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mackbrislawn
Guest
!!!
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JDaniel
Guest
If I may, I’d like to butt in. Sorry for the length.
First of all, IMO, it is extremely important to understand certain concepts when discussing this issue. One of the concepts of which I speak is, “entrapment”.
What is entrapment? Entrapment is that which restricts freedom. However, all restriction of freedom is not entrapment. For example, a person might find a wall in front of him and understand this as being entrapped. But, had he just looked behind him, he would have seen no wall and, therefore, no entrapment.
Another person might regard speed limits as a restriction of freedom. And, yet another might believe that breaking, entering and stealing is a restriction of freedom. And, each of these people would be right.
On the other side of the coin, the general public and the particular home owner have understood that the uncontrolled expression of the above activities would have greater freedom-removing effects than would the imposition of speed limit and anti-burglary laws.
For the person, or persons, suffering physical damage as a result of someone expressing unbridled freedom to speed, his/hers/their freedom is now imposed upon. And such imposition might be so freedom-canceling as to deprive him/her/them of life and limb.
For the person, or persons, suffering the breaking, entering and theft, as a result of someone expressing unfettered freedom, for another’s property and security, he/she/they are now imposed upon. And, such imposition might be so freedom-canceling as to deprive him/her/them of the ability to pursue “life, liberty and happiness”.
So, society has seen fit to create laws to “restrict certain freedoms”. Now, every person naturally strives for freedom, in fact, the maximum freedom one can have. But, as we can see, as a member of society, we must all seek to moderate that desire for the full expression of freedom. In other words, we must be restricted. If we can’t restrict ourselves, then society – by the muscle of the State - will do it for us. It’s very simple.
Very often, these excesses result in unwanted and more restrictive entrapments of the individuals perpetrating the acts or crimes. They self-entrap. And, their self-entrapment is far harsher than the entrapment they felt prior to committing the crimes or acts.
Likewise, in the sphere of “morality”, every person wants and strives for maximum freedom. However, obviously, even in this sphere, there are excesses that must be restricted. To not be unfaithful, for example, is a “moral” canon that results in grave consequences to those people and families that are forced to endure the results of a spouse’s infidelity. The violation of this norm can result in impositions on everyone involved. Such impositions can be so freedom-canceling as to cause the deprivation of life and limb. We read about it daily.
This example of a moral restriction bleeds over into the sphere of the State too, into divorce and property distribution. It can ruin fledgling companies. It can lead to distribution that involves the children. This can and does lead to messed up lives, psychological ills and physical infirmities.
Like the State, the Church has a compelling requirement (and interest) to enter into the society and the institutions of its members and instruct.
The act of sex is that which projects the race into the future by family and children. When this is thwarted by any unnatural means, including the act of sex between same sex partners, the future of the race becomes questionable. In European countries, where contraception has been a mainstay, the birth rate of the indigenous Europeans has dropped to slightly less than 1.1 : 1. It is expected to go even lower. Add to that the deaths of those contracting STD’s and those practicing same-sex unions, then extrapolate that worldwide, and one can no longer say that these practices “aren’t hurting anyone else”. The stats aren’t much better in America.
So, in permitting the maximum freedom of the individual, we are permitting the entrapment of our fellow societal members. And gays, who engorge themselves in hedonistic pleasure, are going to pay a price for it. In fact, many of them already have. Just as many straights have paid the price for their excesses. Unhappiness, despair, loneliness, disease, drugs, disrupted families, distrust, incarceration, estrangement, and so on.
But, worse, these sorts of practices damage the race. As members of the human race, we have an obligation to its survival. We have an obligation to it thriving. We have an obligation to curtail the insanities that are at the roots of unhappiness, despair, loneliness, disease, drugs, disrupted families, distrust, incarceration, estrangement, and so on. We have an obligation to seek the maximum freedom we can have without self-entrapping, or permitting self-entrapment.
Once a person is entrapped in the gay lifestyle, his, or her, life becomes a lot less free in the same manner a thief, by stealing, becomes a lot less free. Looking over your back for the rest of your life is not something I could look forward to. Likewise, walking on egg shells around the other 98.5% of society is not something I could look forward to either.
Many gays can be helped, or, at least, they can lead a life that maximizes their freedom
Merry Christmas and
God Bless,
JD
First of all, IMO, it is extremely important to understand certain concepts when discussing this issue. One of the concepts of which I speak is, “entrapment”.
What is entrapment? Entrapment is that which restricts freedom. However, all restriction of freedom is not entrapment. For example, a person might find a wall in front of him and understand this as being entrapped. But, had he just looked behind him, he would have seen no wall and, therefore, no entrapment.
Another person might regard speed limits as a restriction of freedom. And, yet another might believe that breaking, entering and stealing is a restriction of freedom. And, each of these people would be right.
On the other side of the coin, the general public and the particular home owner have understood that the uncontrolled expression of the above activities would have greater freedom-removing effects than would the imposition of speed limit and anti-burglary laws.
For the person, or persons, suffering physical damage as a result of someone expressing unbridled freedom to speed, his/hers/their freedom is now imposed upon. And such imposition might be so freedom-canceling as to deprive him/her/them of life and limb.
For the person, or persons, suffering the breaking, entering and theft, as a result of someone expressing unfettered freedom, for another’s property and security, he/she/they are now imposed upon. And, such imposition might be so freedom-canceling as to deprive him/her/them of the ability to pursue “life, liberty and happiness”.
So, society has seen fit to create laws to “restrict certain freedoms”. Now, every person naturally strives for freedom, in fact, the maximum freedom one can have. But, as we can see, as a member of society, we must all seek to moderate that desire for the full expression of freedom. In other words, we must be restricted. If we can’t restrict ourselves, then society – by the muscle of the State - will do it for us. It’s very simple.
Very often, these excesses result in unwanted and more restrictive entrapments of the individuals perpetrating the acts or crimes. They self-entrap. And, their self-entrapment is far harsher than the entrapment they felt prior to committing the crimes or acts.
Likewise, in the sphere of “morality”, every person wants and strives for maximum freedom. However, obviously, even in this sphere, there are excesses that must be restricted. To not be unfaithful, for example, is a “moral” canon that results in grave consequences to those people and families that are forced to endure the results of a spouse’s infidelity. The violation of this norm can result in impositions on everyone involved. Such impositions can be so freedom-canceling as to cause the deprivation of life and limb. We read about it daily.
This example of a moral restriction bleeds over into the sphere of the State too, into divorce and property distribution. It can ruin fledgling companies. It can lead to distribution that involves the children. This can and does lead to messed up lives, psychological ills and physical infirmities.
Like the State, the Church has a compelling requirement (and interest) to enter into the society and the institutions of its members and instruct.
The act of sex is that which projects the race into the future by family and children. When this is thwarted by any unnatural means, including the act of sex between same sex partners, the future of the race becomes questionable. In European countries, where contraception has been a mainstay, the birth rate of the indigenous Europeans has dropped to slightly less than 1.1 : 1. It is expected to go even lower. Add to that the deaths of those contracting STD’s and those practicing same-sex unions, then extrapolate that worldwide, and one can no longer say that these practices “aren’t hurting anyone else”. The stats aren’t much better in America.
So, in permitting the maximum freedom of the individual, we are permitting the entrapment of our fellow societal members. And gays, who engorge themselves in hedonistic pleasure, are going to pay a price for it. In fact, many of them already have. Just as many straights have paid the price for their excesses. Unhappiness, despair, loneliness, disease, drugs, disrupted families, distrust, incarceration, estrangement, and so on.
But, worse, these sorts of practices damage the race. As members of the human race, we have an obligation to its survival. We have an obligation to it thriving. We have an obligation to curtail the insanities that are at the roots of unhappiness, despair, loneliness, disease, drugs, disrupted families, distrust, incarceration, estrangement, and so on. We have an obligation to seek the maximum freedom we can have without self-entrapping, or permitting self-entrapment.
Once a person is entrapped in the gay lifestyle, his, or her, life becomes a lot less free in the same manner a thief, by stealing, becomes a lot less free. Looking over your back for the rest of your life is not something I could look forward to. Likewise, walking on egg shells around the other 98.5% of society is not something I could look forward to either.
Many gays can be helped, or, at least, they can lead a life that maximizes their freedom
Merry Christmas and
God Bless,
JD
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CradleCath
Guest
GREAT post.
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sedonaman
Guest
Great post !!! I might add that this idea use to be explained in the seventh grade.
This vacuum is being filled by Muslims, who have a replacement rate approaching 5:1, but that’s another story.
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pathia
Guest
That is not the case with transsexuals. Statistics are hard to come by, because we’re so invisible, but 50% or so of us are below the poverty line is the most quoted number. Homelessness is very high. We’re very regularly fired. I make 14 an hour and I make one of the highest wages of any of my trans associates over several mailing lists which include over a thousand people.
I wasn’t necessarily denied education, but as soon as I ‘switched’ the section of the school I was in tried to remove me from their program. I had to petition the Dean to stop the incident. I have had EMT’s refuse to treat me, I have had police refuse to enforce the law when people have attacked me on multiple occasions and had them mock and ridicule me instead. Seven of my friends and associates have been murdered in only the last five years for being this way and only one was actually working on the street, contrary to CSI and Jerry Springer, we’re not all prostitutes.
I keep copies of my social security card, birth certificate and a bundle of paperwork and legal paperwork just to keep myself safe. I am challenged in all things, by the police, the IRS, banks, work, everything. I keep about 3lbs of paperwork just because I’m afraid and need to cover all my bases, lest I get thrown in jail for some bizarre reason like so many of my friends.
It is also basically impossible to insure me, even though I now have coverage with work, every single thing is denied as ‘out of scope’. I had the insurance company actually tell me my kidney stones were related to my intersexism and transsexualism, I have to pay out of pocket every time I get them (once or twice a year). I have filed bankruptcy twice now due to constant hospital bills that will never be covered because the insurance doesn’t cover me in any way shape or form.
Think all this is absurd and too awful to be true? As far as I can tell this is par for the course in just about the daily life of any transsexual. Some have it easier, some have it much worse.
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cristininha
Guest
Loving v. Virginia defined Marriage as a “basic civil right”. Mildred Loving had the same right as everyone else to marry a person of her own race whenever she wanted. Many people didn’t want her to have the right to marry a person of a different race, but she wanted to. And many of those against her cited religious reasons. The interracial marriage case is similar to what is happening to gay marriages today.Hi all,
I’m from CA, where we barely got Proposition 8 (restoring the true definition of marriage) passed
Here’s where I’m in a bind: many of my friends, who are Catholic (or at least refer to themselves as such) voted against Prop 8 and are very unhappy with the results. For example, one of my friends writes as her status on Facebook, “[name of person] knows Jesus would never deny a human right & people that use the Bible to say yes on Prop 8 show their ignorance and uncompassionate heart for human rights.”
So, I’m working on ways to present what the Church teaches about marriage and homosexuality (and gay “marriage”). The primary argument against Prop 8 frames marriage as an equality and civil rights issue.
Here’s my question though: is marriage definable as a “human right”? I’m struggling to come up with a definite answer from a Catholic perspective. Also, if anyone has any general ideas for ways to explain TRUE Catholic teaching in this regard, I’d appreciate it.
In its decision, the court wrote: Marriage is one of the “basic civil rights of man,” fundamental to our very existence and survival… To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State’s citizens of liberty without due process of law. The Fourteenth Amendment requires that the freedom of choice to marry not be restricted by invidious racial discrimination. Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the State.
========================
*Mildred Loving issued a statement on the 40th anniversary of the Loving v. Virginia Supreme Court decision. Her statement concluded:
My generation was bitterly divided over something that should have been so clear and right. The majority believed that what the judge said, that it was God’s plan to keep people apart, and that government should discriminate against people in love. But I have lived long enough now to see big changes. The older generation’s fears and prejudices have given way, and today’s young people realize that if someone loves someone, they have a right to marry.
Surrounded as I am now by wonderful children and grandchildren, not a day goes by that I don’t think of Richard and our love, our right to marry, and how much it meant to me to have that freedom to marry the person precious to me, even if others thought he was the ‘wrong kind of person’ for me to marry. I believe all Americans, no matter their race, no matter their sex, no matter their sexual orientation, should have that same freedom to marry. Government has no business imposing some people’s religious beliefs over others. Especially if it denies people’s civil rights.
I am still not a political person, but I am proud that Richard’s and my name is on a court case that can help reinforce the love, the commitment, the fairness, and the family that so many people, black or white, young or old, gay or straight, seek in life. I support the freedom to marry for all. That’s what Loving, and loving, are all about.*
Excerpts in italics (sources):
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loving_v._Virginia
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mildred_Loving
…
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sedonaman
Guest
Your case is sad indeed, but we are talking about sodomite marriage.
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Ferde_Rombola
Guest
Loving v. Virginia is an old case. When it was decided the concept of men ‘marrying’ men was unheard of and never so much as contemplated. The decision dealt strictly with heterosexual marriage. The comparison is inapposite and using it to try to validate homosexual marriage is fraudulent. The ‘civil right’ element applies to the Commonwealth of Virginia only. If anyone tried to use it to make homosexual marriage legal in Virginia, they’d be thrown out of court.
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sedonaman
Guest
Everything you wrote is obviously based on marriage being between a man and a woman; sodomites cannot ensure our survival.
Every law ever written is based on someone’s concept of what is right and what is wrong. For a good write-up on this, see
“The Reality About Legislating Morality”, by Selwyn Duke
renewamerica.us/columns/duke/040914
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cristininha
Guest
Sodomites haven’t existed for thousands of years, obviously they cannot ensure our survival.
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PRmerger
Guest
Not at all. The objection to interracial marriage was based solely on bigotry and prejudice. (Incidentally, the Catholic church never opposed interracial marriages.)
As can be shown in these forums, the objection to homosexual acts is based on natural law, human reason and confirmed by divine Revelation in Sacred Scripture.
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cristininha
Guest
Everything indicates we are dealing with another case of bigotry and prejudice in respect to gay marriages.
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sedonaman
Guest
This is correct. However, there was a time that the Church discouraged it because of the unusual problems an interracial couple would face in society, but it never opposed it.
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sedonaman
Guest
No, we are not. We are dealing with keeping society organized.
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KingAlfred
Guest
Not to be crude – but I must ask, what do you think Jesus would say about homosexual acts? Seriously – think about it. I’m pretty sure He’d forbid them. How then can we assume He could ever approve gay marriage? Think of the influence of gay marriage on gay-marriage children: “I admire my parents, who are gay. Therefore, I want to be gay. Here…let me experiment with homosexual acts, to see if I like them, as my parents do.” Wow. What horror. Would their parents be guilty of indirectly *murdering *their children, if they contracted AIDS while imitating their parents? Probably.Hi all,
I’m from CA, where we barely got Proposition 8 (restoring the true definition of marriage) passed
Here’s where I’m in a bind: many of my friends, who are Catholic (or at least refer to themselves as such) voted against Prop 8 and are very unhappy with the results. For example, one of my friends writes as her status on Facebook, “[name of person] knows Jesus would never deny a human right & people that use the Bible to say yes on Prop 8 show their ignorance and uncompassionate heart for human rights.”
So, I’m working on ways to present what the Church teaches about marriage and homosexuality (and gay “marriage”). The primary argument against Prop 8 frames marriage as an equality and civil rights issue.
Here’s my question though: is marriage definable as a “human right”? I’m struggling to come up with a definite answer from a Catholic perspective. Also, if anyone has any general ideas for ways to explain TRUE Catholic teaching in this regard, I’d appreciate it.
E
Elizabeth502
Guest
Jesus was a Jew. He was steeped in a tradition (and faithful to it) which saw a community-validated union between two people–with the intent of having sexual relations & procreating-- as belonging exclusively to male/female. This, and only this arrangement, was the Jewish framework. And by the way, it doesn’t matter whether there was or was not any civil validating format/institution for such a union at the time. (For those who like to discuss when the term “marriage” came to be, whether it was formalized during Jesus’ era, etc.)
It is extremely doubtful that he would have approved of the acts of males lying with males and females lying with females, but even if he had found the actions in themselves tolerable, the idea of a formalized ‘romantic’/sexual/parenting union between same-gendered people is something that would have been totally outside his Jewish world view and utterly unthinkable.
More importantly, he was not just a cultural Jew. (For those who like to go on and on about how marriage is strictly an elastic cultural norm peculiar to each society and era). He was a fervent religious Jew who challenged his followers/listeners to be more deeply religious – not by denying Torah (a point often misunderstood by modern Christians), but by intensely & thoroughly living it.
Jesus’ embrace of those marginalized by society did not include civil reconstruction or civil revolution. Those who read such messages anachronistically backward into the text are reading with ignorance, as they do not understand the principles of biblical scholarship. Those who do so from a position of education are being intellectually dishonest to serve a modern political/social end, and they know it.
His was a personal and religious message, not a civil one. He was not a “liberationist” in any respect except those two. Anyone trying to read any form of “liberation theology” backward into Jesus’ message is completely off-base. I have a theology education, including Christology and all the supposedly liberationist literature about that. These social theories are invalid from a scholarship framework.
He was interested in liberating believers from the enslavement of personal intolerance, bigotry, prejudice, rejection. And he wanted the formal religious institution to stop oppressing the marginalized, which in his day were explicitly the poor, the infirm. It did include those known by the community as sinners (e.g., adulterers, but esp. adulteresses). However, he did not advocate changing civil law so that adulterers would be formally accepted by society, or changing religious law (the 6th commandment!) so that this was no longer a sin.
There is absolutely no indication in Jesus’ teaching that tolerance, acceptance, embrace, Christian love extends to alterations in civil law. None. Nada.
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pathia
Guest
Sodomite is a fairly broad term. Strictly speaking it means much more than just anal sex. It very much applies to ‘my case’. It is impossible for me to marry, just like any more ‘normal’ gay person.
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sedonaman
Guest
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pathia
Guest
You said sodomite, not sodomy, they are different.
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sedonaman
Guest
Bingo. But those who “serve a modern political/social end” are “useful fools.”
Bingo again.
Nor is there anything in the teachings of Jesus that means anything goes between consenting adults. In short, “I have come to fulfill the law, not to abolish it.”
When you analyze this post-modern garbage idea of tolerance, acceptance, inclusion, etc., you find we have arrived at its logical conclusion, for once liberal tolerance rather than traditional morality becomes our guiding principle, we must ultimately tolerate the presence of evil:
“As the older Western understandings on which Liberalism was originally grounded were tossed onto the ash heap by our increasingly secular society, Liberalism emerged as an autonomous force, detached from any cultural or moral framework that could contain its demands. Under this new dispensation, liberal values such as equality and non-discrimination were no longer judged according to a comprehensive standard of the good that included both universalist and particularist elements; rather, the liberal values were now seen as simply identical with the good, and anyone advocating them as a good person. At the same time, any vestige of perceived inequality or discrimination [that is, anything that still remained of the inherited institutions and habits of our civilization, ranging from the rule of law to national identity to the marriage-based nuclear family to much of the ordinary give and take of daily life] came to be regarded as vicious obstructions to true progress that had to be eliminated, reconstructed, or suppressed. Thus politically correct America wages hysterical crusades against ethnic slurs or sexual comments by private individuals, while shrugging its shoulders at gross criminality [e.g., by a popular figure] – if he is seen as a sufficiently ‘tolerant’ and ‘inclusive’ person. Thus the modern liberal regime bans the merest breath of the Christian religion in public schools, while subsidizing student clubs devoted to witchcraft. Thus the mainstream media routinely attack the ‘oppressive’ and ‘racist’ police, while ignoring the criminality of the criminals whom the police are ‘oppressing.’ These inversions of decency and sanity are not the work of anarchists. They are the logical consequence of the central credo of modern Liberalism: that all intolerance and discrimination must be eliminated. In a society dedicated to that proposition, the good itself must ultimately be seen as evil, because the good ** discriminates** against evil, while evil must be blessed with victim status, because it is excluded by the good.
…
“The problem described here points to its own solution, which is to abandon the modern liberal ideology that identifies morality with powerlessness, and return to traditional moral standards. Unlike today’s cultural Leninism that defines men’s moral worth as the ** inverse** of their perceived degree of power or of their attachment to established ways of life, traditional morality judges the intrinsic moral qualities of men’s ** actions** , and so is capable of seeing and stopping real evil when it appears. By contrast, as I said at the beginning, a people that defines the good as ** tolerance** must inevitably end up tolerating evil , even the evil of terrorist killers. Indeed, such a people must ultimately ** lose the authority to enforce any standards at all**, since standards can be enforced only by a society’s dominant culture, and a dominant culture, as a dominant culture, is by definition ‘unequal’ and ‘exclusive’ and thus illegitimate [according to liberal thought].
“If, therefore, we truly desire to live in a society that can effectively resist evil, we must do two things: (1) define the good not as tolerance but as behavior in accordance with the moral law; and (2) affirm the legitimacy – and thus the moral authority – of our particular nation and its historically dominant culture.
“Such a re-traditionalized society will not be absolutely tolerant and non-discriminatory by modern liberal standards. It will, however, be able to assure a civilized order where real evil – such as the evil that now runs free on our society – will not be tolerated.” – Ref: frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=5423 [Emphasis added.]
And that, dear friends is why we are entertaining the idea of sodomite “marriage”.
"The indispensable condition of any conservative or traditionalist movement, as well as of our personal spiritual survival, is that we say NO to the prevailing values of the liberal order and that we keep saying NO.”
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