Will Christians be protected from Gay social goals?

[Mere_Christian]

Once gay marriage is legalized in most states and forced on those that will not legalize it by the power of Democrat majority in Congress, how will Christians be protected from Gay Activists desiring to force Gay Culture and gay sex on every aspect of Christian life?

[East of Eden]

Unprotected sexual promiscuity, not homosexuality is a deadly lifestyle choice.

It is part and parcel of the gay lifestyle, with many gay males having sex with hundreds of strangers. Real nice setting for raising kids.

Wrong. To paraphrase Martin Luther, if I defend God's law in every area except the place where it is being attacked, I am not being a true Christian.

I think that the fourth commandment (the Sabbath) is under greater attack than prohibition against homosexuality. You need to refocus your efforts.

Give me a Sabbath referendum and I'll be happy to vote on it.

[East of Eden]

Then why did you take exception to the quote? Why not just defend that argument, if it is the same as your own?

Because you were wrong in saying I said that. I'll state my own opinions, thank you.

Are you, in fact, for prohibiting proven adulterers, embezzlers, and frauds, e.g., from raising children as well?

The old trick of digging up the scummiest heterosexual parent examples you can find to try to make gay marriage look attractive.

Where have you preached against those sins as vehemently as you have denounced the sin of homosexuality?

As I already said, if there was a major push to make legitimate those sins, I would. There isn't, which makes your question moot.

You deleted and avoided answering the rest;

"With documentation and evidence. And then explain exactly how it fits your description."

My opinion. I don't have the inclination or time to answer every question asked of me by a bunch of pro-gays piling on me.

Again; is this the only place God's law is being attacked?

Never said it was.

Is it even the worst?

I don't know. The 'smallest' sin is enough to separate us from God and put us in need of redemption through Jesus Christ.

Is it okay with God to make up lies and exaggerations to support your point of view?

An example of an idiotic statement I have no obligation to recognize.

Do you really think your own religious beliefs - that is, that homosexuality is "perverse" - should be enshrined in the civil law that applies to all people, including non-Christians?

If the majority wills it. You have no problem thinking your non-religious beliefs should apply to Christians.

But discrimination against gays is perfectly OK, I gather. Is that correct?

Do you think three people should be able to marry, or do you want to discriminate against them?

[cnorman18]

Unprotected sexual promiscuity, not homosexuality is a deadly lifestyle choice.

It is part and parcel of the gay lifestyle, with many gay males having sex with hundreds of strangers. Real nice setting for raising kids.

Vicious and bigoted stereotypes are not evidence. Do you have any actual facts here, or only fundamentalist canards?

[East of Eden]

Unprotected sexual promiscuity, not homosexuality is a deadly lifestyle choice.

It is part and parcel of the gay lifestyle, with many gay males having sex with hundreds of strangers. Real nice setting for raising kids.

Vicious and bigoted stereotypes are not evidence. Do you have any actual facts here, or only fundamentalist canards?

You may get away with it other places, but your name-calling attempts to stifle debate won't work with me.

You want facts, here is an article by an MD with 80+ footnotes about the health risks of the gay lifestyle, with statistics on the hundreds of sex partners point I made that unhinged you.

http://www.catholiceducation.org/articl ... o0075.html

[McCulloch]

[Unprotected sexual promiscuity] is part and parcel of the gay lifestyle, with many gay males having sex with hundreds of strangers. Real nice setting for raising kids.

I am confused by your reasoning. You believe that unprotected sexual promiscuity is common in the male gay community, therefore you are opposed to all same-sex marriage. Isn't marriage a pledge to remain monogamous? It is in every wedding I've attended.

I think that the fourth commandment (the Sabbath) is under greater attack than prohibition against homosexuality. You need to refocus your efforts.

Give me a Sabbath referendum and I'll be happy to vote on it.

You need to write your Representative and see if you can get it added to the next ballot. If you get any response at all, I would bet that it would be an invitation to a remedial civics course.

I don't have the inclination or time to answer every question asked of me by a bunch of pro-gays piling on me.

Sorry, that does not cut it in debate. You made arguments in debate which depend on certain assertions you have made about gays to be true. You must, in order to keep your integrity, either support those assertions with evidence or withdraw them. Otherwise your side of the debate looks like, "I don't like those gays, they make me feel yucky. "

If the majority wills it. You have no problem thinking your non-religious beliefs should apply to Christians.

You seem to misunderstand the constitutional protection of minorities. Secularists have no desire to restrict your beliefs or the practice of your religion.

Do you think three people should be able to marry, or do you want to discriminate against them?

There are significant difficulties with regulating marriages of more than two people. Issues around dissolution, inheritance, custody and consent would have to be explored and answered. None of these issues are a barrier to same sex marriage. Now please let this strawman alone.

You want facts, here is an article by an MD with 80+ footnotes about the health risks of the gay lifestyle, with statistics on the hundreds of sex partners point I made that unhinged you.

http://www.catholiceducation.org/articl ... o0075.html

Before I even click on the link, I have to make an ad hominem question. Are we supposed to accept the facts about sexual safety published by the organization that has recently been quoted, from the highest level, as saying that the distribution of condoms can increase the spread of HIV/AIDS? You might want to find a more creditable source of information.

[cnorman18]

Are you, in fact, for prohibiting proven adulterers, embezzlers, and frauds, e.g., from raising children as well?

The old trick of digging up the scummiest heterosexual parent examples you can find to try to make gay marriage look attractive.

The old trick of trying to distract readers from the fact that you're ducking the question.

Are you in favor of prohibiting other egregious sinners from raising children, or not?

If not, why not?

Where have you preached against those sins as vehemently as you have denounced the sin of homosexuality?

As I already said, if there was a major push to make legitimate those sins, I would. There isn't, which makes your question moot.

Really? Corporations paying bonuses to dishonest and greedy executives? How about greed being sanctified by the "Prosperity Gospel"?

I think you WISH it were moot. You're pretending that that evil 1-1/2% is our biggest moral problem, and are blatantly dismissing other, and much worse and more damaging to society, sins in favor of casting stones at people who have done and wish to do you no harm.

You deleted and avoided answering the rest;

"With documentation and evidence. And then explain exactly how it fits your description."

My opinion. I don't have the inclination or time to answer every question asked of me by a bunch of pro-gays piling on me.

Translation: "I have no evidence but my own prejudice."

Ducking the question again.

For the record: I am not "pro-gay." I am just not ANTI-gay.

Again; is this the only place God's law is being attacked?

Never said it was.

Is it even the worst?

I don't know. The 'smallest' sin is enough to separate us from God and put us in need of redemption through Jesus Christ.

Then why aren't you campaigning against, say, phony "evangelists" who beg for contributions from their elderly followers and live in palatial mansions? Or would you rather turn a blind eye to THAT sin and continue drumming up hatred for gays?

Is it okay with God to make up lies and exaggerations to support your point of view?

An example of an idiotic statement I have no obligation to recognize.

No. It's an example of another question you prefer to duck.

You have made precisely those kinds of statements here and have also shown that you cannot back them up. Calling my pointing that out "idiotic" doesn't give them any more credibility than they had to begin with.

Do you really think your own religious beliefs - that is, that homosexuality is "perverse" - should be enshrined in the civil law that applies to all people, including non-Christians?

If the majority wills it.

You HAVE heard of the Constitution, haven't you? Majority rule is not the highest law in the US.

Further; since the majority does NOT support discrimination against gays, shouldn't you be willing to accept that? If not, what is your point here?

You have no problem thinking your non-religious beliefs should apply to Christians.

Examples?

But discrimination against gays is perfectly OK, I gather. Is that correct?

Do you think three people should be able to marry, or do you want to discriminate against them?

And yet again, you duck the question with an attempted distraction.

Do you actually ever defend your position, or do you only throw out canards and legends and then hide from debate behind distractors?

[East of Eden]

[Unprotected sexual promiscuity] is part and parcel of the gay lifestyle, with many gay males having sex with hundreds of strangers. Real nice setting for raising kids.

I am confused by your reasoning. You believe that unprotected sexual promiscuity is common in the male gay community, therefore you are opposed to all same-sex marriage. Isn't marriage a pledge to remain monogamous? It is in every wedding I've attended.

This is addressed in my link, if you dare look at it. Monogomy is fairly non-existant in the gay culture.

You need to write your Representative and see if you can get it added to the next ballot.

Strawman. I'll make a deal, you start a thread as has been done ad nauseum with the gay issue and I'll address it.

Sorry, that does not cut it in debate. You made arguments in debate which depend on certain assertions you have made about gays to be true. You must, in order to keep your integrity, either support those assertions with evidence or withdraw them.

You're not the one to be lecturing on debate protocol after asking for evidence and then refusing to look at it.

Otherwise your side of the debate looks like, "I don't like those Catholics, they make me feel yucky. "

About what you're saying below.

You seem to misunderstand the constitutional protection of minorities. Secularists have no desire to restrict your beliefs or the practice of your religion.

And nobody is trying to stop gays from their perversion.

There are significant difficulties with regulating marriages of more than two people. Issues around dissolution, inheritance, custody and consent would have to be explored and answered. None of these issues are a barrier to same sex marriage. Now please let this strawman alone.

So you're for discrimination. There is a half-serious movement for this idea, BTW.

Before I even click on the link, I have to make an ad hominem question. Are we supposed to accept the facts about sexual safety published by the organization that has recently been quoted, from the highest level, as saying that the distribution of condoms can increase the spread of HIV/AIDS? You might want to find a more creditable source of information.

That was a big ad hominem. Why don't you look at it and tell me which of the documented facts you disagree with? If you're going to ask for evidence and then not look at it, let's just stop this discussion right now.

[DirtDon'tLie]

If gay marriage is legalized, straight marriage becomes illegalized. That's my understanding.

[micatala]

If gay marriage is legalized, straight marriage becomes illegalized. That's my understanding.

I would be interested in knowing how you came to this understanding.

You might consider that when it became legal for women to vote in the U.S., it did not become illegal for men to vote.

[micatala]

Unprotected sexual promiscuity, not homosexuality is a deadly lifestyle choice.

It is part and parcel of the gay lifestyle, with many gay males having sex with hundreds of strangers. Real nice setting for raising kids.

Vicious and bigoted stereotypes are not evidence. Do you have any actual facts here, or only fundamentalist canards?

You may get away with it other places, but your name-calling attempts to stifle debate won't work with me.

You want facts, here is an article by an MD with 80+ footnotes about the health risks of the gay lifestyle, with statistics on the hundreds of sex partners point I made that unhinged you.

http://www.catholiceducation.org/articl ... o0075.html

First off, although I will respond to some of the particulars of this article, this article most certainly does NOT relate to East of Eden's previous claim.


The claim was that gay marriage is bad for children because children raised in gay households suffer adverse affects.



Can East of Eden point me to ANYTHING in his link that actually addresses children raised in gay households?????





















Note I left lots of space for Eof E to address the pertinent issue.

Now, let's look at what the article does say, in particular relating to East of Eden's claim that gays are excessively promiscuous.

A far-ranging study of homosexual men published in 1978 revealed that 75 percent of self-identified, white, gay men admitted to having sex with more than 100 different males in their lifetime: 15 percent claimed 100-249 sex partners; 17 percent claimed 250- 499; 15 percent claimed 500-999; and 28 percent claimed more than 1,000 lifetime male sex partners.5By 1984, after the AIDS epidemic had taken hold, homosexual men were reportedly curtailing promiscuity, but not by much. Instead of more than 6 partners per month in 1982, the average non-monogamous respondent in San Francisco reported having about 4 partners per month in 1984.

In more recent years, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control has reported an upswing in promiscuity, at least among young homosexual men in San Francisco.

Note the CDC study only relates to San Francisco.

When one looks at the footnote related to the "far-ranging study" one finds the following:

Alan P. Bell and Martin S. Weinberg, Homosexualities: A study of Diversity Among Men and Women, p. 308, Table 7, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1978.

While I was not able to find an online version of this book, I did find the following

Alan P. Bell, a Kinsey Institute researcher who helped conduct a pioneering large-scale study that countered the notion that homosexuals were maladjusted, died on May 13 in Bloomington, Ind., where he lived. He was 70.

The cause was a stroke, his wife, Shirley, said.

In 1968, Dr. Bell and a colleague, Martin S. Weinberg, began surveying nearly 1,000 gays in San Francisco to assess their mental health and to try to determine what, if anything, in their lives had influenced their sexual orientation.

''It was the most ambitious study of male homosexuality ever attempted,'' said Martin B. Duberman, a history professor at the City University of New York who has written on gay issues. The resulting books, ''Homosexualities'' (1978) and ''Sexual Preference'' (1981), ''refuted a large number of previous studies that gay men were social misfits,'' Professor Duberman said.

The study found that homosexuals were as well adjusted and as satisfied in their relationships as heterosexuals. The researchers argued that there must be a biological basis for homosexual orientation, because they did not find that parental personalities or traumatic experiences played a role. That conclusion was greatly debated, with critics raising questions about methods.

''I expect the study to be condemned from both sides, by the radical gays for even looking into the subject and by the analysts who may say we're trying to paint a glowing picture of homosexuality,'' Dr. Bell said in 1981. ''But we reported what people say, and it's all very consistent.''

Thus, while 1000 can be considered a pretty reasonable sample size, we see that this study looked at gay men only in one U.S. city: San Francisco.

No one trained in social science research or statistics would generalize these results to gay men in general or even gay men in the U.S. We all know the reputation San Francisco has, and even without this, we should all know that drawing a sample from a single locale is not likely to produce a representative sample.

Also, note that even the link provided by East of Eden admits the following:

The data relating to gay promiscuity were obtained from self-identified gay men. Some advocates argue that the average would be lower if closeted homosexuals were included in the statistics.9 That is likely true, according to data obtained in a 2000 survey in Australia that tracked whether men who had sex with men were associated with the gay community. Men who were associated with the gay community were nearly four times as likely to have had more than 50 sex partners in the six months preceding the survey as men who were not associated with the gay community.10 This may imply that it is riskier to be "out" than "closeted." Adopting a gay identity may create more pressure to be promiscuous and to be so with a cohort of other more promiscuous partners.

Thus, even this site which we can reasonably believe has a bias informed by a religious position, admits the statistics it cites are likely skewed, never mind the previously noted problem of sampling from only one city.




Thus, we pretty clearly cannot accept the figures given by this article as representative of the gay population at large. Now, I am certainly willing to consider that gays are more promiscious and less monogamous as a population. However, this study absolutely does not establish this; it doesn't even come close.


As a last quote form this site, I submit the following:

Despite the difficulty in defining homosexuality, the one thing that is clear is that those who engage in same-sex practices or identify themselves as gay, lesbian or bisexual constitute a very small percentage of the population. The most reliable studies indicate that 1-3 percent of people " and probably less than 2 percent " consider themselves to be gay, lesbian or bisexual, or currently practice same-sex sex.

These figures are in line with other studies I have seen. Gays are a very small minority.

By contrast, 30% of American households are headed by a single parent, which this article claims amounts to about 12 million households. These 12 million single parents represent roughly 4 to 5% of the U.S. population. We can reasonably say that twice as many people are single parents than are gay, lesbian, or bisexual.

Some 22 million children "go home to a single parent."

The article goes on to say that:

General Effects of the Single-Parent Household:

It has been found through varied research that children in single-parent homes generally fare worse than those homes with two parents. Statistically, in the United States, family structure does contribute to certain characteristics of a child's well being. For example, there is a prevalence of lower birthrates and higher death rates among infants when there is just one parent. Also, the number of children ages 15-17 in school and in good health is much lower in this group of children, and the number of children becoming pregnant at these ages is increasing. There are also signs that children who have gone through a divorce may have problems with depression, emotional stress, and difficulties in school. It has been found that adolescents from single-parent families were found to be three times more likely to be depressed than those living with two parents. Single parent homes are also associated with criminal activity in the U.S.A. Children from a single-parent household account for 72% of teenage murderers, 60% percent of people who commit rape crimes and are eleven times more likely to exhibit violent behavior. These statistics are astounding and the problems that accompany single-parenthood appear volatile.

Now, I again challenge East of Eden to back up his assertion that children in gay households suffer adverse effects.

See if you can find evidence something like what I have provided for single-parent households. Keep in mind that we allow single-parent households under the law and so if we are to ban gay marriage because of its adverse effects on children, we should reasonably expect that it can be shown that these adverse effects are significantly worse than the effects cited above concerning single-parent households.