I can't be bothered to review the primaries at this point (My voting rating is Bush>=Hillary>Fiorina>>>>Cruze=?=Sanders, and I refuse to decide on the rest for a while, Trump included), so I'll just say "less disbelief than they claim". What, did you think Republicans were wholly pure and honest? The only one I assess to be so pure is Cruz, who I simply will not vote for (my state allows leaving any combination of races blank).
Grayhome wrote:As to your second point Krulle I do not see how that has any bearing any on my points. The philosophical musings of theologians are not going to erase the event from history, nor will reinterpretations of those texts bring back the dead. These biblical passages were used as justification of the African slave trade. This is a verified historical fact.
Neither do the unfounded claims of manipulators dictate the nature of things which they do not have the grounds to define. Your own point stands against you.
Grayhome wrote:The very fact that it was used to such great effect in validating the African Slave trade proves that it was very valid in influencing the thoughts and actions of millions.
Here's a modified form of this sentence:
The very fact that it was used to such great effect in accelerating and sustaining the African Slave Trade proves that it was very successful in influencing the thoughts and actions of millions.
You used the word "valid" quite a number of times in the original, but how exactly did you determine that "valid" belonged in those particular positions?
At any rate, the Bible wasn't what produced that magnitude of effect: money was. The South discovered that cotton was very valuable, and thus started importing slaves to increase the amount that they could produce. However, slaves could honestly only work coastal cotton, because because inland cotton seeds are and always were too small to pick by hand. By the late 1700s, it was becoming clear to the southern plantation owners that slavery was not the font of money that they had once considered it: plantation slavery was largely doomed, and all that
could therefor remain were a few household servants: slavery was going to drop to the levels seen in the old Roman Empire (where it was never common, despite the fame of Sparticus: the Romans were afraid of revolt, and thus kept them few). Then Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin, and it made financial sense again, because his gin
could work with inland cotton, and thus increased possible production. This last-minute reprieve is what the civil war interrupted. Except that rather than interrupt slavery, it just reduced the severity of the system: sharecropping was arguably not as bad as slavery, but it was still pretty far down the spectrum, and it didn't end (or rather the mass-misery aspects ended: if you're just starting out, farming is still
very low-profit in America; rich farmers are either capitalists instead of farmers, or have been in the game for
decades) until mechanical harvesters became reliable enough in the 1950s.
And if you look at e.g. the coal-mining or textile industry about the same time, you see the same or similar without all the slavery (labor unions didn't come out of nowhere): and I have never heard of a religious reason for
that misery.
Grayhome wrote:Like it was pointed out by several participants in this discussion, context is very important.
The small exercise I gave you should point out that it is nearly impossible to interpret these old texts, as the context has dramatically changed.
Krulle, people can and do interpret these holy texts every single day of the week.
And when they cannot interpret, they
invent. In fact, when Washington was made President,
we invented. America does not simply have a history, it has a mythology, and for a
reason: it's useful. Lincoln is now part of it, FDR is part of it, Reagan is part of it. JFK is part of it, but he seems to be getting somewhat undermined as of late, and LBJ and Nixon rehabilitated (in so much as a chronic paranoid
can be rehabilitated by revealing the truth). Others as well, of course, but you need a certain sense of "magic" to make the list. None of the presidents since Reagan, Bush Jr & Obama included, seem to have that certain touch (Bill Clinton might make it, but if so then he'll be rather ignominious among the list).
Grayhome wrote:Then they start mega churches and sends millions, tens of millions, even hundreds of millions of dollars to fund the election campaigns of politicians who agree with their religious agenda and upon being elected fight against LBGT rights, women's rights, try to get creationist teachings put into science classrooms, try to teach that slavery in the United States was just a big conspiracy and that it didn't happen, etc.
And corporations do it as well, and so do labor unions; and in case you forgot, one of the most vociferous anti-slavery factions was precisely such
for religious reasons.
Grayhome wrote:Also: just because some egocentric and dumb people interpret "holy texts" in a very (for them) convenient fashion does not mean that the interpretation is right, or followed by a majority of that religion.
Krulle the United States fought one of it's most violent wars over the slavery. The scars of that conflict are still prevalent today and I still see quite a few confederate battle flags in my home state in the north. This is not a "some people" event that can be waved away, this was and is a very important historical event and it continues to influence the United States to this day.
The Civil War was
also fought over a (accurate) perception that the South was losing political power to the north (there really were that many immigrants at the time, and they shunned the South... because of the slavery, and what I consider an accurately perceived similarity between Southern plantation owners and English lords of the manor). The South could have (and arguable should have) tried to diversify into industry, but because of their opposition to debt they never did: the delay of the Inter-Continental Railroad until after the Civil War is at least partly a result of this.
The scars of the conflict are, in fact,
not just over the war itself, but in fact over differing cultures (though certainly more similar than at the time):
When someone from a red state hears someone from a blue state talking about the environment, they hear a desire of one faction within the United States to impose it's vision of the future upon the rest (Obama is unfortunately not a good enough orator... or maybe it the speech writer? to avoid this. He actually managed to sound like an Ayn Rand villain one or twice when addressing a liberal audience
). Fortunately, as long as we don't get one of the fringe-wingers among the Republicans as the next President the excesses of this administration will likely get rolled to something more reasonable (we can leave
their excesses to whoever comes after
that, and there's always some... Enhanced Interrogations, anyone?).
Meanwhile, when a blue stater hears a red stater talking about abortion, they hear a desire of one faction within the United States to impose it's vision of the future upon the rest (I actually might have heard worse than you, since I actually
live in a red state). These laws tend to get overturned fortunately, and that's if they even survive the legislative sniff test in the first place (politics tends to draw money-hunters and TvTropes Fundamentalists though, so they do tend to pass... then again, NYC Soda laws, so it applies on all sides).
Razor One wrote:
I decline to bake that cake, on the grounds I do not condone your actions. You go get guns (government) and force compliance. Repeat after me, "Its a free country" (⌐■_■)–︻╦╤─ now bake that cake.
Ah yes, the
infamous cake incident. Please examine the following statements.
Would you agree that it is good and correct for a business to refuse service to someone who is gay?
Would you agree that it is good and correct for a business to refuse service to someone who is black?
Would you agree that it is good and correct for a business to refuse service to someone who is muslim?
Would you agree that it is good and correct for a business to refuse service to someone who is french?
Those last three are flat out illegal.
If the Hobby Lobby case is carried forward, then depending on the respective groundings of the decisions (I don't even remember if I
heard why the court ruled the way it did), eventually all of those refusals may actually be legal... with caveats. The Hobby Lobby health-care case established that certain corporations can be legitimately ascribed specific moralities, but
also established that forcing action against those morals is indeed against the law. The later of which is certainly reasonable when applied to groups that genuinely have some form of morality, since otherwise a Neo-Nazi could legitimately sue the Anti-Defamation League for not being hired if the successful applicant was verifiably the vastly inferior candidate. No, seriously, if you take that last,
uncomfortable step back then you
do find that
if a group's morality is
not allowed to play a role in business decisions, then the Neo-Nazi
is the correct hire, because the organization's hiring procedures are capable of calculating that
in the absence of the moral-horror of that particular hiring decision the Neo-Nazi is the superior choice, and any decision to the contrary is a violation of legal non-discrimination rules.
And if morality is a valid factor in business choices for groups (whether corporations, labor unions, social lodges, etc.), as the Supreme Court has itself de-facto ruled to be the case, then it is virtually impossible to
not apply that rule to individuals. Which is where a bit of irony comes in, because while you
can usually tell if someone is black from looking at them, you
can't reliably determine that with homosexuality: I expect that either the laws will be changed, or we will discover what the Supreme Court thinks about requiring business decisions to all be enforceable
(if they say "yes, it must be enforceable", then all business rules against serving gays and Muslims will instantly be invalid, rendering the whole point of those laws moot: because that plaid-wearning grizzled slightly smelly white male trucker that you serve at the lunch counter might say if asked that he is both gay
and Islamic, yet you were fine with feeding him for years).
This is one of the reasons why the BSA allowing gays is actually major within their ranks: it makes the BSA itself (not necessarily the individual troops) subject to discrimination rules in a way that they previously were not (it's a less extreme equivalent to the Vatican deciding that homosexuals can serve as clergy).
Razor One wrote:That first statement is still a rather emergent phenomenon legally, and so varies state by state. The flipside of freedom is responsibility. Freedom is also a two way street. One of the cornerstones of freedom, democracy, and the sheer success that the US is built on is the fact that anyone can do business with anyone within certain legal restrictions. You can't be refused service just because you're black. Or french. Or muslim. Buy you can be refused service in some areas because you're gay, or you're promoting a pro-gay message.
And customers can refuse to buy from you because you sound Texan, or you have a christian bumper-sticker, or you promote a anti-gay message. Freedom is a two-way street all right, but bear in mind that there is
always some dark implication of this or that which can bring the whole thing tumbling into chaos or tyranny, and that
all of us customers in some sense depend on those rules being applied only to the "merchants", and never to the "peasants".
Razor One wrote:I feel that for the same reason that businesses must serve black people, muslims, and frenchmen, businesses have absolutely no right to refuse service to gay people. If you're fine with businesses discriminating against gay people then you also must be fine with businesses discriminating against just about anyone else for any reason. It's a free country, right? Or does this right to discriminate only apply when it's against a group that you find distasteful?
It's a free country, right? Let California boycott Arizona.
Seriously, no happiness lies down this road, only scale can even
hope to keep this train of logic from rampaging while rabid.
Razor One wrote:Nemo wrote:
To say nothing of the poor thought which has gone into the LGBT community. There are two modes of thought here. One is that it is a choice, something you can pick up or drop as a habit.
There is literally nobody in the LGBT community who advocates that their sexuality is ever a choice.
I've actually heard it before, though it was years ago.
Razor One wrote:
Other is that is a biological imperative, just born that way! If it is true that it is a choice, it is a choice which others must be free to support OR criticize at will. If it is not a choice, but a fault of biology, then science will eventually discover the fault. Be it randomly mismatched DNA or a hormonal imbalance during pregnancy it matters not, eventually it will be known and after that, will be treatable. In the meantime that would make it a disease or perhaps more accurately a syndrome of unknown cause. Yet it is illegal to try to treat it as such in two states, California and New York, owing to questionable past practices (electroshock therapy) attempting to treat it as such.
Curiously, the only modern research I know of in that line is Oregon State University research into ram sexuality. PETA tried to stop that research by saying the results could lead to medical research into changing the sexuality of humans. The researchers then took flak from LGBT supporters for daring to inquire into the medical basis of homosexuality. Interesting that a group which insists it suffers greatly not by its own choosing but as a consequence of biology does not want nor encourage medical research into finding answers or possible treatments or cures. Groups waving flags and wearing ribbons for curing this disease or that cancer, but not in this case. My question becomes where does the biology end and the choice begin?
I find it rather disturbing that the moment we accept that homosexuality has a biological basis that we must then immediately move towards identifying and 'fixing' it as though it is problem. It also disturbs me that the way you phrase it coming into being mandates that it be a mistake and the attempt to relegate it as a disease. Exactly what is wrong with being a homosexual that requires fixing? If your answer is that they face societal pressure and persecution, then I would argue that it is society that needs to change and not the other way around.
This particular perspective
actually arises out of taking a very mechanical view of the biological aspects behind it, rather than anything sociological. My point earlier about transsexuals was actually much the same: if you actually think about the biological subjects in question, rather than any other influencing factors, then asexuality, homosexuality, and bisexuality don't make a lot of sense, because you have limited resources (sperm and eggs.. and time, I suppose) with which to achieve something that theoretically the biological processes in question should be attempting to achieve (reproduction). From a low-level perspective he is actually perfectly right.
It's much like transsexuality, where it would only make sense for society to touch the subject if some sort of societal gain could be reached via that intervention, but none the less, when you're just considering the biological concepts it's a perfectly sensible question to ask.
Razor One wrote:That being said, they have found some genetic factors that increase the rate of homosexuality.
It's linked to fertility. Assuming that the factors that give rise to homosexuality are solely genetic, you'd also need to effectively nuke fertility across certain cross-sections of society in order to 'fix' the 'problem'.
And this is where you start to move beyond low-level biological matters. It doesn't change the low-level biological reasoning, but within an individualistic society (like our own), it should be enough.
Razor One wrote:That being said, genetics is certainly not the sole factor. There are cases of twins where one is homosexual and the other not. You can't really argue that genetics are a factor there, and since a lot of those cases have the twins growing up in identical environments and frequently together, sociological factors become difficult to underpin as well.
It was years ago, but some study gave me the impression that around 80% of the human population is probably genetically bisexual, with the minorities being homosexuals, heterosexuals, and asexuals (apparently a genuine category: they enjoy sex, but they don't experience sexual attraction like most people).
Razor One wrote:There are a lot of factors, known and unknown that go into shaping ones sexuality. Finding what these factors are is certainly a scientific endeavour worth pursuing. Taking that knowledge and using it to determine a good and correct sexuality and labelling all other sexualities that do not conform to that standard as things to be fixed, as a disease to be cured, is beyond repugnant and for reasons I would hope are readily apparent and obvious.
There's also no stopping a group you dislike from rising to power and declaring your way of life as a disease to be cured and then persecuting you in turn. How we treat our minorities reflects upon us as a society. I prefer to live in a society that is just, fair, and tolerant if not inclusive. The society that opts to 'cure' the gay is, in my view, none of those things and on a very dark path indeed.
Agreed, but when I was a child I was interested in living in isolation on a mountain, so I am fully aware of why: I prefer individuality, whereas those actions are rooted in social tilts, where communism and fascism eventually manifest (Fascism is economically the "conservative" counterpart to Communism). We actually see some level of manifestation of this darkness, such as the Shining Path's opposition to the concept of human rights. The monster is ever on the other side of the mirror, and we cannot outrun it, but instead merely not become it.