You know, I always thought that for someone to be anti-gay, they had to make clear, through words or actions, their animus against gay people. We do see such folks from time to time. A few of them will not be participating in CPAC next week.
Seems some on the gay left have different standards. Many seem to believe that someone is anti-gay merely because he doesn’t support state recognition of same-sex marriage. David Harsanyi disagrees, calling it “deceitful to dismiss legitimate arguments for preserving traditional marriage and ugly to smear everyone making them as homophobic Neanderthals.” I agree.
That hasn’t stopped some people from bandying about the accusation:
Southern fried-chicken chain Chick-fil-A has recently been accused of anti-gay sentiment for providing sandwiches and brownies to an event sponsored by the Pennsylvania Family Institute, a “traditional, foundational” family based group that has rallied against gay marriage in the past, the “New York Times” reported Saturday.
So, they provided food to a socially conservative group. So, what? Did they prevent or otherwise discourage gay men from partaking of their offerings? Did they deny lesbians admission to their restaurant? Did they post signs in said restaurants calling homosexuality a sin?
While supporting traditional marriage, Chick-fil-A president Dan Cathy said that he and his family “love and respect anyone who disagrees.” Sounds like a voice for civil discourse to me.
In the face of all the hullabaloo, our pal Chris Barron, chairman of the board of GOProud, said:
With the gay left it’s all stick and no carrot. Instead of working to change hearts and minds the angry gay left would rather go on witch hunts. . . . The witch hunts by the professionally outraged gay protestor class may feel good, but I think they are incredibly counter-productive. To most of the world a chicken sandwich is just a chicken sandwich and folks who try to politicize everything usually end up doing more harm to their cause at the end of the day.
That people are getting upset over a restaurant providing meals to a socially conservative group shows that things are not as bad as some would make them out to be. The folks are Chick-fil-A are only offering food to people with whom many of us disagree. They’re not denying us service or proselytizing against our “lifestyle.”
They’re just helping out people with different points of view. And if some people are upset about that, they should at least acknowledge that compared to the outrages minorities have experienced in American history, this is small potatoes. Very small potatoes.
UPDATE: Michelle Malkin has more on the whole hullabaloo.
This is a very conservative Christian organization, and they have a right to sponsor these types of events and are a real Christian organization and not the nutjob, haters that are profiled in the news. They don’t hate gays or anyone else. They should be left alone!
Unless you’re a democrat. Your opposition to same sex marriage makes you a champion of gay rights as long as you have that (D).
Dan
Glad you wrote on this. I almost sent it to you just for the comments from the person who runs the ice cream truck quoted in the article. It’s nice to know that a company donating to a group, who probably asked is right up there with active loathing. I’m surprised it wasn’t compared to stoning…oh wait we cann’t mention that group as they are protected, can we?
I think I’ll have lunch there tomorrow.
there seems to be a flutter out there that Cathy’s philathropic creation WINSHAPE has ties and working partnership with Maggie and Brian’s NOM spinoff — Ruth Institute.
The leftist intellect is incapable of debating its opponents factually or logically, and so must label any opposing argument as “hate.”
Ridiculous. The Left is insane. Why go after a private company doing its own thing? I think the Lefitsts want Obama to run Chik0Fil-A through ObamaCare. As I said, insane!
And that’s just the problem isn’t it? There are no legitimate arguments for ‘preserving tradtional marriage,’ which was the same excuse people used to prevent white people from marrying black people for years. Just making an argument doesn’t make it legitimate, and invoking tradition is the same rationale that peopel used to justify things like the all male vote and slavery.
I would say that 95% of the arguments against gay marriage are religious in nature and are therefore self-nullifying. The remaining 5% are these tortured misinterpretations of the Constitution or states rights. In other words, no legitimate arguments.
That said, I don’t think that this necessarily reflects an anti-gay attitude, though in some cases it most certainly does. I think this has more to do with the egotism of religious people, who want to still feel relevant in the culture and don’t mind being complete douchebags to do so. I don’t think the opposition to gay marriage is driven by hatred so much as it is driven by smugness and a religion-fueled superiority complex. If they weren’t picking on gays, they’d most likely be picking on somebody else.
There are no legitimate arguments for ‘preserving tradtional marriage
Only because the left dismisses as illegitimate the idea that the traditional, monogamous, committed relationship between a man and a woman create the best possible environment for the nurturing of healthy, productive children.
This argument is dismissed as illegitimate regardless of the number of studies that back at up. And it isn’t that other committed arrangements do not have value or merit, it’s that the social value of committed heterosexual marriage is vastly greater than that of other committed arrangements.
In short, any point of fact or argument that doesn’t result in leftist self-gratification is simply dismissed as illegitimate, and so they can claim there are no “legitimate” arguments against their agenda.
Chris Barron would be correct on the matter of continuous, invented outrage does more harm than good, except for two things:
Keeping the fires stoked is a natural thing: folks live to be kept outraged, whether it’s Obamacare, Chik-Fil-A, the so-called ‘Republican Re-Definition of Rape,’ Or the starting lineup of the Steelers. It’s kept El Rushbo in very good business for decades, and is a motivator behind the success of this site and others, such as Instapundit. Folks just want to believe the smear, the news, the facts, whatever keeps them agitated.
Second thing is this: without opposition, how does one know the value of their position? At what point does one say to their non-violent opposition: don’t change, we need you as you are, not as we would wish.
Mr. Barron is an intelligent man – but his statement made the fundamental error in assuming constant agitation is counter-productive. It isn’t.
Once again Levi shows his hypocritical self nsture. Levi’s lectured time and again on how it;s the men in black robes who decide laws are fair, but he ignores his precious court ruled on the question already and found him wanting.
Of course Levi, being a socialist at heart, wants to ignore any facts he disagrees with.
Now hush Levi, adults are talking.
Originally, I just read the one really stupid sentence from Levi’s rant, but then I went back and read the rest. He comes across as a very, very bitter person, with no knowledge of people of faith beyond narrow caricatures.
And the “egotism” and “smugness” he projects on people of faith are characteristics that are more commonly associated with the secular left; the people who are so offended by the site of a cross or a Nativity Scene in a public space that they have created lavishly funded organizations to sanitize public spaces of any religious or even quasi-religious iconography they can’t bear the sight of.
Good post. I tweeted much the same view. Exposes, yet again, the intolerance of the gay left. They are not content to live and let live, they demand you adopt their values – which is what makes them, not the vast majority of conservatives. more dangerous to liberty.
(yes, I succumbed to the soul-sucking, evil incarnate that is twitter 🙂 you can follow us at @AmericnElephant)
Fixed it.
Hmmmm. A big company helping a socially conservative group instead of falling all over itself to brown nose the social Left. How refreshing!
Now I’m craving a chicken sandwich. A chicken CLUB! mmmmm bacon
Barbara Bush, Dubya’s daughter, now stepping up to plate : Supporting SSM publicly
1) Providing food to an event does not mean sponsorship or endorsement.
2) It was a single Chick-Fil-A store owned by a franchisee. What a single store does does not reflect on the entire corporation and/or the single store.
3) Most Chick-Fil-A stores will do catering. Anyone can walk into a store and place an order. In this economy, would you turn away a significant catering order? The store manager probably didn’t even communicate to the owner when the order was placed.
4) Next time you go out to eat, should the restaurant ask you about your core beliefs before they allow you in the door? Ummm… no!
Non-story. Left hysterics. The culture of victimization is strong and well.
We don’t have Chik-Fil-A here in Maine. When I went to Mayport, FL on business, I saw one for the first time. What struck me most was that none of the outlets are open on Sundays. I think that’s a stupid business model, but hey different strokes.
Never even heard of Chik-Fil-A before today…closest one appears to be in Bellingham which is about 2 1/2 hours away.
Levi,
I’ve got some bad news for you – the patriarchal family is the only means by which a high civilization can develope, at all. Think that’s bad? Well, it gets even worse: it is only the Christianized, patriarchal family which can develope high civilization combined with maximum individual liberty and a State which is subordinate to the needs of the family and the individual. And here’s the worst news of all – if you destroy this Christianized, patriarchal family you will destroy the civilization you live in – the one which prevents, among other things, gay people from being slaughtered for the mere fact of being gay.
Opposition to gay marriage isn’t based upon conceit; it is built on the fact that we know – as an absolute fact – that the Christian, patriarchal family is the building block of our society and if you destroy it, you destroy it all. We’ve already gone a long way towards wrecking the family – industrial capitalism, easy divorce, birth control/abortion…all of these have hammered the family mercilessly for more than a century and you can see the effects all around you.
Topple it completely from its perch and the game is up. If you succeed in your effort – just taking one more chip away from the stone we stand upon – then you’ll either continue absolute disintegration leading to a Roman Empire-like collapse, or you’ll get something replacing what is dying – and these days, the thing making the running is that old heresy, Islam…which twists the Christian, patriarchal family which subjugates women, over-exalts the male (which, by the way, has also led to wide spread homosexuality in secret; they execute gays, but they also engage in it on a grand scale) and enervates society in to frozen, apathetic and sterile organization.
Rather than add gay marriage to the mix, it is time to make divorce more difficult, re-assert the authority of parents and, in general, do all we can to restore the family (which includes a big make over in our economy so that more families control the means of their own wealth creation). You’ll please note that I haven’t quoted scripture at you – even without such a resort, it can be made abundantly clear that gay marriage is out of bounds. It just doesn’t fit in to what is best for society as a whole.
True enough, a number of gay people want to join their lives together in permanent union – that can be accommodated – but not as marriage. Making it easy to set up mutually beneficial arrangements for finance and health care – consider it done. But put the word or implication “marriage” in to any same sex union: sorry, it must not happen. What we have is too precious to trifle with – certainly not in order to pay homage to a rather odd notion of what marriage is for (it isn’t for tax breaks and it isn’t for love; those are things added to marriage because it is so very important as the starting point of the Christian, patriarchal family which forms the basis of our civilization).
Dan, I’m surprised you didn’t highlight this nugget:
Wha…?
Really? They’ve been closed on Sundays for 65 years so that their employees
What exactly is stupid about that?
But here’s the clincher:
Sounds like they do more for people than the elitist liberals do. That makes ’em a target for elimination. I’ll wager Truett Cathy is more charitable than Chairman Obama.
At worst Chick-fil-A provides indirect support from donating the chicken sandwiches, which to the left means they support the cause of anti-gay marriage; however, I didn’t get from the article that the donation was supporting an anti-gay marriage event. The organization, Pennsylvania Family Institute, has “has rallied against gay marriage in the past.” There is NO direct link to ANTI-GAY activities by Chick-fil-A. This is about tarring all social conservatives as anti-gay, although we should say everyone has certain degrees of tolerance and activism for gay or anti-gay politics.
I hope that people are not so short sighted to completely disown, discredit, or disassociate with Christian or social conservative organizations because two can play this game.
I normally don’t eat at any fast-food restaurants (health issues), but I think a grilled Chick-Fil-A sammich sounds pretty good for lunch today.
Eat THAT, you libtards! Capitalism in action! (H/T ILC) 😉
Regards,
Peter H.
By supporting businesses which support groups like Pennsylvania Family Institute, you’re giving aid and comfort to the enemies of the gay community.
Talk about self-loathing. Makes me sick.
If eating at a Chik-Fil-A will piss off left-wing dupes, I’m down. Their Polynesian dipping sauce is yummy.
No Christian organization is exclusively anti-gay. You’re not all that.
Talk about self-loathing. Makes me sick.
I don’t see how that’s possible, Steve Barnes; after all, you and your fellow liberal gays scream that investigating and punishing child molestation by gays is “homophobic”, that companies that fire gays and lesbians who sexually harass their coworkers are “homophobic”, and that anyone who opposes dressing children as sexual slaves and taking them to sex fairs to “show off” for gays and lesbians is “homophobic”.
In short, if sexualizing, molesting, and raping children doesn’t make you sick, I fail to see how people donating chicken sandwiches would.
But perhaps that’s the point. Pervert gays like yourself are so amoral that you really have rationalized your need for child rape.
Safe to say our new troll buys gas, so, to use yourar argument, your using of plastics drivinga car, etc. is support of terrord groups.
TGC, what I meant by stupid business model is that all other fast food outlets are open on Sundays. Chick-Fil-A is losing gobs of potential revenue every week. They have their stand (can’t fault them for that). When I was in Mayport, Sunday was my only really free day to eat out and I wanted to try their food. I wound up going to Popeye’s instead (waay better than KFC). Whataburger is also outstanding (none of those in Maine either).
Boy was I cheered to read Barron’s statement and to find this blog. I’ve been trying to avoid a all out flame war with a few gay leftists who lurk and attack my way more middle of the road comments on the Belief Beat blog over at Beliefnet. Talk about rabid she wolves eating their own. My god if you don’t agree with everything the far leftists pronounce as gospel they will try to smear you in anyway they can. Glad to see there is counterpoint in the community. Making an issue of chicken sandwiches is puerile and the height of tedious stupidity. But common sense never has never gotten in the way of those who wallow in the art of hyperventilating.
Jim,
Chick-fil-a has decided to institute acorporate policy based on their moral concerns, not on profits. I actually applaud that balance.
Well, that’s completely fabricated. ‘Vastly greater?’ You’re pulling that out of your ass.
There is no way to guarantee a person’s parenting abilities by examining their sexual orientation. There are other characteristics like income and education level that are good indicators, but sexual orientation? No. Sorry – your ‘argument’ is illegitimate, no matter how many Focus on the Family…. uh, ‘studies’…. you might be able to produce.
Simply put, >90% of children are heterosexual. Within the context of a committed, monogamous heterosexual marriage, they learn… through parental modeling… the proper set of behaviors, commitment and give-and-take that ensure long-term, stable relationships. Same sex relationships simply don’t have the same psychological chemistry, and the roles taught are not generally applicable to heterosexual children. Single parenthood models lack these models. Although these arrangements can be all right for children, they are demonstrably inferior to the committed heterosexual model, primarily because this model is more broadly applicable for more people.
This model is not universally true, but it is more generally true than any other model. As a single parent, I recognize that my situation is less than ideal, but I don’t demand that the state declare it equal to other arrangements for the sake of my self-esteem.
And here we see the games of the delusional Levi.
There is no way to guarantee a person’s parenting abilities by examining their sexual orientation. There are other characteristics like income and education level that are good indicators, but sexual orientation?
Levi blabbers about “guarantee” based on sexual orientation. Of course there’s no guarantee. There never is. Fallible humans and all that. So Levi’s argument is that, since there is no guarantee, the matter is irrelevant.
But then Levi talks about income and education level, neither of which are guaranteed — but Levi demands government programs to increase both, claiming that doing so would invariably make people better parents.
The duplicity and lies of Levi are obvious. He refuses to use the same set of standards. The reason is because Levi doesn’t give a damn about children’s welfare; he only cares about pushing leftist causes. That much was made obvious last week with his endorsement of snipping the spinal cords of children because he knew they would never have a good life.
TGC, what I meant by stupid business model is that all other fast food outlets are open on Sundays. Chick-Fil-A is losing gobs of potential revenue every week.
Yes and no.
By being open on Sundays, they would potentially earn more revenue, true. But that has to be offset against several operational costs — in particular the necessity to hire more workers to cover the additional day or pay existing ones to do overtime. In addition, there is a definite productivity gain, especially among workers that tend to work irregular shifts, when they’re able to structure and take a guaranteed day off each week.
In short, I would say the loss of revenue is greatly offset by decreased operational expenses and increased employee satisfaction and productivity.
what I meant by stupid business model is that all other fast food outlets are open on Sundays. Chick-Fil-A is losing gobs of potential revenue every week.
Have you ever seen the Chik-Fil-A parking lot on a Saturday morning? Its packed. And much of the customer base appreciates the No Sundays policy. When you subtract the cost of salaries, utilities, and materials… being open on Sundays is pretty marginal in terms of the bottom line.
IMHO, the world would be a nicer place if there were no commercial enterprises open on Sunday, and we were all compelled to spend the day with our families.
There’s more to life than making money.
Chik-Fil-E nuggets are in my refrigerator; they make for a good lunch. I also ate their last week before I went to the grocery store.
See what I mean about the egotism? Christianity is responsible for the whole of civilization.. well I’ll be! From my perspective, it seems to me that human beings were spinning their wheels for quite a long time there, murdering Jews and burning people at the stake and waging holy wars and imprisoning scientists…. but all of that is what has brought us here today, that’s your thesis? Do you think they call them the Dark Ages because weren’t religious enough for those first thousand years after Jesus was crucified?
As it turns out, the key innovation underpinning American democracy was the recognition that religion should be relegated to private life. Human history is trending towards secularization, and it should be quite clear that we’re a lot better off with out government enforcing religious dogma and traditions. If we were having this conversation in the 16th century, you could easily have me killed for my arguments with a wave of your hand – yeah, that’s some civilization.
This is just nonsense. Like so much else, Christianity claims to be responsible for something that existed in human experience long before it was even founded. The evolutionary process that lead to anatomically modern humans also favored social organization based on families. Hundreds of thousands of years after this has taken place, religion comes along and codifies that family unit as God’s law. Sorry religion, but you’re a few million years late to claim families as a religious innovation.
And this is where we get to the hysterical part, where it is implied that all of civilization will come crashing down because gays start getting married. How this is supposed to happen isn’t entirely clear to me – like, are all of the straight people going to stop getting married? Are people going to stop having babies? Will we be incurring God’s wrath? You don’t mind that gays be allowed the same partnership benefits, but you’re hung up on them using the word marriage? That’s supposed to negate the Industrial Revolution and the Renaissance?
Marriage is a pretty good way to organize a society, and in this secular republic of ours, we encourage that by having the government offer a few perks. Offering those perks to gay people isn’t going to be a catastrophe, regardless of what they call it. We should be encouraging people to commit to one another and we shouldn’t be arbitrarily excluding and thereby ostracizing certain kinds of people from positive social experiences. If that offends your religious sensibilities, then so be it.
And gay parents can do that just as easily as straight parents. Children don’t need to be taught sexual attraction by their parents, they need to be taught how to get along with other people so that they may develop the kinds of relationships you’re describing. What matters is how the parents treat one another, not what sets of genitalia everyone is packing.
Totally bogus. It isn’t the 1950’s anymore, it’s not as if women stay home and keep house all day while the man is bringing home the bacon. There are fathers who cook, there are women who go to Home Depot, there are stay-at-home dads and there are professional businesswomen. What roles are you talking about here? Is that what you think parenting is about? Teaching your kids outdated historical gender roles?
Again, what matters is the relationship and the cooperation. What’s more, you’re hardly even talking about marriage here anymore – you’re arguing against gays being able to have kids. Did you even notice?
It always devolves into this crap, which I assure you is a complete fabrication that doesn’t describe any human being I’ve ever known. All gays care about is the recognition, right? They just want to poke a finger in your eye, and that’s all they think about, and that’s all that matters to them? Do you consider that to be a legitimate argument as well? So far, you’ve come up with:
1. Gays aren’t as good at raising kids.
2. Gays are attention whores.
Well done sir!
When you take all the denial of reality (“the key innovation underpinning American democracy was the recognition that religion should be relegated to private life”), shopworn leftist cliches (“It isn’t the 1950′s anymore”), and the blatant distortions (“you’re arguing against gays being able to have kids”) out of Levi’s response, what is basically left of his argument can be summarized as: “Nunh-unh.”
I do so love it when Levi demonstrates his mental incompetence.
The evolutionary process that lead to anatomically modern humans also favored social organization based on families.
If Levi knew something about evolution, he would recognize that a key process in it is the fact that traits that are advantageous tend to become more predominant, and those which are less advantageous or inferior tend to occur less. Traits which are equally advantageous tend to occur at the same rate.
So applying this to families, we see that the delusional boob Levi screams that gay-sex relationships and single parenting are just as ideal from an evolutionary standpoint as is male-female coupling — which would mean that evolution would cause them to occur at roughly equal rates in the population.
Instead, what we find is that male-female coupling is overwhelmingly predominant, with single parenting being a complete aberration with obvious inferiority and gay-sex relationships being a tiny, tiny, tiny fraction with historic relegation to an inferior status.
The hilarious thing about this is that Levi blabbers and screams that people have been organizing this way for “hundreds of thousands of years” — but insists that, in all that time, in all those generations, in all those bits of evolution, no one ever tried the experience of endorsing gay-sex coupling in the same manner as opposite-sex coupling and found it wanting. No, society learned nothing, did nothing, had no experience with, and never thought through the consequences before Levi came along.
This is what makes liberals so hilarious. If they actually understood the science, they would realize that the reason homosexuality has never been predominant, equal to, or even widely tolerated in human history is the same reason that humans don’t have three arms; over hundreds of thousands of years, something tried it along the way and found out that it didn’t work. That’s the way everything else goes in their evolutionary theory, but for some reason, their leftist ideas are magically exempt.
Conservativism is about the idea that the people before you were not automatically stupid know-nothings. Liberalism assumes that everything and everyone born before you was.
But it’s totally cool for liberals to give and and comfort to the enemies of the United States.
FAIL!
“From my perspective, it seems to me that human beings were spinning their wheels for quite a long time there, murdering Jews and burning people at the stake and waging holy wars and imprisoning scientists”
Did the leftists suddently support Jews? Or witches? Or scientists? I must be living a fantasy life. Christians are the strongest supporters of Jews and Israel and no propaganda in the last few months can change the narrative. Nor can they whitewash the trashing of O’Donnell in Delaware. So sudden did witches became disreputable. Scientists seemed to have created their own imprisionment at institutions of questionable learning with shoddy work on global warming. How quaint.
As a leftist, Levi has to pretend that all arrangements are equally good, because denial of reality is central to leftism.
There are good gay parents, and there are good single parents. And some of these are better than the worst heterosexual married parents. But the best committed traditional parents are going to be far superior to the best gay and single parents because the examples they model are more relevant to the future happiness, commitment, and security of their children.
I note, at this point, that gay activists have no interest in promoting the commitment and responsibility of marriage, they just want the pinata of benefits, self-esteem, and validation they imagine will come as well as the in-yer-face to the Christian Right when they force the state to recognize whatever arrangements they come up with as equivalent to committed, monogamous, family-oriented traditional marriage. And the apologists like Andrew Sullivan say, if we permit gay couples to marry, commitment and responsibility will follow.
This idea of benefits-first, responsibilities-later reminds me of the “Ownership Society” promoted by progressives under Clinton and Bush; the idea that if you gave mortgages to financially irresponsible people, it would inspire them to become financially responsible citizens.
How well did that scheme work out for society?
Lenin. Stalin. Hitler. Mao. Castro. Ho Chi Mihn. Pol Pot. Saddam Hussein. Hafez Al-Assad. Idi Amin. Ceaucescu. The two Kims. Secular, tyrannical mass killers all. Tell me again, Levi. What’s so great about secularism?
We need to clear this up – what does gays’ ability or inability to raise children have to do with marriage? If a couple of gays wanted to get married and signed a waiver promising to never have children, would that make it okay to you?
Anyway, you’re just repeating yourself at this point and it means nothing. The gender of the parents simply isn’t as important as the personality of the parents or the strength of the relationship. Do you mean to say that a heterosexual couple where the father is occasionally abusive and the mother is occasionally distant is preferable to a gay couple that isn’t? What’s the break-even point there?
And again, you reveal the true nature of your opposition, which has more to do with your ego as a Christian. Of course, the quest for gay marriage has absolutely nothing to do with you, but religious-minded folk tend to have this persecution complex that positions you as the central figures in any issue. Ergo, gays don’t really have any kind of sincerity, they just hate Christians and want to stick it to you! It’s not like these are people’s lives we’re talking about here, you’re a Christian and you’re unjustifiably offended, so everybody has to listen to you whine while you pee your pants over nothing.
Civil unions = one size fits all. End of story.
Psychobabble about supposed Christian persecution complexes is a poor substitute for a cogent argument.
Methinks Levi must have been taunted in his youth about Christianity. His commentary has been drivel of the worst kind. Couple of points he fails to take into consideration – or, having done so and seeing the illusion of his argument, leaves them out of his commentary.
We know that since Gutenburg invented the printing press, and began mass producing Bibles, those “Dark Ages” came to a screeching halt. Knowledge enabled by faith is an incredibly strong force.
We know that anthropologists, sociologists, and others regularly report on the human social unit. Early humans, and proto-humans, congregated in family units. From the intermarriage of families came the clans, and from the intermingling of the clans came from tribes. The tribes that stopped roaming took up farming – not as hundreds or thousands of people, but as individual families: a couple, and their children.
From these static societies we get Sumer and Ur. From there came Abram. The rest, as they say, is Biblical history. All the while family to nation-states, the nuclear social unit has been, and will be the family unit. With thousands of years (or hundreds of thousands depending one’s faith in evolution) of history backing the argument made by Mr. Noonan above, Levi’s arguments are invalid.
It’s not ego, Levi. It’s Super Ego. There’s a difference.
North Dallas Thirty: Wow! Enjoyed your comments.
We need to clear this up – what does gays’ ability or inability to raise children have to do with marriage?
Merely that, for hundreds of thousands of years, the reason humans live in families in the first place is for the protection and nurturing of children.
Hundreds of thousands of years prior to religious belief ever existing, human beings prioritized opposite-sex couplings and discouraged same-sex relationships. Evolution and the distribution of traits in the human population make that clear; homosexuality is an evolutionary dead end, counterproductive, and in fact, so undesirable that hundreds of thousands of years of human evolution through natural selection have subtracted whatever factors apparently cause it down to a miniscule aberration in the population — and in fact, reinforced it being undesirable to the overwhelming majority of the population.
If you were truly scientific, Levi, you would recognize that. But you’re not. You’re an antireligious bigot and hatemonger, as has already been proven repeatedly here, and gay-sex marriage is your attempt to attack Christians.
DaveO, I agree. Levi clearly is an antireligious bigot with an axe to grind against Christianity and Christians. He could care less about gays and lesbians; all that he wants is an opportunity to attack Christians. You can see that in his violent hatred and attacks on gays and lesbians here who don’t support his antireligious bigotry.
note, at this point, that gay activists have no interest in promoting the commitment and responsibility of marriage, they just want the pinata of benefits, self-esteem, and validation they imagine will come as well as the in-yer-face to the Christian Right when they force the state to recognize whatever arrangements they come up with as equivalent to committed, monogamous, family-oriented traditional marriage.
Which is sad. As a same-sex marriage supporter (that is, one who truly supports same-sex couples marrying, not just getting the license), I feel almost betrayed that the very activists yelling the most loudly for marriage are the ones who have the least respect for it.
Go for civil unions and work on mainstreaming. If you want the benefits, you need the responsibilities.
And the apologists like Andrew Sullivan say, if we permit gay couples to marry, commitment and responsibility will follow.
Which hasn’t worked out in practice, given that the number of “inappropriate incidents” on the Provincetown beaches has gone up since SSM came to Massachussetts. I’ve wanted to believe that, but it just isn’t true.
Levi,
Well, first off, if you are going to attack me, at least attack me for something I said. What I said was that the patriarchal family is a necessary pre-condition for high civilization…Greece, Rome, China; all had strong, patriarchal family organizations, eg. What I did say was that the Christianized, patriarchal family is what made our civilization – the civilization you live in. If you destroy that organization you destroy our civilization. Gay marriage, in and of itself, would not do that – but as part of a whole series of events which have weakened the family, it would. I’d almost trade you gay marriage in return for a ban on divorce, you see?
What would be most helpful to you is to actually read up a bit on what happened in our past. I direct your attention to Regine Pernoud’s “Those Terrible Middle Ages”, Hilaire Belloc’s “The Great Heresies” and G K Chesterton’s “The Everlasting Man”. They would do wonders for your understanding.
Gee, Y’think:
Clearly, there are some issues there. Levi isn’t merely an atheist, he’s a Theophobe. The mere mention of religious faith is enough to launch him into long, hysterical rants. And even when religious faith isn’t brought up… [neither of my comments at 8:14 on January 31 nor my follow up on February 1 at 1:54 even mention religion as a basis for rejecting same sex marriage] … he is so compelled by his hatred of religious faith to inject it into the discussion anyway.
I have noticed atheists… despite their protests to the contrary… tend to be sad, bitter little people. I think they sense on a certain level what they are rejecting, they sense Christians lead happier and more fulfilling lives, and they resent us bitterly for it.
Hit where it hurts (in the pocketbook)
I’ve never encountered one who wasn’t an angry asshole about it.
Just for the record, I am an atheist. The only person on here I’ve met is Dan. I’m not sure if he would describe me as sad and/or bitter or an “angry a**hole” either.
Throbert McGee hasn’t been too obnoxious about his atheism.
It’s also not too hard to mock atheism. I mean, take the Big Bang Theory that is the alternative to God’s Creation. According to the Big Bang, in one instant nothing existed, then in the next, everything existed. Nothing, then, BANG! Everything! Sounds kind of… um… magical… doesn’t it?
And then there’s dark matter. According to Almighty Science, dark matter makes up 90% of the mass of the universe. Is there any proof that dark matter exists? No. Then, how do scientists know it exists? “Because our models of the universe don’t work unless dark matter accounts for the missing mass.” Ah… OK, good luck with that.
Gosh, maybe if my entire belief system were founded on the idea that everything that exists spontaneously popped into existence out of nowhere from nothing for no reason and my entire life was a meaningless accident (made possible, I might add, by a series of “chance” occurrences the odds of all of which happening and resulting in human life are more remote than the odds of winning the Powerball lottery every week for a century), I might be pretty bitter, sad and nasty, too.
I understand your argument. My response is that humans and our evolutionary ancestors had been organizing into familial groups for millions of years before man invented Christianity. To call it a Christian innovation is to ignore most of our history.
Why don’t you summarize them for me, because thus far you’ve failed to make an argument. What I don’t understand here is how expanding the concept of family and marriage to include a tiny sliver of relationships that have always existed in human history would undermine all of society. You’re skipping a step –
1. Gays are allowed to be married.
2. _________________________
3. Civilization crumbles.
What goes in 2, exactly? Do people stop having regular marriages? Do we all forget how to procreate? Are you worried that God is going to release a flood or something? How does the simple existence of a family with two gay partners weaken families for the rest of us?
I had the good fortune of having two parents and an extended family that didn’t try to indoctrinate me into their faith while my brain was still developing. I got to make up my own mind about religion without having people make me feel guilty or intimidated.
So how did all these Bibles pull man out of the Dark Ages? I’d say that we learned more when we started using the printing press to exchange scientific ideas, wouldn’t you?
At least there is an effort to figure it out. At least we have worked our way to the unknowable through the scientific method and the invention of calculus and the building of satellites. At least some of us put a little work into understanding the nature of the universe we live in versus going by what illiterate goatherds said two thousand years ago.
There is proof it exists, indirect as it may be. There just isn’t enough visible mass in the universe to account for the kind of movement and rates of acceleration that we can detect from out little corner of the universe. It is theorized that dark matter and dark energy exist based on the seeming shortfall of stuff we can see in the sky. It’s a hard concept for us to wrap our heads around, to be sure, but there is evidence for it, which is better than you can do for your God.
I’m quite happy, thanks, and I think the randomness of the scientific description of the universe is one of the most uplifting aspects. I can recognize how incredibly lucky I am to be alive, that human beings evolved, and that our planet is close enough yet far enough from the sun. I’m doing my best to enjoy my time here and contribute something for future generations. I think that’s a lot more positive outlook than even the most cheery religious attitudes, which is always a front for what amounts to authoritarian power structures that allow people to hold dominion of other people.
“There is proof it exists, indirect as it may be. There just isn’t enough visible mass in the universe to account for the kind of movement and rates of acceleration that we can detect from out little corner of the universe.”
So in other words you beleive in something that can’t be detected or measured, but can only be inferred because your worldview will not function without it.
Congratuations Levi… You’ve found the Divine.
If Levi knew something about evolution, he would recognize that a key process in it is the fact that traits that are advantageous tend to become more predominant, and those which are less advantageous or inferior tend to occur less. Traits which are equally advantageous tend to occur at the same rate.
homosexuality is an evolutionary dead end, counterproductive, and in fact, so undesirable that hundreds of thousands of years of human evolution through natural selection have subtracted whatever factors apparently cause it down to a miniscule aberration in the population
NDT, as far as what I know about evolution, what you say in the first paragraph appears to be true. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that homosexuality is an evolutionary dead end, and if the percentages of homosexuals have decreased (maybe they have, I really don’t know). But what is clear is that breeding isn’t the end all and be all about our species. If that were, we would be more like rats, which can breed quite more often, with multiple babies for each pregnancy, sexual maturity occurring in months, and kicking out the kiddies even before sexual maturity. Yet humans have done the exact opposite, putting quality ahead of quantity, and caring for humans, even the ones who can’t or won’t breed. We want the best for our children no matter what. No wonder why most persons, straight or guy, believe that at least civil union recognition is a good idea. Despite the evolutionary trend away from breeding focus, we still in the past 80 years went from 2 billion to 7 billion.
If homosexuality is that disadvantageous, I suspect that as you indicate, it will go away. But the fact that there may be as roughly as many homosexuals as there are left-handed people, there may be a good reason why there are homosexuals, and why after 10 million years of so since the existence of the human race, there is still a significant percentage. There could be other characteristics that come with homosexuality that have benefited the human race, and have made it advantageous for those who are carriers of the homosexual gene or genes (if they exist) to breed.
The focus has shifted away from merely breeding but to produce quality offspring. We have established that children are raised for 18 years, more or less. We don’t just teach them how to breed, but make sure they have a quality childhood. And say what you want about self-esteem, but that is one of the main goals of parenting. To build it up for children, so they can have a higher likelihood of being well-adjusted adults. That’s why it’s such a shame when I see parents treat the gay kids like dirt. Why? Because they don’t want to breed? Or some other made up pathetic excuse? Yeesh!
It’s also not too hard to mock atheism. I mean, take the Big Bang Theory that is the alternative to God’s Creation. According to the Big Bang, in one instant nothing existed, then in the next, everything existed. Nothing, then, BANG! Everything! Sounds kind of… um… magical… doesn’t it?
V the K, there are a lot of magical things that are explained by science. Whether or not we attribute this to God or whatever is another thing.
I do believe in God (but not the nature of God as explained in the Bible, Koran, or any other existing sacred text). So, I don’t know if this makes me a theist, agnostic, atheist, or whatever. I don’t really care. But regardless of whether our universe was created by the Big Bang, or some other event, whether or not God was the orchestrator, or simply the Creator, the biggest mystery to me is how and why the universe was created, and why there is any existence to begin with. If one wants to attribute all this to God, fine. But it still does not answer the fundamental question. I mean, why does God even exist and how did He come into being in the first place.
So in other words you beleive in something that can’t be detected or measured, but can only be inferred because your worldview will not function without it.
Congratuations Levi… You’ve found the Divine.
Livewire, I don’t know if Levi’s worldview couldn’t function without there being dark matter or not. So, in that sense, I don’t know if he found a substitute for God or not.
As I understand it, the existence of dark matter is just a hypothesis that’s being tested. There seems to be evidence that it exists. Maybe it’s just a case that our current formulas need to be revised, as they always have been. But I always shudder when there is no explanation for something to simply pin it on God. We’ve always been able to find scientific explanations for phenomena that previously did not have a scientific explanation. Again, if one wants attribute dark matter or anything else to God, fine. But that shouldn’t preclude a scientific explanation. If God does exist, so far, we’ve haven’t found any phenomena that has defied physical laws.
Pat..
It’s not that Levi’s worldview would not function in the absence of dark matter…
it’s that his worldview CANNOT function without his BELIEF in the presence of dark matter…
Which, of course, takes us right back to those attacking others for their BELIEF in something that cannot be seen, detected, measured, proven, etc, but that just ‘must be’ because …. because… because…
I think so/it HAS to be/it just is/how else would…
Pat,
My theory is that the Divine does need to obey physical laws. But when he can rewrite them, it’s a moot point.
I was just pointing out the irony that Levi cites a scientific theory that is based on something that seems to be unmeasurable and undetectable, yet mocks religion for doing the same thing. It was like when I saw Stephen Hawking’s universe and they addressed the improbability of life existing. “While it’s true that the odds of this happening are infintessimal, we postulate that there are infinate numbers of alternate universes where these conditions weren’t met.”
I sat there and went “Ok, so they’re theorizing that there are billions of undetectable alternate realities (maybe even one where I married Grace Park) and they laugh at me saying the Divine did it?”
As to science vs theology…
I’ve read articles that linked most of the plauges of Egypt to global phenomena. (well except the curse on the firstborn). I’ve read that computer models show a 30 MPH breeze over a part of the reed sea will dry it out to allow crossing from Egypt to Europe. If those explainations bear out, then you can explain Exodus with science. Science wouldn’t explain how these events ‘just happened’ to be at the right time.
The constant whining, bitching, and long hate-fueled rants say otherwise.
One of the things my church teaches is that the Physical Laws of the Universe are part of God. God can’t break the physical laws of the universe because He is inside of them, not outside.
V the K,
Interesting. I did not know that. Learn something new every day.
rodney,
You got my point exactly.
Long story short, atheism is just another religion and their adherents can be just as dogmatic.
BTW, I didn’t say that all atheists are angry assholes, just the ones that I’ve met plus a few online. Further, I also said that they were angry assholes about their atheism and are generally pretty cool otherwise.
Long story short, atheism is just another religion and their adherents can be just as dogmatic.
It’s amusing to me that when you confront atheists with the major holes in evolutionary or cosmological theory, they always say, “Well, someday science will find the answers to that.” If that isn’t blind faith, I don’t know what is.
But what is clear is that breeding isn’t the end all and be all about our species. If that were, we would be more like rats, which can breed quite more often, with multiple babies for each pregnancy, sexual maturity occurring in months, and kicking out the kiddies even before sexual maturity. Yet humans have done the exact opposite, putting quality ahead of quantity, and caring for humans, even the ones who can’t or won’t breed.
Well, first, look at it this way; rats become sexually mature at about 3 – 4 months on average and have an average lifespan of between 24 to 36 months. If one looks at the ratio of sexual maturity to lifespan, it’s actually fairly close between rats and humans.
Furthermore, we’ve only just in the last century moved AWAY from large families and marriage and childbirth at much earlier ages. Women used to be considered unmarriageable spinsters at the age when many women are just getting married today.
Interestingly enough, we’re now starting to see the repercussions of this movement. Seems that “quality over quantity” has a detrimental effect on economies, societies, and infrastructure.
The reason why is pretty obvious. Babies and children need mature adults to care for them or to generate the resources to provide care for them. Once mature adults become senior adults, they need mature adults to care for them or to generate the resources to provide care for them. Failure to produce enough babies ultimately kills both ends; there are no longer sufficient mature adults to produce and care for the young or to produce and care for the elderly. Hence societies with scarce resources have traditionally killed off the elderly; societies which did the opposite ended up weakening and starving themselves out of existence.
So yes, Pat, breeding ultimately IS the end all and be all about our species, because, frankly, without it, we can’t provide for ourselves and will die. That’s why it is overwhelmingly preferred from an evolutionary standpoint and why, throughout history, cultures that de-emphasized it in favor of sexual promiscuity and homosexuality, i.e. the Romans and the Greeks, collapsed.
it’s that his worldview CANNOT function without his BELIEF in the presence of dark matter…
Rodney, I did not see that to be the case either.
Which, of course, takes us right back to those attacking others for their BELIEF in something that cannot be seen, detected, measured, proven, etc, but that just ‘must be’
Personally, I believe there is evidence of dark matter, but I’m agnostic when it comes to such belief. I’ll let Levi clarify how strong his belief is on dark matter. I don’t think that the two types of belief (scientific vs. faith). However, If anyone wants to have blind faith in dark matter, fine be me. But if such a belief leads them to conclude that same sex marriage is naughty, I’d fight that.
I sat there and went “Ok, so they’re theorizing that there are billions of undetectable alternate realities (maybe even one where I married Grace Park) and they laugh at me saying the Divine did it?”
I get your point Livewire, but, unless I’m mistaken, even Hawking hasn’t said that belief is definitively true, that he is still open to evidence that buttresses his belief, or contradicts it.
My theory is that the Divine does need to obey physical laws. But when he can rewrite them, it’s a moot point.
I don’t know if God needs to obey physical laws, but so far, He seems to have followed them.
One of the things my church teaches is that the Physical Laws of the Universe are part of God. God can’t break the physical laws of the universe because He is inside of them, not outside.
V the K, sounds good to me.
73.Long story short, atheism is just another religion and their adherents can be just as dogmatic.
Definitely, regarding the dogmatic part. Don’t know if it is another religion, but as someone said, atheists are like most theists. They just believe in one fewer god.
So yes, Pat, breeding ultimately IS the end all and be all about our species, because, frankly, without it, we can’t provide for ourselves and will die.
NDT, we’ll have to disagree on this point. In fact, you support my opinion with what you’ve written above.
That’s why it is overwhelmingly preferred from an evolutionary standpoint and why, throughout history, cultures that de-emphasized it in favor of sexual promiscuity and homosexuality, i.e. the Romans and the Greeks, collapsed.
Maybe so, but they weren’t exactly defeated by beacons of morality either. Perhaps when people get over their obsession with homosexuality, it will be de-emphasized and we can all lead our lives. And heterosexuals can still continue to breed so that the human race doesn’t die out.
I have come to believe that the loosening of sexual mores is a symptom of societal collapse, not a cause. At the risk of being misunderstood by readers who aren’t that bright, let me explain.
Civilizations move through four stages. I’m really, really simplifying it here, but in the first stage, they establish their identity through values and principles. In the second, they hold to these principles, work really hard, and become prosperous. In the third, prosperity enables them to become arrogant and decadent, and this coincides with a rise in promiscuity and sexual license (which is permitted by their prosperity because people have more time and wealth to devote to pursuits that are unaffordable in the previous stages {again, simplifying}) This is also the stage in which the wealth built up in the previous stage is spent in pursuit of gratification and greater material comfort. In the fourth stage, because the founding principles have been abandoned and the wealth has been squandered, they collapse. Most every civilization on Earth that has risen and fallen has followed this pattern.
Astronomers in the 19th century used mathematics to predict the existence of Neptune. It’s not like they woke up one morning and decided to themselves that they were going to start believing in Neptune, they had all these equations and numbers, based on empirical evidence and observations of other planets’ orbits, that allowed them to scientifically predict the discovery of Neptune’s orbit. They were only off by a few degrees when they finally found it.
The point is that they had a way of testing their claims and were ultimately proven correct. Scientific claims about dark matter and dark energy are similar. The math suggests there ought to be more matter than we can see in the universe, there are a number of different theories to explain that phenomenon scientifically, and these predictions can be tested. Maybe they can’t be tested today, our technology may be too limited. Technology was limited in the 19th century, too.
This is a far cry from a belief in God, which is substantively no different than the belief in unicorns or leprechauns. Religion does not present a testable hypothesis the way that science does. The trust that I place in science has been earned, because science has been proven correct every single time.
This always kills me – you, one of the faithful, going around hurling ‘blind faith’ as if it were an insult. Shouldn’t that bolster my position from your perspective? If I were to say that I had undying faith in scientific theories and that no amount of evidence would persuade me otherwise, wouldn’t you have to admire me for doing just as you’re doing?
You can think you know something about evolutionary or cosmological theory, but the religious mind is inherently un-objective and is perpetually looking to shoehorn their God into any temporarily unexplainable phenomena. For thousands of years, humans didn’t know anything about physiology or disease or weather or the stars, and God was always the go-to explanation. Modern science has dispelled each one of those myths, and though there are still scientific mysteries that remain, things like the Big Bang theory and how life originally arose on the planet, we are still getting closer to finding those answers too. The only choice for religion is to continue to abandon its prior claims and set up in the realm of the unknowable, where the Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus live.
Like when science proved that blacks were inferior to whites or with Global Warmism?
Well TCG, he does believe that brown people can’t handle democracy.
And he tries to ignore that his belief comes down to “For X to work, there must be Y. We can’t find Y, we can’t prove Y, but it Must be there”
In other words he finds ‘dark matter’ to fill the holes in his theories. I find the Divine. That he can’t see it’s the same thing amuses me to no end.
Pat,
One of the similarities I see between the belief in science and the belief in religion is that both require faith in things that cannot be proved (yet). If dark matter doesn’t exist, then the entire theory is out.
Religion is science as well. Faith is ‘He did it’ when merged with theology and science is becomes “How did He do it?”
For centuries, science ‘proved” the sun revolved around the earth. For centuries, we believed God parted the red/reed sea. Science has now proved that the sun revolved around the earth, and we’ve now ‘proved’ it is possible in global physics to show how the reed sea could be ‘parted’.
Well, that puts him ahead of the Astrophysics community which has found precisely zero dark matter. The only evidence of the existence of dark matter is that scientists need it to exist for their models of the universe to work.
The cool part about that lavish California education spending? They can spend $578,000,000 building one inner-city middle school. Wow! Those kids are going to be super-geniuses!
Being something of an empiricist, my support for religion is based primarily on the demonstrable benefits to the individual and to society as a whole of following religious teachings. In general, who has more contentment, more happiness, and lower rates of disease and violence? The correlation between religiosity and positive personal and social outcomes is huge!
I’d agree with that if we were talking about people having sex with their family members or household pets, but homosexual sex isn’t ‘a loosening of sexual mores.’ There have always been homosexuals and it’s likely that there always will be. Two consenting adults – what’s the problem here? How does this erode anything?
I’ll note here the shiftiness of your pleading – you seem to be arguing against homosexuality in general, rather than arguing against gay marriage.
I don’t doubt that religion helps a lot of people, as irrational as the experience seems to this outsider. If you need to believe that someone is watching over your shoulder and reading your mind to do good things, that’s fine. What do I care?
The problem arises when a religious person starts thinking that the rest of the society needs to start accommodating their religious beliefs. To their credit, many people of faith seem able to compartmentalize their religious beliefs with public policy, a characteristic that seems especially lacking on the right.
On issues of public policy, if a person invokes their religion in an argument, they have effectively taken themselves out of the debate. There can be no reasoning with someone who truly believes that the creator of the universe is in direct communication with them. The resolution of the gay marriage question is obvious when considering things like social justice and legal precedent, and religion is only a distraction – effective only because there are so many religious people. It is the tyranny of the majority and it’s stubborn and it’s pointless.
Levi,
A society is built from the ground up – some societies build well, others build poorly, but all of them build. Carthaginian society was built upon rampant, commercial greed coupled with roasting babies alive as a central religious act. Take out the rampant greed and/or the baby roasting, and that society would have died (as it turns out, it was executed by Roman society which, for all its flaws, at least didn’t murder children as a regular thing).
Our society is built upon the Christian family – it is the building block; it is the foundation. Take away the foundation, and the whole thing collapses. You can already see it happening in Europe which has advanced much further on the road to dissolution than we have – birth rates are dropping like a rock, fewer and fewer people bother to marry, at all. Less and less work is done – Europe is becoming as hollow a shell as Roman was in the fourth century. If Europe doesn’t change very soon, it will fall and something new will arise to take its place – curiously enough, it could even be Christianity, again, as there is a residual population of Christians there (about 15% of the total population)…but, of course, it could easily become Islamic. Whatever it is, it will be a society which will be built upon a certain idea of human life, and that successor society will last just as long as that idea does.
What you want is the benefits of Christian civilization without all that tiresome bit about being Christian…amazing the lengths people will go to in order to get out of going to Church on Sunday. You can remain in your ignorance, if you like, but if you’ll learn you’ll find that the period from 476 to 1453 wasn’t all “dark ages”; that there was justice and freedom; that the life of the mind was vibrant; that art and architecture rose to astounding heights…and, most important, that a series of events starting in the 14th century and lasting until the 19th turned what was ever growing in to something which was twisted off its course in to rampant greed, totalitarianism, conscription and war and oppression no medieval Christian would ever have contemplated.
Obviously you care a great deal or you wouldn’t be such an insufferable ass about it.
Amen, TGC. I don’t spend a single moment of my day trolling left-wing blogs or lecturing atheists about how stupid and destructive their philosophy is. But Levi thinks such is a valuable use of his time. Hmmmm….
One of the similarities I see between the belief in science and the belief in religion is that both require faith in things that cannot be proved (yet). If dark matter doesn’t exist, then the entire theory is out.
But scientists admit that it’s a work in progress, Livewire. Not the case with religious faith.
For centuries, science ‘proved” the sun revolved around the earth. For centuries, we believed God parted the red/reed sea. Science has now proved that the sun revolved around the earth, and we’ve now ‘proved’ it is possible in global physics to show how the reed sea could be ‘parted’.
It was hypothesized by ancient Greeks that the Earth revolved around the sun. But the Catholic Church declared that the Earth was the center of the universe. It amazed me that any authority would imprison someone for holding a scientific belief, but that’s exactly what happened. There were those that did hold the “scientific” theory that the Sun and the other planets revolved around the sun, but it involved epicycles so that the calculations could come out correctly.
As for the Red Sea, my impression of the exodus story is that things were going fast (couldn’t even wait for the bread to rise), and they had to go to the Red Sea to escape the Egyptians. And then when they got there, the sea quickly parted, they got to the other side, and unparted, so the Egyptians couldn’t catch them. But it’s a while since I read Exodus.
I’ll repeat – I don’t care what silly religion you want to believe in as long as you put that crap on the shelf when it comes to public policy. In my experience, social conservatives are woefully incapable of achieving this. It isn’t fair to put one’s religious dogma before social justice and community – which is precisely why the framers erected a wall between church and state.
Wow, Levi fails Constitution 101, Again.
“It isn’t fair to put one’s religious dogma before social justice and community – which is precisely why the framers erected a wall between church and state.”
Where, Levi? Or are you just going to continue to ignore when you’re called out on your lies.
the framers erected a wall between church and state.
Actually, that was the work of Justice Hugo Black… a klansman who ruled that government couldn’t provide bus services for Catholic kids mainly because he despised Catholics. The entire modern liberal interpretation of the Establishment clause is based on the jurisprudence of a racist bigot.
The framers’ intent in the Establishment Clause was simply to forbid the Government from establishing a national state religion. Only modern leftists came up with the idea that it was a license to scrub the public sphere of any utterance or symbol of Christian faith.
Pat,
I may sound like I’m hedging here, but now we’re getting into Man vs G_d in religion. (Sounds like a new reality series on Discovery). The Church can make whatever pronouncements it wants. It is our reason that allows us to reconcile the World with the Divine. The church (whatever one) Can make its own pronouncements and theories, and man can question them and find our own conenction to Him w/o the trapings.
In fact, I believe it is a part of our nature to find the why’s, and questioning is in itself a form of worship. But I’m a self admitted Heritic, so what do I know. 🙂
Men of Faith aren’t perfect. The actions of organized religion in the past stand as proof. Men of Reason aren’t perfect, the Socialist ‘Utopias’ are proof of that. Man is unique in that we stand in both worlds, and have to balance both.
Sorry to get all metaphysical.
Again, families pre-date Christiany by millions of years, so to describe it as a Christian innovation is to give credit where it simply isn’t due. You still haven’t explained how allowing gays to get married destroys families, either. If families are so great, shouldn’t we want more of them?
And if you’re going to go on about the ‘Christian family’ then you need to explain what you’re talking about. Family structures have changed drastically in this country over the past 100 years. Are you talking about a modern nuclear family; mom, dad, and 2.1 kids? Before social security, most old people had to move back in with their adult children, so you’d have single homes housing 3 to 4 generations – is that the kind of family you’re talking about? Before industrialization, a couple used to have 6-10 kids because they needed lots of hands to work the fields and because mortality rates were a lot higher – is that the traditional Christian family? Marriage used to be basically a property arrangement, what about that?
The point being that scientific progress and economic policies have changed the culture and warped the definition of the family in radical and unexpected ways. Simply letting two people of the same sex marry each other won’t have anywhere near the same impact.
As far as you characterizing this as a Christian society – you’re simply wrong. Clearly, Christianity has been an important part of Western civilization and it would be wrong for me to say that it hasn’t contributed at all to the modern world, but this is not a Christian civilization. We are explicitly a non-denominational civilization, and we’re all a lot better off for it. You can go waste your time on your Christian stuff and I can go waste my time doing atheist stuff, and no one is going to get sent to prison or be executed because of it, which is how things worked for thousands of years, coincidentally, when religions were in charge.
As for the Dark Ages, we emerged from that period because the Black Death started killing people by the millions, and they finally started realizing that praying to God and giving all your money to the church wasn’t an effective way of dealing with real problems. A bit after that, we had the Renaissance and the scientific revolution and here we are. Seems like the more we reject religion, the better things get!
Uh, yeah. Like I said – the framers erected a wall between church and state. It’s called the first amendment. I never said anything about scrubbing Christianity from the public square, but don’t let me get in the way of you going off on pointless and irrelevant tangents.
Levi doubles down on his ‘wall between church and state’ falsehood. Of course, no proof existing of same. Maybe it was written with dark matter?
The Establishment clause is to prevent a State sponsored religion (ala the CoE). But hey, don’t let facts get in the way of your hatred of religion.
Livewire, it is entirely possible… based on his comments… that Levi is simply too dim to see the difference between the Framers not wanting to recognize a state religion and leftist nutjobs who run to the ACLU to file a lawsuit every time they see a cross in a public space or hear a Christmas Carol at public school.
Gee, speak of the devils.
Yeah, a fifth grader was going to establish a state religion by singing a song with the word “Jesus” in it. Is this just liberal stupidity? Hostility to Christianity? Or the epic confluence of both that runs through the progressive movement like a herd of wildebeests.
It isn’t fair to put one’s religious dogma before social justice and community
LOL…..and what do you call your conception of “social justice”, Levi?
For example, you consider it a capital crime and a violation of “social justice” to prevent people from snipping the spinal cords of newborn babies. Indeed, you want government to pay for and fund it in the name of “social justice”. You demand that people pay tax dollars so that you can murder children because you consider them “undesirable”.
You whine that Christians aren’t “fair” because they make you take responsibility for the children you produce instead of just killing them and getting rid of them. How do you call that social justice, Levi? Why do you and the “progressive” community you represent support infanticide?
That’s what makes you really hilarious, Levi. You want a state religion. You want people taxed to support your state religion. You want people who practice different faiths sued, punished, and silenced out of existence, as V the K just pointed out above. And you FULLY support and endorse torturing and murdering that which you consider undesirable, such as children for which you would have to take responsibility.
Again, families pre-date Christiany by millions of years, so to describe it as a Christian innovation is to give credit where it simply isn’t due.
And so do strictures against, disdain for, and refusal to legitimize homosexuality or gay-sex relationships.
Indeed, the fact that homosexuality occurs in such a tiny fringe of the population, almost at the rate of known mutations, makes it clear that evolution itself is anti-homosexuality and that natural selection is strongly AWAY from it.
So Levi, your own blabbering makes obvious how you operate solely on blind faith and how you ignore science repeatedly when it clashes with your preassigned belief structure.
I’m not sure what the argument is about separation of religion and state. Is it that you don’t like the idea of a wall? Because the first amendment is in fact pretty clear (“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”). Originally this amendment applied only to Congress but was later applied to ALL government (both federal and state).
This is a mutually beneficial situation. It protects people like me (Jewish and Methodist by heritage, raised agnostic, atheist by choice) from having religious beliefs forced upon me, but it also protects religious folks from being discriminated against by their government.
The Founding Fathers were very clear on being Christian, but also very clear in their understanding that the New World was a place for religious freedom — and this included the freedom to not be religious.
Thomas Jefferson very eloquently wrote on behalf of the people of Virginia, “We the General Assembly of Virginia do enact that no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer, on account of his religious opinions or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities.”
We all have the right to practice our religion, or our lack of religion, and we none of us have the right to enshrine religion into our government at the expense of other people’s freedom.
As the progressive left has shown in their jihad against the public display of crosses, they are actually quite keen on prohibiting the free exercise of religion.
Naturally, atheists are delighted with the current progressive jihad against Christianity, because when religion is obliterated from the public square their religion… atheism… becomes the state religion by default.
In fact, I believe it is a part of our nature to find the why’s, and questioning is in itself a form of worship. But I’m a self admitted Heritic, so what do I know.
Livewire, I don’t know if questioning is a form of worship, but obviously many people who do worship do question. Anyway, I’m probably a heretic as well. Not quite religious and not quite atheistic.
Sorry to get all metaphysical.
No problem. I find these discussions interesting when civil.
Men of Faith aren’t perfect. The actions of organized religion in the past stand as proof. Men of Reason aren’t perfect, the Socialist ‘Utopias’ are proof of that. Man is unique in that we stand in both worlds, and have to balance both.
Can’t argue with that.
Homosexuals that don’t have children can confer a survival advantage for their families, who share most of the same genes. Evolution and natural selection don’t work on species or even individuals, those forces are acting on genes. A homosexual without children can help a portion of his or her genes be passed on to the next generation by helping to provide and care for their brothers, sisters, nieces, and nephews. A homosexual without children is another able-bodied adult that is there to help hunt, gather food, watch the kids, fend off attackers, act as a substitute for a member of the family/group that is sick, injured, or deceased, etc., and because they don’t have kids, more of their efforts contribute to the group.
As you can see, having a gay son or daughter may translate into some measure of success for the rest of your children. Of course, the most efficient way to pass on your genes is to procreate, and to have all of your children procreate, but that doesn’t mean it’s the only way. That is the cool thing about evolution – it is a process that really explores every avenue of possibility, even those that are seemingly counter-intuitive. On the plains of Africa, having a gay child that never procreates might have been a significant advantage, if and only if you had other children.