Strangely enough, the religious nuts are strongly in favor of a-la-carte channels for completly unrelated reasons. They feel very uncomfortable at having to pay for 'indecent' programs in order to get the channels they really want.
"like the fact that Christians don't kill except to prevent worse"
Not right now, no. But remember the inquisitions? The brutal middle ages? The catholics slaughtering protestants and vice versa? Christianity as it is today is generally peaceful, but history shows that isn't an inherent part of the religion. It's just the fashion right now.
"people (ie. they're slavers"
So were Christians. Again, you're mixing religion with culture. Modern western culture vs middle eastern culture is not the same thing as Christianity vs Islam. Times change, cultured change. While Christian culture was going through the dark ages, Islamic culture was in it's golden age - the most advanced academics in the world were Muslims. You can still see the influence in the language - algebra, alcohol, alchemy, all words with Arabic roots. Today, the roles have reversed: Christian culture went through a series of revolutions to become what we know today, while Islam got stuck in the past and started intensely resisting social change. I'm not sure why. That's just how history worked out.
As was stated above, the cables were secret, but not the most secret - this wasn't nuclear-launch-code stuff, hundreds of thousands of people had access.
There is the commerce clause. A few court rulings expanded the definition of interstate commerce to the point it's now a congress-can-regulate-anything clause.
It's a difference of extent, not position. The islamists have the same political views as the most conservative christians, but greatly intensified and taken to the extreme.
The big problem here is that church-marriage and state-marriage are both *called* marriage, and in the minds of most people are just two aspects of the same thing. The root of the problem isn't practical, or theological, or legal: It's linguistic.
Civil unions in the US are complicated, because of the tiered law system. A state may recognise them, but the federal government doesn't - which means a paperwork nightmare when the time for tax comes, a real mess relating to benefits, and so on. If things go interstate, it can get even worse - and that often does, if someone in a civil union is working for a company based in another state that doesn't recognise them and so health insurance coverage becomes an issue. There have been a few cases of couples in a civil union getting into legal difficulty when traveling outside the state, including one in which a lesbian died alone in hospital following an accident while the hospital refused to recognise the union as legally valid and so denied her partner visitation rights.
Have you ever heard of adoption? People are very good at making babies. They make more than we know what to do with. Besides, I guess you have no objection to people marrying without intent of breeding? Maybe infertile people shouldn't be permitted to marry - they too are perverting the institution by preventing it serving it's purpose, are they not?
There's a verse in Romans that reads "Because of this [false religion], God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones." It's the closest the bible may get, but as it so often a problem it's practically impossible to figure out what it's supposed to mean. A lot of anti-gay Christians point to this as a clear condemnation of lesbianism, but that could be seen as them reading their expectations into the next - it's a possibility, but 'unnatural relations' could just as easily mean masturbation, or bestiality*, or adornment with fine clothing**, or even that the women were so bold as to forget their place as the submissive partner and try to seduce the men into bed.
*The old 'The enemy tribe fuck goats!' insult has been going around from the ancient world to the modern redneck joke.
**Also condemned in Leviticus - and the word is translated as 'lust' here, but it's also used elsewhere to simply mean 'strong desire' without any sexual element.
It's a convenient codeword. It would be too drawn-out to refer to them as the 'Republican anti-gay pro-life Christian pro-school-prayer anti-hpv-vaccine abstinance-only-supporting association.' Over time, the word 'family' as just come to be a form of political shorthand for a whole package of highly-correlated political positions.
There have been quite a few Christian games. I can name four of them without even resorting to google. I cannot, however, name any that don't suck. Indeed, some are famous precisely for how much suck they contain.
"That thought is just so stupid I can't believe they are saying it."
I've been reading their media and trolling their blogs for years, and I'm not surprised at all. They have a very different view of how sexuality works. To the FRC, there are no true gays - only straight people who have been deluded into thinking they are gay to satisfy their hedonistic lusts, and can surely be cured with the power of faith.
It depends how you define it. The one-in-ten figure was from Kinsey's study, and actually meant that he had managed to get one in ten people to admit to some homosexual experience in their past - but this was Kinsey's work, and so shouldn't be taken seriously. He has a role in history for breaking the taboo and opening human sexuality up as a respectable field of scientfic study - but his statistics are actually dubious, due to the difficulty he had getting subjects.
In more respectable studies, the estimates for GBLT still vary widely. Anywhere from 1% to 10%, depending who does the survey, where and how.
What they really mean is 'Hate the sinner so long as he continues to sin.' The idea isn't to love sinners for who they are now, but to love them enough to 'cure' them and bring them back. Once they have given up their sinful ways* then they are to be welcomed into the fold - but until that day comes, they are just another piece in the game fought for the souls of men.
* Christ, naturally, can cure gayness with ease. If they truely believe, they'll turn straight.
You need to look at it from a christian-nutcase perspective. Firstly, there *are* no real gay people in their view. There are only heterosexuals who have chosen* to be gay, even if they don't realise it was a choice. The more homosexuality is seen as normal, the more people will choose the gay way. To them, society *needs* to fight the gays, needs to treat them as inferior, dirty, loathsome creatures - because that homophobia is the natural defence against sin, and without the loathing it'll be Soddom all over again.
*Due to mental illness, hedonism, demonic posession or being raped as a child by another homosexual to induct them.
The FRC is the organisation that first turned me from indifferent to religion into actively campaigning against it. The conversion from atheist to antitheist was in response to an interview I read with one of their representatives regarding the HPV vaccine (Still awaiting FDA approval at the time), which the FRC held should not be administered because it might encourage premarital sex.
There is indeed a Gay Agenda, in the same way that the civil rights movement could be termed the Black Agenda.
It's just basic use of persuasive language. Calling something an agenda can make it sound intimidating and worrying. Even better if you imply the agenda is some sort of secret plan.
The Amateur Mad Scientist group I run has made the accent a requirement. All experimental equipment is activated only after declaring the traditional 'Throw Ze Svich!'
birds-are-nice.me/explodium/ - you can hear it. Need to work on the accent.
No company has tried to claim that piracy is killing cable. Why not? I expect better sleezyness from the media industry these days. They disappoint me.
I keep trying to promote exactly the same idea - once you start addressing files by hash, it shouldn't be difficult. Storage is cheap. But I have not the skill to impliment it myself, and even if I did such a technology isn't going to take off without backing from one of the big players.
Slashdot Mirror
You're both semi-wrong here: The testing was for EU regulations, nothing to do with the FCC. Though they may want their own tests done in addition.
I thought that was a given. If you're not in the niche, it doesn't even make it to suck. It's be incomprehenseable, and unplayable.
Strangely enough, the religious nuts are strongly in favor of a-la-carte channels for completly unrelated reasons. They feel very uncomfortable at having to pay for 'indecent' programs in order to get the channels they really want.
With a concept like this, there is no middle ground. It'll either be incredibly great, or painfully bad. No possibility in between.
"like the fact that Christians don't kill except to prevent worse"
Not right now, no. But remember the inquisitions? The brutal middle ages? The catholics slaughtering protestants and vice versa? Christianity as it is today is generally peaceful, but history shows that isn't an inherent part of the religion. It's just the fashion right now.
"people (ie. they're slavers"
So were Christians. Again, you're mixing religion with culture. Modern western culture vs middle eastern culture is not the same thing as Christianity vs Islam. Times change, cultured change. While Christian culture was going through the dark ages, Islamic culture was in it's golden age - the most advanced academics in the world were Muslims. You can still see the influence in the language - algebra, alcohol, alchemy, all words with Arabic roots. Today, the roles have reversed: Christian culture went through a series of revolutions to become what we know today, while Islam got stuck in the past and started intensely resisting social change. I'm not sure why. That's just how history worked out.
As was stated above, the cables were secret, but not the most secret - this wasn't nuclear-launch-code stuff, hundreds of thousands of people had access.
There is the commerce clause. A few court rulings expanded the definition of interstate commerce to the point it's now a congress-can-regulate-anything clause.
It's a difference of extent, not position. The islamists have the same political views as the most conservative christians, but greatly intensified and taken to the extreme.
The big problem here is that church-marriage and state-marriage are both *called* marriage, and in the minds of most people are just two aspects of the same thing. The root of the problem isn't practical, or theological, or legal: It's linguistic.
Civil unions in the US are complicated, because of the tiered law system. A state may recognise them, but the federal government doesn't - which means a paperwork nightmare when the time for tax comes, a real mess relating to benefits, and so on. If things go interstate, it can get even worse - and that often does, if someone in a civil union is working for a company based in another state that doesn't recognise them and so health insurance coverage becomes an issue. There have been a few cases of couples in a civil union getting into legal difficulty when traveling outside the state, including one in which a lesbian died alone in hospital following an accident while the hospital refused to recognise the union as legally valid and so denied her partner visitation rights.
A bit like how everyone once had an equal right to marry someone of their own race?
Have you ever heard of adoption? People are very good at making babies. They make more than we know what to do with. Besides, I guess you have no objection to people marrying without intent of breeding? Maybe infertile people shouldn't be permitted to marry - they too are perverting the institution by preventing it serving it's purpose, are they not?
There's a verse in Romans that reads "Because of this [false religion], God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones." It's the closest the bible may get, but as it so often a problem it's practically impossible to figure out what it's supposed to mean. A lot of anti-gay Christians point to this as a clear condemnation of lesbianism, but that could be seen as them reading their expectations into the next - it's a possibility, but 'unnatural relations' could just as easily mean masturbation, or bestiality*, or adornment with fine clothing**, or even that the women were so bold as to forget their place as the submissive partner and try to seduce the men into bed.
*The old 'The enemy tribe fuck goats!' insult has been going around from the ancient world to the modern redneck joke.
**Also condemned in Leviticus - and the word is translated as 'lust' here, but it's also used elsewhere to simply mean 'strong desire' without any sexual element.
It's a convenient codeword. It would be too drawn-out to refer to them as the 'Republican anti-gay pro-life Christian pro-school-prayer anti-hpv-vaccine abstinance-only-supporting association.' Over time, the word 'family' as just come to be a form of political shorthand for a whole package of highly-correlated political positions.
There have been quite a few Christian games. I can name four of them without even resorting to google. I cannot, however, name any that don't suck. Indeed, some are famous precisely for how much suck they contain.
"That thought is just so stupid I can't believe they are saying it."
I've been reading their media and trolling their blogs for years, and I'm not surprised at all. They have a very different view of how sexuality works. To the FRC, there are no true gays - only straight people who have been deluded into thinking they are gay to satisfy their hedonistic lusts, and can surely be cured with the power of faith.
These are activists. They aren't worried about their children: They consider it their duty to worry about everyone else's children.
It depends how you define it. The one-in-ten figure was from Kinsey's study, and actually meant that he had managed to get one in ten people to admit to some homosexual experience in their past - but this was Kinsey's work, and so shouldn't be taken seriously. He has a role in history for breaking the taboo and opening human sexuality up as a respectable field of scientfic study - but his statistics are actually dubious, due to the difficulty he had getting subjects.
In more respectable studies, the estimates for GBLT still vary widely. Anywhere from 1% to 10%, depending who does the survey, where and how.
What they really mean is 'Hate the sinner so long as he continues to sin.' The idea isn't to love sinners for who they are now, but to love them enough to 'cure' them and bring them back. Once they have given up their sinful ways* then they are to be welcomed into the fold - but until that day comes, they are just another piece in the game fought for the souls of men.
* Christ, naturally, can cure gayness with ease. If they truely believe, they'll turn straight.
You need to look at it from a christian-nutcase perspective. Firstly, there *are* no real gay people in their view. There are only heterosexuals who have chosen* to be gay, even if they don't realise it was a choice. The more homosexuality is seen as normal, the more people will choose the gay way. To them, society *needs* to fight the gays, needs to treat them as inferior, dirty, loathsome creatures - because that homophobia is the natural defence against sin, and without the loathing it'll be Soddom all over again.
*Due to mental illness, hedonism, demonic posession or being raped as a child by another homosexual to induct them.
The FRC is the organisation that first turned me from indifferent to religion into actively campaigning against it. The conversion from atheist to antitheist was in response to an interview I read with one of their representatives regarding the HPV vaccine (Still awaiting FDA approval at the time), which the FRC held should not be administered because it might encourage premarital sex.
There is indeed a Gay Agenda, in the same way that the civil rights movement could be termed the Black Agenda.
It's just basic use of persuasive language. Calling something an agenda can make it sound intimidating and worrying. Even better if you imply the agenda is some sort of secret plan.
The Amateur Mad Scientist group I run has made the accent a requirement. All experimental equipment is activated only after declaring the traditional 'Throw Ze Svich!'
birds-are-nice.me/explodium/ - you can hear it. Need to work on the accent.
No company has tried to claim that piracy is killing cable. Why not? I expect better sleezyness from the media industry these days. They disappoint me.
I keep trying to promote exactly the same idea - once you start addressing files by hash, it shouldn't be difficult. Storage is cheap. But I have not the skill to impliment it myself, and even if I did such a technology isn't going to take off without backing from one of the big players.