a problem with two men kissing each other?

[anriana]

The hell it is, no one I have had as a friend has known what my sexuality is, or who I have sex with before they've become a very close friend, but they become my friend, not for who I might want to fuck, but because I'm a nice (well sometimes) person

Sex has more than one meaning. As you should have learned in left-wing indocrination class, it can mean physical funzies or biological differentation between male and female.

I'm still pretty sure my question of "Do you think it's ok to force your religion on other people?" was never answered either.

That's been answered 18,000 times with "I don't want my religion forced, I just don't want the government to acknowledge things I don't like which are currently not acknowledged."