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BlindSheep
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Did you read the post you are responding to?
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trustmc
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I’m happy to know now that you characterize your misgivings about the Church as “doubts” and “opinions” instead of the absolute judgments you portray them to be.
Mike
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trustmc
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I’ll let his response speak for itself.
Mike
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Actress101
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Love the sinner, but not the sin.
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Thekla
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That’s the person that I know to be a homosexual. I think that my question had more to do with those I don’t know. How society is to treat homosexuals through laws, etc. And again I must come to the question of whether only those individuals whose sin I don’t know merit tolerance?
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MikeinSD
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Glad you agree with me, Mike. Because what you said is gross invasion of privacy and shows a gross disrespect of Americans who do not follow yr verision of yr faith.
See, you are walking down the sidewalk minding yr own business. A man wearing a burnoose and robes grabs you. Pulls you over.Tells you that Allah will forgive you. But you have to leave that prostitute you call a wife. And forget any values or beliefs that you have. Or the love you share with yr wife and your family. Because there is no god but Allah and Muhammad is his prophet. And Allah does not forgive non-believers. And believers marry good Muslim women and have good Muslim children. Since you did neither, you have no choice but to abandon yr family and follow Allah. Because this man in a burnoose and robes said so.
How many red blooded American men would put up with such an assault on themselves and their families? And yes, in areas of US where there are conceal carry laws, men would pull out their guns and shoot when assaulted like that.
Second, in the US, gay rights means that the US Constitution and rule of law applies to US citizens who love their same sex partners. So what is to “support” or not to “support” whether the US Consititution applys to citizens? It’s a given. Doesn’t matter which religion you follow. Or if you don’t believe in any religion. Still have to follow the laws. Don’t like the laws, you have the right to try to change them. Don’t like yr fellow citizens, that’s tough. You can’t restrict their right to work, own property, or enjoy their civil rights. Don’t matter what you think Jesus/Allah/Buddha might have said.
How
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pnewton
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Right. We do not not to legalize assault and kidnapping of homosexuals.
Are you familiar with how a strawman argument works? You put something out absurdly exaggerative so you have an easy target to argue against.
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pnewton
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For those who have argued that Christians are hypocritical for opposing gay rights, I will also say that I am against laws which specify rights for those who commit abortion, want to use birth control and want to be greedy or selfish. I would not like legieslation passed specifically protecting people who chose to ditch Mass, nor protecting those who are gay.
It’s not that I think we should legislate against these things, it is just that I believe in equal protection and we should not give any group “special” rights for engaging in specific behavior.
It’s not that I think we should legislate against these things, it is just that I believe in equal protection and we should not give any group “special” rights for engaging in specific behavior.
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MikeinSD
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What’s a strawman? IMO, I’m being asked to give up my partner, the way I live my life because someone waving a bible tells me too. I’m not a Catholic nor a Christian. How would you react to someone waving a Quran demanding that you divorce your wife, leave yr faith, and become a Muslim?
Also, what part of the US Consititution does not apply to gay men or lesbians? See, the 1st Amendment protects people who prefer not to attend a Catholic Mass or a Baptist service. Does the 1st Amendment also apply to gay or lesbian citizens too? I think it does.It is called equal protection under the law. Therefore the Consititution applys to us gay guys as well.
See you are on the secular side of the street in the gay rights thread. You’re not debating what rights gays have in yr church. The Catholic church has every right to establish and enforce rules for its members. In the US however, people do not have to belong to a particular faith to be citizens. Yr faith has every right to call us gay folks sinners. But you have to no right to strip us or anyone else of our rights as citizens.
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fix
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The civil law has its basis in natural moral law. That applies to each of us whether we like it or not.
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BlindSheep
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What do you consider “tolerance”? As far as I can see, the law already “tolerates” homosexual activity, since there are no longer any laws against it. For the government to actively recognise and reward homosexual relationships by naming them marriages is going beyond mere tolerence. If the law actually goes as far as punishing people for saying that homosexual behavior is a sin, this is not only going beyond mere tolerance of homosexuality, it is intolerance of Christianity (and Islam as well).
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fix
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Not only that we can rightly reason that such things are wrong:
ARGUMENTS FROM REASON AGAINST LEGAL
RECOGNITION OF HOMOSEXUAL UNIONS
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pnewton
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I would ignore such a person, because they are wrong. That is not the issue here. A strawman is when you make a false issue, like you are doing. The law does not wave a Bible and tell you to leave anyone.
All of the constitution applies to everyone, it just does not apply to any group specifically. Where in the Constitution is the word “Catholic” or "Baptist"mentioned? No where, of course. I am not advocating homosexuals be stripped of Constitutional rights, just that we do not give them additional rights that go beyond the constitution and are written specifically for them. I do not approve of this for any group. I firmly believe that only way to arrive at equal protection under the law is to not single groups out for special treatment.
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soulspeak23
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Fix,
I have gone through the natural moral law thing with you before, so we won’t go there again. I think what MikeinSD is trying to get across is that the secular laws of this melting pot we call America apply to everyone, of all races, religions, colors, everything. He is saying that the catholic church has every right (under those same laws) to determine who may or may not be allowed to be a member of that church and what they are to believe. He is just pointing out that people who are not members of the church and may have differing views, also have the same civil rights under the government as everyone else, regardless of church teaching. The example of the man telling you Allah is the only way is his analogy of how he feels. You, being a strong catholic man, would either walk away from the allah-promoting man or try to get him to see your point of view. MikeinSD, as a gay person, is trying to get you to see his point of view.
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BlindSheep
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A strawman is when you misrepresent the position you are arguing against to make it easier to defeat. For instance, when you describe our position as if it condones grabbing people in the street and threatening them, that is a strawman.
If someone literally grabbed me, I would punch him or spray pepper spray in his face. However, I don’t go around physically grabbing people, and I don’t think anyone else here does either. Without the grabbing, you are describing somethingI think we all enounter (JW’s, mormons and the like), and I respond with a polite “no thanks” and leave - something you are free to do also. As far as hiring homosexuals goes, this may markl me as a bigot in your eyes, but I don’t think every person is well suited for every job. For instance, a small, weak, unhealthy person would not be well suited to a career as a firefighter, a person with an IQ of 95 won’t make a good brain surgeon, a schizophrenic shouldn’t be a cop, and for the same reasons, a person who flaunts his sexual disorder and is statistically likely to abuse children is not a good choice for a school principal. No, people don’t choose to have the conditions that make them unfit for certain things, but it happens, and pretending it isn’t so will only endanger those who depend on them.
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fix
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It is not simply a matter of a particular belief system. Murder is illegal not because the CC says so but because we know it is wrong based on the natural moral law.
Things such as same sex marriage are wrong whether any particular Church says so or not.
Is chattel slavery acceptable if a majority of people think it is ok or if some judges think it is ok? Is it wrong simply because a church says so?
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trustmc
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What you do not tell any homosexua, whether you know them or not is: “your sins are tolerated, now go and sin some more.” Societies laws should reflect this.
Mike
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trustmc
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You read too much into my statement. I never said I agreed with you. By the tone of your rants, you obviously misunderstood what I was saying. Just so you don’t misconstrue again, allow me to make myself perfectly clear: we don’t see eye to eye on this issue. My opinion is grounded in Church teaching, yours is not. How simple is that?
Mike
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trustmc
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I think I’d be a lot more charitable towards your hypothetical muslim sidewalk evangelist. How charitable others are is up to them, but shouldn’t be a deterant to my forgiveness of others. Even Jesus was aware that the hostile crowd was armed with stones that could have been aimed at him.
Further, your opinion is grounded in your own interpretation of the Constitution. You seem to treat the document like a Christian fundamentalist treats the bible: make it bend to your own beliefs. The laws of this country are based on a 6 millennia-old understanding of the purpose and nature of marriage. We call it “common law.” Additionally, this understanding has been codified by about 300 years of democratic legislation – that is, legislation based on the will of the people, not unelected justices.
Homosexual activists need to overturn this precedence by petitioning members of an unelected minority, namely members of the courts, in order to redefine marriage. Marriage has and always will be between one man and one woman. No one is denying homosexuals the right to marry under this definition. They know this but are being disingenuous when they say they are being discriminated against.
Their definition of discrimination is predicated on the notion that everyone should have the “right” to marry anyone no matter what gender they are. They redefine marriage this way and then turn around and say that society discriminates against them. This rouse will not hold water in the court of public opinion, and by extension, the legislature, so they turn to liberal justices to impose their morality on the rest of us.
Many states have democratically voted to save the definition of marriage by enshrining it in their constitutions. This is democracy. That the will of the people has been informed by six millennia of Judeo-Christian teaching is irrelevant. People can choose their source of inspiration and teaching and act on it: It’s called freedom of religion and freedom of conscious. I suggest you learn more about this before you relinquish your freedoms to some newly minted judicial oligarchy.
Mike
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trustmc
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Years ago, someone else treated me the same way Jesus treated the adulterer. He said, “Your sins are forgiven, now go and sin no more.” He didn’t say: “Your sins are tolerated, now go and sin some more.”
The sins he was referring to had to do with compulsive sexual behavior not unlike homosexual behavior. With the help of the Church (sacraments), and the forgiveness of Christ, the compulsion is gone and my sexuality restored with a healthy and natural orientation for women. My current romance bears that out.
Thank God for the charitable Christian! It takes more guts to speak the truth in love to someone than it is to take the easy road of “tolerance.” I pray that others will treat you and yours with the same charity with which they treated me.
To answer your question above, consider what Fulton Sheen once said: anyone can rationalize their way to a lie when they begin with a lie. A straw man is when you prop up a false argument (intolerance / violence / discrimination), in order to prop up a lie (tolerance / legal acceptance / moral equivalence / constitutional recognition).
Mike
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