petals
so is heterosexuality... to the straight peson; itsa heteros personal affair... why is it important to the rest of us?
we're forced to live with it everyday... Its in our face everyday... and straight people complain about gays? I dont understand the straight mentality of "gays.... its ok by me as long as its kept behind closed doors"
..

that isn't my mentality at all.

what i meant is - how is expecting ppl to keep their religion behind closed doors any different from expecting to keep their sexuality behind closed doors?

but obv. i must be a homophobic cow if i don't agree with y'all, right?

__________________

that's also pretty much what i've been trying to say this whole time.

telling people to stfu about their religion in the workplace, or any place for that matter, is right up there with the whole "don't ask, don't tell" policy. & i'm willing to assure that many users in this thread opposed the whole "STFU & DO YR JOB NO MATTER WHAT U R" motto because they felt gays should openly serve in the military, yet harp on about how discriminative it is when someone of faith acts accordingly to their faith. the gays can be gay, but the christians can't be christians? does that honestly make sense to anybody?

& if anyone thinks that sexuality is more important & vital to people than religion is.. well sry, but it really is a different scenario for everybody. i know this bitch who told her parents she was a dyke & they ended up getting more enraged that the bitch she was dating was black. & my family would sooner accept me being a gay lot lizard than they would if i were to throw away my rosary to become a jew & not believe in jesus. or if i ever associated with the likes of user Diablo_ in any form.

different strokes, guys. i thought you guys were supposed to be all open-minded & shit.

i'm not sure why you are allowing identities an equal validity. can the child killers be child killers? obviously that's a bit extreme, but i'm not really as concerned about why people do things or what they call themselves to justify the things they do, more whether the actual things they do are sound or not.

__________________
they made soup out of my research turtles.

& isn't st. george also the patron saint of Ethiopia & herpes? good crowd lmao!!!

they all pale against the true American Saint.

well kesh, in a completely open-minded world, yes, child killers could be child killers. but in this day & age that's a little dramatic. then again, you are british & somewhat of the lesser species so that's understandable.

if its in with accordance with the law, its fair game. anything that goes outside of that should be taken to the courts & be judged individually, like this case was. if she refused the marriage because she's just a homophobic little bitch, then that's wrong & the law should ride her ass for it. but if she did it out of fear of her salvation, then its fair game.

& even if she was homophobic & used the christian thing as a scapegoat, it's still fair game. unless they come up with a How Holy R U? online quiz that all religious people have to take to test their faith in the courtroom.

so you're saying it's ok to do bad things if you can justify them religiously, even if the justification is misguided?

and that's how superior species do things?

__________________
they made soup out of my research turtles.

yes.

hmm, time to get 18th century on your medieval ass

__________________
they made soup out of my research turtles.

everybody has feelings, kesh. & everybody's feelings must be respected.

or else.

i live just up the street from where they used to publically execute catholics in the good old days st. george was loose.

but that's illegal

i'm not arguing for that. (though i fail to see how either is relevant in the workplace), it's just that what you and this women call "openness" and "religious freedom" is, to me, just the right to discriminate. a guy open about his sexuality does not effect christians in the same way.

Petals.. im not calling you homophobic at all so forgive me. It just upsets me as a gay person to hear all these slights on gays. Just yesterday a gay bishop was giving a sermon and was shouted down telling him to Repent cos he was gay and blaming the split in the church on him. And in Italy a gay man was told to re-do his driving test or have it revoked due to his 'sexual disturbance.' I just think its unfair...

strong social constructionism is a useful and fun point of view, but it isn't true. if it were true it would negate itself because its own truth would also just be a construct.

__________________
they made soup out of my research turtles.

no pun intended, but i'm afraid that's his cross to bear. seeing as members of the christian clergy are supposed to be held under vows of clerical celibacy, so tell me why these bishops & vicars & friars are all coming out as big ole nellys when it's smthing that blatantly goes against what his church teaches; not just in the context of gayity, but all "wordly attractions".

that being said & with the "REPENT!!!" nonsense set aside, the split of the church probably was because of people like him tbh. especially if it was a sect of christianity outside the roman catholic & eastern orthodoxy circle & was - yet another - creepy protestant-christian schism. i guess if you play with fire you're going to get burned eventually (fire being the sorrowful, unforgiving flames burning from the dregs of Hell obvs)

unless they were actually talking about the latin/greek split.. but i'm going to assume they weren't because who would rly complain about that.

the driving test one is just lol. wrong, but lol.

oh well... *sighs*

this was about the split in the anglican communion, what you americans call the episcopal church (for some reason calling yourselves anglicans didn't sit comfortable after the war of independence). anglican clergy don't have to be celibate.

__________________
they made soup out of my research turtles.

I've never got that impression.

I've made my views on marriage known before, but just to add my two cents: Christians should be allowed to preserve the sanctity of their marriage service, as should any other religion. To help them with this, anyone who doesn't subscribe to a religion should be encouraged to take a civil partnership. Ideally, this would eventually lead to a single, across-the-board document to be signed by the couple, which would be applicable to any legal union, religious or secular. Whatever service or ceremony a group or individual wants to have should have absolutely no impact on their legal rights (so for example a couple who has had a Christian wedding service would have to sign the document anyway).

The way I see it, Christians can set whatever rules they want within their religion. But their religion is afforded a disproportionate level of legal representation in this country, and that is something that must be corrected. The only reason their rights appear to be infringed is because their religion is allowed to affect those who aren't involved in it, and unless they actually want that to be the case, I would imagine that they'd be happy enough to go along with the above.

They wouldn't be, of course, because the church has the notion that the UK is a "Christian country", despite less than 2% of us (about 1 million) attending church with any regularity. Not that it would be okay for a religion to be imposed on others even if 98% attended church every day, but people are persuaded by weird things.

I get that there are potential issues with allowing discrimination, but I think legally it would have to be made clear that they can only discriminate against those within their own church, and ideally that they can only discriminate if their decision is shown to have some basis in the tenets of their religion (rather than it simply being a personal choice).

This in turn would hopefully mean that the church would actually step up and lay down some rules, to take an official position on what is and isn't allowed. I'm tired of Rowan Williams pussyfooting around the gay issue; he's so obviously a big liberal softy who is trying to be diplomatic for the sake of a few bigoted cockends who are doing anything but in return. Even if the church just said "we don't like gays, gaying is a sin, if you're a gay, you can't be in our church", at least people would now where they stood and could make a decision over whether to stay with the religion or not. The ambiguity is what's causing the problem, because Christian beliefs cannot be relied upon; most Christians I've met have no problem with gays, and so it's reasonable for me to assume that the religion doesn't require them to have a problem with it, but because no-one in charge will say one way or the other, it's impossible to distinguish between someone acting in the name of their religion and someone who is simply using religion to justify prejudices they have anyway.

Am I the only person who is disappointed that this thread wasn't actually about a cow?

By a guy who looked like he should be playing bass for Napalm Death, for some reason. It made me doubt Christians, to be honest, that no-one stood up and shouted the fat asshole down (he had girly hair, surely that's just as bad in God's eyes). You'd hope that at least someone in the room would've thought he was being a dick, or had the balls to tell him to fuck off and attend a sermon with a nice closeted bishop instead. Despite my views on religion, I think the gay bishop should be commended for coming out - the fact that everyone knows that he's gay means that, if people have a problem with it, they can just go to another service. They won't, and they'll piss and moan for a bit, and then they'll grudgingly accept it, and that'll be fine.

I gotta ask though: anyone else a little annoyed that there wasn't such an uproar and threat of schism when all those clergymen turned out to be child rapists?