AstroProdigy

Some people would like the US to be a Christian government, mainly your lovable conservative base. We deny gay people rights on the basis of it being morally wrong in the Christian religion. I think you really are having trouble grasping the concept of analogies. You seem to jump from the intended analogy of Christians persecuting homosexuals with Muslims persecuting Christians to Christians persecuting Muslims with Muslims persecuting Christians. Maybe you should take a logic class? Either you've been playing dumb pretending to be unable to understand how analogies work because then that takes the attention away from those analogies or...other options.

I'm not sure how many of the counties you have checked, but an actual figure would be nice. Maybe a cool map.

I think there are 2 fallacies being committed here in this discussion. The first one is from ThunderJam. The vast majority of immigrants do not come to America to sit around and collect welfare. In fact the illegal immigrants aren't even eligible for welfare. They come here to work and get wages they can survive on because that's not available where they come from. Coming from an immigrant family myself very very VERY few come to be lazy and reap the benefits without working. People leave their homeland to come to a strange land because they HAVE to not because they want to sit around reaping welfare checks. As a community Mexicans are essential to our American economy as are all the other immigrant communities. It's not until they start to seriously Americanize that they get lazier. The second fallacy is in using the success of college education justify a failure of education at the most basic levels. Scholarships and aid will make only limited difference if you can't even get to that point. The failure of our education system isn't at the college level. We have the best universities in the world and although we have a lot of massively overpriced colleges we also offer a lot of cheap ones and have plenty of financial aid for the poor. The problem comes from elementary school-high school where America fails so miserably your head spins. The problems are magnified for minorities at these levels especially in communities where they are predominant. There are plenty of examples of people who really work hard there and succeed anyway, but this should not be an excuse for inaction.

http://www.nolo.com/article.cfm/objectId/E...11/259/283/ART/ There is no law preventing discrimination in the workplace based on sexual orientation by private employers. That legislation is currently gearing up to be vetoed by the president and then be unable to override the veto with strong Republican opposition. I never said racism and sexism are religious based. I said the bible has been used to justify it the same way it's used to justify homophobia. There are laws in certain states limiting adoption by homosexuals. Florida is a notable example of this. If it was just the choice of the adoption agencies this wouldn't be a problem. The gun analogy is pretty irrelevant here. Saying "there will always be something infringing on someone's rights" is no excuse to give up. The research shows that kids need to see a healthy relationship between their parents. The requirement of both a mother and father is pretty irrelevant except for the influences of peers who might tease that child. To that I say 1) The homophobic Christian parents who tell their kids that homosexuals are !@#$%^&*ed to eternal !@#$%^&*ation are breeding this teasing to a large extent and 2) Teasing seems bad to you when you're a kid, but it's actually something very healthy if you can get over it. As someone who was constantly teased for most of my childhood and teenage years I can tell you it's a great character building experience. Nothing teaches you empathy like teasing.

So if you were a Christian minority in a Muslim country, say the way homosexuals are a minority here, and those Muslims limited your rights and told you the way to get them back and be saved is by converting then that'd be fine with you?

So if a Muslim tells you that you are going to !@#$%^&* for not accepting Muhammad and limit your rights and tell you the way to get those rights back is by accepting Muhammad that'd be hunky dory?

Uh proof? Examples? If it's Mexicans you say are causing more trouble than they're worth then go ahead and send them back and watch what happens to the prices of all those services they so nicely provide getting substandard wages. On the whole immigrants are very essential precisely because they feel they need to succeed whereas Americans wrongly think they're safe in this country. Falcoknight: The schools screw up because they can. Kids have to go to their zoned school and if that school sucks then tough !@#$%^&* for them. The money is also attached to the school instead of the kids so the schools feel no need to compete for money by offering a good education. European schools do much better with much less funding because they know how to run an education system. It's funny how we in America control the system, whereas Europeans allow free compe!@#$%^&*ion. We also will not fire a teacher even if they are utterly incompetent. We send them to a special building where they sit and get paid and waste tax payer money.

Wait what? Blacks and women voting had no correlation to religion? Religion was never used to say justify slavery? It was also never used to claim female inferiority? Well that's really news to me. The 60s were very "unchristian" times. There is legislation NOW in 2007 that needs to be passed in order to protect gay people in the work place. Bush is guaranteed to veto it and it's almost impossible to win over enough Republicans to override it. They also don't have the right to marry or raise children in most places. I'm sure there's more, but these are the most famous examples.

Only Iran and Venezuela need to abandon the dollar and then that will probably push us into a recession by itself. Chavez also gives us cheap heating in NYC because our own government doesn't seem to care. I may not like the man very much, but considering how demonized he is by American media I'd be pissed off too. We all know the coup was American made too and I wouldn't be happy if a government did that to me too. The fact is that we have been insulting Venezuela for years by raping their most precious resources while supporting their own impoverishment because it is more profitable for us. If you don't want leaders of countries to hate us go protest our own leaders for trying to screw their people. I never said Clinton created the dot com bubble. I said he handled it responsibly by NOT squandering the money away the way Bush does. A good president could have used responsible economic policies rather than supporting a long outdated economic ideology that only sends our country spiraling into debt and does nothing to help those in need. Our economy will balance itself out because future presidents will be forced to pursue responsible policies and it will take a lot of sacrifice to fix what has been done to us. In case you haven't noticed the battle cry for war with Iran has been getting louder and that type of war would be like 10 Iraqs. I can put a lot of blame on Congress for the housing crisis. At least in that respect it is mostly their fault for not pursuing responsible policies and the Democrats for not voicing those policies strong enough. What I wouldn't give to change to at least a two round first past the post election system so there would be at least a little room for outside compe!@#$%^&*ion from the main two parties. Just because the founding fathers didn't think of it doesn't mean it's a bad idea and all we'd need to do is have 2 election days instead of 1. By this I mean you have a system where you need to get a 50% majority to win an election rather than just a plurality and if that doesn't happen a second round where the top two candidates are up for election only is held on the second day. Thus the old idea that voting for a third party candidate is a waste of your vote since they can't get elected and the major party candidate closest in ideology will be hurt will be bunk.

Foreigners like the idea of their currency being worth more in comparison, but they don't want their foreign currency reserve to be in money that is continually devaluating. The euro is already much more appealing in every comparison to the dollar, but the dependence of the major Gulf states (except Iran) on the US and the influence we have on them means they can't switch to the more profitable euro and other countries will keep their dollars if that's what they need to purchase oil, the most precious commodity in today's world. The point is that we aren't just dependent on oil for our consumption, we are dependent on it for our dollar's dominance. Without that dominance our poorly run economy would collapse from massive gluttony. If we stopped being profitable for countries like Saudi Arabia they'd switch to the Euro that gives them more profit and a more stable currency and we'd lose the huge kickback we get to keep our economy afloat. Thus we are paralyzed and we can't even remove our dependence on oil without changing our gluttonous, consumerist culture. It's been unsustainable for a while and what I don't understand is why economists aren't willing to admit that we've only been able to sustain it through global dominance. The reason why European countries aren't as wealthy as us isn't social services. Sure certain countries have too many barriers to free enterprise where they shouldn't be, but for the most part European economies under the EU are much better run than ours. We just get an extra giant sum of free money from our dominance. Without it we'd be as rich, or poorer than Europe if they gained that dominance from us. There is a good chance this will backfire on us. Iran doesn't want the nuke to use against us or Israel. They actually want it as a deterrent. They know they can hit us real hard simply by switching to the euro for their trade currency and Americans will be dumb enough to buy the trumpet call again and invade on false pretenses. There's already a greater than 50% support in public opinion for launching an attack on Iran. Things are really a lot more complicated than everyone is lead to believe. If I were you I'd put my investments in Europe since there is no foreseeable reason for them to enter into a depression.

So when Muslims say the same thing they are wrong and extremists?

The inferiority aspect relates to the racism analogy not the real life example with you and homosexuals. I think you need to go back with that and look again at the analogy. I can bring up again the fact that you would have to naturally think anyone who is not Christian is immoral with the logic you apply to homosexuals and thus should not have full rights the way you think gay people shouldn't.

Just a little side note if OPEC switched it's currency reserve from the failing dollar to the much more fiscally sound euro the United States would literally go bankrupt and considering all the debt we're taking on for tax cuts for the rich and wars for oil and influence we'd have absolutely no way to pull ourselves out of it. You see even though we spend like a 5 year old with a credit card and consume much more than we produce we make up the difference by forcing the world to use the dollar as their currency reserves. The only reason the world isn't using the euro more since it's a better currency with their responsible economic policies is that oil is a major commodity and through Saudi Arabia's dominance of OPEC we have forced all the major oil producing country to only sell for dollars that we give out with interest. The only country to deviate from this was Iraq and that was followed up by a nice little invasion to show the rest of the world that challenging America in any serious way leads to destruction. Iran is talking about doing the same thing and well we can all see the rhetoric piling on preparing for that invasion. Basically the point about this is that Americans can afford to stuff their faces (and give their richest some nice tax breaks that end up allowing their taxes to be less than working class schmoes pay as a percentage of their earnings so they can buy more private jets) is because we do it on the backs of the rest of the world. They are forced to pay for our gluttony and greed with their hard work and if they were ever to successfully challenge that we'd be utterly screwed. With Clinton and the dot com boom at least we had a thriving economy and a president who knew what to do with that money so there was some sense of fiscal responsibility, but with Bush we are screwing ourselves over so bad we can only keep it going by screwing everyone else. Kudos to Iran and Venezuela for not being puppets the way Saudi Arabia is. I may hate Iran's regime and think Hugo Chavez quite likely sees himself as some sort of deity, but at least they challenge the big fat imperialist power.

Not that I want to sound racist here, but I am equating white people to God in this example (not that it's true). The point is your logic crumbles under any serious examination. I understand how you've convinced yourself that this is sound logic through your absolutist premises that the bible is absolutely perfect because it was "written by God", but that just makes you impossible to reason with on these issues and allows you to use preposterously unsound logic like this and expect people to buy it. Also, why is this in it's own separate "Important Topics" topic? If there isn't a process of latest posts putting threads on the top of the list people will miss this discussion.

I already responded to this in the other thread too. Summary: Way to go you just showed your bigotry and how Christianity has created it. Homosexuality to you is a disease the same way Christians have said Judaism is a disease preceding such wonderful things as the Inquisition and the Holocaust. It's identical logic that bred the persecution of the Jews and yet it gets repeated for different groups. Sad.

It's called going back in the closet. If people constantly bombard you with threats of eternal !@#$%^&*ation you can do it. If you're bisexual it's easier because you can just stay on the straight side. I clearly understand your viewpoint now. It is a viewpoint utterly dominated by what your preacher tells you. Congratulations on being a patsy. Talking about turning homosexuals straight to "fix" them is just as bigoted as talking about turning Jews into Christians to "fix" them. I'm not sure how you still don't understand how this can into hate, but i guess ignorance is bliss.

You told me to find part of the bible that is contradictory to hating gays. I provided you with one. Also on the second part you have provided no argument whatsoever other than "YOU DON'T KNOW ME!"

I bring up the bible being contradictory to force you to use your own brain here. There are plenty of reasons to reject homosexuality that actually make plenty of sense, but I personally find them not strong enough to justify it. If you really spend the time to consider the subject without the influence of a book written thousands of years ago and the threat of eternal !@#$%^&*ation and come to the decision that you still think homosexuality is bad then good for you, but I will never consider any view legitimate on the basis of a book whos origins can never be verified with information that largely can never be verified nor made sense of. I find that the "love thy neighbor" bit does not have attached to it "love thy neighbor...unless they're gay". If you can use the bible to justify hating homosexuality without hating homosexuals, even ignoring all the psychological impossibilities of these two beliefs being able to both be right even most of the time then you still are forced to come to the conclusion on the same grounds that you hate every non Christian religion or even certain Christian religions. That's when the psychological aspect comes into play. Can anyone make the argument that they hate Judaism, but not the Jews? Don't !@#$%^&* me that you don't hate homosexuality, you just disagree with it. You think it's evil and unless you like evil you are naturally bound to hate it. That's what takes me back to the hating Judaism analogy. There you go.

Tell me where the Bible says racism or sexism is wrong. Don't !@#$%^&* me with "love thy neighbor" crap or something saying to treat women well because the Bible also says to treat animals well, but that doesn't mean they're seen as any less inferior. The Bible says a lot of things and even though MOST might not be contradictory there are lots and lots of examples that are, even some of the most major ones. Find somewhere where the Bible says to try to limit those we disagree with. The bible says any non Christian religion is immoral, but does that mean we must limit those religions?

There is stuff against a lot of things in the Bible where there is also something for it. It really doesn't matter because as you would admit man is imperfect and thus none of us can ever have a perfect interpretation of the Bible. Thus acting like we do or citing the Bible for controversial issues like homosexuality where the Bible also conflicts only shows the insecurity of the citing party in not being able to morally accept their stance on homosexuality or convince others to do so without using a conflicting Bible to do so.