RKMBs Forums .::Important::. Politics and Current Events beyond the big gay shitstorm...

I notice a lot of people have brought up the point that this nation was founded mainly by Christians, and much of our law is rooted in Judeo-Christian precepts (for the record I agree). However a lot of people seem to be missing the point that one of the main reasons the Founding Fathers risked brutal executions as traitors to the Crown was their fervent belief that no one strain of Christianity (or any belief system, but there were fewer options at the time) should have the power to lend force of law to its theological points of contention. It seems a bit hypocritical, therefore, to give lip service to our respect for the FFs and the Constitution and yet deny certain legal privileges to fellow Americans because of our personal beliefs.
For what it's worth, I'm still not completely sure how I feel the Bible addresses this issue... but I have a pretty good idea how the Constitution does. Yeah, I'm conflicted sometimes when it comes to what I believe about the lifestyle itself (which, I'm relieved to say, doesn't affect my acceptance of the people who live it or my friendship with some wonderful people who identify with it), but I don't think it's morally right to deny taxation and death benefits (feel free to show me a Bible verse that addresses those) to a union of two consenting, responsible adults under the law... whatever you want to call such a union. I realize taking a middle-ground stance like that will probably just anger people on both sides, but as an evangelical libertarian (I know, right?) I'm used to that anyway. Okay, can we PLEASE get back to the economy now???

The chief of a watchdog organization working to combat the spread of HIV and AIDS has launched a campaign to demand a government investigation of – and action over – the homosexual behavior that has been linked to more than 25 million deaths over the last 30 years, likening the problem to smoking, which was blamed for 100 million deaths in the 20th century.

Although statistics on the diseases linked to homosexual activity notoriously are hard to obtain, a report from the International Journal of Epidemiology estimated from a review of the “gay” population of Vancouver, B.C., that HIV/AIDS costs homosexuals up to 20 years of their lives on average.



And the U.S. government is spending, according to a Congressional Research Services report to Congress, in the range of $20 billion a year for treatment and research, with a small fraction for prevention that, analysts explain, includes testing but largely doesn’t address the behavior itself.

That’s even though when another threat to lives and livelihood – cigarettes – were suspected of imposing such a cost, Washington mandated exhaustive studies, imposed draconian advertising limits, demanded warning labels and enacted outright bans in many circumstances. The studies said the behavior, smoking, could be changed.

“It’s a public health question,” Peter LaBarbera, president of Americans for Truth about Homosexuality, told WND. “We’ve got to get beyond the gay politics and get back to the behaviors. We know there are high risks.”



LaBarbera recently demanded a federal government review of the problem and action regarding it. He issued the call to action at a Reclaim Oklahoma conference, and he later explained the idea to WND.

“We need to pull this information together,” he said. “We would, if it were from any other behavior, where one in five men who practice come down with this awful disease called AIDS.”

On his website, LaBarbera explained that homosexual behavior is like the behavior of smoking, which the U.S. government investigated and addressed directly by requiring warnings and other limits.

“Men who have had sex with men since 1977 have an HIV prevalence 60 times higher than the general population and 800 times higher than first-time blood donors,” LaBarbera wrote, citing a federal report that touched on the issue.

(much more at link)

The article makes a great point. That smoking consistently results in cancer, so there has been a campaign to actively discourage the behavior that leads to disease.

And given that risky gay behavior has consistently had an even higher ratio of terminal disease, that it makes sense for society to discourage the behavior.


The article doesn't argue it, but you could further say that gay sex doesn't just kill gays, but presents a wider threat to the heterosexual community, through secretly bisexual relationships that cause them to bring home the disease to their wives and girlfriends.

I actually had a client back in 2009, an attractive and very personable black girl, who told me she had gotten a call from the CDC saying her boyfriend of 3 years had tested positive for HIV(they were calling all his former sex partners, to come in for HIV testing), and he had been secretly bisexual with other men during their entire relationship, She told me she'd found out right before visiting me that she was HIV-positive, and burst into tears. 20 years old, she felt like her life was over.

That is a case of one gay many's selfishness ruining another person's life, with his risky and undisclosed behavior.

I've mentioned many times that my objection to legalizing gay marriage is that it would go beyond equal rights for gays, but actually begin to suppress religious freedom in the U.S., rendering the reading of Bible verses critical of homosexuality a "hate crime".

Verses such as:

GENESIS chapters 18 and 19 (Sodom and Gommorah)
LEVITICUS 20:13
ROMANS 1:18-32
1CORINTHIANS 6:9-11
2 PETER 2:6-12
JUDE verses 5-10

Here's an article that describes how Canada has made the free exercise of Christianity a "hate crime" punishable by fines or imprisonment.
http://www.ignatiusinsight.com/features/mobrien_thoughtcrime_sept04.asp


And Bill O'Reilly just last night said on his program that laws in Sweden and Denmark likewise make any criticism of a minority like gays a "hate crime".

The First Amendment:
"Congress shall establish no law respecting establisment of a religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of people to peaceably assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."

Well, following the Canadian/European model (which seems to be the answer to everything for liberals) is definitely "prohibiting the free exercise thereof".

This country has freedom of religion. A church doesn't have to marry any hetrosexual couple it doesn't want to. Woman still can't be priests. The government letting gays getting married isn't going to force religions to do anything different than any other time they recognized rights of a group.

Making hypothetical partisan guesses about the future isn't a real good reason to supress somebody else's rights and freedoms. Churches don't have to marry or bury any hetrosexual it doesn't want to, it just seems silly that anyone would think a much smaller population is going to do something the majority is unable to do. I wouldn't even want a church to be forced to marry somebody that it doesn't want to in the first place.

While the bill was in formation in Parliament two crucial amendments proposed by the conservative opposition party were defeated.
The first was to ensure that religious pastors and teachers would retain full freedom to teach traditional Judeo-Christian view on these matters.
The second was an attempt to make a distinction in law between homosexual persons and homosexual activities. The Church does not condemn homosexuals as persons; it condemns sinful activities--activities that are not only an offense against God, but are destructive of the person, as well as society in the long run.

In rejecting these two amendments, Parliament simply decreed that henceforth any public criticism of homosexual activity is a hate crime against homosexual persons, punishable by jail sentences.

O’Brien: The ink is still wet on the document, and there has been little time to bring many law suits...

At the same time activist homosexual groups are bombarding a number of pro-family, pro-life organizations in this country with mockery and threats, planning strategies (in open forums) for silencing all opposition, warning that those who don’t keep silent on homosexuality will go to court, and to jail. The high level of emotional violence in homosexual activist strategy is at times quite shocking. They seem consumed with hatred and determined to bring about an entire social revolution in their favor.

The courts generally have sided against the churches and individuals who do not want to cooperate with the "gay agenda."

For example, a printing company that declined to print Toronto’s annual gay pride day literature was sued under the human rights law, fined heavily, and forced to print the material or close their business.

A Catholic school was coerced by a court order to admit an openly homosexual teenage boy and his older male lover to the school prom; the court also refused the school board permission to cancel the prom.

A daily newspaper that published an advertisement page of Biblical quotes regarding homosexuality was fined.

Such incidents are multiplying.

I think it's wrong that Canada is doing that but that doesn't make keeping the gays from getting married right.