With a 52% majority. Thankfully there is lots of legal precedence in such cases. Let us examine Prop 14.
As Ronald Reagan (a prop 14 spokesperson) summed it up: If an individual wants to discriminate against Negroes or others in selling or renting his house he has a right to do so
60% of Californians agreed with him. So, the people of California struck down a federal requirement that no such discrimination could take place.,/blockquote>Actually, it was 65% of the population approving it, Ronald Reagan apposed it so your characterization is not only out of line, like much of everything else you mentioned, it out of touch with reality, and finally, pro14 was ruled in violation of the 14th amendment because it's purpose was to allow property owners to refuse to sell or rent to people based on race, ethnicity, or other factors already outlawed. You have yet to show discrimination in the marriage law being between a man and a woman. as noted before, a gay man wanting to marry another gay man can in fact marry anyone of the opposite sex. At best, you have showed that it doesn't allow you to do what you want to do, but laws are generally like that anyways.
History is utterly irrelevant in law. Why even bring it up? As Kennedy said when SCOTUS struck down laws about same-gender sex, "Times can blind us to certain truths and later generations can see that laws once thought necessary and proper in fact serve only to oppress". SCOTUS deals with rationalism and what is, not "what has always been". Going by your argument, property rights would still trump individual rights (as it did for quite some time in the US) and slavery would still be legal.
History is completely relevent. You are the one who brought the context up anyways. You said "Since when was the government allowed to determine whom someone can marry?" I gave that all throughout history, this has been the case. Now that you got the answer and don't like it, you think it's irrelevant?
SCOTUS deals with matters of constitutionality and whether or not the power to regulate is present. They do not, and never were intended to be the playground bully allowing certain people to bribe them into forcing others into making Baseball fair for the people who can't hit the fucking ball. They are not your mom with the intent of making your feelings stop hurting or to make the neighbor kids play nice. What they are there for is to decide conflicts of law, settle disagreements between courts on the same, and to validate the powers of the government with their constitutional endowments or restrictions. If it were as you said, then the birthers wouldn't have had their case thrown out and Obama would have had to provide a valid birth certificate by now. But they aren't what you pretend they are, your claim on constitutionality isn't even the constitution (pursuit of happiness), and the law doesn't discriminate against anyone as the people claiming to be effected can in fact participate if they follow the law in the same way that someone drive a car has to get a license- they can in fact marry a person of the opposite gender at any time.
I would recommend you read up on the word discrimination: Discrimination is a sociological term referring to the treatment taken toward or against a person of a certain group in consideration based solely on class or category
Here is a class of people defined by "Want to marry a same-gender person". Simple definition. That group is being discriminated against. Simple.
And I would recomend that you stop inventing classes of people in order to support your own ideals. The law does not stop anyone who wants to marry someone of the same gender from getting married. It stops them from marrying someone of the same gender. That's where your discrimination falls apart. It does nothing to prevent them from getting married, it only prevents them from what they want to do. But guess what, all laws prevent people from doing something legally, should we take your same illogical conclusions and apply it to pedophiles or shoplifters? I mean is it discrimination for it to be illegal for "people who want to take things from stores without paying for them" (yea, that's the made up class)? What about people who want to marry 6 year old kids? That's a class right? Or how about the people, and there are a bunch of them, that want to drink then drive? Is that discrimination too? Show all the DUI laws and Petty theft laws be thrown out under the same made up argument? Sure, petty theft causes harm to others, DUI's don't unless you are in a wreck of some sort. So should the only way someone should be charged with a DUI be if they cause harm or damage to someone else? I mean otherwise, it's discrimination and should be overturned according to your definition and applied logic.
Sigh. The group of people who fall under the category "would like to marry a same-gender person", and this is a well-defined group, are not allowed to marry whomever they like (consenting adults apply). SCOTUS has long since stated that marriage to the person you want to marry is an inalienable right.
As I mentioned before, the law doesn't stop them from getting married. It stops them from marrying each other. Read the above again, and yes, DUI offenders are a well defined group too. You don't want equal treatment, you want special treatment based on your own preferences.
It is once that is directed at a group or category of people.
Like the DUI laws right? I mean when two people go to the bar and suck down 10 drinks each and the law stops them from driving but doesn't stop joe blow who has had only one drink, that's discrimination right? and yes, there are people with such a tolerance of alcohol that they can drive reasonably safe after 10 drinks.
That is actually quite easy. Again, we define a group of people by the property "want to marry a same-gender person". This is a very straightforward definition and easy to understand. The state of California has approximately 1,100 legal and economic benefits that are only given to married couples. A group defined as above are denied those benefits based on nothing but the definition of the group.
Lol this is laughable. OK, lets play the game then. You still haven't shown where the constitution says anything about it. and you are still ignoring the fact that the law simple does not stop them from getting married, it only stops them from marrying someone of the same sex.
But lets see, lets define a couple other groups and call them "people who don't want to get married but are living with someone". Lets define another group and call them "people who want the advantages of being married without having a spouse or partner". Lets define more groups and call them "people who want welfare but make too much money" and "people who want to drink and drive over the legal limit". Oh yea, one more group needs to be defined, "people who think people like you are extremely stupid and want to castra
No, I don't have physical evidence. It is possible that the entire hierarchy of the Catholic Church are complete idiots so out of touch, that they have had no clue as to what was commonly known to have been going on in their own organization. I also have no proof that we have actually landed men on the moon. It COULD have been a hoax filmed in a studio. I also have no proof that the planet is more than 40 years old. Heck, I can't truly prove that we even exist. I have to take the evidence presented and come to a reasonable logical conclusion.
Wow, you really are mentally challenged aren't you? I mean you are the same guy who couldn't tell the difference between a government ordering people to war and people within an organization acting on their own aren't you? And now you are attempting to compare things that have not only eye witness testimony from the people involved in going to the moon, but also the people who recorded it on camera, working in the control rooms and so on, with your insinuations about something the accused completely denies. Umm, that simply doesn't make sense. It might if the Catholic church was making the same claims as you are, I mean when you say the earth is older then 30 years, you obviously are forgetting about your parent and their parents being around if you think you have no proof of it. But hey, I guess anything you can wrangle into fitting your view I guess, right? As I already showed. it wasn't common knowledge until after the lawsuit in the mid 1990's when more and more people started coming forward. And before that, the instances reported happening was less then in any other field, which became about equal to all other fields once the bulk of the reports started coming in. But hey, let's not let facts get in your way right?
No, it wasn't. It has been common knowledge since at least the 70's.
The number of reported incidents simply do not back that up. Stop making shit up. Less then.5%, that's five tenths of one percent or.005, of the priests were ever accused of sexual abuse between 1950 and 1993. How does that insignificant number of priest being accused make something common knowledge? Especially when you are claiming that the Church covered it up, endorsed it, and kept it quiet. You can't have it both ways, either it's true and common knowledge and the law failed to intervene making it the laws problem, or the covered it up and encourage it in which it wouldn't be common knowledge. Have you even thought that out? Have you ever attempted to follow logic?
Are you seriously trying to claim that because 11 year old boys didn't come forth in 1950 and tell people that old men had raped them in the butt that it didn't happen?
Lol.. That's almost laughable if it wasn't A: such a serious subject, and B:, another failing in your ability to follow logic and comprehend what was said. No, I'm not saying it didn't happen. What I'm saying is, if they didn't tell anyone, then it can't be known so it's impossible to be common knowledge. You do realize that if something happens, it has to be told in order to be known in order for it to become common.
Heck, in 1950, 30 year old women generally didn't come forward and make accusations if they were raped. Thinking that young boys would tell people is ludicrous. Even more so when the person that raped them was a priest. What do you think would happen to a boy even as recent as the 1980s if he came forward and said that a priest had had anal sex with him?
Again, your imagination is working overtime. And yes, the surge in numbers or reports between 1993 and 2004 were reports of past years when people finally got the courage to say something. It wasn't 7000 molestation accusations claiming to have happened in those 11 years, it was 7000 accusations claiming something happened in any year. The proble
So you do think sexual attraction is the result of evolution?
No, sexual attraction is conditioned behavior. As I attempted to mention before, if it was a result of evolution, it would have died out as it contains it's own mechanism for destruction eg, no reproduction.
My brain certainly seems to be wired up to respond to certain thoughts or images in a certain way and has been since I've been able to keep my memories (ie, around age 3). Attraction to females has been there since at least then (I obviously cannot speak of before). We know that we all basically start off the same (which is why dudes have nips etc) and it's not til we create our hormone flooding organs that our bodies start to morph one way or another. We know this because it's not unheard of for somebody to be male, but resistent to (or inaffected by) testosterone, and so develop the body and mind of a female... while still having testicles rather than ovaries.
Well, let me ask you this, are there any types of females other then those that remind you of your mother that you are either more attracted to or put off by? And in that, are there any females such as a 700 pound fat greasy girl stuffing her face with bon-bons (not sure if that's work safe-no nudity) that you simply do not think you could get it up for? Is that genetic or conditioned behavior? Does doing it in public make you get off harder then behind closed doors or is there a favorite way of doing it?
Seriously, we are trained from the very beginning of life to know what we like and don't like. It's really a monkey see monkey do situation with the exception of perversion. It may not be as obvious and our imagination supplements a lot of it, but it's behavior we are talking about, not irresistible urges. Some people are more attracted to redheads, some like fat girls, some like blonds. If you ever went to church to get laid, you would know the wildest girl in the room would be the preacher's daughter. It's because the rebellion and doing what was drilled into her not to do excites the feelings when doing it. Take a kid and a candy bar. Sure, the sugar makes it enjoyable but it's mostly because the kid can't have one all the time that they want it the most. If the kid got one every hours, they wouldn't be as excited to have them.
Now I certainly have met females who have gone at least bi-Q after experiencing sexual abuse especially during the early teen years, but the level of attraction is just not the same as in somebody who is "born that way". So while I'm not disregarding non-genetic causes, I don't think their existence rules out the possibility of genetic causes, whether there's any truth to things like Xq28 results, correlations with left-handed people, cochnia structures in lesbians, ridges on the fingers of homo/hetrosexual males, INAH-3 neuron counts, or whether they're just coincidences depending on the sample, which is hardly surprising, considering that genes do different things in the presence or absence of others. I've certainly seen no evidence to suggest that sexuality is learned, yet all experience and external evidence I've seen supports the idea that it's built in... which means genetic.
First, no one is born gay or straight. They either consciously or subconsciously make the decision through a process of conditioned behavior. Now, I'm not saying it's always a choice to them, they may simply not be aware of the conditioning. And of course, someone who subconsciously makes the turn will probably have stronger feelings then someone who consciously makes the decision, especially if it was because of a bad situation like sexual abuse.
The possibility of sexual preference being genetic doesn't mean it is either. It like claiming there is a god, there might be, but we haven't proven or disproved it yet and in most cases, we can't even test. But I thin
You think a teacher would be a credable source for information on genetics??? The only friends I've had who're teachers are generally pretty mental, so no I hold somewhat higher standards what for what I consider a "credable source" than a teacher.
I was just tossing ideas out there.
I read it in a publication some 2-3 years ago, so no, I can't produce it here. Sorry, but if it was that important, you should have asked me 2-3 years ago when I had my hands on it.
I would imagine if it was a creditable study, others would be repeating it or echoing what it says. I should at least be able to find a link to it or something that points me in the right direction. Perhaps it was something pointed out that they were going to look further into and didn't find anything interesting. As far and finding you 2-3 years ago, well, you mentioned it today and I find it hard to believe today. I guess you can see where that was going.
Why do you think it must be a 'defect' for there to be genetic causes behind favouring an attraction to one gender over another? Do you think sexual attraction is not a result of evolution?
Well, it's logical in evolution and social behavior. If something happens that suppresses the reproduction of itself, then it's a defect. Changing the genetics to make someone not procreate is natures way of saying die off. Now on the flip side, we understand nature and evolution to work a certain way and have become accustom to what we know to be the norm. So if something is genetically different, it would be a defect, especially when it retards the ability to spread. That's the beauty of evolution. If something comes along that is a colossal failure in improving the life that evolved, it simply dies off. Sometimes it doesn't, but in this case, a gene mutation that stops someone from procreating and passing the gene onto offspring would basically be a self terminating mutation.
The interesting thing is that if it's real and not natures way of killing off a particular gene pool, then it is probably caused by environmental influences which would still make it a defect, but go along the lines of conditioned behavior too.
You think that pretending to be ignorant of a fact that is considered common knowledge absolves the Church as on organization of guilt.
First, this is pure conjecture that they are pretending. Fuck, do you have any proof? No, then why are you making assertions as if they are true without knowing they are? Second, it's only common knowledge after the fact when it's been exposed. No one has had any idea of how wide spread something like this was until the last 20 years or so when it's been highly publicized. Again, you are working completely from you imagination here.
I don't know what hole you were living in, but at least for the last thirty years, it was well known that priests were molesting kids. Given your tone, it isn't surprising that you were in denial about it, and just chalked all of the jokes, innuendos, and accusations about it up to people "hating the church" back then too. You are what is known as an enabler.
Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit. The John Jay report issued by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in 2004, noted that between 1950 and 2002, 10,667 people made accusations against 4,392 roman catholic priests out of 109.5k priests in the US during that time. Of those ten thousand people, two thirds of the allegations happened after 1993 with one third happening between 2002 and 2003. This means that of the 10,667 people or allegations, 7111 of them came to light in just 11 years with half of them in the last 3 of those 11 years with the remaining 3555 people or allegations happening in the 43 years prior. and just for perspective, that's roughly 82 a year from 1950 to 1993 in an organization with over 41,406 diocesan and religious-order priests and 30,000 lay ministers currently operating in the US. Even if we neglect the lay ministers, that's something like one tenth of one percent of of the priests being accused of sexual misconduct up until 1993. And yes, 1993 is less then 30 years, in fact, it's about half the time.
It also noted that the 4300 priests represent only 4% of the priests employed during that time and 56% were the subject of a single allegation. Of those priests the allegations were substantiated for 1,872 priests and unsubstantiated for 824 priests. They were thought to be credible for 1,671 priests and not credible for 345 priests. This means that they only knew the claims against 1,872 of them to be true and real and thought the other claims against 1,671 priest to be plausible. That leaves us with 1,169 priest who were wrongly accused or the accusations against them lacked merit. This also brings us to the accusations against the remaining 3041 or so priests. There were 109,694 priests operating in the US at the time so this brings us to a percentage of about 2.7%. That's hardly an indoctrination by the church. It doesn't even support the idea that it endorses it or anything. But hey, lets no let facts or the correct interpretation of them get into you way right?
Why are you insisting on attributing malice to what can easily be explained by ignorance?
I mean this crap happens all the time in a large organization which some people know some things but do not fully understand the scope of it. Crap, the government had enough information to of stopped or severely hampered 9/11 from happening but it was only after the fact that all the pieces of known information came together in one room to create the larger picture of the events of 9/11. Are we supposed to believe that Clinton and all his lackies as well as Bush were behind 9/11 because they allowed this information which didn't present a clear picture because it wasn't all in one place to not be used to stop 9/11 from happening?
Listen, I don't know anything about you, but suppose you have kids, applying the logic used to indict the pope is akin to you seeing your kids show lace is untied then being blamed for him tripping on it and injuring himself moments later. Of course you wasn't trying to hurt your kid, you just didn't seem an eminent threat of a shoe lace being untied to race over and tie it. Suppose when the kid fell, he knocked over a stand with an expensive vase on it at someone else' house. Does this mean you intended to break the vase? No it means a chain of events happened and while you are responsible for the child, saw his untied shoe lace, and didn't get over to tie it fast enough or didn't even think twice about it until after the incident happened in which a vase got broken. Suppose the neighbor is always accusing you kid of trampling her flowers. Suppose this happens all the time, even when the kid was with you all day long. Now suppose you found that the neighbor didn't like kids and used any excuse to get them in trouble. Now, are you going to discipline your child every time this neighbor makes a complaint about your kid? But suppose you kid did run through her garden once or twice and trample the flowers, does that now mean you endorsed it? Suppose you saw it once and took the kid elsewhere, punished him and kept him away from her yard, does that mean you endorsed the behavior? does that mean you sanctioned it or told the kid to do it? Does that mean anything other then what it is?
That's the fucked up logic being used to accuse the pope and the catholic church of being responsible for the wrongdoings their members or employees were involved in. And just like the neighbor lady who hates kids, it seems that your hatred or disdain for the church has allowed your imagination to work overtime.
You also forgot that with cops following your car, when your at the stop light on the corner where the 7-11 is being robbed, they are going to see that you are not involved in the robber where a GPS monitor would/could be used to indicate you as the getaway driver or something.
Is it the business of the government who marries as long as they are consenting adults? Why? Marriage is a legal contract, nothing else. It has nothing to do with religion. As long as the government allows one person to marry whomever they please and deny someone else in a systematic manner, that is - per definition - discrimination based on the background of that systematic manner. Is the government allowed to discriminate based on gender?
Lol.. I'm not arguing that the law is right or wrong, I'm saying that it's not discrimination. And yes, if it's a legal contract, I would guess it's the business of the government to regulate them as they regulate all legal contracts. Now they have not denied a gay man from marrying a women or even a gay woman. There is no discrimination going on at all. You are attempting to apply something completely outside the law to the law then claim it doesn't apply in order to show the discrimination. Well, you are jumping through too many hoops to make your point. Two men not being able to marry is not discriminating the same way as a black man and a white man not being able to marry is totally different from a black man and a white woman. Only the last is discriminatory.
When someone wants to turn the power over the individual to the federal government they are most often a communist. More rarely a fascist. You want to turn power over the individual to the government and I therefore assumed you were a communist. I don't like communists. If I was wrong and you are a fascist, I am slightly sorry - though the slightly is only as slightly as the difference between fascism and communism is.Man, you are confused about a lot of things here. First, no one is wanting to turn the power over to anyone- especially the federal government. Marriage is already a matter of the states and has been since the conception of this country or before. So no one is turning power over to anyone, they are just wanting to keep things the way they already are. And to that point, it was the public who made the rule in California, not the federal government or anyone like that. That's not communism or fascism. Fuck, you couldn't even get the competent jurisdiction right in this so why am I even pretending you will understand that?
and if you stop a man from marrying a man then you discriminate both on arbitrary moral superstition and also based on gender.
No you do not. Where is the discrimination and how does the law discriminate. Any man has the same right to marry a woman as any man does. The law says someone of one sex can marry someone of the other sex, not that some people can get married while other can't. Nothing is stopping a gay man from getting married except his preference to marry the same sex. And that's his "choice", not the law's. It's not discrimination simply because the law doesn't allow you to do something you want to do. Fuck, I want to set fireworks off in my own backyard but that's illegal in my state, is that discriminatory? I mean they let cities and large events do it. Why does the law need to be involved in me setting off fireworks? Are people that support the ban on residents setting off their own fireworks communists or fascist?
The only right requested is the right to marry whatever consenting adult one pleases without the interference from the government. Since when was the government allowed to determine whom someone can marry? Please explain how that fits into the constitution. Remember, the constitution strongly limits the governments right to interfere in private lives.
Actually, why don't you explain how the constitution prevents the government from doing so? I mean the constitution does three things, it gives the government a limited set of powers, it explicitly restricts the government from certain actions, and it explicitly reserves everything else for the states or the people respectivel
You essentially said you heard it somewhere but can't reproduce where. I said I can't find any creditable links which in fact suggests that someone told you that without creditable sources backing it up, and somehow you believed it (you may have been operating under the impression they were a creditable source like a teacher or something). In other words, if it was real, one of the two of us would have found something by now.
Now another poster displayed some things in animals which suggest genetic mutations might be behind it. But as far as I know, these studies turn out to be vapid when looked at in humans. Or in other words, the genetic defects in animals that they are attempting to associate with being gay are not recreated in humans who claim to be gay.
And Vietnam wasn't a war, and neither was Korea. I cannot speak for before I was born, but I knew that kids were being molested by church officials since Paul VI.
Wow, you can't see the difference between a government ordering troops to do something and people acting on their own? Are you serious?
Certainly the Popes knew it was happening and continued to not only ignore the problem, but make policy that protected it.
Pure conjecture. In fact, there is no direct evidence that any pope knew what was going on outside of the current pope- at to that extent he knew as in a position other then being pope. The pope might have been aware of some accusations but accusation have been made in order to hurt an image or reputation that have turned out to be nothing but that. So the question is, was there any creditable evidence that the pope knew about that the church refused to act on or actively covered up? And the answer to that is no, specifically because most of the accusations were made after the abused came of legal age. And to that extent, a lot of the accusers were converted self proclaimed evangelical atheists who seems to be backing a motive other then stopping the abuse. Now that does not excuse the church from taking the claims seriously, but I can see how they would tend to ignore frothing at the mouth god haters making accusations. That is a reasonable error as it happens all the time.
Growing up, calling someone an 'alter boy' was basically accusing them of getting buggered by old men.
Bullshit. Unless you were in some secrete club that got molested all the time or grew up in the last 10 years. The actual percentage of priest molesting children or anyone else in the congregation is no different from the average for any other occupation that comes into contact with children. the difference is that you hear about it more because the religion behind the church stands for the opposite of that happening and calls it a sin. This creates not only a shock value to keep it in front of the public, but is cause for ammunition from those who actively work against the church or religions.
Priests molesting kids was an open secret. It does not take an official statement by an organization to make the organization responsible for it's actions
Bullshit again. That is nothing but pure conjecture by you with absolutely nothing backing it's accuracy.
By your standards, there isn't, and never has been a Mafia. After all, they haven't made any official statements.
Actually, the Mafia has made official statements. That's how crime bosses get busted for the actions of their lackeys. And you have absolutely no evidence to even remotely suggest that the Roman Catholic Church acted even somewhat officially like the the mafia in it's endorsement of abusing children. You should stick with reality and not let your mind get carries away.
Which event would that be? Osama has had an international warrant out for his arrest since the 1990's and the US is behind one of them.
So if he received medical care at a US facility, it was either before the 1990's and the warrant or his identity was obscured and we didn't find out his true identity until after the fact. In either case, it isn't really a fault of the US as if you didn't know something, you simply didn't know it. I mean if you gave your neighbor some coffee and talked to him while he was waiting for his wife to come home, then he later killed her when she walked through the door, you aren't responsible for those actions for keeping him up and talking to him. You didn't know he was going to kill her.
You are marked insightful but you should be marked funny.
The so called "only one in decades to reduce the deficit" is a lie. They balanced a budget- not reduced the deficit- and that was with a republican controlled congress and some special tricks that would have fallen away anyways. These special tricks were the Roth IRA conversions which took taxes that should have been paid in the future and allowed them to be paid now instead in order to bank on the idea that taxes would be higher in the future. These special tricks are also the capitol gains tax cuts that virtually increased the value of holding to make selling of them more attractive which in turned caused tax revenue that wouldn't have otherwise been accounted for. You also have the Y2K situation in which people were tricked into replacing computers and software causing an economic spike that compounded the 2001 recession under the notion that your old computer would kick your wife, rape your dog, and set your house or business on fire because the two digit date would role back and nothing would know what it was doing.
Without all those things, the budget would not have been balanced which in itself is a misnomer. While the budget was supposedly balanced, federal outlays were actually more then receipts when you considered off budget expenditures. While it's true that this slowed the growth of the deficit, it did not reduce it in any way.
It's probably more economical to install a power generation plant at a sewage treatment facility instead of doing this. and to that point, It's probably even more economical to use something like an Activated Carbon Facilitated Oxidation reactor to power a low temp steam turbine generator.
Except in this case. activist judges is a correct and proper term. The judge went out and found his own evidence to support his ruling and his ruling focused on argument that weren't pertaining to laws or legal procedures already established and on the books long before this was an issue before him. This judge also ignored legal rules and allowed the video transmission of statements of the plaintiffs to be broadcast live in an attempt to give national exposure to their side of the argument.
If you want to ignore fact and make an ideological declaration, then fine. but that doesn't make you correct.
It was meant as a joke. The word means what I think it means, I just used it in an abstract way like blowing a hole in the ground to solve the problem of someone else blowing your house up.
So in other words, the idea that attraction is genetic is simply an idea at this state right?
As I said before, I can't find anything on gay being genetic from a creditable source. There is reason for that though, it's because being gay is a preference and all preference is conditioned behavior. Being gay is not a genetic mutation or disease or anything else other then a preference that someone has learned or been conditioned to throughout their life. Now this still doesn't mean it's a choice necessarily as most of the conditioning is probably done well before it can be associated with any actions. Of course acting on that preference is a choice though. But having a preference for the same sex is little to no different for having a preference for redheads or being sexually put off by brunets. It's simply a conditioned behavior.
I think the point the above poster may have been trying to make (in his or her crude way) was that if a church is led by a man who willfully supported and even enabled the sexual exploitation of children over a period of decades, then perhaps members of that church, once the behavior is made public, do not have the moral high ground if they continue to support that church. Perhaps they should not denigrate less centralized religions either, as such entities by their very nature cannot have a top-down core practice of concealing a disgusting betrayal of its own congregation.
Unless you mean enables by lack of positive actions when the circumstances were known, then the accusation would be completely wrong. The pope did not support or enable sexual exploitation of children over a period of decades outside of failing to act responsibly when he knew about it. And during the time period, it was somewhat common for people to push things like sexual abuse under the rug because they didn't want to deal with it. It's not just the Catholic church that has had to deal with it, it's all of society. Look at how long it took to get laws about background checks for workers who have access to children? Hell, it wasn't even illegal in most states for a convicted child molester to go down to the play ground at the local park and hang out all day until the late 1980's early 90's.
Now, I'm not saying what the pope did while he was a bishop was right or anything, I'm saying it doesn't equate to how you or the op presented it. Nowhere in the catholic religion does it support the sexual exploitation of children or even adults, and in fact, it actually states the contrary. So you end up with the actions of people in positions of power who were not acting within the scope of the church and leaders who failed to do something about it when it was found out. One of those lacking leader is not the top leader of the church which makes him about as morally equal to the leaders of many other countries including some of the leaders of the USA.
t really isn't a matter of guilt by association, but rather indirect complicity. This isn't a few instances of abuse after all, but a systematic conspiracy lasting decades, and perhaps a century or more. It speaks directly to the heart of the institution itself. By holding up his church as a standard for christian behavior, the GGP is defending that church's abhorrent practices.
Well, I'm glad you actually see that it's not a direct action of the church or the current pope. Now, if you ask most Christians who are not part of the catholic church (more precisely the roman catholic church), they will say they are somewhat of a cult and not a church. However, even with their insane worshiping of idols like Marry, or the insistence on the divine right of kings, and so on, the church itself is not indicative of the lousy leadership it has had over the last century or so.
But the clearer problem is that the GGP did not in any way hold up his church as a standard for Christians or defend that church's abhorrent practices. He simple states (in layman's terms) that some churches interpret things differently and there isn't just one church there are many. He goes on to say that because of the different interpretations he might not even be a true Christian. That's hardly holding his church up or setting it as a standard for others. His point was to why the actions of some should not dictate a belief towards all which was clearly lost in this thread.
Rubbish. The government prevents gays from marrying the people they love, while you and I are free to marry.
Rubbish is right. Nowhere in the laws is love a requirement or even part of marriage. Love is part of a religious sentiment that was used to stop arranged marriages and attempt to keep them working longer. It has transferred onto society to some degree but it is on no way connected to the law. People who do not love each other get married all the time. The law is completely void about love.
Why do you think I think there is such a law?
There would need to be a law on this if the law somehow discriminates against someone for the reason of love. There isn't, therefore it doesn't discriminate at all.
The fact that you don't see that when you say "marriage being between a man and a woman" that is discriminatory by definition.
Marriage by legal definition is about society at large and the complexities created when people weren't married. There used to be rules about common law marriages to get around some of these problems but those are even being repealed or invalidated so no, nothing is discriminatory at all in that statement.
But please, if you can explain outside of "because it's what I want or believe" or outside of Just because of "what you said makes you a certain way", then please, present your case. But pointing to what I said as something you disagree with without providing any explanation to back the disagreement just means you are a bigot- not that I'm discriminating or anything.
Yeah, all judges who limit the powers of the government are activist judges. And you are a fucking communist for demanding the government decide who I can and can not marry as a consenting adult. I hate communists like you who want to give the government unlimited powers.
Why don't you stick to the points and present an actual case to support your idea instead of turning to insults and attempts to change the subject? The law wasn't made by the government in this case, it was made by the people which inhabit the state. and yes, that's how a democracy- not communism works. and yes, the government has legal jurisdiction of legal processes within it's state. You can marry anyone you want at a church or cult gathering but it will have no legal backing. That's what you want BTW, a marriage with legal backing which by default means the government should be involved.
Why don't you actually think your arguments out before you make them?
Correct, and it is a legal maneuver that California tried to arbitrarily limit. Why do we not just ban white men from marrying black women or vice versa. There is no difference right? There would be no discrimination, right? Moron.
Wow, "Moron" if that isn't the pot calling the kettle black. There is no arbitrary to it. It's called what society thinks is normal. And no, it wasn't California that tried to limit it, it was the people in the state of California who voted the measure into law.
And the difference between stopping a black man and a white women from marrying and stopping two men from marrying is that the black man and white woman are still man and woman. Two men are not. So if you are stopping a black man and a white women from marrying because of their race, then you are discriminating based on race because ordinarily a man and a woman can marry. Now with two gay men, you are stopping them because it's not a man and a woman, so there is not discrimination at all. Even if it was a black man and a white man, there would be no discrimination at all. And they know this which is why it hasn't been brought up. This is because anyone with enough intelligence to simply look around can see the difference in the situations. You don't want equal rights, you want extra rights.
Nice analogy, but if I brought you before a court of law, chances are you would walk away freely. Precisely because there would not be any verifiable _proof_.
I think you are severely underestimating the power of witness testimony in a court of law. There have been murder convictions based entirley around people claiming to have seen someone in a certain area arguing with someone moments before someone was killed.
Not that I have ever met anyone who presented me with his/her story of how he/she knows God which I found credible even if I trusted the whole story without questioning anything.
I'm not arguing the existence of a god or God, I'm not arguing that those who told you about them were telling the truth. Please don't take as that. I'm simply attempting to say that there are conditions to which evidence is only available to a few people and you have to take their word for it.
This is not to say that I am against religion per se, but at least up to now all religions are _faiths_ based on _belief_, not _facts_.
Well, partially faith based. There are a lot of facts in most religions. These facts pertain to outcomes of events and historical accounting much like any other history is shown to us. To say something like Christianity is not based on any facts is sort of missing the forest for the trees. There are plenty of facts surrounding it. Biblical people actually existed, evens in the bibles actually transpires (perhaps not as recorded but the essence is real) and so on. Hell, even the plagues on Egypt in which Pharaoh was convinced to let the Jews go can be explained scientifically with the exception of one (which seems to be a combination of two separate conditions), and the weird thing is that one plague invites the others as a consequence of the effect the one had. Now attributing that to a god or God in faith, but the events can be very real and a fact.
As an aside, don't you think it's funny that the larger miracles seem to have happened in times when scientific verification was a lot harder? The only one in "recent" times I can think of right now is based solely on the story told by one single adolescent boy who profited from the story, so yah..
Well, you are talking about the time span of 4000 or more years in which the miracles have happened. You can probably list them to less then 1 per century. The process of scientific validation or verification has been around for less then one century in the capacity it is today. No, I don't think it's funny that something that averages 1 in 100 or less and is recorded in a specific book or books that were propagated with an intent behind them is not happening in the 100-200 years or less that science has been around and capable of verifying the events in which the books or propagation of books seemed to lessen on the intent (In other words, they don't update the bible with current events anymore).
On another note, a lot of things don't look like miracles any more with the progress of technology and special effects. This reminds me of Chris Angel, the "mind freak" dude. He had a heavy metal band in which he attempted to insert his illusions as part of the act. The music wasn't that bad but the audience saw the entire thing as a fraud and stopped showing up. This is because the audience was conditioned to expect crap like that and was intelligent enough to figure it out. But when he dropped the band and attracted a much larger audience, people actually thought he was somehow levitating in air, or climbing through solid glass or whatever the illusion was. So yes, some things that might appear as miracles wouldn't be suggested as one now compared to earlier when the tech to do the tricks simply weren't there. This might also cause the reporting of them to stop or slow quite a bit.
I have a ghostly personal experience that some would call a miracle which both defies scientific explanation and presented me with evidence to act that couldn't be verified is you are interested in it. But it's sort of long winded so I won't post it unless specifically asked to.
It is not guilt by association. If another Catholic was convicted of child molestation, I wouldn't call his membership in the Catholic Church a membership in an international child molestation ring. That isn't what happened though. What happened was that he declared his allegiance to an organization where the organization actively used their vast resources to directly support child molestation. Presumably, the poster donated money to this organization knowing that the organization used money he collected to support members of it's staff to commit child molestation.
That's not what happened at all. He follows a religion that doesn't condone child molestation although a percentage of other members may have been involved in it. And to that, the number of people involved in Child molestation is no different from any other occupation that has access to children (IE, Schools, juvenile courts system and so on. You are living in some fallacy that because you hear more of a stink being made about the members of the church and the church's inability to hide the molestations you somehow think it's happening more or it's sanctioned by the church which is an absolute fabrication. Nowhere in the Catholic church does any document or policy written or understood accept the molestation of children.
You are in fact operating under guilt by association.
Now, if you want to compare the Catholic Church to the internet, you would need to change your analogy. Christianity as a whole would be the equivalent of the internet, and the Catholic Church would be the equivalent of AT&T. If it turned out that AT&T leadership was systematically collecting up children and molesting them, it was well known by both the public and everyone onside the organization that this was a common practice and there were other ISPs, then yes, I would considers someones use of AT&T internet access to be supporting child molestation. I would certainly consider them to support child molestation if the DONATED money to AT&T and was going to take their moral guidance from executives who were known to be directly involved with setting the policy to use AT&T funds to keep the molesters in positions where they would continue to have access to kids. As far as I know, AT&T has not done this, and I don't know anyone that looks to AT&T to give them moral guidance.
No analogy change is necessary, you just need to practice fairness in your accusations and get you facts straight. The leadership of the catholic church was not in any way systematically collecting up children and molesting them. Leaders in the catholic church were but it was never a church sanctioned event.
Now I can tell you are of limited mental capacity so I will explain what the difference there is. In order for the leadership to do something, it has to be a sanctioned event that is progressed down the line. When leaders act on their own, it's simply an abuse of their position of trust. In all occupations where access to children is possible, people who want to molest children seek to be employed. This is why there are law concerning employment at schools and daycare facilities, parks and so on. The church for some reason wasn't really included in those mostly because the government can't have direct control over them (just like scout leaders and such) but generally because it's the last thing one would expect from a church who's message is quite the contrary. And yes, the Jedeo-Christian-Muslim religions all do not accept the molestation of children or even adults for that matter, as part of their religion. But because people sought out jobs to gain access to children like the pedophiles who became boy scout troop leaders, does not mean that the organization accepts it, sanctions it, or allows it to happen.
If someone is guilty because others who participate in the same activity, club or organization does something wrong, then it's transferable to anything
Look for a book called "the God part of the brain".
It's premise is that our brain is conditioned to actually need a god type reality and if there isn't one, one will either be invented or something real will be substituted for it.
This is probably the only time I think a Citation needed is warranted. Where have genetic markers been linked from?
I have never seen any creditable study saying this. I have seen a bunch of made up shit on pro gay sites claiming everything from genetically different ears to other defects but the truth is that sexual attraction is learned/conditioned behavior and little more. This is the same reason why certain types of partners attract people more then others and even why they are somewhat repulsed by them.
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And I would recomend that you stop inventing classes of people in order to support your own ideals. The law does not stop anyone who wants to marry someone of the same gender from getting married. It stops them from marrying someone of the same gender. That's where your discrimination falls apart. It does nothing to prevent them from getting married, it only prevents them from what they want to do. But guess what, all laws prevent people from doing something legally, should we take your same illogical conclusions and apply it to pedophiles or shoplifters? I mean is it discrimination for it to be illegal for "people who want to take things from stores without paying for them" (yea, that's the made up class)? What about people who want to marry 6 year old kids? That's a class right? Or how about the people, and there are a bunch of them, that want to drink then drive? Is that discrimination too? Show all the DUI laws and Petty theft laws be thrown out under the same made up argument? Sure, petty theft causes harm to others, DUI's don't unless you are in a wreck of some sort. So should the only way someone should be charged with a DUI be if they cause harm or damage to someone else? I mean otherwise, it's discrimination and should be overturned according to your definition and applied logic.
As I mentioned before, the law doesn't stop them from getting married. It stops them from marrying each other. Read the above again, and yes, DUI offenders are a well defined group too. You don't want equal treatment, you want special treatment based on your own preferences.
Like the DUI laws right? I mean when two people go to the bar and suck down 10 drinks each and the law stops them from driving but doesn't stop joe blow who has had only one drink, that's discrimination right? and yes, there are people with such a tolerance of alcohol that they can drive reasonably safe after 10 drinks.
Lol this is laughable. OK, lets play the game then. You still haven't shown where the constitution says anything about it. and you are still ignoring the fact that the law simple does not stop them from getting married, it only stops them from marrying someone of the same sex.
But lets see, lets define a couple other groups and call them "people who don't want to get married but are living with someone". Lets define another group and call them "people who want the advantages of being married without having a spouse or partner". Lets define more groups and call them "people who want welfare but make too much money" and "people who want to drink and drive over the legal limit". Oh yea, one more group needs to be defined, "people who think people like you are extremely stupid and want to castra
Wow, you really are mentally challenged aren't you? I mean you are the same guy who couldn't tell the difference between a government ordering people to war and people within an organization acting on their own aren't you? And now you are attempting to compare things that have not only eye witness testimony from the people involved in going to the moon, but also the people who recorded it on camera, working in the control rooms and so on, with your insinuations about something the accused completely denies. Umm, that simply doesn't make sense. It might if the Catholic church was making the same claims as you are, I mean when you say the earth is older then 30 years, you obviously are forgetting about your parent and their parents being around if you think you have no proof of it. But hey, I guess anything you can wrangle into fitting your view I guess, right? As I already showed. it wasn't common knowledge until after the lawsuit in the mid 1990's when more and more people started coming forward. And before that, the instances reported happening was less then in any other field, which became about equal to all other fields once the bulk of the reports started coming in. But hey, let's not let facts get in your way right?
The number of reported incidents simply do not back that up. Stop making shit up. Less then .5%, that's five tenths of one percent or .005, of the priests were ever accused of sexual abuse between 1950 and 1993. How does that insignificant number of priest being accused make something common knowledge? Especially when you are claiming that the Church covered it up, endorsed it, and kept it quiet. You can't have it both ways, either it's true and common knowledge and the law failed to intervene making it the laws problem, or the covered it up and encourage it in which it wouldn't be common knowledge. Have you even thought that out? Have you ever attempted to follow logic?
Lol.. That's almost laughable if it wasn't A: such a serious subject, and B:, another failing in your ability to follow logic and comprehend what was said. No, I'm not saying it didn't happen. What I'm saying is, if they didn't tell anyone, then it can't be known so it's impossible to be common knowledge. You do realize that if something happens, it has to be told in order to be known in order for it to become common.
Again, your imagination is working overtime. And yes, the surge in numbers or reports between 1993 and 2004 were reports of past years when people finally got the courage to say something. It wasn't 7000 molestation accusations claiming to have happened in those 11 years, it was 7000 accusations claiming something happened in any year. The proble
No, sexual attraction is conditioned behavior. As I attempted to mention before, if it was a result of evolution, it would have died out as it contains it's own mechanism for destruction eg, no reproduction.
Well, let me ask you this, are there any types of females other then those that remind you of your mother that you are either more attracted to or put off by? And in that, are there any females such as a 700 pound fat greasy girl stuffing her face with bon-bons (not sure if that's work safe-no nudity) that you simply do not think you could get it up for? Is that genetic or conditioned behavior? Does doing it in public make you get off harder then behind closed doors or is there a favorite way of doing it?
Seriously, we are trained from the very beginning of life to know what we like and don't like. It's really a monkey see monkey do situation with the exception of perversion. It may not be as obvious and our imagination supplements a lot of it, but it's behavior we are talking about, not irresistible urges. Some people are more attracted to redheads, some like fat girls, some like blonds. If you ever went to church to get laid, you would know the wildest girl in the room would be the preacher's daughter. It's because the rebellion and doing what was drilled into her not to do excites the feelings when doing it. Take a kid and a candy bar. Sure, the sugar makes it enjoyable but it's mostly because the kid can't have one all the time that they want it the most. If the kid got one every hours, they wouldn't be as excited to have them.
First, no one is born gay or straight. They either consciously or subconsciously make the decision through a process of conditioned behavior. Now, I'm not saying it's always a choice to them, they may simply not be aware of the conditioning. And of course, someone who subconsciously makes the turn will probably have stronger feelings then someone who consciously makes the decision, especially if it was because of a bad situation like sexual abuse.
The possibility of sexual preference being genetic doesn't mean it is either. It like claiming there is a god, there might be, but we haven't proven or disproved it yet and in most cases, we can't even test. But I thin
That's what happens when you want accurate results from a cheap sensor.
Actually, it's probably either different sensors configures in the different balloons or someone's deodorant or body spray interacting with them.
well, that's my guess anyways.
I was just tossing ideas out there.
I would imagine if it was a creditable study, others would be repeating it or echoing what it says. I should at least be able to find a link to it or something that points me in the right direction. Perhaps it was something pointed out that they were going to look further into and didn't find anything interesting. As far and finding you 2-3 years ago, well, you mentioned it today and I find it hard to believe today. I guess you can see where that was going.
Well, it's logical in evolution and social behavior. If something happens that suppresses the reproduction of itself, then it's a defect. Changing the genetics to make someone not procreate is natures way of saying die off. Now on the flip side, we understand nature and evolution to work a certain way and have become accustom to what we know to be the norm. So if something is genetically different, it would be a defect, especially when it retards the ability to spread. That's the beauty of evolution. If something comes along that is a colossal failure in improving the life that evolved, it simply dies off. Sometimes it doesn't, but in this case, a gene mutation that stops someone from procreating and passing the gene onto offspring would basically be a self terminating mutation.
The interesting thing is that if it's real and not natures way of killing off a particular gene pool, then it is probably caused by environmental influences which would still make it a defect, but go along the lines of conditioned behavior too.
And here you go again.
First, this is pure conjecture that they are pretending. Fuck, do you have any proof? No, then why are you making assertions as if they are true without knowing they are? Second, it's only common knowledge after the fact when it's been exposed. No one has had any idea of how wide spread something like this was until the last 20 years or so when it's been highly publicized. Again, you are working completely from you imagination here.
Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit. The John Jay report issued by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in 2004, noted that between 1950 and 2002, 10,667 people made accusations against 4,392 roman catholic priests out of 109.5k priests in the US during that time. Of those ten thousand people, two thirds of the allegations happened after 1993 with one third happening between 2002 and 2003. This means that of the 10,667 people or allegations, 7111 of them came to light in just 11 years with half of them in the last 3 of those 11 years with the remaining 3555 people or allegations happening in the 43 years prior. and just for perspective, that's roughly 82 a year from 1950 to 1993 in an organization with over 41,406 diocesan and religious-order priests and 30,000 lay ministers currently operating in the US. Even if we neglect the lay ministers, that's something like one tenth of one percent of of the priests being accused of sexual misconduct up until 1993. And yes, 1993 is less then 30 years, in fact, it's about half the time.
It also noted that the 4300 priests represent only 4% of the priests employed during that time and 56% were the subject of a single allegation. Of those priests the allegations were substantiated for 1,872 priests and unsubstantiated for 824 priests. They were thought to be credible for 1,671 priests and not credible for 345 priests. This means that they only knew the claims against 1,872 of them to be true and real and thought the other claims against 1,671 priest to be plausible. That leaves us with 1,169 priest who were wrongly accused or the accusations against them lacked merit. This also brings us to the accusations against the remaining 3041 or so priests. There were 109,694 priests operating in the US at the time so this brings us to a percentage of about 2.7%. That's hardly an indoctrination by the church. It doesn't even support the idea that it endorses it or anything. But hey, lets no let facts or the correct interpretation of them get into you way right?
Why are you insisting on attributing malice to what can easily be explained by ignorance?
I mean this crap happens all the time in a large organization which some people know some things but do not fully understand the scope of it. Crap, the government had enough information to of stopped or severely hampered 9/11 from happening but it was only after the fact that all the pieces of known information came together in one room to create the larger picture of the events of 9/11. Are we supposed to believe that Clinton and all his lackies as well as Bush were behind 9/11 because they allowed this information which didn't present a clear picture because it wasn't all in one place to not be used to stop 9/11 from happening?
Listen, I don't know anything about you, but suppose you have kids, applying the logic used to indict the pope is akin to you seeing your kids show lace is untied then being blamed for him tripping on it and injuring himself moments later. Of course you wasn't trying to hurt your kid, you just didn't seem an eminent threat of a shoe lace being untied to race over and tie it. Suppose when the kid fell, he knocked over a stand with an expensive vase on it at someone else' house. Does this mean you intended to break the vase? No it means a chain of events happened and while you are responsible for the child, saw his untied shoe lace, and didn't get over to tie it fast enough or didn't even think twice about it until after the incident happened in which a vase got broken. Suppose the neighbor is always accusing you kid of trampling her flowers. Suppose this happens all the time, even when the kid was with you all day long. Now suppose you found that the neighbor didn't like kids and used any excuse to get them in trouble. Now, are you going to discipline your child every time this neighbor makes a complaint about your kid? But suppose you kid did run through her garden once or twice and trample the flowers, does that now mean you endorsed it? Suppose you saw it once and took the kid elsewhere, punished him and kept him away from her yard, does that mean you endorsed the behavior? does that mean you sanctioned it or told the kid to do it? Does that mean anything other then what it is?
That's the fucked up logic being used to accuse the pope and the catholic church of being responsible for the wrongdoings their members or employees were involved in. And just like the neighbor lady who hates kids, it seems that your hatred or disdain for the church has allowed your imagination to work overtime.
You also forgot that with cops following your car, when your at the stop light on the corner where the 7-11 is being robbed, they are going to see that you are not involved in the robber where a GPS monitor would/could be used to indicate you as the getaway driver or something.
Lol.. I'm not arguing that the law is right or wrong, I'm saying that it's not discrimination. And yes, if it's a legal contract, I would guess it's the business of the government to regulate them as they regulate all legal contracts. Now they have not denied a gay man from marrying a women or even a gay woman. There is no discrimination going on at all. You are attempting to apply something completely outside the law to the law then claim it doesn't apply in order to show the discrimination. Well, you are jumping through too many hoops to make your point. Two men not being able to marry is not discriminating the same way as a black man and a white man not being able to marry is totally different from a black man and a white woman. Only the last is discriminatory.
You essentially said you heard it somewhere but can't reproduce where. I said I can't find any creditable links which in fact suggests that someone told you that without creditable sources backing it up, and somehow you believed it (you may have been operating under the impression they were a creditable source like a teacher or something). In other words, if it was real, one of the two of us would have found something by now.
Now another poster displayed some things in animals which suggest genetic mutations might be behind it. But as far as I know, these studies turn out to be vapid when looked at in humans. Or in other words, the genetic defects in animals that they are attempting to associate with being gay are not recreated in humans who claim to be gay.
Wow, you can't see the difference between a government ordering troops to do something and people acting on their own? Are you serious?
Pure conjecture. In fact, there is no direct evidence that any pope knew what was going on outside of the current pope- at to that extent he knew as in a position other then being pope. The pope might have been aware of some accusations but accusation have been made in order to hurt an image or reputation that have turned out to be nothing but that. So the question is, was there any creditable evidence that the pope knew about that the church refused to act on or actively covered up? And the answer to that is no, specifically because most of the accusations were made after the abused came of legal age. And to that extent, a lot of the accusers were converted self proclaimed evangelical atheists who seems to be backing a motive other then stopping the abuse. Now that does not excuse the church from taking the claims seriously, but I can see how they would tend to ignore frothing at the mouth god haters making accusations. That is a reasonable error as it happens all the time.
Bullshit. Unless you were in some secrete club that got molested all the time or grew up in the last 10 years. The actual percentage of priest molesting children or anyone else in the congregation is no different from the average for any other occupation that comes into contact with children. the difference is that you hear about it more because the religion behind the church stands for the opposite of that happening and calls it a sin. This creates not only a shock value to keep it in front of the public, but is cause for ammunition from those who actively work against the church or religions.
Bullshit again. That is nothing but pure conjecture by you with absolutely nothing backing it's accuracy.
Actually, the Mafia has made official statements. That's how crime bosses get busted for the actions of their lackeys. And you have absolutely no evidence to even remotely suggest that the Roman Catholic Church acted even somewhat officially like the the mafia in it's endorsement of abusing children. You should stick with reality and not let your mind get carries away.
Which event would that be? Osama has had an international warrant out for his arrest since the 1990's and the US is behind one of them.
So if he received medical care at a US facility, it was either before the 1990's and the warrant or his identity was obscured and we didn't find out his true identity until after the fact. In either case, it isn't really a fault of the US as if you didn't know something, you simply didn't know it. I mean if you gave your neighbor some coffee and talked to him while he was waiting for his wife to come home, then he later killed her when she walked through the door, you aren't responsible for those actions for keeping him up and talking to him. You didn't know he was going to kill her.
So let's keep a little perspective here.
You are marked insightful but you should be marked funny.
The so called "only one in decades to reduce the deficit" is a lie. They balanced a budget- not reduced the deficit- and that was with a republican controlled congress and some special tricks that would have fallen away anyways. These special tricks were the Roth IRA conversions which took taxes that should have been paid in the future and allowed them to be paid now instead in order to bank on the idea that taxes would be higher in the future. These special tricks are also the capitol gains tax cuts that virtually increased the value of holding to make selling of them more attractive which in turned caused tax revenue that wouldn't have otherwise been accounted for. You also have the Y2K situation in which people were tricked into replacing computers and software causing an economic spike that compounded the 2001 recession under the notion that your old computer would kick your wife, rape your dog, and set your house or business on fire because the two digit date would role back and nothing would know what it was doing.
Without all those things, the budget would not have been balanced which in itself is a misnomer. While the budget was supposedly balanced, federal outlays were actually more then receipts when you considered off budget expenditures. While it's true that this slowed the growth of the deficit, it did not reduce it in any way.
It's probably more economical to install a power generation plant at a sewage treatment facility instead of doing this. and to that point, It's probably even more economical to use something like an Activated Carbon Facilitated Oxidation reactor to power a low temp steam turbine generator.
Is methane much worse then Co2? I mean Co2 is a very stable compound and Methane has a lot short life span as it breaks down easier.
Or are you simply looking at the heat retention factor and ignoring the facts that Co2 remains in the atmosphere 200 times longer then methane?
Except in this case. activist judges is a correct and proper term. The judge went out and found his own evidence to support his ruling and his ruling focused on argument that weren't pertaining to laws or legal procedures already established and on the books long before this was an issue before him. This judge also ignored legal rules and allowed the video transmission of statements of the plaintiffs to be broadcast live in an attempt to give national exposure to their side of the argument.
If you want to ignore fact and make an ideological declaration, then fine. but that doesn't make you correct.
It was meant as a joke. The word means what I think it means, I just used it in an abstract way like blowing a hole in the ground to solve the problem of someone else blowing your house up.
So in other words, the idea that attraction is genetic is simply an idea at this state right?
As I said before, I can't find anything on gay being genetic from a creditable source. There is reason for that though, it's because being gay is a preference and all preference is conditioned behavior. Being gay is not a genetic mutation or disease or anything else other then a preference that someone has learned or been conditioned to throughout their life. Now this still doesn't mean it's a choice necessarily as most of the conditioning is probably done well before it can be associated with any actions. Of course acting on that preference is a choice though. But having a preference for the same sex is little to no different for having a preference for redheads or being sexually put off by brunets. It's simply a conditioned behavior.
Unless you mean enables by lack of positive actions when the circumstances were known, then the accusation would be completely wrong. The pope did not support or enable sexual exploitation of children over a period of decades outside of failing to act responsibly when he knew about it. And during the time period, it was somewhat common for people to push things like sexual abuse under the rug because they didn't want to deal with it. It's not just the Catholic church that has had to deal with it, it's all of society. Look at how long it took to get laws about background checks for workers who have access to children? Hell, it wasn't even illegal in most states for a convicted child molester to go down to the play ground at the local park and hang out all day until the late 1980's early 90's.
Now, I'm not saying what the pope did while he was a bishop was right or anything, I'm saying it doesn't equate to how you or the op presented it. Nowhere in the catholic religion does it support the sexual exploitation of children or even adults, and in fact, it actually states the contrary. So you end up with the actions of people in positions of power who were not acting within the scope of the church and leaders who failed to do something about it when it was found out. One of those lacking leader is not the top leader of the church which makes him about as morally equal to the leaders of many other countries including some of the leaders of the USA.
Well, I'm glad you actually see that it's not a direct action of the church or the current pope. Now, if you ask most Christians who are not part of the catholic church (more precisely the roman catholic church), they will say they are somewhat of a cult and not a church. However, even with their insane worshiping of idols like Marry, or the insistence on the divine right of kings, and so on, the church itself is not indicative of the lousy leadership it has had over the last century or so.
But the clearer problem is that the GGP did not in any way hold up his church as a standard for Christians or defend that church's abhorrent practices. He simple states (in layman's terms) that some churches interpret things differently and there isn't just one church there are many. He goes on to say that because of the different interpretations he might not even be a true Christian. That's hardly holding his church up or setting it as a standard for others. His point was to why the actions of some should not dictate a belief towards all which was clearly lost in this thread.
Rubbish is right. Nowhere in the laws is love a requirement or even part of marriage. Love is part of a religious sentiment that was used to stop arranged marriages and attempt to keep them working longer. It has transferred onto society to some degree but it is on no way connected to the law. People who do not love each other get married all the time. The law is completely void about love.
There would need to be a law on this if the law somehow discriminates against someone for the reason of love. There isn't, therefore it doesn't discriminate at all.
Marriage by legal definition is about society at large and the complexities created when people weren't married. There used to be rules about common law marriages to get around some of these problems but those are even being repealed or invalidated so no, nothing is discriminatory at all in that statement.
But please, if you can explain outside of "because it's what I want or believe" or outside of Just because of "what you said makes you a certain way", then please, present your case. But pointing to what I said as something you disagree with without providing any explanation to back the disagreement just means you are a bigot- not that I'm discriminating or anything.
Why don't you stick to the points and present an actual case to support your idea instead of turning to insults and attempts to change the subject? The law wasn't made by the government in this case, it was made by the people which inhabit the state. and yes, that's how a democracy- not communism works. and yes, the government has legal jurisdiction of legal processes within it's state. You can marry anyone you want at a church or cult gathering but it will have no legal backing. That's what you want BTW, a marriage with legal backing which by default means the government should be involved.
Why don't you actually think your arguments out before you make them?
Wow, "Moron" if that isn't the pot calling the kettle black. There is no arbitrary to it. It's called what society thinks is normal. And no, it wasn't California that tried to limit it, it was the people in the state of California who voted the measure into law.
And the difference between stopping a black man and a white women from marrying and stopping two men from marrying is that the black man and white woman are still man and woman. Two men are not. So if you are stopping a black man and a white women from marrying because of their race, then you are discriminating based on race because ordinarily a man and a woman can marry. Now with two gay men, you are stopping them because it's not a man and a woman, so there is not discrimination at all. Even if it was a black man and a white man, there would be no discrimination at all. And they know this which is why it hasn't been brought up. This is because anyone with enough intelligence to simply look around can see the difference in the situations. You don't want equal rights, you want extra rights.
I think you are severely underestimating the power of witness testimony in a court of law. There have been murder convictions based entirley around people claiming to have seen someone in a certain area arguing with someone moments before someone was killed.
I'm not arguing the existence of a god or God, I'm not arguing that those who told you about them were telling the truth. Please don't take as that. I'm simply attempting to say that there are conditions to which evidence is only available to a few people and you have to take their word for it.
Well, partially faith based. There are a lot of facts in most religions. These facts pertain to outcomes of events and historical accounting much like any other history is shown to us. To say something like Christianity is not based on any facts is sort of missing the forest for the trees. There are plenty of facts surrounding it. Biblical people actually existed, evens in the bibles actually transpires (perhaps not as recorded but the essence is real) and so on. Hell, even the plagues on Egypt in which Pharaoh was convinced to let the Jews go can be explained scientifically with the exception of one (which seems to be a combination of two separate conditions), and the weird thing is that one plague invites the others as a consequence of the effect the one had. Now attributing that to a god or God in faith, but the events can be very real and a fact.
Well, you are talking about the time span of 4000 or more years in which the miracles have happened. You can probably list them to less then 1 per century. The process of scientific validation or verification has been around for less then one century in the capacity it is today. No, I don't think it's funny that something that averages 1 in 100 or less and is recorded in a specific book or books that were propagated with an intent behind them is not happening in the 100-200 years or less that science has been around and capable of verifying the events in which the books or propagation of books seemed to lessen on the intent (In other words, they don't update the bible with current events anymore).
On another note, a lot of things don't look like miracles any more with the progress of technology and special effects. This reminds me of Chris Angel, the "mind freak" dude. He had a heavy metal band in which he attempted to insert his illusions as part of the act. The music wasn't that bad but the audience saw the entire thing as a fraud and stopped showing up. This is because the audience was conditioned to expect crap like that and was intelligent enough to figure it out. But when he dropped the band and attracted a much larger audience, people actually thought he was somehow levitating in air, or climbing through solid glass or whatever the illusion was. So yes, some things that might appear as miracles wouldn't be suggested as one now compared to earlier when the tech to do the tricks simply weren't there. This might also cause the reporting of them to stop or slow quite a bit.
I have a ghostly personal experience that some would call a miracle which both defies scientific explanation and presented me with evidence to act that couldn't be verified is you are interested in it. But it's sort of long winded so I won't post it unless specifically asked to.
That's not what happened at all. He follows a religion that doesn't condone child molestation although a percentage of other members may have been involved in it. And to that, the number of people involved in Child molestation is no different from any other occupation that has access to children (IE, Schools, juvenile courts system and so on. You are living in some fallacy that because you hear more of a stink being made about the members of the church and the church's inability to hide the molestations you somehow think it's happening more or it's sanctioned by the church which is an absolute fabrication. Nowhere in the Catholic church does any document or policy written or understood accept the molestation of children.
You are in fact operating under guilt by association.
No analogy change is necessary, you just need to practice fairness in your accusations and get you facts straight. The leadership of the catholic church was not in any way systematically collecting up children and molesting them. Leaders in the catholic church were but it was never a church sanctioned event.
Now I can tell you are of limited mental capacity so I will explain what the difference there is. In order for the leadership to do something, it has to be a sanctioned event that is progressed down the line. When leaders act on their own, it's simply an abuse of their position of trust. In all occupations where access to children is possible, people who want to molest children seek to be employed. This is why there are law concerning employment at schools and daycare facilities, parks and so on. The church for some reason wasn't really included in those mostly because the government can't have direct control over them (just like scout leaders and such) but generally because it's the last thing one would expect from a church who's message is quite the contrary. And yes, the Jedeo-Christian-Muslim religions all do not accept the molestation of children or even adults for that matter, as part of their religion. But because people sought out jobs to gain access to children like the pedophiles who became boy scout troop leaders, does not mean that the organization accepts it, sanctions it, or allows it to happen.
If someone is guilty because others who participate in the same activity, club or organization does something wrong, then it's transferable to anything
Look for a book called "the God part of the brain".
It's premise is that our brain is conditioned to actually need a god type reality and if there isn't one, one will either be invented or something real will be substituted for it.
This is probably the only time I think a Citation needed is warranted. Where have genetic markers been linked from?
I have never seen any creditable study saying this. I have seen a bunch of made up shit on pro gay sites claiming everything from genetically different ears to other defects but the truth is that sexual attraction is learned/conditioned behavior and little more. This is the same reason why certain types of partners attract people more then others and even why they are somewhat repulsed by them.