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

What kind of BS is this? The charity itself refused the donation. The "strong arm tactics" were informing the charity that it would be a "public relations disaster" to accept money from Springer. The whole thing seems quite odd to me, as I can see boycotting a business that supports public policies I object to, but I don't see the point of a charity's refusing a donation from anyone. Certainly there is more to this story than has made print. Be that as it may, blackmail??????

No, the strong arm tactics were threatening to picket Maggie's Centres. This would have upset the patient's being treated and would have been a stress for patients and their families...effectively giving them an extra fight to worry themselves with.So they didn't so much as threaten Maggie's, as much as threaten the patient's of Maggie's with stress and upset whilst they were fighting off a disease...Maggie's had the power to stop that stress, at the cost of 3,000.Thus, Christian Voice provided both the disease and the cure and it would cost the victim 3 grand for it. Sounds like blackmail to me. Extra reading

If it is as you say then I am strongly opposed to it. I'm for picketing and boycotting under certain circumstances but I can't see how I could support that.

Here is a quote from a recent 'Daily Show' with Jon Stewart...he may be the funniest/smartest man around:From the Daily Show: I wish I could find the video for this one.

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Why do men have nipples?

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?

You can get the daily show episodes on bittorrent here (I think the episode in question is either 6-22 or 6-23:The Pirate Bay - The galaxy's most resilient bittorrent siteOr you can wait for legal downloads of pieces of the show here:That Page Does Not Exist! Error 404 | Comedy Central USOr you can try alt.binaries.multimedia on usenet.I don't have cable but I don't miss the daily show.

Aw, now that's downright sweet.I understand about frustration, believe me, and I have certainly let it get the best of me on plenty of occasions.I really do appreciate your comments.

Marriage is for heterosexuals. That's what it's for, always has been. It has a specific cultural function for heteros, circumscribing and protecting the NATURAL sexual function and its NATURAL offspring. Gays have no need for it except a psychological need. It's just phony twisted propaganda to call this "second-class status." They have the same civil rights as everyone else, and if in some particulars in some cases they don't I'm for legal measures to grant them, such as next-of-kin rights or whatever, but I understand those are in fact not the problem some try to make out of them. Legal adjustments, accommodations, fine, and whatever they want to do to officialize a relationship within their own communities, but not forcing a government redefinition of marriage on all the rest of the population. That isn't civil rights, that is wagging the dog.{EDIT: marriage is as much for society as a whole, a principle of social order, as it is for the involved parties. There is no benefit for society whatever from gay marriage, and blurring the definition of marriage is not a good thing from any point of view.}This message has been edited by Faith, 07-04-2005 12:06 AM

If anything doesn't need protecting its humanity's number one pastime. So heterosexual people who don't want children shouldn't be allowed to get married then, right?TTFN,WK

So treating people equally is bad for society? How so? I think blurring the definition of marriage (if in this case it means that people get treated equally) is a good thing. So your above statement has been falsified.

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*not an actual doctor

My point, which should have been clear enough as stated, is that this is not a matter of equality. Historically, cultures don't marry gays. Nero indulged in a gay marriage, I understand, if you want to point to him as a model, but staid Roman society frowned on his antics. Marriage was designed to unite heterosexuals. It simply has no application to gays whatsoever. Changing the custom of millennia is not a good idea for the health of society. This is a bogus redefinition of "equality" of the sort that got going only in very recent decades. "Freedom" and "equality" as applied to gay marriage and some other social projects dear to the Left, are an abuse of language and logic, very recent revisionism.

How is denying a person the right to marry not a matter of equality? Historically, cultures engaged in slavery. Historically, cultures treated women as property. "This is the way its always been done" is a bullshit arguement. At one point marriage was designed to unite heterosexuals of the same "race". Things change, get used to it. Why?

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*not an actual doctor

Oh that old bit about voluntarily and involuntarily infertile heteros. I believe we are talking about a principle here, and the principle is that marriage is for heterosexuals, who in principle are designed to conceive children, while in principle, as well as in absolute reality, gays can't. Marriage is to sanctify the heterosexual principle if you will.This message has been edited by Faith, 07-04-2005 03:52 AM

circumscribing and protecting the NATURAL sexual function...
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If anything doesn't need protecting its humanity's number one pastime.
====That description alone should tell you why it needs protecting. I really mean the fruits of it need protecting. Social chaos is even now as we speak growing as a result of our having lost sight of the importance of the basic unit of marriage and family to a healthy society. We are wealthy enough to absorb the immediate consequences of our current permissiveness and defiance of God's law, so far, and ignore them, but they are growing. Look at the consequences: huge numbers of teenage pregnancies; huge numbers of abortions (yes, murders of our own offspring); huge numbers of fatherless babies and single mothers who have to depend on parents or welfare to survive, or put their babies in childcare which they can barely afford while they work; huge statistics on the increase in STDs of all kinds, many of which were unheard of only a few decades ago. An orderly society depends on the basic organization of a secure family, and ideally children need both sexes to raise them.

It's a matter of qualifications. We don't marry children. We don't marry animals. The qualification is heterosexuality and the potential -- IN PRINCIPLE -- to conceive children. It is in society's interest to protect this institution. Gays have no qualifications for it no matter how hard they work to ape it. They can live as they please, no problem, but they do not qualify for marriage. None of those situations was universal, marriage is, and if you just pick and choose among negatives you can make any point you like, but it's a fallacy to do that. Marriage is the foundation of order in a society. What we are doing is brand new on planet earth, large-scale denial of this fundamental of order. When marriage is demeaned as it now is, and increasingly so, when people do without it altogether as so many do (which is really only feasible for the very rich such as all the celebrities who are setting the example these days), put it on and take it off at will, shuffle children hither and thither, which is recognized as being very hard on their psyches, marry people who aren't qualified and in general trash the institution you might as well toll the bell for the society as a whole. An extremely rare occurrence both historically and crossculturally. That's a joke of a nonargument that's always trotted out. I daresay you will have to also if you live to experience the full chaotic results of the trashing of marriage, growing poverty, burdened single parents and grandparents, alienated younger generation, growing sexually transmitted diseases. Not a pretty picture and society as a whole has to pay for it. Gay marriage is just the last straw I believe, added onto the violence done to marriage over the last few decades. See above.This message has been edited by Faith, 07-04-2005 04:19 AM