The Pope has again launched into what is becoming a disturbing mantra: gay marriage is threatening the future of mankind. Now that the Mayan apocalypse has passed, it appears the Pope is ready with a substituted menace of loving gay couples marrying. Pope Benedict XVI insisted that gender theories supporting homosexuality are false and that the world must confront “the question of what it means to be a man, and what it is necessary to do to be true men.”
The Pope criticized theories suggesting that homosexuality is natural and insists that “[t]he profound falsehood of this theory and of the anthropological revolution contained within it is obvious . . . it becomes clear that when God is denied, human dignity also disappears.”
The statement again relies on this false assumption that gay marriage is a threat to family and procreation. The opposite is clearly true. Many such couples want to have children either by artificial insemination or adoption. Same-sex marriage expands the number of families, not reduce that number.
Source: Telegraph
“Vital Moors, also whales.” Not to mention porpoises and dolphins. May be some octopi in there if we need invertebrates too. A see a study needed…
The problem is always with words, natural and anthropomorphization, for example. Comparing with others, using the older KPCOFGS, is fraught with trouble especially by the latter word starting with “a”.
Dimorphism is natural, but some species can actually change sex by demand, humans can’t. So one part natural shot to hell.
Down’s Syndrome is natural. Cleft palate is natural. Pseudohermaphroditism is natural. Autism may be. Scoliosis is natural. (about 2 to 3% of children need medical attention because of it, but 10% have it).
I doubt you’d call any of these “natural”, as I did, or argue about how they exist in other species. You’d likely call them “naturally-occurring” without calling them natural, given the connotative difference. You would need to make some distinction.
Only in human sexuality do we need to go to such great lengths to accept the variance of other humans. Why do you have to anthropormorphize other species to feel comfortable with homosexuality? What would you do if no other mammalian species, or for god’s sake no other class, exhibited what you could interpret as homosexual? Be still? Try something else? Punt?
WTF does any of this have to do with tolerating or accepting homosexuality, especially within a secular government framework? Note: I’m still against same-sex marriage as a category error, but for civil-union with full government privileges and/or entitlements (rights don’t really apply here).
If you’ve got to go to other species to justify to yourselves variance in human sexuality, just let it all go and embrace bonobo sexuality. They’ve got it all down right, less aggression than chimps or humans, and a lot more play. Oh, wait, that’s not human.
As far convincing the ignorant Pope, you know the guy that speaks/reads 5 or more languages, has an education in Classical History, and more, that would likely give a PhD or two, or some MAs with a PhD, he isn’t listening. He’s a buffoon. I saw it when I was an Engineering student. Not one of the humanities professors I knew could even solve a simple mass transfer equation. Ignorant buffoons. What do you do…
Malisha,
I forgot. Be well too, and all your family.
Ariel, thanks for your well wishes and I’m sorry you didn’t feel mine to be gratifying but, as you point out, we don’t know each other.
I can’t comment on your suffering. I will chime in that the reason women are “enforcers” or as you describe them, the “civilizers” into an abusive culture, is that they have often adopted the role of the “good girl” which is also the role of the “good subject” which is a way of achieving “goodness.” It is a trap. But our culture sets these traps and few can avoid them forever.
I’m glad you also did not try to comment on my suffering. It’s a damn shame and that’s about all it is, and I have survived it so far, and am about to go have a sandwich which will mean I’ll survive it even further!
Be well.
Malisha,
I took your wishes, however harsh I responded, as I said “I do accept the good wishes as intended by you, and as you intended. Peace be unto you.”
We all have our tragedies, our sufferings. Some more, some less. I consider all mine just life, because it is my life. I can’t judge the worth of yours, because yours is your life.
Mine? I was raised by paternal grand-parents as guardians, but paternal great-grandparents and uncles played as big a part (I’m most partial and most effected by my great-grandmother, the reason for my interest in early 20th Century social movements and history; a 5’8” woman with a figure far, far from boyish, intellectual, and in her early 20’s in 1920, a poor fit by the times, and I heard a lot about those times). Lost enough family by the time I was 15 and a half that I was sent to the other side of the family, and not a good fit. I went to seven different schools to reach graduation. So what? Bombs didn’t drop on my house…had they, it would still be just my life.
However, if either us of claim the sufferings of another as ours, shame on us.
” I will chime in that the reason women are “enforcers” or as you describe them, the “civilizers” into an abusive culture, is that they have often adopted the role of the “good girl” which is also the role of the “good subject” which is a way of achieving “goodness.” It is a trap. But our culture sets these traps and few can avoid them forever.” But, Malisha, there are traps for men too, enforced by both sexes. It’s all part of the same, the shame is when either sex is too self-absorbed or dull to realize the others trap.
I’ll give you a scenario any woman could identify with and certainly take action on. You’re in a fast-food restaurant in the Verde Valley, though any locale would do, and in the children’s area where exits are padlocked for the safety of the children. Your husband comes in with the trays of food, and at the same time says “there was a guy at the counter that got so mad he threatened to kill the manager and everyone else”. You ask, as the dutiful wife “where’d he go?”, and get “he went to his car”. So, you send your husband through the main dining area to the exit opposite where the schmuck went with “I’ll hand you our children” over the block wall. You do, along with another wife’s children, and tell your husband to get as far away with the children as he possibly can. After that, you and the other wife hunker down at the door to the main-dining room, prepared to charge and die if need be to stop the gunman. Not all women are prepared to do this, but most are. After all, a husband that hides behind his wife when violence is threatened is doing what is expected, but a wife that hides behind her husband is a yellow coward. We all have our traps.
You know if this world had singled out “German, English, Scot-Irish, French, Native American with a touch of Italian” men for oppression, repression, even slavery, before I was born or a child in elementary school, I just couldn’t think of myself as a victim. Even if the oppression and repression lingered. You can try like hell to make me a second-class citizen, but I’m not and I won’t let you make me.
ARE:
Child molesters and pedophiles come in both gay and straight, as well as male and female. I have come to be familiar with all kinds in my line of work.
Don’t know where you got your information, but if it was passed off as science, then it is junk science.
Glad to hear that. I read one of those studies in a link on Hufpost in which the author stated that gays are not child molestors at all.
Monte, you put the cart before the horse. Societal proscription came first. No more needs to be said.
leejcarrol, because the far majority of child molestation in the Catholic Church was male on male. However we twist it, it’s still homosexual.
OS, thank you for a moment of clarity by this “Child molesters and pedophiles come in both gay and straight, as well as male and female. I have come to be familiar with all kinds in my line of work.” Thanks for the distinction too of CMs versus pedophiles, the latter having this inexplicable need for sex with prepubescent children. Both sexes, and all orientations, have these subsets. Women are much less likely to be pedophiles, but rise in CM while still being less than men. If we go across cultures, ME women do a lot more of what we would call pedophilia but the purpose may be different.
randyjet, yeah, you got pure BS in that Huffpost. It’s likely they defined pedophilia and CM in a way that gays couldn’t be either. I see the same, too often, with child abuse and DV in the societal media. Non-sexual child abuse is about 1.75 times more likely done by mothers than fathers and DV is about equal unless you define it by outcome (women use fists and weapons poorly, men use fists better). If you make excuses for either sex, you only infantilize that sex. Either adult or not.
nick spinelli “Pedophile priest are the threat.”
The overwhelming majority of the kids that were molested in church were done so by homosexual priests.
and Hubert where is your proof for that? (He wrote: The overwhelming majority of the kids that were molested in church were done so by homosexual priests.)
I saw the studies that said that homosexuals do NOT molest children at all. Of course, they state that any same sex pedophiles are NOT homosexual, but are child molestors. So that makes it pretty hard for homosexuals to ever be classed as pedophiles since homosexuals are by definition excluded from child molestors.
Behaviour and the regulation of:
Romer: “when homosexual conduct is made criminal by the law of the State, that declaration in and of itself is an invitation to subject homosexual persons to discrimination both in the public and in the private spheres.”
Or: when the conduct of the married couple who co-habits with another or others is made criminal by the law of the State that declaration in and of itself is an invitation to subject free individuals to discrimination both in the public and in the private spheres.”
When behaviour no longer matters, no behaviour can be held to fault
Hi, Malisha,
No, it isn’t the way that you use it, as that is one meaning, it’s when used thinking that is the only meaning and missing the deeper and broader meaning of the word. Bigot has the same problem, which is why I always leave off the “especially” portion of the usual definition. We should discriminate, even judge (since to discriminate is to judge), but never be a bigot in doing so.
In my illustration of that one woman (not the only one I’ve met, by far), she was a bigot. She maintained obstinately, and irrationally, that women couldn’t own property while the history is something different. It was emotionally necessary for her to continue her narrative where she could be a victim, though she never suffered that victimization, but just by being a member of the group. BTW, as was the norm at this Episcopal Church, she was quite wealthy and quite privileged, yet still a victim of a victimization she never suffered. Any other sufferings aren’t pertinent, as our discussion was only on that one point of property.
She didn’t get it wrong, she had no understanding of the history. Couldn’t accept the history, and wrapped herself in victimhood while never suffering that victimhood. She wasn’t generally right, she was plain wrong. One, women did have property rights as single women, something she could neither accept nor understand, and two, the whole movement in the 19th Century by men was to give married women property rights.
“Mormons previously denouncing Blacks”, no they restricted male blacks to the lower priesthood. They repressed them yes, but denounce is too strong a word. As I pointed out, much earlier Christian groups consider “blackness” as the Mark of Cain. If Mormonism had denounced, then no Aaronic blacks whatsoever. The Mormon Church repressed by a physical characteristic.
The Catholic Church is denouncing a behavior. Whether a behavior is intrinsic, genetics or epigenetics, it’s still a behavior. I don’t agree with them, it deserves at the least benign tolerance if not embracing, especially by a secular government, but still that Church is making a stand on a behavior. The Mormon Church, while just repressing, was much worse as it used a physical characteristic. The Catholic Church also denounces heterosexual behavior, especially normal male heterosexual behavior. Monogamy isn’t normal male heterosexual behavior, it’s a societal constraint that men try to adhere to over economics as well ideals. I am in no way saying there aren’t monogamous men, they just aren’t the bulk. I’m monogamous, an outlier, but I like ideals so it’s easy though not always satisfying. Women of course as a group embrace that restriction, while breaking it for reasons not a man’s.
Women hold up the social order, or pecking order, more than men; it’s why the 19th Century concept of women as the civilizers of men and women, certainly not a misogynist concept. What it missed, and what schools are seeing today, is that it is more a pecking order that is maintained with relentless and vicious enthusiasm on other women. Women, girls, use social media today to continue that need to establish order. Been through it in elementary school, middle school, and HS. One thing I will give school administrators, over society in general, is they don’t start by making excuses, infantilizing women, in these circumstances. Through 5 schools, the comments by administrators has been they’d rather deal with boys as the violence is straight forward, seldom as relentless or vile as the girls.
My great-grandmother was NA, my grandfather and my mother would also qualify, I am at the cusp. I could go on about how “my group” suffered horrors even greater than any American woman not NA, but I suffered none of that. My victimhood is my suffering in my lifetime. I’m a white male, by identification, so I’ve had no suffering by definition. My cheekbones are quite high and pronounced, my skin quite red-brown, though lightened because I avoid the sun, and my hair was black when younger. My mother and I had to speak at every border stop. Victims.
“One of the most efficient abuser techniques is to project the abuse onto the victim and turn the tables”, absolutely, but claiming victimhood when you haven’t experienced that particular circumstance might also be in the DSM. Thank you for using “sociopath” to justify people claiming victim status when they were never victims of that circumstance. Men or women that claim victimhood over what their ancestors suffered qualify. People as tools.
Dinner’s here, so I must go. However, living to a 100 years is a wish of pain and poverty. We spend $15,000 to $20,000 a year on medical bills. Our stocks are gone, and our property is next, there is no retirement. I only hope to send my children off well. A beneficient wish by you, yes, but my circumstance is a twist on your ” You won’t know anybody else’s if you live to be 100″. Perhaps you do not know enough others. I would never wish to others what you did, as I know some would only suffer.
You have no idea of my breadth in my lifetime; from broken homes, to poverty, to so many deaths. None. Nor I you, which is always my underlying reservation in judging people I don’t know face to face.
I do accept the good wishes as intended by you, and as you intended. Peace be unto you.
Ariel, sure and so what.
I can see you don’t like the way I use the word “discriminate” and also, so what.
I’ve met a variety of violent hateful women; I’ve met a variety of violent, hateful men. There are all sorts of excuses for bad behavior. The Pope denouncing gays and the Mormons previously denouncing Blacks, and all the erudite renditions of earlier and subsequent denouncings notwithstanding, my general take on this is so what.
As to the “needed narrative of women as only victims,” that’s counter-productive. There are times, and unfortunately, PLENTY OF TIMES, when people being victimized don’t feel they have the right to complain about the victimization and the blowback can be like the A-Bomb. That’s a piggy-back atrocity in my opinion; happens every damn day.
If people are often victimized, and one of them claims that she is being victimized, and she is told that her conduct is wrongful somehow because she is trying to “rely on a theory of victimization,” where is the lie being born? Was she somehow NOT victimized because we don’t like to think that she joins a group too large for comfort?
The reality of this is that there are many, many abuser techniques in use all over the world. One of the most efficient abuser techniques is to project the abuse onto the victim and turn the tables. Sociopaths are so good at it that they live by it and they get people running around going “boo hoo boo hoo look what happened to the poor blameless victim” and they out-victim everybody.
I really don’t care if some woman somewhere got the facts wrong about when or how women in Massachusetts could own property. She was generally right about the property and liberty rights of women in the 1800s being unequal to the property and liberty rights of men in that same period of time, was she not? If you want to say her wrongness about this alleged fact (I have not checked it) means she was wrong in her assumptions about the victimization of women in American history in general, you’ve gone way way too far with a fact and with a single woman’s error about a single fact.
There are enough facts in one lifetime to convince you, or me, or anybody of many wrong theories. You won’t know anybody else’s if you live to be 100.
Which I hope you do. Peace of the season upon you.
Malisha,
“Ariel, I’m going straight to Hell, but not until I die.” That shove you’ll feel will be me impatiently behind. Mark Twain gave hell high marks..
“But we all use the word “discriminate” now to mean “to pre-judge people based upon stereotypes.” Yes, the problem is we generate stereotypes to deal with the world. Stereotypes aren’t bad, bad stereotypes are bad. Discrimination isn’t bad, discriminating poorly is bad, as you well know. Mishtunk is a variation of Schtunk?
I deplore good, meaningful words turned into shallow, unthinking shells of their real meaning. I still hate the use of decimate to mean exterminate, or discriminate as you gave. When lexicographers switched from descriptive and prescriptive, to only or predominately descriptive, the language and our thinking suffered.
All the Christian sects have horrible histories if you want to emphasize that part, much as all human groups do horrible things while doing good things. I forget the term for fundamentalist Jews, but they aren’t nice people to others either. I always remember that when German Flagellants were fomenting blame and hatred against Jews for the Plague (roughly 1350, give or take some decades) it was a Catholic Pope that said stop, they die with us and are not the cause. Given European Jew-hatred, this was bold. It’s not the only example, just one that comes to mind.
The Democrats have a horrible history regarding racism, KKK, and Jim Crow, and it can’t be laid solely at the feet of southern Democrats. The Klanbake of 1924 wasn’t just Southerners. The Republican party went from a strong supporter of racial equality to tepid if not against (depends on the emphasis of what racial equality entails, and this penchant, also a Democrat problem, for Law and Order, which is usually expressed against the poor and minorities).
The issue of women in churches, in political movements, or under law in marriage is always thorny, especially with all the bigotry on both sides (a bigot being one who is “a person who is obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices” this from Merriam-Webster, I left of the “especially”) I dealt with a woman in one class at an Episcopal Church who maintained that women couldn’t own property during 19th Century America (single could, period, and starting in 1834 in Massachusetts, married women could, each state following suit over the course of of that century). She would have none of it; it disturbed her needed narrative of women as only victims.
Mormons, like Protestants, Catholics, or Republicans and Democrats, vary from region to region. The Stake I attended, sparingly, had strong women who had power. Another one I went to in Illinois, I have no idea what I was thinking other than make Momma happy, was disturbing. Definite subjugation of women, with a dour, sullen, oppressive atmosphere. I have no doubt that Synagogues have that variance also
@ Ariel,
What I was explaining to you was my use of the “Mormon theory of the inferiority of Blacks” as a comparison to what the Pope has been doing with his bully pulpit.
Let me start by mentioning who “the Mormons” are in my experience. I am a Jew and I lived with my then husband (also a Jew) in a neighborhood where some Mormons lived a block away and were friendly and had lots of kids who were fun and smart and playful. As my kid grew to be best friends with their kids, I grew to be a welcomed “Auntie” in their house. My son is the only Jew I know who was ever “Best Man” at a Mormon wedding. These are wonderful folks. Their church, however, like all the churches, has behaved poorly, in my opinion. They’d be very hurt to hear me say this, so I don’t say it to them. They’re not likely to be blogging here, either (and they don’t know me as “Malisha,” a name I created for the Internet).
I have known other Mormons, including Senator Harry Reid, and including a couple (wife is a lawyer, husband a psychologist) whom I consider free thinkers and intellectuals. But that’s just about my personal experience with some Mormons.
In my opinion, the Mormon Church discriminates terribly against Blacks, against women, against many kinds of people. Here’s how I use the word “discriminate”: I use it as it has come into usage in common American English. Of course I discriminated in the sense of “choosing by means of comparison of various differences” when I chose a mate. (And I discriminated very poorly because I failed to discriminate against sadists, stupid people, and liars, all in one big mishtunk.) But we all use the word “discriminate” now to mean “to pre-judge people based upon stereotypes.”
Thus, to identify “people with black skin and flat noses” as “descendants of a single bad person who was properly judged by God” as inherently bad and thus deserving of less good treatment than others is, in my book, discrimination.
The Catholic Church has a long history of horrible, forcible, sadistic discrimination against many kinds of people. That’s history. The Pope’s conduct now is not a sudden new unprecedented behavior. The Jewish Orthodox establishment has even discriminated against its own in ways I find so abhorrent that I often find myself fighting my own at times unreasonable discrimination against the Orthodox. (Jews have no Pope so we don’t get this kind of on-high pronouncements that shock the whole world, of course; things are more subtle.) Some of the non-Catholic Christian clergy have come out with things so atrocious I keep getting the feeling that all shock has been used up and “Now I’ve heard everything,” but no, there’s always another one…
Muslim Clerics from this tribe or that tribe will jump up from time to time making declarations and issuing Fatwahs that are just plain hair-raising sadistic lunacy. Nobody is immune, it seems, so long as we cling to the notion that there is a supergod who gives one guy or another guy the right and even responsibility to control the actions of a third person by divine authority. It means I, as a religious person, can always have a trump card and my saying, “God said so” is my trump card no matter what cards YOU may hold.
My son, by the way, does a hilarious stand-up routine (perhaps cruel towards Mormons, some of whom he loves dearly; and perhaps cruel towards people with Tourette’s Syndrome) called “Mormon with Tourette’s giving testimony.
RIght around the part where “I know this is the true church” comes in, he does a crescendo of graphic curses and the accompanying physiological movements in exactly the loud voice of the real illness. Not once have I failed to crack up in helpless laughter at this point; afterwards I always feel terribly guilty but so far have resisted going to confession.
Ariel, I’m going straight to Hell, but not until I die.
the antichrists will usurp the power of GOD.
the people will be forced to accept the mark of the beast, (which has nothing to do with the hot one that got terminated) for the weak will be swooped up…
once IT starts you will not stop the SECOND COMING. and all those who speak against GOD, will be judged accordingly.
did anyone support the antichrists for the holidays.
telling you to be prepared, was like telling the government, and the churches what to do.
If you were GOD, why would you create a universe !
why would you create man ? ? ?
if you are gods children, not one of you has listened to god.
not even the poop has listened!
if you have any children and they do not listen to you, do you discipline them?
but you all claim to know more than GOD and accept the beautiful ones because, you do not believe in the truth. you say that you won’t be here in thirty years.
where will you be ?
this is read by different countries and ministers. and they all deny THE BIBLE.
ALL PREDICTED.
you may create hell on earth if you don’t listen.
the church will be put on trial !
religions have failed you again. don’t think children can’t be judged at a young age for being in the christmas play. (now THE HOLY SPIRIT has to change HOLY diapers till easter)
three things were said over four years ago:
same sex marriage would be legal through out the World.
abortions would be legal through out the World.
to close every religion down so they would not fight with ME, and mislead the people against GOD.
Hi, Malisha,
” I never imagined that the other religions did not have weird.. I just brought up one that I thought of for some reason at that point.”
Call that my sensitivity to being sporadically and loosely brought up in the Mormon Church. They are good people, but their archeology sucks. I have a knee-jerk response because I remember the anti-catholic bigotry when JFK was running. Bigotry has many arguments and many flavors. Still Mormons are better comedians than Calvinists.
“There’d be a Helluva contest if we were to try to figure out the most weird, bizarre, outrageous, discriminatory, misogynist, racist or nasty religious doctrines; even the research would use up a coupla lifetimes.” If you’d include misandrist, you’ve got the whole human experience covered. Nothing wrong with bizarre or outrageous, it draws us out of our box. We’d be so 1950’s otherwise.
Discriminatory? You grabbed your lover using eeney-miney-moe? We discriminate all the time in our private lives, only fools don’t. Personally, I think women of color beat white women, except those red-headed alabaster Irish, hands down in beauty. Period. No contest.
My wife, however, is white. She’s Scot-Swede with NA. My discrimination isn’t just about physical beauty , but who the woman is in totality. Discrimination is all about judging worth, and each of us in our lives have to make that judgement to make our own lives worthwhile, worth living.
I have had friends and lovers of all colors, all ideologies (the closest friend was a Wobblie) and religions. It’s not what you think, it’s how you think. I’ll discriminate for the latter always, seldom for the former. I can find agreement at some level with the how, but with the what it’s only if my what is their’s. As is so evident here.
Discrimination is wrong when it’s basis is wrong, a superficial basis. It’s right otherwise. I’m not writing about legalities.
We use the word discriminate poorly, like using decimate to mean exterminate. We loose by poor use.
OS,
You do realize that the bulk of the books Heinlein wrote were classified as “Juvenile” because that is the audience he wrote to for most of his career (Podkayne of Mars for example). I loved Heinlein as a kid, he was one of the Big Three, but quoting him settles nothing, as quoting Asimov or Clarke settles nothing. In fact, around here, quoting Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Nietzsche, Kant, or Sarte settles nothing. Great quotes though. TANSTAAFL should make stand for all ages to come. And I do like “The Green Hills of Earth” collection.
Would H.L. Mencken quotes settle anything? Or W.C. Fields, such as “go away kid, ya bother me” or “A man’s got to believe in something. I believe I’ll have another drink” or even more apropos to these comments “”I am free of all prejudices. I hate everyone equally.” If only the last were true, so simple it would be…after all you’d all recognize you’re prejudices.
Moving on, OS, the miscegenation argument is a category error. It falls into the definition of heterosexual marriage (man-woman). It isn’t applicable, nor polygamy or polyandry, all of which fall under heterosexual. Nor is the civil-rights argument regarding blacks, their civil-rights were acknowledged in Plessy v Furgesson, by “separate but equal” though it actually meant “separate and unequal” in practice. Same-sex marriage is a category change and should be recognized as such and acknowledged as such, instead of the dishonesty of it’s no different.
“Earlier today I learned there are approximately 1,000 benefits available to officially married couples that are not available to persons who are not married. That includes civil unions which are not recognized in most states.”
For heterosexual couples there is no excuse, none, they can easily formalize their relationship and get those benefits. If they don’t, eff them, they chose not to and I have no sympathy or empathy. Not doing so is a choice, and we are all for choice, aren’t we? As adults, we chose.
However, homosexual couples (lesbians are gay, but not all gays are lesbians, so homosexual, or LGBT is one letter redundant) haven’t had that choice, not that choice means right, but by my sense of equity should have that choice to formalize their union. It should be recognized in every state (realizing that the states decide by agreement to recognize the other state’s standards: driver’s licenses being one example, marriage or civil union another, under contention; CCP are problematic). You and I may argue terms, but civil-unions of homosexuals should be recognized with all privileges granted married heterosexuals. Notice my use of terms.
Gene H.’s 14th Amendment argument just doesn’t cut it. There’s nothing in the original arguments for “same-sex marriage” as a 14th “due process”, nor in over one hundred years. Unless we want jurists as clergy, this societal change should be left to legislatures and the people. The Reconstruction Amendments were about race, specifically blacks, and slavery.
Hi, Malisha,
“They did not, however, explain the move or rescind the stuff they had published before about why it was Church policy. It had been put in place by Brigham Young himself.” Sorry, I missed this, but they did. The change was done by revelation to the President, and it was rescinded. That books prior weren’t torn up was just logistics and inertia, like maintaining the KJV.
The actual attribution is to Joseph Smith but admittedly by way of Brigham Young. It’s indeterminate as to whether JS practiced it, he was martyred only 17 years after the very beginning of the Church (hey, martyr is their term, I’m just showing a semblance of respect, and I mean it). Church doctrine is slow to evolve and it’s quite possible that JS made reference from which BY drew. I have to give great respect to BY, if not for longevity but for stamina.
Really, it isn’t any different from a new Papal missive; a reinterpretation by the Bishops of the Episcopal church (one Bishop even called the Resurrection a metaphor, and I’m being nice); or anything Presbyterians, Methodists, Lutherans, or post-Protestants have done. It’s just that there’s more prejudice in interpreting what Mormons do, as well that they are better comedians than Calvinists (I do like Calvinists about work and pride, they must have been reading the Bhagavad Gita).
Ariel, I never imagined that the other religions did not have weird, bizarre, outrageous, discriminatory, misogynist, racist, and downright nasty stuff throughout. I just brought up one that I thought of for some reason at that point.
There’d be a Helluva contest if we were to try to figure out the most weird, bizarre, outrageous, discriminatory, misogynist, racist or nasty religious doctrines; even the research would use up a coupla lifetimes.
Vital Moors,
“Reproduction among prosperous people has a demonstrable impact on the welfare of others: thanks to the depletion of resources and the effects of climate change, every child born to the rich deprives children elsewhere of the means of survival. In a world of diminishing assets, being gay is arguably more moral than being straight.”
This is just a whole lot of stupid, and there is nowhere to begin on this. Really there isn’t. It’s a bunch of mindless current shibboleths thrown together. Depletion of resources? We’ve only scratched the surface. Climate change? Even if the man-made signal is forcing it, we would still be going through Climate Change, it’s natural because climate isn’t static, the Earth isn’t ever at equilibrium, only the acceleration is man-made. Every child born to the rich? You mean the nations with the lowest birth rates on the planet? You mean the pie is set, there is no more pie to be had, and every slice you have starves someone else? Quit eating, please, quit eating so others may live, please. Diminishing assets? Do you really understand how massive just the crust of this planet is, and we haven’t even scratched that? Tell the gays you don’t won’t them to have children, unless born by way of heterosexual unions. So much stupid in one comment.
I bet you think breaking windows puts people to work, making a stronger economy.
As for your anthropomorphizing of the animal world, you missed our two closest relatives: chimps, the violent relatives; bonobos, the sex-solves-a-lot relatives. “documents homosexuality in no fewer than 470 animal species. He shows how groups of manatees carouse in gay orgies; how male giraffes start “necking” and end up fornicating, how female Japanese macaques will pair off for weeks at a time, fondling each other and having sex.” So this is the majority of animal behavior? Showing that what we interpret as homosexual exists in other animal species is nice, but as far as I know it’s one big bisexual expression, that orientation we avoid because it screws with our binary thinking. No bisexual? Do bisexuals even exist? No submission-dominance, no estrus-hormonal drive, just heterosexual orientation or homosexual orientation?
If the epigentics, yet to have enough verification if only too recent, or the genetic reason has weight, so what? It’s a very small percentage, in humans roughly 2%, and represents outlier behavior. I doubt that the overall mammalian behavior, neglecting submission-dominance, is any higher likely because whether epigenetic or genetic the ratio is likely somewhat fixed because we and they are mammals. There are only two sexes, the behavior is variation.
Really, leave out the terns. They aren’t mammals.
As for morality, if you want to argue homosexuality is more moral because of population control making that fixed pie available (really, stop eating you rich basturd -you live in the rich Western world after all- because you’re depriving kids in Korea) then heterosexuality is more moral to maintain entitlements because that pie isn’t fixed (tax base, guy, tax base). Hope you clean your plate.
I do agree with the celibacy issue, it is unnatural, but so was Paul. Catholic priests molest (more males than females) than non-celibate clergy at about twice the rate, though non-celibate clergy go more for females. Google it, takes some creative searching,
Hi, Malisha,
The “mark of Cain” as to black skin has it’s origins in at least Syrian Christianity as well Armenian and did pass on to mainstream. It isn’t unique to Mormonism, so it wasn’t an “extremely weird doctrine only followed by Mormons” (you’ll find references throughout Christianity if you dig, it’s not something of which Christian sects are proud). The mark is actually a “mark, sign, tattoo” in Hebrew, but too many turned it into “darkened skin”. Certainly justified the Atlantic Slave Trade (before any of you go into Europe bashing, something I enjoy, the AST was much smaller than the ME slave trade).
Next, up to 1978, blacks could be part of the lesser order Aaronic, but not the Melchizedek order, so they couldn’t be Elders. I couldn’t enter the more sacred areas of a Temple either as an Aaronic without a Melchizedek signing on, but neither I (and I’m white with a lot of NA but that’s okay in the Mormon Church) nor a black would be their slave by your implication. You’re mistaking level for color. They, black males, couldn’t hold power in the upper echelons of the Church when relegated to Aaronic and couldn’t enter the more sacred areas just as I couldn’t without Melchizedek imprimatur. That the Mormon Church is pragmatic, as it was in the 1890’s with polygamy so that Utah could be a state, I will give you.
As an aside, if you think women don’t hold power in the Mormon Church, you miss the limitations of formal power and the extent of informal power.
Finally, as for weird, let’s get to the basics of flesh-blood, wafer-wine? Christian mysticism is it’s most endearing feature of all the three Abrahamic religions.