FinbarReilly
Actually, um, The Bible did sort of exist prior to Sparta; it's been around for thousands of years...Wait...you used "bible" (non-specific book); Sparta did exist before books, so yeah, you're right! (sorry; flip answer...)

Why does everyone assume that? The bible is just The Torah with another section slapped on called the New Testament. The bible may not have existed but the Torah did which is just the Old Testament for Christians. And in Christ's day, it wouldn't have been a book, The Bible would've been a huge scroll. Second, the Torah already downcast the idea of being gay.

According to Genesis God made man and woman, not man and man. If man were meant by nature to marry another man, then the human race would've ended when Adam #1 and Adam #2 died.

I'm not against gay marriage nor am I for it. What I believe, is gay marriage is fine, as long as there are those who would remain straight and actually make the babies that gays cannot makje and have to adopt.

fibonacci

FinbarReilly
I'm not against gay marriage nor am I for it. What I believe, is gay marriage is fine, as long as there are those who would remain straight and actually make the babies that gays cannot makje and have to adopt.

I'm glad you're not anti-gay marriage, but one of your comments leads to a statement I have often heard in he arguements against marrige. Why would legalized gay marriage make straight people turn gay? I've heard a lot of arguements against gay marrige because "It'll result in less children, weakening our country!" I know a lesbian couple that has three children. None of them are adopted. They were all birthed by one mom, and raised by two. No dad involved, unless you consider another gay friend of theirs the dad, who has no involvement other than providing material. Meanwhile, my not gay parents failed to produce more than a single child. Weird, huh?

magickmaker
I'm glad you're not anti-gay marriage, but one of your comments leads to a statement I have often heard in he arguements against marrige. Why would legalized gay marriage make straight people turn gay?

Which comment. I never said anywhere that gay couples make straights gay, I just said as long as the ratio between gays and straights maintains a balance.

FinbarReilly
1)

fibonacci
Why does everyone assume that? The bible is just The Torah with another section slapped on called the New Testament. The bible may not have existed but the Torah did which is just the Old Testament for Christians. And in Christ's day, it wouldn't have been a book, The Bible would've been a huge scroll. Second, the Torah already downcast the idea of being gay.

I believe that the Bible was around prior to Sparta because it was. This is historical fact. Note that I'm not saying that the Bible would have been a book, just that it was around in some form prior to the Greek city-states.

You are aware that by saying Old Testament=Torah (which no one denies, BTW), you're highlighting that fact, right?

Okay. The way it was written, it seemed that you were saying the Bible didn't exist in Sparta's day, which it did. The Spartans probably didn't know about it though.

FinbarReilly
2) Homosexuality=Promiscuous: Blame the various gay rights groups for this one, ironically enough there's too many "Why would I want to be stuck in a relationship with just one person?" type of quotes around. This is not to say that there aren't a lot of long-term relationships; just that most gay media tends to highlight party spots and date lines more than cozy restaurants and general advice. It doesn't help that very few gay characters in movies by supposedly gay writers are in it for more than a few years (and usually just a few months)...

FR

...Como se wa? What does Brokeback Mountain have to do with. Oh wait. Nevermind.

Well everyone seems to be PC. But on another board the subject of feminism came up and an interesting point is whether challenging the Islamic patriarchy is an honorable thing to establish freedoms for women, or a dishonorable thing: cultural imperialism?

Now, for a while I've arrived at the conclusion feminism is Gay rights and vice versa. How so? Equal rights for women is a challenge to sex roles for which there is tremendous cultural inertia. Gay rights is, as well, a challenge to sex roles for which there is tremendous cultural inertia.

When a gay man is bashed, it's because he's defying his gender role. Ask a fag basher, they're quite open about it.

So, what about Arab patriarchy? Is it equal to Western liberality? Has it a right to exist? How is it justified?

I'll answer. And in answering I condemn everyone here for not representing enough diversity that the fag has to explain this.

The Islamic cultural model operates from a classic and uncontroversial paradigm: The greatest good for the greatest number. The patriarchy is right as most women and men are comfortable being heterosexual and living life through a strict gender role prepared for them. The minority that is not heterosexual or is denied the opportunity to expand their role beyond the limits proscribed for their gender, it is selfless and honorable to stay quiet and suffer in secret.

It's true, at the heart of feminism and homosexuality is SELFISHNESS. Feminism is all about what I can do as a woman. Gay rights is about what I can do as a gay man. What happened to what is best for society? What is best for the culture?

Islamic cultures come from what works for their society, the individual is unimportant in comparison. Therefore feminism has no place, gay rights has less place.

Now, I could argue that feminism and gay rights strengthens and empowers the society and the culture. But no one gives a flying fuck, so what's the point?

Fair enough, but:

mykill
Now, I could argue that feminism and gay rights strengthens and empowers the society and the culture. But no one gives a flying fuck, so what's the point?

You could say that, but is it true? In the overall I don't think it makes a difference. Oh I prefer to live in a society where such things are a part of the culture, but a culture that never knew them wouldn't function any worse. I mean, it hasn't in the past, we're still the same bunch of crazy fools... There have been primarily gay cultures too, like the Spartans of course, and quite a few matriarchies and they haven't been nice and peaceful, artistic, and friendly places (the way New Age people would like to imagine). Quite the contrary in most cases.

Even cultures where there’s been a good level of equality suffer along just like all the others… Kelts, some American Indian cultures etc.

And it is cultural imperialism to impose equality on Arabs. We can help them achieve it by influencing them in subtle ways, but telling them what to do or forcing them, is a recipe for possibly catastrophic failure. “Liberation” happened internally in the “West”. Women got the vote in New Zealand first, later in Britain, then in the US… The “East” has followed its own special path.

Gay rights aren’t the same thing as women’s rights though, because gay people have all of the same rights as the rest of their particular sex (male or female). But they diverge on personal rights, things to do with relationships… The marriage issue is bad, but mostly gay people are just denied the right to express themselves, (which is really quite horrific in itself, but doesn’t deny them any opportunities in society –so the history of wildly successful gay people tells us).

I totally agree, 100%.
I think this is similar to womens and/or African American rights. Gays/Lesbians are people too and deserve the same freedoms as any other person in this world. If they love someone, who are we to tell them they can't make the same oath a man and women do when letting the world know that they love eachother?

I have known gay people to be two types:
1) regular people that just happen to be gay
2) gay people who act in a way that reinforces sterotypes.

I find that the latter type of person I genuinely don't like, they often, in my opinion are using homosexuality as a platform to express deeper psychological issues, and they may or may not actually be gay. I think they clearly don't know it. These are the people who end up having sex change opperations and then find they're still not happy. They're not happy with who they are and they try to change themselves to make themselves happy, but it doesn't work, because it's only a superficial change. What these people need is counciling, every one I've met has been really depressed, and they use the flamboyant gay sterotypes to cover it. Oddly enough I've seen this more commonly in gay men than gay women.

Of the former group I've had several friends of either gender it its fairly ridiculous that they aren't allowed to get married. Most of them get "married" anyway, in a non-legal sense but it's bullshit that they don't get the legal benifits that come from marraige.

Thats where I stand on "the whole gay thing"

I believe a church should be able to decide who to marry and who not to marry.

I believe the state shouldn't be offering incentives or disincentives for people to get married. If the state didn't. This dicsussion would be over, except for the various arguments between religious groups on whether to allow marrige or not.

However, the state does give tax advantages (and disadvantages, but I haven't set them side by side to say what the benefit/detriment net is.) for married couples. In some ways, this kind of made sense because women are still and underclass (that is improving, but women still make 30% less than men). The underclass thing matters because it justifies why legislation was set up so that if a married man, who had benefitted in his career because of having a supportive wife, who didn't benefit directly, decided to leave his spouse, the spouse wasn't in complete financial hardship. On a side note, court cases have worked the other way, where the wife benefitted in her career from a supportive husband, and she had to provide support for him.

All of this crap should be set up with a good pre-nup, but it isn't. So there are laws to protect the spouse of either sex.

By denying homosexuals the right to this kind of protection, whether you agree with the protection or not, is discrimination based on sexual preference, and flat out wrong.


I think that an equitable solution is to have the state recognize no marriages, and require people who get married to also have a civil union, which outlines those protections above. People who want a church service that is sanctified by deity X? Go for it, but you don't get any state protections. In order to get those protections and tax benefits, you need to get a civil union on top of that.