So, since most of us share the =same religion, I'd like to get some opinions...

Ideas on homosexuals.

Political Party.

And anything interesting?

I

I am not affiliated with any religion, so I can like whatever I want without an outside force 'suggesting' what I should support and what not to.

Homosexuals are "A okay" in my book, no problem, do you wanna do.

I am a Republican by nature since I prefer there way of running an economy, but I prefer Democratic ideals: pro-choice etc.
But I dislike the way Democrats run the economy, it doesn't work, plain and simple. And I dislike Republican ideals: pro-life, or any other law trying to be passed because of religious beliefs.

You can keep religious laws in the Middle East, in my own opinion.

451563
I just can't stand politics as a whole. We have a good system on paper, but then parties happened...

451584

Well I embrace them, they are a daily part of life in general. I want to know who I stand for, and who I disagree with.

And 2 parties, what can you do, people always have differing opinions, nothing you can do but pick a side. And, this may just be me being a judgmental douche, but I look down on people who don't understand politics, they are that important to American life, but ignorance is bliss I suppose.

And I suppose the American educational system is lagging behind for some reason.

451589
My problem with politics is the party system, plain and simple. Parties are businesses, designed with no purpose beyond getting a candidate elected. It doesn't matter who gets elected into office, no candidate can do anything that the party that elects him doesn't want. It's a disgrace to the people the government is supposed to serve.

It's not that I don't make an effort to understand politics, I know that I need to have an understanding of politics to be able to form an opinion worth having in the modern world. But the more I understand politics, the more I hate them. I can dislike things that I study, it's like those annoying core classes that I only take because my degree requires them. I'd rather be studying music, as my major entails, but if I want to graduate, I still need to have an understanding of math.

That was a better analogy before I tried to explain it.

451603

Well of course it's business, it is a government, a country's economy acts almost exactly like a company. But yeah, I understand your dislike, as I dislike them as-well. And you analogy was pretty spot on.

451603>>451614
'

All of that said, who do you plan on voting for.supporting this November?

451704

Romney, Obama is a totally incompetent leader.

452442

But what is your written opinion?

Homosexuality is an issue that the church makes a bigger deal out of than the Bible does. To be honest, I personally can't see anything wrong with homosexuality. I think it's possible that people can engage in homosexual relations in a God honoring manner.

And that is a struggle for me, seeing as God's word directly states that taking part in homosexuality is sinful, and especially so because I myself struggled with homosexual desire for years, and occasionally I still do. I'm not gay, nor do I want to engage in homosexual relations with anyone, but I can't help but to catch myself looking at an attractive guy for just a little too long.

I've decided that I'm not going to bother arguing one way or the other. God gave me a story to tell, and asked me to tell it. He didn't tell me to go around telling people that they need to change their lifestyles, just to spread the good news of Jesus Christ.

454657
John chapter 4 talks about Jesus and the woman at the well. He asks her for a drink of water, and she, in turn asks why He is speaking to a Samaritan. Jesus, tells her about living water and reveals all of her sins. He also tells her he is the Christ. If you read all of John 4, then you can interpret that story as hate the sin, but love the sinner. Romans chapter 1 even says that homosexuality is a sin but that a gay person can be changed through the Holy Spirit. The church should welcome homosexuals into the church, but shouldn't encourage their lifestyle.

454813

So except your losses and say "we don't like it, but won't fight it"?

455209
No, we like you, but we dont like your sinful nature. Hate the sin, not the sinner

455223

Let me rephrase, my bad, "we don't like it," ('it' being, they're gay, not them personally).
So they hate what you do, but they don't hate you? That still sounds equally dis-respectful. Like telling a tradesman, his trade is stupid and useless, but I don't hate you, just what you enjoy dong, just hate what makes you happy, just hate what makes 'you' you, but not you personally?

Is that the gist?

Thing is though, when Christ told the Samaritan woman all she had done, and told her He was the messiah, she went out and witnessed to others. Bringing a large group of Samaritans to Christ. Homosexuals may not think it's wrong, but the body does know it, it releases the same chemicals into the brain when 2 guys kiss, but not the high amount it normally would when a guy and girl kiss. So while it may sound offensive when we say hate the sin not the sinner, we still treat them like we would treat any other member of the congregation

[Science!]
From doing things like studying identical twins who were split up at birth and raised in different families, we know that homosexuality is at least partly genetic (~50% correlation). Like any other genetically-determined trait, the expression of the genes can be affected by the environment (no, this doesn't include things like hanging around gay people; it's stuff like diet, hormones, etc). The individual has essentially no control over either set of factors.
[/Science!]

To get at why organized religion has such an issue with homosexuality, you need to study its history. The short, oversimplified version is this: it's about control. You can only have sex at these times and in these ways, because it makes more of you. Outside of that, it's bad and wrong, because you're having too much fun, and you need to be at least somewhat unhappy so our promises of a better life have a stronger hold on you. (Think about where and when modern monotheisms grow the fastest. Hint: it isn't peaceful places with nice climates, open governments, lots of food, good healthcare, and honest cops on every corner.)

455250

There body knows it's wrong? I am sorry but you need to find your facts from somewhere else then the bible. It would be fine, if you used most of your info from it, but some diversity would be nice.

Here's the straight answer, their bodies is what tells them, this is right. While your body tells YOU IT'S WRONG.
That is how they are genetically programmed, just because you think it's wrong, doesn't mean it really is. You are letting your, and other peoples bigotry cloud the difference between right and wrong.

454657 I have that issue sometimes.

455610
1. If you get STD's from something, then does common sense tell you to do it over and over again? So unless people have an immune system that can fight STD's like AIDS, and I don't have that immune system, then I'm pretty sure that its WRONG.

2. The average lesbian relationship lasts about a year, a homosexual one lasts even less.

3. I'm not just using the Bible here, I'm also using science. I know. Big shocker for a Christian to use science.

455697
A person can contract STD's from a heterosexual relationship just as easily as a homosexual one...

455697
Quick question, what's your source for length of relationship, and what does it say about straight relationships? Note that I said relationships, not marriages. Apples to apples, please. You might find it interesting to know that, in countries that allow gay marriage, heterosexual and homosexual divorce rates are about the same.

455697

There are ways other then sexual intercourse to contract STD's, like giving blood, yes they have measures to prevent it, but it still happens.

And Corny already told you that is just as easy to contract something in a heterosexual relationship as it is homosexual. Also, what if someone was raped and got and STD that way? Are they in the wrong for being raped?

Also, if you get facts from one side, get some from the other as well.

455895. It's not just STDs. Life span shortens, there's are risks of physical injury and mental illness. Some of which don't even happen in heterosexual relationships.

456336

Don't even happen is heterosexual relationships? I would like to know them, I have never heard of a solely gay STD.

451532

Well, in a nutshell:

- Against homosexuality.
- Against abortion.
- Against death penalty.
- Against nuclear weapons.
- Against "full" free speech.
- In favor of gun control.
- In favor of social wellfare.
- In favor of public health care.
- In favor of public education.
- In favor of green policies.

I am not american, so I am not sure in which political party I would be. Did I forget any polemic issue to add?

456813
'Full' free speech? Please explain.

534954

I don't believe that free speech should protect hate speech.

I believe that people should be able to disagree with everything. But when those words incite violence I think they should be regulated.

535094
But who gets to decide what "hate speech" is? I can think of quite a few things that would have been classified as such 200 years ago but not now, and vice versa. And that's just in my part of the world. Different cultures have different ideas on the subject. What if unpleasant facts are classified as hate speech?

536025

The law, the judge, people's common sense? It's not that hard to notice things like place and reason, you just have to sufficiently examine it.

My country was a racism law, for example. Some people complain, but things are much better now than they were before it.

I agree there is many different cultures and differences through time, but that doesn't mean that all values are acceptable. Otherwise someone could suggest that a law system from 500bc could be an acceptable form nowadays.

As for the 'unpleasants facts', it's like I say: the truth can be ugly, but it's not mean spirited. For example, if you do an historic documentary about war, I fully expect you to show the gruesome details of it. But if you do the same documentary trying to show how inhumane a country is, then your objective is far besides 'just showing facts', don't you agree?

536057
Oh, I understand how hate speech laws generally work (Canada has them), but in practice they can be problematic. Here, they are often handled at the level of a provincial "Human Rights Tribunal", where you are generally guilty until proven innocent, there aren't firm categories that tell you what's offensive in advance, etc. In theory, they could be useful, but after a certain point, they become more of a problem than they solve.

As for not all values being acceptable, imagine a hypothetical world where, 100 years from now, opposition to homosexuality is treated the same way as support for racial slavery is treated now. Does that retroactively render your present values "wrong", or just different? Are they unacceptable because they are factually wrong, or because of public consensus? What if the public consensus or judicial opinion is factually wrong?

As for the "unpleasant facts" issue, we can see what happens when, for example, anyone in the public view dares to suggest that in general males have a higher aptitude for math than females at the highest levels. "That's sexist / discriminatory / whatever", regardless of what is true in reality. People don't care if it's true, they just don't want to hear it at all.

536127

I cannot say how is it in the US, but where I live people are usually inoccent until proven guilty. And while this approach isn't perfect, it's the fairest at my point of view. Still, that doesn't mean that the law would be inefficient: just that the judicial body would have to change in order to better enforce it.

That really depends on how you define opposition to homosexuality. I am against bashing of homosexuals, not of homosexuality. The same applies to religion, political parties, sports clubs, etc: you are free to criticize ideas and things, but you shouldn't be free to criticize people.

In your society of the future, this value could be "wrong" by other people. But then, in this future society, would we really think as we do now? Do we know as much as we do now? That is another important thing to consider, one that makes it impossible for me to answer your question.

That really depends on who is saying it. If you are a scientist in a scientist meeting, doing a research and arrives at this conclusion, then no. If you are a machist who is using this fact to try to downplay women performance in the math olympics, then yes, you are being sexist. Still, that would also depends if the other party would get offended at it.

536206
See, I'm not a fan of legislating a policy without already having an acceptable method of implementing it. We have the hate speech laws in Canada because it gets politicians votes, but the implementation sucks.

For the homosexuality example, saying anything non-negative (even if not positive) about slavery is "unthinkable", and can be considered hateful. Imagine if saying anything non-positive about homosexuality (even if not negative) was treated the same way. First you can't criticize people, then you can't criticize people's ideas, and eventually you can't criticize ideas.

For the math example, what if you're president of Harvard University, and are discussing possible reasons for the under-representation of women "in tenured positions in science and engineering at top universities and research institutions"? What if you suggest that there are at least three possible explanations, including "The high-powered job hypothesis", "Different availability of aptitude at the high end", and "Different socialization and patterns of discrimination in a search"?

What if you say "So my best guess, to provoke you, of what's behind all of this is that the largest phenomenon, by far, is the general clash between people's legitimate family desires and employers' current desire for high power and high intensity, that in the special case of science and engineering, there are issues of intrinsic aptitude, and particularly of the variability of aptitude, and that those considerations are reinforced by what are in fact lesser factors involving socialization and continuing discrimination. I would like nothing better than to be proved wrong, because I would like nothing better than for these problems to be addressable simply by everybody understanding what they are, and working very hard to address them."

I'll tell you what happens. You lose your job at Harvard, and you don't get to be Treasury Secretary for the Federal Government. Now imagine that said government had anti-discrimination hate speech laws, rather than all this just being caused by public uproar.

For homosexuality, I was recently convinced that the Bible in it's original greek didn't clearly prohibit homosexuallity as a sin, so I'm not against that anymore (however, it's not the ideal kind of relationship, since I do believe that God had intended for marriage to be heterosexual).

For politics, I support whatever party the country needs most.

536248

See, I'm not a fan of legislating a policy without already having an acceptable method of implementing it. We have the hate speech laws in Canada because it gets politicians votes, but the implementation sucks.

But here is the thing: all the laws are inefficient if the implementation is wrong. If a law is worth going on, then we need to fix the process and then allow it. And I believe that would be one of such laws.

For the homosexuality example, saying anything non-negative (even if not positive) about slavery is "unthinkable", and can be considered hateful. Imagine if saying anything non-positive about homosexuality (even if not negative) was treated the same way. First you can't criticize people, then you can't criticize people's ideas, and eventually you can't criticize ideas.

I‘m not American, so I really can’t say much about this. Still, here in my country if you say something positive about slavery you will receive bad publicity, but you won’t be sent to prison. Still, if you said something like ‘blacks would be better slaves because they aren’t good workers’, then yes, the law would apply and you would receive some kind of punishment.

For the math example, what if you're president of Harvard University, and are discussing possible reasons for the under-representation of women "in tenured positions in science and engineering at top universities and research institutions"? What if you suggest that there are at least three possible explanations, including "The high-powered job hypothesis", "Different availability of aptitude at the high end", and "Different socialization and patterns of discrimination in a search"?

What if you say "So my best guess, to provoke you, of what's behind all of this is that the largest phenomenon, by far, is the general clash between people's legitimate family desires and employers' current desire for high power and high intensity, that in the special case of science and engineering, there are issues of intrinsic aptitude, and particularly of the variability of aptitude, and that those considerations are reinforced by what are in fact lesser factors involving socialization and continuing discrimination. I would like nothing better than to be proved wrong, because I would like nothing better than for these problems to be addressable simply by everybody understanding what they are, and working very hard to address them."

I'll tell you what happens. You lose your job at Harvard, and you don't get to be Treasury Secretary for the Federal Government. Now imagine that said government had anti-discrimination hate speech laws, rather than all this just being caused by public uproar.

I am sure that most people would only scratch their heads, trying to understand what he said.

But seriously, I am not sure the other mathematicians would be offended by it. Unless there was a press conference there, which the news reporter would try to get a simpler answer for him.

I imagine the interviewer would go and ask: “Are you saying that woman perform worse at math?” And then he would reply: “The result of the research made in my university shows that women has a tendency to perform worse at math than men.”

Did you notice something? He didn’t add his personal opinion there. I don’t know how it would be in America, but here he wouldn’t be punished for saying something if he didn’t put his personal values in it.

But if he said: “I said that women performs worse at math than men. And I have a study that proves it.” He is now putting his own personal values on it, and women may get offended or not. I don’t think that would also be punishable, but it really shows a lack of ‘touch’ on his part.

It really depends on how you say something.

538583
I think the difference here is, you're focusing on the way things ought to be, and I'm focusing on the way things are. Sure, if laws, political positions, and popular opinion were suddenly formed on a completely rational basis and implemented correctly, we could do a great many things. However, they currently aren't, and I have no reason to believe that they ever will. Given that, we have to weigh the positives and negatives of any policy. Where such policies have been implemented in reality, they have frequently been abused.

I'm in agreement with John Adams:

It is more important that innocence be protected than it is that guilt be punished, for guilt and crimes are so frequent in this world that they cannot all be punished.

But if innocence itself is brought to the bar and condemned, perhaps to die, then the citizen will say, "whether I do good or whether I do evil is immaterial, for innocence itself is no protection," and if such an idea as that were to take hold in the mind of the citizen that would be the end of security whatsoever.

I'd have to look up the references again, but we've studied this process, and when it becomes unacceptable to discuss certain things in public, people don't stop discussing them. They only discuss them with people who already agree with them instead. This makes racists more racist, and extremists more extreme in their views. It isn't helpful. It might make public conversations more "polite", but it actually makes the underlying problems worse. And to compound the folly, if you suddenly discover that the only people who are willing to speak an "unacceptable" fact are, for example, racists or extremists, and you discover that they are in fact correct, that makes some people more likely to believe racist or extremist nonsense, because they were the only ones who told the truth before.

As for my math example, I wasn't making it up. That's Lawrence Summers' life, starting in 2005. We shouldn't have to sugar-coat the truth, or avoid asking important questions just because they make people uncomfortable. Reality is what it is, and people need to deal with it.

538591

I think the difference here is, you're focusing on the way things ought to be, and I'm focusing on the way things are. Sure, if laws, political positions, and popular opinion were suddenly formed on a completely rational basis and implemented correctly, we could do a great many things. However, they currently aren't, and I have no reason to believe that they ever will. Given that, we have to weigh the positives and negatives of any policy. Where such policies have been implemented in reality, they have frequently been abused.

But you are applying how things are in America and Canada, and I am talking about how things can be in general. Just because America situation is one, it doesn’t mean that it wouldn’t be applicable in other countries. Still, I disagree with your statement: ever is a very strong word to use, and there is no way to really know if things can change or don’t.

I'm in agreement with John Adams:
It is more important that innocence be protected than it is that guilt be punished, for guilt and crimes are so frequent in this world that they cannot all be punished.
But if innocence itself is brought to the bar and condemned, perhaps to die, then the citizen will say, "whether I do good or whether I do evil is immaterial, for innocence itself is no protection," and if such an idea as that were to take hold in the mind of the citizen that would be the end of security whatsoever.

I am not sure how this phrase would apply to this situation. Still, I agree that people shouldn’t be considerate guilty until proven otherwise. Mind you, the focus on ‘proven otherwise’.

It’s true that a state cannot punish every crime, but that really shouldn’t be an excuse to put a low approach on them. And it’s also kind of pessimism to say that it would have no difference to do what is right or wrong: even if something unethical was suddenly accepted, I am sure the people own moral convictions would still stop them in getting in the following deed.

I'd have to look up the references again, but we've studied this process, and when it becomes unacceptable to discuss certain things in public, people don't stop discussing them. They only discuss them with people who already agree with them instead. This makes racists more racist, and extremists more extreme in their views. It isn't helpful. It might make public conversations more "polite", but it actually makes the underlying problems worse. And to compound the folly, if you suddenly discover that the only people who are willing to speak an "unacceptable" fact are, for example, racists or extremists, and you discover that they are in fact correct, that makes some people more likely to believe racist or extremist nonsense, because they were the only ones who told the truth before.

I don’t think it quite goes this way. While I agree that talking with people you agree with doesn’t provide counterpoints, I am not sure if this would make them more racist. For example, the Islamism groups like the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Islamism is pretty much accepted there, and yet there are groups competing to try to look more extremist than the other, in order to gather support from the extremist base. The point I am making is that extremism, just like racism wouldn’t probably get worse just because their hate speeches aren’t allowed anymore.

As for ‘unacceptable’ facts, like I said it’s all a matter of how people relay them. I think we can agree to disagree, but I trust the judicial system can have the sense needed to make those choices and see if it’s a fact or if it’s a personal attack.

As for my math example, I wasn't making it up. That's Lawrence Summers' life, starting in 2005. We shouldn't have to sugar-coat the truth, or avoid asking important questions just because they make people uncomfortable. Reality is what it is, and people need to deal with it.

Of course those cases can happen. Just like cases where unregulated hatred provoked deaths and bloodshed. The justice isn’t perfect, but it can be improved. And it needs to be improved.

And reality, like I said, can be ugly… but it can never be mean. All the people in the world should have the right to be respected, and this right for respect needs to be enforced, otherwise conflicts can and will keep happening.