Pray to God

[Guest]

Personally, I hate religious discussions. I grew up very religious and almost was a pastor. I still consider myself religious and pray nightly. I am not part of an organized religion and don't expect to be a significant part of one. However, I do consider religion a very good thing for the vast majority of the world no matter what the religion. There are extremists that will always take the written word from any book and bastardize it to their desires. But, the books I have read all give great stories dealing with how to live life in a better way. What is best for one person is not best for another. Instead of going on and on, I'll just say my prayer tonight and hope the the boy next to me answers it.

[Gaybutton]

Who is upset? I speak out against intolerance and now I am intolerant?

Yes, I think you are. If you are intolerant of people kidding around about religion, then you're intolerant, aren't you? You can tell me all about how that's not the same thing if you want to and that's fine with me. You are entitled to your opinion as I am entitled to mine, as Hedda is to his, as GT is to his. We all have our different points of view. I joke about religion and I will continue to joke about religion. If that offends people, well....I say a lot that offends people.

[Guest]

You are entitled to your opinion as I am entitled to mine, as Hedda is to his, as GT is to his. We all have our different points of view.

 

My mother always said, "opinions are like assholes. everyone has one." Speaking of asses, I was at a few bars tonight and with the rain, there were fewer asses around. I wonder if this was a sign from up above that we needed to stay home tonight and debate religion?

[Guest lvdkeyes]

My mother always said, "opinions are like assholes. everyone has one."

There is more to that saying: "...and they all stink except your own."

[Guest laurence]

Instead of going on and on, I'll just say my prayer tonight and hope the the boy next to me answers it.

 

Amen to that Brother!

 

[Guest rainwalker]

Stand back; He's going to rant about those misguided true believers who believe in Jebus...

 

Here's how we can secure what exultant happiness we have and change the world for the better...

 

Forget the fundamentalists. I don't mean literally forget them; that will be impossible to do, what with the shouting and the frothing and the calling down of hellfire and brimstone upon everyone's heads. What I mean is that you cannot waste good time and effort trying to bring them around to your point of view. You can argue the issues up one side and down the other and it will not make a bit of difference to them, because from a fundamentalist's point of view, their opinion is always right, and always trumps science, nature, community standards, compassion, tolerance, civil rights, and common sense. There is no way to win an argument with a fundamentalist and there is no point in trying.

 

Remember Mencken once said, "Moral certainty is always a sign of cultural inferiority. The more uncivilized the man, the surer he is that he knows precisely what is right and what is wrong. All human progress, even in morals, has been the work of men who have doubted the current moral values, not of men who have whooped them up and tried to enforce them. The truly civilized man is always skeptical and tolerant, in this field as in all others. His culture is based on 'I am not too sure.' "

 

Dignity is sweet, and appeasement gets beat. There is nothing more humiliating or self-destructive than sacrificing your own freedom, identity, and emotional health in a futile quest for the approval of people who will not only never give it to you, but will ruthlessly exploit your desire for acceptance. If you make decisions based on what will gain the approval of people who abhor everything you stand for, all that happens is that you end up living all the misery they have wished on you.

 

The way we fight the battle will have an enormous impact on the spectators watching from the safety of the trees. If we don't act like we believe in ourselves, nobody else is going to believe in us either. So please, guys, either show up ready to fight, or don't show up at all. Commitment is always going to beat cowardice.

 

If we want to win on this, we have to be as passionate and powerful in our defense of our position as the "Believers" or the Free Republic weirdoes are in theirs. We have to get as fired up about equality and justice as they are about hellfire and damnation. It can be done. And indeed, it must.

Nobody wants their friends to get hurt. And in the end, this is the thing that makes these issues our wedge, and their nightmare. Part of the 1950s exist in almost every area of Western Culture but more of us are living honest and open lives than ever before, and that means that there are more people in this country than ever before who know that they have gay or liberal or feminist or Wiccan or just plain odd and gentle friends, family, colleagues, children, neighbors, and classmates trying to make sense of a world that is always changing.

 

Popular culture is finally catching up, largely because they have discovered that they can make money off us - and that means that the majority is now used to identifying and sympathizing with our kind of people, whether it's Adam Lambert, the liberal characters in some sitcoms or the goings on at Hogwarts (Dumbledore is a big fag). And the more hysterical the right gets about the "evil" we represent, the more regular folk they are going to alarm and anger. And once those people realize that this is not about us attacking morality, but about the extreme right attack against people average folks care about, it's going to be working for us and not the right-wingers.

 

But, that will not happen unless we remember...

 

Don't throw people to the wolves. It won't slow them down that much. You can't protect yourself from hatred and prejudice by offering one of your own as a scapegoat. To argue that you deserve to be treated well because you are just like straight people and not at all like that guy with the feather boa or that you are more valuable because your skin is lighter than Wesley Snipes' or that you deserve more than that guy who moved to New York from Taiwan years after you did because your accent is more understandable is to give away the argument before you even get started. Because let's face it, either our society is going to value tolerance and respect difference, or it's not, and taking refuge in protective coloring may allow you personally to ride out the storm, but it is not going to advance the cause.

 

Failure is not an option. With the crowd currently challenging our rights and our very right to be, there is no such thing as a conditional surrender. If you give them an inch, they just keep on taking; and even if you don't give them an inch, even if you stand there and say, "Hey, that's my inch, let go," they'll take it anyway.

 

If you don't press forward, you will be beaten back.

 

The religious bozos have slapped us silly for years and some in our community want us to play nice with them because we are "better" than they are.

 

When they play nice, then we can.

 

Until that day, fuck them...

 

(Cribbed, revised, and expanded so many times that I forget where I took the bulk of this from...)

[Bob]

It's beyond me how somebody can assert a person is intolerant just because that person personally believes a given organized religions (or most or all of them) are, to him, a joke. I have no problem with (and in fact support the rights of) any person who wants to be religious or non-religious and I think that's the same notion expressed by GB. A very tolerant attitude, at least in my eyes.

 

Now, just because I have no use whatsoever for organized religion (and consider most if at the same level I consider voodoo) doesn't indicate any intolerance; in reality, those who would blast somebody for having that kind of belief is, in my view, the intolerant ones.

 

In one prior post, a poster suggested that we "gay" people somehow ought to understand that freedom and individual liberty relate just as much to being religious as to being gay. I didn't quite understand or agree with that post for the reason that (1) nobody here has suggested in the slightest that anybody ought to be denied the liberty and freedom to practice any given religion, and (2) the rather lame analogy somehow forgot the history of how it's mainly been organized religions that have attempted to attack and eradicate those sinful homos.

 

Believe what you want and, frankly, I likely won't even roll my eyes if you want to pray to Jehovah, Buddha, or Britney Spears in my presence; nevertheless, if you could read my mind at the time, I'd consider your mental state no different than the caveman who prayed to the god of thunder or lightning.

[Guest Soi10Tom]

Would we also call a Black person intolerant if he criticized the KKK for trying to convert people to their views?

 

Picking up on Pattaya Male's comment, "Would we also call a Black person intolerant if he criticized the KKK for trying to convert people to their views?"

 

Being gay and christian IMHO is not unlike the Jews that joined the Nazi party and then were in a total state of shock when they, along with their family, were loaded in a truck and shipped off to their death.

 

To say mormons have a right to free speech and to be unaware of the way that mormons torture to change the sexual orientation of the gay kids....is ignorance.

 

To say the catholics have a right to free speech and to be aware of the hate they direct at gays universally is to emasculate yourself and be a self hater.

 

To say that christians in general have a right to free speech and be aware of the hate that they constantly spew is pure insanity.

[Gaybutton]

"Religion has actually convinced people that there's an invisible man who lives in the sky who watches everything you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these ten things, he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish, where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry forever and ever 'til the end of time!

 

 

 

But He loves you."

 

- George Carlin

[Guest Hedda]

Amazing too, Hedda, how you don't seem to cotton to freedom of speech at times (unless, of course, it conforms to your own dogma)

Ok, Bob, I'll bite. Just where have I written something that you say didn't cotton to freedom of speech ?

 

May I remind you that you posted this on Thursday:

I do not understand why any country would allow any outside religious group the freedom to proselytize within their borders. In my view, allowing the christians, mormans, or whoever to come into the country in groups to attempt to convert the "pagans" is nothing more than an active attempt to denigrate the local culture.

But then wrote this of Friday:

...nobody here has suggested in the slightest that anybody ought to be denied the liberty and freedom to practice any given religion

I realize that asking for consistency on most boards is naive, but could we at least have one standard apply within the same thread ? Most religions believe in spreading their version of God as part of their faith. Do you mean that it's alright for "outsiders" to promote things like democracy, free speech, and gay rights, even though these ideas may conflict with historic local culture in many places, but not promote their personal belief in God ? That sounds an awful lot like some serious religious intolerance to me.

[Bob]

Do you mean that it's alright for "outsiders" to promote things like democracy, free speech, and gay rights, even though these ideas may conflict with historic local culture in many places, but not promote their personal belief in God ? That sounds an awful lot like some serious religious intolerance to me.

 

Please don't ascribe your words to me. Since I didn't say that, how can you suggest I meant it? We're sorta back to the "does your mother know you beat your wife" logic.

 

I object to just what I said I objected to - outside religious groups effectively coming in to fuck up the local culture. If a Morman wants to live in Thailand and practice his religion, I have no problem with that - but I do have a problem with that Morman attempting to convert the "pagans" (on a more humorous side note, I wonder why can't they find 144,000 gullible people in Nevada???). Too often, again in my opinion, the groups hide their main intent to "convert" under the guise of charitable aid.

 

Just because some religion has some basic tenet (hmmmm.....wasn't it the pope that pronounced it was the holy duty of the catholics to join the crusades and kill as many of the muslim heathens as possible?) doesn't mean a country has to allow a particular tenet to be practiced. There's a difference between belief and action and, while I'd certainly allow any belief, I wouldn't allow (presuming I was in charge - which I am not) certain practices if I felt they conflicted with and harmed the local culture.

 

And, obviously, I'm a religious cynic. There are hundreds (thousands?) of religions which believe they own the patent to the one and only true religion. Simple logic tells us that all but one of them is wrong. My logic tells me they're all wrong.

[Guest laurence]

....I say a lot that offends people.

 

At least we agree on something.

[Gaybutton]

At least we agree on something.

Do I offend you? Goooooooooooooood.

[Guest laurence]

Do I offend you? Goooooooooooooood.

 

No, not at all. You amuse me; like listening to Glenn Beck or Bill O'Reilly on Fox TV.

 

[Guest]

No, not at all. You amuse me; like listening to Glenn Beck or Bill O'Reilly on Fox TV.

 

You guys are too funny. Thanks for all the laughs on this thread. Reminds me of the last time I listened to PTL Club.

[Gaybutton]

Reminds me of the last time I listened to PTL Club.

To the tune of "It's a Small World (Disney)"

 

"Come with us be born again.

In Jim and Tammy Land, amen.

We pray to St. Mercedes Benz

In Jim and Tammy Land.

 

Come to Jim and Tammy Bakker Land

Where a hotel room costs a hundred grand.

Send your check to PTL

And if you don't, then go to Hell

In Jim and Tammy Land . . ."

 

- Mark Russell, PBS

[Guest buckeroo2]

You guys are too funny. Thanks for all the laughs on this thread. Reminds me of the last time I listened to PTL Club.

Actually Tammy Faye became quite fond of the gay community after PTL. She recalled that the gays were her only support in the darkest days after the PTL scandal and collapse. The gays loved her over the top persona. I was walking trough the Castro district in San Francisco about 8 years ago and she was walking out of the Castro theater alone in the middle of that afternoon. I spoke to her by name and told her I always watched her singing on PTL at 6:00 AM before heading off to work. We had a nice chat and that night I attended her screening of "The Eyes of Tammy Faye" - a documentary about her life, PTL, her struggles with cancer etc. The gay community gave her a standing ovation after her presentation - and the tears flowed and the mascara ran - just what we all wanted to see - and Tammy Faye had a bit of a cy as well.

 

[Bob]

You guys are too funny. Thanks for all the laughs on this thread. Reminds me of the last time I listened to PTL Club.

 

Praise the Lord.....and pass the basket!

[Guest ButterballBruce]

No, not at all. You amuse me; like listening to Glenn Beck or Bill O'Reilly on Fox TV.

 

I lurvvve Gaybutton. He's like a cross between Ethel Merman and Dom DeLuise.

[Gaybutton]

I lurvvve Gaybutton. He's like a cross between Ethel Merman and Dom DeLuise.

Thanks (I think)

 

"The best thing to have ever come out of religion was the music." - George Carlin

[Guest laurence]

I lurvvve Gaybutton. He's like a cross between Ethel Merman and Dom DeLuise.

 

With a name like ButterballBruce it is quite understandable you luvvve GayButton. We all love him or maybe love to hate him or is it, hate to love him?

 

[Gaybutton]

We all love him or maybe love to hate him or is it, hate to love him?

You could also look at it from my point of view, namely that I don't give a shit whether you do or not.

[KhorTose]

You could also look at it from my point of view, namely that I don't give a shit whether you do or not.

 

Sorry, but I think your statement of indifference is pure bullshit. Having met you and having read hundreds of your post there is no way I believe the above to be true. Let me guess you were raised by John Wayne?

[Gaybutton]

Sorry, but I think your statement of indifference is pure bullshit.

As opposed to impure bullshit? Actually, if I was worried about whether I would win a popularity contest, I would have been gone from the boards years ago. But I appreciate your sentiment.

[Bob]

Let me guess you were raised by John Wayne?

 

I don't get that one, KhorTose, as John Wayne in person was a sweetheart and rather shy (now does that sound like our GB!?!). Maybe you were referring to his acting persona - the tough guy with the thick skin.....and, yea, I do give GB credit for having a thick skin over the years.

 

As to the Dom Deluise and Ethel Merman comparison, I can see the Dom Deluise humor component but I didn't know GB sang that loud...