Girlie-men

[M2]

Dear Shin,

I watched part of another ST-Voyager episode today. Episode# 206 Latent Image.  The Doctor is having to deal with the dilemna of choosing to save one crew member over another when both had an equal opportunity to survive depending on treatment.  There was only time to save one and he chose Kim.  Janeway decides to treat the Doctor as if he was a human being.  She becomes his sounding board as he attempts to figure out his dilemna.  If only there were more counsellors/ministers like her.  She recognized him as a 'person'.  She was willing to spend the time and the effort to help him even at the cost to her own well-being.  She did not criticize him because he 'was facing a dilemna'.  She truly has a shepherd's heart and a real care for each individual crew member.

Back to the ongoing discussion.  Marriage does not enter the picture if I view homosexuality as morally wrong.  However, I do care for you as an individual even though I disagree with your lifestyle.  I also understand that 'passion' is very difficult to switch off and that it does take a concerted effort to make the 'right' choices despite what one is feeling.

Much love and God bless,
Marcia

[David Mauldin]

Marcia,  Pam (My wife) tells me that there is an ST episode where the social norm is same sex marriage and that heteros are the "weirdos"  is this an episode you have seen?

[David Mauldin]

Could we please talk about child porn on another thread?  This thread is not about Child Porn!  Let's stay on the issue.

[Oscar]

Hi Mark,  I  would like to respond to this.

 Your arguments were not against my position, but against a caricature of my beliefs.  It seemed you were consciously twisting my comments into a "I hate homosexuals" kind of position.  Though I believe it ridiculous to consider homosexuality an issue of "civil rights", I believe that God loves all sinners, including homosexuals

O.K. I know that you do not percieve your views of Homosexuals as an typical "Archie Bunker" view. Your view, of your view, is that the homosexual is a sinner, who is giving place to his sin.  Just as an alcoholic who drinks is a sinner who is giving place to his sin.   O.K. Mark I know you as a nice, fair man.  But I don't see it that way I see it as a civil rights issue.  Mark, fifty years ago an open conversation about blacks in a public place might be,  "Are blacks really human?"  Today this is absurd, yet it still goes on! Maby now it is private but it still happens.  Mark if someone were to approach you today and seriously strike up a conversation with you on the subject "are blacks really human?"  You would find it offensive.  Why because you know blacks are just like anyone else and they deserve the respect and dignity just like anyone else.  The current views about gays are no different.

David,

I noticed in one of your recent posts to Mark that you claim to respect "logic and reason".  Well, this looks like a good place to start.

Your argument commits a fallacy of equivocation.  (that means that you have quietly changed the meaning of your terms)  Your argument claims that Blacks are "just like everyone else."   Then you go on to claim that Homosexuals are "just like everyone else" as well.

In the first case, Blacks are actually "just like everyone else" in our common humanity.  But no one that I have ever heard, read, or talked to has ever claimed that homosexuals are not human.

Homosexuals are not different in their humanity, they are different in their behavior, which is definitely not "just like everyone else!   So you are committing a fallacy of equivocation, which is another way of saying that in terms of logic, you are talking nonsense.

Why do I feel this way so strongly.  Mark I have been a Christian.  I know what a Christian is!

Dave,  based upon what you have posted on this board, I would have to say that I remain unconvinced of this.  You seem to have understood Christianity as poorly as you seem to understand atheism.

 A Christian is like anyone else No different! I know people who are decent and are Gay.  They deserve respect and to deny them equal status is a terrible injustice.

Here is where you begin to display your ignorance of atheism.  No God, no rules.  No rules, no evil.  No rights, other than legal rights, which change whenever the laws change.

Currently, homosexual marriage is illegal in 49 states.  So no injustice can be committed by applying the law.  

As to what homosexuals "deserve", no one deserves anything in atheistville Dave.  

I believe that you are a good man and wouldn't knowingly try to hurt anyone.  I believe that fifty years from now people will look back on how Gays were treated and they will say "Man what were they thinking?"  Mark I don't want to offend you and I guess there must be a way that I can respect your views and still disagree with them.
 But Mark  What is it about Gays that you find threatening?  I want to know?  What?

In logic, Dave, this is known as an ad hominem argument.  It is a dishonest attempt to discredit someone by casting aspersions upon their character.

Since you now claim moral superiority...why don't you stop this?  The homosexuals cannot offer any argument that homosexual behavior is a postitive good.  So, as a sort of last ditch effort to defend their actions, they invented the word "homophobic", which means "an irrational fear of homosexuals."

Someone called me this once.  I challenged them to back up their claim with any evidence whatsoever.  All they could do was to sit and look at me.  

You need to provide evidence that Mark C. has an irrational fear before you make statements accusing him of it.

Incidentally, I then asked the folks who were calling me "intolerant" and "homophobic" to tell me WHY it is wrong to murder people.  Not why it is illegal, why it is WRONG.  

Being athiests, and actually understanding what that means, all they could do was sit in silence.  FIVE master's degree level teachers in their 30's.  THAT I do find frightening.

Thomas Maddux

[David Mauldin]

You are right Tom it is a behavior vs race issue.  but I don't know how else to explain it.  Tom I like to look at women!  I marride one!  I  like to hug her, kiss her.  If a man feels this way towards another man why is that to be condemned?  Tom when I was a christian I was taught that I could never judge anyone else but you have no problem telling me that I wasn't a true Christian?  I have no respect for this comment!  Do me a favor and stop making these comments!  What do you mean homosexuals can't offer any positive statements about their sexuality?  Where do you live? Tom did I say I was an Atheist?  No you keep saying it!  Stop it!  Why do you accuse me of "acursions?"  No Tom stop judging me! I just honestly wanted to know why he felt threatened!  Tom Murder is justified in some cases!  Tom stop judging me!  How about stop replying to my post and let me have my own conversations.  If you would read them you would see that they work themselves out.  I don't like the way you judge me.  Stop It!  

[shinchy]

Marcia,  Pam (My wife) tells me that there is an ST episode where the social norm is same sex marriage and that heteros are the "weirdos"  is this an episode you have seen?

Dave,
I mentioned this episode in one of my replies to Marcia:

There was a Next Generation episode, "The Outcast," where the Enterprise interacts with the J'Naii, an androgynous, genderless people. One of these people identifies "herself" as female and "she" keeps it a secret from her fellow J'Naii. "She" is outed when her flirtations with Commander Riker becomes obvious and then she is put through a hearing where her "nature" is condemned as a perversion and "she" reprogrammed at the end, having no feelings for Riker in the end. It's implications are very clear concerning the treatment of gays with how the situation is reversed. The androgynous society, strangely enough, is quite conservative and devoid of sensuality.
http://www.startrek.com/startrek/view/series/TNG/episode/68540.html

[Oscar]

You are right Tom it is a behavior vs race issue.  but I don't know how else to explain it.  Tom I like to look at women!  I marride one!  I  like to hug her, kiss her.  If a man feels this way towards another man why is that to be condemned?

David,

Simple.  Male attraction to women is a normal, natural part of healthy human experience.  Of course, it must be controlled and ruled by moral values.  Men have the capacity to feel sexually attracted to almost any female.  But it is destructive to both individuals and societies if this attraction is not held in check, controlled, and channeled into legitimate forms of expression.

Homosexuality is about NOT doing this!  Now, you have said,

"If a man feels this way towards another man why is that to be condemned?"

If a man "feels this way" his feelings are evidence of a dysfunctional personality.  The human body is not designed for male/male sex.  So, if your emotions drive you to want this unnatural union, that is dysfunctional.  

Some homosexuals try to claim "I was born homosexual."  If this were true, (there is little scientific evidence to support this, and what exists is very inconclusive), then homosexuality is nothing more than a birth defect!

It is impossible to argue for homosexuality by appealing to evolution, since the failure to reproduce constitutes a death penalty for one's genetic line.  No offspring, no evolution, even for those folks who accept Darwinism as true.

Many homosexuals argue that they were "born this way" on the basis of their having felt this way in their earliest memories.   Actually, many normal men report that they had this type of feeling as children.  The homosexual, for various reasons, has become fixated on the undifferentiated sexuality of childhood.  The reason this happens is not completely understood.

No one denies that homosexuals have these feelings.  The issue is what they do with them.  There are millions of normal men and women, Christian and non-Christian, that live as single adults without having sex with anyone.  Although I suppose that there are some that do this, I have personally never heard or read of a homosexual that controls himself in this way.

My church, (E. Free of Fullerton), will recieve people with this problem into membership.  All they have to do is to observe the same moral standards everyone else does.  No sex outside of marriage.

Tom when I was a christian I was taught that I could never judge anyone else but you have no problem telling me that I wasn't a true Christian?  I have no respect for this comment!  Do me a favor and stop making these comments!  What do you mean homosexuals can't offer any positive statements about their sexuality?  Where do you live? Tom did I say I was an Atheist?  No you keep saying it!  Stop it!  Why do you accuse me of "acursions?"  No Tom stop judging me! I just honestly wanted to know why he felt threatened!  Tom Murder is justified in some cases!  Tom stop judging me!  How about stop replying to my post and let me have my own conversations.  If you would read them you would see that they work themselves out.  I don't like the way you judge me.  Stop It!  

I will continue my answer in another post.

Thomas Maddux

[Oscar]

You are right Tom it is a behavior vs race issue.  but I don't know how else to explain it.  Tom I like to look at women!  I marride one!  I  like to hug her, kiss her.  If a man feels this way towards another man why is that to be condemned?  Tom when I was a christian I was taught that I could never judge anyone else but you have no problem telling me that I wasn't a true Christian?  I have no respect for this comment!  Do me a favor and stop making these comments!

David,

Actually, what I said was,

"Dave,  based upon what you have posted on this board, I would have to say that I remain unconvinced of this.  You seem to have understood Christianity as poorly as you seem to understand atheism."

Dave, I stll remain unconvinced.  What you posted about "judging" is another evidence, (as far as I'm concerned), that you never understood Christianity.

What do you mean homosexuals can't offer any positive statements about their sexuality?  Where do you live?

Dave, you need to read what I actually said.  I said that no argument can be made that homosexuality is a positive good.  Sure, a homosexual can declare, "I like sodomy".  That however, is not what I am talking about.  I am talking about establishing, by clear arguments, that homosexual behavior is a good thing.

Tom did I say I was an Atheist?  No you keep saying it!  Stop it!

Dave you claimed in a recent post to Mark Campbell that a personal God does not exist.  Sounds like atheism to me.

There aren't that many options.  Monotheism, Pantheism, Polytheism, Atheism....and what else?   Where do you fit in?

Oh yes, these days there is another option....New Age Anything I Like Is True And Anything I Don't Like Is Not True Mysticism.

So, Dave, if you are not an atheist, just who, or what, is God?

Why do you accuse me of "acursions?"

Please explain what you mean by "acursions?"

 No Tom stop judging me! I just honestly wanted to know why he felt threatened!

David, I am well aware than in the circles you run in that this lie is widely accepted as the explanation for opposition to homosexual behavior.  What you are doing is making a lying accusation against Mark C., and you made it against me several posts back.

Either give evidence to show that we, in fact, DO feel threatened, or stop making these accusations.  It is nothing more than a disguised form of name calling.   Stop it.

Tom Murder is justified in some cases!

Since murder is the illegal taking of human life, when is it justified?

Tom stop judging me!  How about stop replying to my post and let me have my own conversations.  If you would read them you would see that they work themselves out.  I don't like the way you judge me.  Stop It!  

Dave, you are posting in a public forum that you choose to come to.
As long as you are not abusive you are welcome here.

However, if you wish to have private conversations with Mark, or anyone else, I suggest you use PM's or e-mail.

Thomas Maddux

[shinchy]

It is impossible to argue for homosexuality by appealing to evolution, since the failure to reproduce constitutes a death penalty for one's genetic line.  No offspring, no evolution, even for those folks who accept Darwinism as true.

If it is genetic, then people whose genetic dispostion is homosexual may have been reproducing for millenia since many of them may have honored social obligations to marry and reproduce. And I made a point earlier about the grand tradition of marriage was to consolidate power and resources/assets. There certainly wasn't something that required someone to be attracted to their wives. There have been a couple of homosexual kings in medieval England who apparently had heirs from their marriages. And the genes may have been passed on by various people in the 20th and even the 21st centuries through marriages (to the opposite sex) and even arranged pregancies for lesbians.

[outdeep]

If it is genetic, then people whose genetic dispostion is homosexual may have been reproducing for millenia since many of them may have honored social obligations to marry and reproduce. And I made a point earlier about the grand tradition of marriage was to consolidate power and resources/assets. There certainly wasn't something that required someone to be attracted to their wives. There have been a couple of homosexual kings in medieval England who apparently had heirs from their marriages. And the genes may have been passed on by various people in the 20th and even the 21st centuries through marriages (to the opposite sex) and even arranged pregancies for lesbians.

So what I hear you saying is that if we allow gay marriage and teach genetically disposed homosexuals to resist the artificial hedrosexual-based social mores places upon them, over time the genetically tainted gender of homosexuality will be naturally erradicated?

[Oscar]

It is impossible to argue for homosexuality by appealing to evolution, since the failure to reproduce constitutes a death penalty for one's genetic line.  No offspring, no evolution, even for those folks who accept Darwinism as true.

[quote
If it is genetic, then people whose genetic dispostion is homosexual may have been reproducing for millenia since many of them may have honored social obligations to marry and reproduce.

Shin,

"If", "May have" are terms used in speculative statements.  If homosexual desires are caused by kissing frogs then the recent rise in homosexual "outings" may be related to an increase in frog kissing.

Not a very meaningful statement, is it?

And I made a point earlier about the grand tradition of marriage was to consolidate power and resources/assets.

Actually, what you made was an assertion, along with committing a fallacy of composition.  (ascribing a characteristic of particular members of a class to all members of the class

There certainly wasn't something that required someone to be attracted to their wives. There have been a couple of homosexual kings in medieval England who apparently had heirs from their marriages. And the genes may have been passed on by various people in the 20th and even the 21st centuries through marriages (to the opposite sex) and even arranged pregancies for lesbians.

An interesting theory.  However, it depends on finding that there actually is a genetic component to this behavior by identifying the particular gene.  If this were the case, genetic engineering could possibly correct the condition.  Or, more likely in this age, babies testing positive for homosexual tendencies would simply be killed.  

It also depends on establishing the materialists claim that mind is produced by the interactions of matter according to physical laws.

Until such things are established as highly probable by research, it is mere speculation.

Concerning the "homosexual kings".  I do not know what you are basing this on, so I cannot comment.  But it seems to me that you might be using the term "homosexual" too broadly.   Personally I am of the opinion that homosexual behavior has multiple causes and degrees of severity.  There is a difference, IMHO, between a debauched hedonist who will do whatever it takes to get his jollies and some guy that wants to dress up like a bride or walk around in high heeled shoes and hot pants.

Thomas Maddux

[shinchy]

If it is genetic, then people whose genetic dispostion is homosexual may have been reproducing for millenia since many of them may have honored social obligations to marry and reproduce. And I made a point earlier about the grand tradition of marriage was to consolidate power and resources/assets. There certainly wasn't something that required someone to be attracted to their wives. There have been a couple of homosexual kings in medieval England who apparently had heirs from their marriages. And the genes may have been passed on by various people in the 20th and even the 21st centuries through marriages (to the opposite sex) and even arranged pregancies for lesbians.

So what I hear you saying is that if we allow gay marriage and teach genetically disposed homosexuals to resist the artificial hedrosexual-based social mores places upon them, over time the genetically tainted gender of homosexuality will be naturally erradicated?

No. It could be recessive. Your phenotype may not manifest the trait and you could be a carrier. But I don't know if being gay is genetic or not so I'm not really invested in this.

[shinchy]

"If", "May have" are terms used in speculative statements.  If homosexual desires are caused by kissing frogs then the recent rise in homosexual "outings" may be related to an increase in frog kissing.

Actually, what you made was an assertion, along with committing a fallacy of composition.  (ascribing a characteristic of particular members of a class to all members of the class

Kissing frogs - horrible abuse of a syllogism.

Second item quoted: huh? I think not. People love to appeal to the tradition and sanctity of marriage when they define it as between a man and a woman. Arranged marriages have existed in many cultures for millenia. Dowries and bride prices have also existed in various fashions, pointing to the political-economic nature of marriage.

[al Hartman]

...People love to appeal to the tradition and sanctity of marriage when they define it as between a man and a woman. Arranged marriages have existed in many cultures for millenia. Dowries and bride prices have also existed in various fashions, pointing to the political-economic nature of marriage.

     Marriages in the bible (anyone on this thread remember that book? ) certainly reflect a broad spectrum of motives, from the "political-economic" to that of love.  Surely the bride of Christ was courted for love, and she was purchased.  The bride had no dowry to offer, and the dowry the Groom provided, although exactly what the bride's wicked father demanded, turned out to have ramifications he had never anticipated.  It is the bride's good fortune that she also got a new Father as part of the exchange!

Praise God from Whom all blessings flow,
al

[shinchy]

Tone of Handel's Messiah and Revelation: If "the kingdoms of this world are become the Kingdom of our Lord" then perhaps there is a socio-economic transaction in the marriage of Christ, as the "kindgdoms of the world" would serve as the Bride's dowry. Or a bride price was involved as many hymns such as "I will sing of my redeemer" talks of him purchasing us with his blood.

Yes, the motives for marriage vary in the Bible. The king of Persia married Esther out of lust (after selecting her from a group of women) and because he didn't want to lose face (the queen embarrassed him and she was no more). David did marry for political reasons, such as his marriage to Michal, Saul's daughter. Solomon had hundreds of wives to seal political alliances with many of his neighnoring kings. He had hundreds of concubines as well and that's just being greedy. Isaac does marry Rachel out of love. When Isaac pays the bride price by seven years of labor, Laban does the bait and switch and gives him Leah's hand in marriage and Isaac must work seven more years to marry Rachel.