Frosstbyte

It's threads like this when I really miss Gilda. Wonder how she's doing these days.

I think Tully's last point pretty much sums up the issue for me. My wife is a teacher and I've seen kids in her schools as young as four acting in ways that simply can't be described as anything but gay. A kid from a fundamentalist Muslim family who likes to paint his nails, wear dresses and otherwise acts like a five year old girl instead of a five year old buy sure as shit didn't "learn" that behavior from his family or "choose" to be that way in some conscious sense.

And, to put it another way, EVEN IF being gay is a choice, we treat your creed or religion the same way we treat someone's race. It gets strict scrutiny, you can't discriminate against people on the basis of it. If being gay or straight is a "lifestyle choice" it's without question a more fundamental and baseline choice than the choice of which god to believe in. To take this lovely conversation to a ridiculous extreme, if we're not going to protect people's personal choices about who they fuck which have no impact on anyone else, there shouldn't be any protection for religion either.

That is to say, even if we could all agree that it's a choice and not physiologically ingrained (though I think it's much more the latter than the former), we have no problem at all protecting fundamental choices and the mere fact that it is a choice should not automatically end the discussion of whether or not it should be protected, as is argued above.

Iliftrocks

Why are any of you people any less bigoted than the anti-gay poster? You rail against his opinions and make judgements on his character.

He simply made a choice, for whatever reason, to think this way. But why couldn't his nature have led him to this choice also? Saying things are all right just based on genetic tendencies is kind of a slippery slope don't you think?

I don't agree that gay folk are bad, but he's got the right to think so, or our freedoms of speech and religion are just so much crap on a cracker. If we have a right to believe something, then we have a right to believe that everybody else is wrong. Otherwise we will all have to believe all of the same things. Who then gets to choose what is right? I guess our benevolent government will figure out what is best for us to believe and instil all of these things into our children for us. Etc......

Intolerance is also a choice, live with it. When people are free to choose, then they will make choices we don't agree with. Some of those choices will make us mad, one way or another.

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bill hicks - "I don't mean to sound bitter, cold, or cruel, but I am, so that's how it comes out."

MSD

No, it's full of logical fallacies.

Frosstbyte

I am more than happy for him to feel any way he wants to about gays. I am more than happy for him to shout from the rooftops how he feels about gays. He can hate them to the core, and join a church that won't let them get married and I'm happy for both him and his church and every member to feel that way. I disapprove, but I'll defend their right to say it.

There are two problems, though.

The first is he's wrong, and while beliefs are something I'm happy to let people express and have no matter what they are, ignorance and beliefs based on ignorance are dangerous. I have never met a gay person who expressed his sexual orientation as a choice, just as I've never expressed mine as a choice. It supposes that every person at some point in his life has a moment where he says "Am I attracted to girls or guys?" and then decides on one, and that gay people pick improperly and ought to train themselves to pick the other, because that's the "right" choice.

Second, he wants to deprive people of something which our courts have described as a "fundamental right" because he believes it is wrong and because he thinks they have some sort of agency about who turns them on. I like speech. I like people to express themselves. I don't like it when expression infringes on the rights of others. For the life of me, I cannot conceive how two men or women getting married has any impact whatsoever on the lives of anyone other than them or their friends. This is not rape or theft or murder or harassment. There is no victim, just like there was no victim when a black man and a white woman got married. My how society has collapsed since we legalized that nonsense.

And, I guess if none of that matters and I have to be a bigot against a group, I'm ok with being a bigot against bigots.

The_Jazz

So in my hypothetical where I have two gay kids, I'm wrong to be outraged that someone would hate my kids? Or, to remove the hypothetical, to be outraged that this guy seemingly hates any kids that happen to be gay?

He's got a right to his opinion. I've got a right to mine. However, mine doesn't lead to lynch mobs or hate crimes. Guess whose does.

__________________
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - B. Franklin
"There ought to be limits to freedom." - George W. Bush
"We have met the enemy and he is us." - Pogo

KirStang

I'm noticing a lot of logical fallacies here. To each their own.

Lasereth

Exactly!! I don't care if people have their own opinions as long as they're educated, researched, and factual based in cases of this magnitude. But the fact of the matter is that this guy is flat out wrong. Being gay isn't a choice. Acting gay if you are gay is a choice but the actual orientation of liking the same sex in a sexual way is completely out of one's control. He can have his own opinion about this sure, but his opinion is unjust and invalid because he's simply wrong about the fundamental fact surrounding it.

Iliftrocks

Well you might have to convince this guy he is wrong, and ignorant. Good luck there. There is no requirement for freedom of choice, that you be educated. Plus who is going to educate you that you are wrong?

Let's not lose sight of freedom here. If you believe in freedom, then you must allow someone the freedom to remain ignorant. That person has the freedom to choose wrongly (by whatever stick you have to measure wrongness with), and that choice might just lead them to do something illegal. Can't be helped. The true price of freedom. Once that person does something illegal you then take his/her freedoms away. This has no bearing on a person's choice to believe a thing. Once you start telling people what they can and can't believe you've given up the ghost of freedom and are on the road to fascism, well meaning or not.

I don't believe our public schools should teach that being gay is good or bad, that should be up to the parents, and ultimately the individual. If science teaches that it is natural, which it is, then that should be taught, without the judgement of right/wrong. Same thing with evolution, etc. If you don't like it, then please go to a forum which supports your idiocy, err. ideology.

I honestly wish our government would not be involved in marriage anyway. No tax breaks for a choice in living arrangements. Marriage, in my opinion, is a religious rite, or I guess it could be a non-religious contract with your spouse. I do think the government should make parents responsible for their kids, regardless of marriage.

Personally, I don't have time for bigots either, but I would be afraid of anyone that feels justified taking away their right to believe, for their own good, ya know.

Sorry, didn't mean to threadjack.....
-----Added 4/12/2008 at 03 : 11 : 01-----

You are not wrong to be outraged, but it really does no good to get pissed, does it?

Does it always lead to lynch mobs and hate crimes? Even most of the time? By the way I only believe in crimes. Hate is a separate issue and should only be used to establish motive. Hate itself is not a crime. Is murder any less loathsome because someone hated another person, or just because you wanted something from that person? Some people murder out of what they would call love. Does that make it better? I don't think so.

All this reminds me of some lines from The American President (not the best movie, but...):
"America isn't easy. America is advanced citizenship. You gotta want it bad, 'cause it's gonna put up a fight. It's gonna say "You want free speech? Let's see you acknowledge a man whose words make your blood boil, who's standing center stage and advocating at the top of his lungs that which you would spend a lifetime opposing at the top of yours. You want to claim this land as the land of the free? Then the symbol of your country can't just be a flag; the symbol also has to be one of its citizens exercising his right to burn that flag in protest. Show me that, defend that, celebrate that in your classrooms. Then, you can stand up and sing about the "land of the free"."

That kind of sums it up.

__________________
bill hicks - "I don't mean to sound bitter, cold, or cruel, but I am, so that's how it comes out."

Zocrates

Listen, as long as people's personal choices don't affect my life, let them be. live and let live is the philosophy. So, why do we care if the decision is about religion, sexuality, and/or politics? As long as your decisions don't infringe on my decisions, who the hell am I to have an opinion. Go on and make LOVE to whomever you choose (consensual and legal of course), vote for any party you like, pray to whichever god you like, as long as I'm extended the same freedoms I'm happy; isn't that what AMERICA is all about? Isn't that the reason we moved from England on boats? Isn't that the reason the fathers of our fathers spilled their blood on this wonderful soil? We are AMERICANS; We are here because we chose to be different; That is what our heritage is, a heritage of choice and tolerance, and if you don't like it, GO SOMEWHERE ELSE. In Mozambique they hang people for being gay, look how far has that country come along,

Deltona Couple

What gets to me the most about the statement quoted in the OP is not that he is obviously anti-gay, hell, he has the right to feel however he feels, and nobody has the right to tell him any different. What bothers me the most is his plans to teach his own children that it is wrong. While they ARE his children, I feel that forcing a belief on someone is worse than anything else one could do to a child. Giving the child as much information as possible, and letting that child make a decision on who they want to be on their OWN is proper parenting skills in my eyes. I guess it is a fine line there in how people raise their own children, and I know many here are VERY sensitive about their own children, as I am. I just have a hard time seeing people teach their children only THEIR way of how the world should be. I am Baptist, but one of my kids tends to be more Catholic in what they believe in, and the other is more Agnostic ( I believe that is the term) in how she sees religion. Did I force Baptist ways onto my children? no. I let them attend MANY churches and decide on their own what they liked, not that we attend church on a regular basis. Children should be nurtured, not trained.

I love how the Catholic church is so "Bible specific" in how things should be. Considering the Bilble was written by man, and translated by man, I see the inherent risk of errors, omissions, and out-and-out changes that could be made to fit how the church leaders wanted it to be. Anyone can be "taught" that, say being gay is wrong according to the Bible...But then, how does anyone KNOW? They have to have that thing called "faith". Interesting how "faith" can be so closely compared to "hope".
Again, as I said in my now favorite quote by me...."Children should be nurtured, not trained"

__________________
"It is not that I have failed, but that I have found 10,000 ways that it DOESN'T work!" --Thomas Edison

Baraka_Guru

Just a reminder to everyone: Jesus died to take away our sins, not our sexuality.

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Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot