Comments on: What dominionists would do with gays, part 2 – Enter Bryan Fischer

By: Emily K

Emily K — Wed, 30 May 2018 21:47:22 +0000

I for one just happen to believe that the bible is an accurate record of the history of the world, it’s my starting point.

Well, if that’s your starting point, it’s also your ending point. Since I do NOT believe “the bible” to be a history textbook, it’s moot. Thank goodness our government has a secular basis (no matter what david barton tries to say; expertly refuted by the author of this blog).
Honestly, people get so obsessed with our sex lives. We want equal protection for ourselves and our spouses under the law, not permission for public sex orgies.

By: Richard Willmer

Richard Willmer — Wed, 30 May 2018 20:34:34 +0000

Joe
It is so dirt-shovellingly typical of some people to lump bestiality and paedophilia with consensual same-sex relationships. It’s that tired and dirty propaganda line loved by homophobic people everywhere. Really!
The is a fundamental moral and jurisprudential difference between the first two and the third. It’s called ‘informed consent‘ – which doesn’t apply in the first two cases, but does in the third.
As for questions you asked (well, the ones I understood) … SGM is correct: it’s none of your business.

By: Richard Willmer

Richard Willmer — Wed, 30 May 2018 20:34:34 +0000

Dave
You put it rather more gently than I did!
I take the view that paedophilia has nothing to do with sexuality – it’s really about (the abuse of) power … as is rape.
By the way, didn’t King Solomon have rather a lot of wives?! Maybe our ‘dominionist’ friends should hire a time capsule and go and sort out that little situation!

By: StraightGrandmother

StraightGrandmother — Wed, 30 May 2018 20:34:34 +0000

Joe,

You have an orientation in which you DID NOT choose, so what are you going to do about it? What should you do about it?

SGM- It is none of your business what other people do relativ to their private sexual life, it is not your business nor is it the governments business.
Joe-

You don’t like the term sexual behavior, you prefer sexual orientation and sexual minorities. We can use your terms but they do not stop with homosexuality. You would also have to include bestiality. pedophilia, polygamy, incest, necrophilia,
all I assume innate sexual orientations.

SGM- let the animals make their case if they want to fool around with humans. Yes all you are doing here is trying to create a diversion. Doesn’t work.
Joe,

That was the manual William Wilberforce used against slavery and the one Martin Luther King, Jr. used against segregation, and if memory serves correct the founding fathers used it as a basis for equality.

SGM- Oh yes our real nice slaveholding founding fathers.

Twelve American presidents owned slaves and eight of them, starting with Washington, owned slaves while in office. Almost from the very start, slaves were a common sight in the executive mansion. A list of construction workers building the White House in 1795 includes five slaves – named Tom, Peter, Ben, Harry and Daniel — all put to work as carpenters. Other slaves worked as masons in the government quarries, cutting the stone for early government buildings, including the White House and U.S. Capitol. According to records kept by the White House Historical Association, slaves often worked seven days a week — even in the hot and humid Washington summers. CNN

Seems to me you are saying that the Bible should be the basis for our laws. Funny you should mention MLK using the Bible, as the white slave holders and segragationalists claimed that their actions were also Biblically sanctioned. Our laws are built on a foundation of Human Rights, not your interpertation of the Bible.

By: Zarron

Zarron — Wed, 30 May 2018 20:34:34 +0000

Joe said:
“That was the manual William Wilberforce used against slavery and the one Martin Luther King, Jr. used against segregation, and if memory serves correct the founding fathers used it as a basis for equality.”
I’m afraid this argument leads nowhere, since it’s had the distinction of being uwed to justify anti-semitic beliefs by the Nazis, was used to instigate the Spanish Inquisition and the Crusades, and was used by white Southerners to justify slavery. That’s right. The same book Wilberforce used against slavery was used to justify it as well. It’s worth mentioning that both the new and old testaments explicitly condone slavery, as well. No less than Jesus commanded slaves to obey their masters.
What does this show? It shows that people use the Bible to justify their own predisposed beliefs. It’s rather astonishing to see that whenever someone talks about God, God always seems to believe exactly what the speaker does.
FYI, your memory does not serve. Some of the founding fathers were, in fact, men of faith, but they were also secularists; if you’ll notice, the constitution makes NO reference to religion of any sort, and the Declaration of Independence has only a reference a ‘Creator’, rather an explicitly Christian god. The founding fathers were quite aware of how religion can be subverted very easily, because it is based on ‘divine authority’. They knew that the nation they waged a war against was based on the idea that God had anointed their King to be the ruler. This is just part of the reason that the Constitution is a secular document.
If you didn’t know, many of the Founding Fathers were actually deists, and Masons. Thomas Jefferson famously wrote a version of the New Testament with all the miracles and references to Jesus’ divinity removed, turning it into a story about a jewish man with some good ideas who gets punished by an authoritarian society whose power he threatens with his message of social justice and universal redemption. It’s quite blasphemous, and an interesting take on the story.
Anyway…off of the Bible. You are baselessly linking homosexuality to things like bestiality, pedophilia, polygamy, incest, and necrophilia. Your only argument is that homosexuality is ‘not normal’, so let’s group it with these things I don’t consider normal either. Your refusal to see homosexuals as human beings is nothing short of disturbing.
You cannot seem to understand that homosexuality is, quite simply, a harmless behavior that does not affect you in the least. Two men walking down the street holding hands is not going to unravel the fabric of society. What they do in the bedroom together, with the blinds closed, is not going to affect you. Even if you believe it is ‘wrong’ (which is ridiculous, by the way), it’s not like they are forcing you into the behavior as well. Remember: Judge not, lest ye be judged.
Your assertion that morality is impossible without God is ridiculous as well. Atheists can be just as moral as Christians. I would argue more so; theistic morality is a sham, because the only standard for morality becomes what you believe God says. And we all know just how wobbly that is. I would actually argue that belief in morality coming from God is a sign of moral weakness, indicating that the person in question believes that morality cannot exist without an omniscient God out to punish you for bad behavior. You are leading us to believe that people who ‘fear God’ only abstain from rape, murder, and lies because of fear of God’s punishment. That certainly seems like moral weakness to me.
Most atheists have a morality based on the venerable Golden Rule, which does not need a God in order to operate. Only a bit of logic, and the assumption that other people like to be happy, just as oneself does, among a few other simple, uncontroversial things.