Christian Group has bank account removed due to "unacceptable views"

It's not so much the talking about sin that bothers us; it's the tying gay people to fences and beating them to death, then desecrating their funerals; it's the shooting abortion doctors with high-powered rifles and setting up kill-list webpages for people to keep track; it's the bombing government buildings; it's the stockpiling of weapons and suicide pacts that kill hundreds of children.It's the burning books and interfering with libraries. It's the funding of political corruption and blackmaining public officials to prosecute personal vendettas.It's mostly that stuff. Yeah, I know. Maybe we're a bit hypersenstive. Oh, shit! People are excercizing their freedom to not associate with you! You might have to - gasp - bank at another institution!God, your lives are hell. How do you stand it?

Lying hyperbole? You may have noticed that I supported each of those assertions with links.Something that, apparently, you're never required to do.

These are ordinary Bible-believers who followed, in your words, "the logical outcome of your trend of thinking, whether you recognize it or not."

That's not what they say. How can I judge? You yourself have made it clear that I'm not equipped to truly understand the Bible.At any rate, it's clear that they've simply taken the hate-filled invective you continually spew here and translated it into action. Your attempt to distance yourself from the ultimate result is amusing, but nobody's fooled, faith. If you really want to distance yourself from these kooks, then you need to stop employing their rhetoric. It's your choice, but as long as you show up here and continually voice your support for the same justifications they used for these actions, we're going to rightly assume that you're with them.It's impossible to distinguish your rhetoric from theirs. The bank was right to disassociate with those who have made it pretty clear that violence is their next course of action.

Yes. Employees, however, should not be able to deny service to persons their employer would have as customers.In other words, a bank can refuse service to (say) a pro-homosexual organization, but a teller can't refuse service to a patron just because he's gay. I would. But also I would support a bank for suggesting that organizations that promote illegal activities would be best served at another institution. Do you think so? I honestly believe that the mantle of tolerance doesn't extend to those who are intolerant. I don't see that as inconsistent, I guess.

I guess I don't understand. As written this suggests that a person who believes that criminals should be punished for misdeeds is a "bigot," a characterization that would be neither fair nor accurate.

No matter how abusive any of us get, you were there first with ten times the invective. You're in absolutely no position whatsoever to lecture anyone on their behavior. And now you're hiding behind your sex? You're despicable. Clearly there's no depth to which you won't sink.

That's absolutely incorrect. What do you think is driving the shift in British policy towards gay equality? It's being driven by the people, not in spite of them:

quote:

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According to the British Social Attitudes survey, 70% of Britons thought homosexuality was wrong in 1985; by 2000 that had dropped to 47%. Moreover, there is a startling generational divide: 60% of people aged 60 and over still thought homosexuality was always wrong in 2000, but only 23% of people under 30 did.

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Home - AradorI'm sorry your friends are homophobes.

And then add all those people I listed before. Abortion snipers. Branch Davidians. Timothy McVeigh. The corruption machine of DeLay and Abrahmoff. All absolutely confident in their course of action and that they were following the will of God to the letter.You're in some pretty good company, aren't you?

Oh, I make the basic distinction, all right. They put their beliefs into action, and you just talk.

Why don't you try having some, first.

In other words, they advocate equality for homosexuals but do not want to partake in homosexual acts themselves.Well, duh. That's what it means to be a heterosexual who supports gay rights. Here's a better idea - call it from the evidence.

Well, you're entitled to your view, but you'll pardon me if I don't find your seat-of-the-pants speculation about the internal lives of Britons to be more compelling than England's most comprehensive national survey of social attitudes.I mean, what are politicians supposed to do? Read minds? If the public is telling them publically that they're for gay rights, how are politicians supposed to know that, privately, they're not?

Hey, there's a pretty easy way to make that go away. Just give them the damn equal rights, already. I mean you don't see too many women holding parades for the right to vote anymore, now do you? Wait, what? I understand how the parades make your life unpleasant, but how does equal rights make your life unpleasant? And if the pleasantness of your life requires that a certain portion of the citizenry be relegated to second-class status, why are you entitled to it?

Why? Why do heteros need marriage? Why do we have it at all? C'mon, that's clearly bullshit. Marriage as we have it now protects more than the natural children of a heterosexual relationship; it protects any children they choose to adopt from someone else's sex, and it protects couples that have no children, like me.Moreover, in what sense is homosexual sex not natural? If it was unnatural, it wouldn't be possible; moreover we wouldn't see it so often in the animal kingdom. There's over a thousand Federal legal rights and privleges extended only to married couples. That's a thousand rights you can't get any way else, and that's just at the Federal level. Now, we could either amend one thousand federal laws, or we could make just one new one. Your religion doesn't get to dictate the civil rights status of other individuals. Nonsense. Why on Earth do you think that gay people give a fuck how you define marriage? Unless you're the government they have no interest whatsoever in what you think. You get to define marriage however you want, just as I did - to some, marriage is defined as a relationship where the man is steward of a family who submits to him. My wife and I define marriage as an equal partnership. Many people wouldn't consider my parents married because my mom married outside of the Mormon faith.Everybody gets to define marriage for themselves, Faith. Something you'll learn when you're older, I suspect. You don't get to decide the definition for everybody else. But the government has to apply the marriage laws fairly, and there's no legitimate reason to deny them to gay couples and much harm in doing so. These are real couples with children, and only a sociopath who places religious bigotry over the welfare of children would deny these couples the legal protections they need to raise families.Why do you hate families so much, Faith?