What is Liberal?

So, the ACLU, an organization that persues the protection and expansion of personal freedon and civil liberties to the point of (often dumb but well-intended) excess, would be an example of what, exactly? By what you just said, they should be considered conservative. I don't think any conservatives would agree with that statement. I would agree that "hate" laws are silly (motive shoudln't matter, only actions, and killing a person is no more or less wrong dependant on that person's race. Hate laws give special legal consideration based on race, which is wrong). However, the term "Thought Police" is not exclusive to liberalism. Note that every time a liberal criticizes the current conservative government, conservatives slander them as "anti-American" or "unpatriotic." Apparently, blind obedience to the establishment is a virtue. That sounds more "1984" - ish to me. No. What conservatives are trying to do is FORCE THEIR LIFESTYLE ON EVERYONE ELSE, the opposite or protecting privacy. Gay marriage does not magically force conservatives to marry people of the same sex, nor does it force religious organizations to recognize a secular law. Gays do NOT have the rights and priviledges of a spouse (medical decisions, inheritance, etc.). The definition of "freedom," Faith, is the ability to make your own choices and control your own destiny without interference from the state unless it directly harms the person, property, or freedom of others. Your definition involves restricting a group from taking part in a legal contract on the basis of their sexuality. Gay marriage does not harm you, your property, or your personal freedoms. You just don't LIKE it, which is not a good reason to make a law. You have a very narrow definition of religious freedon, Faith. The government can have no direct association with religion, as that promotes one above others. Our civilization has never BEEN Christianity-based (I can provide the quotes of the Founding Fathers if you wish to prove it). Our government was designed from the get-go to be secular in nature, to protect the rights of ALL religions. Religious freedom means the right to choose a religion, Christian or not, theistic or atheistic, without interference from the state. Prayer in schools violates the religious freedom of atheists and non-Christians. How would you like it if your child was indoctrinated into the Hindu religion at school? You wouldn't, and non-Christians don't want their children being indoctrinated into Christianity at school, either. Why can't you just let religion stay at home and in church, where it belongs? No. Teaching children that homosexuality is natural is a scientifically-based fact. Handing out condoms is giving the children the ability to use protection IF they are going to make the decision to have sex anyway. In no way do these things interfere with the parents right to say "we believe that homosexuality is wrong," or "sex before marriage is wrong, even with a condom according to our religion." The government isn't taking away any options for Christians - Christians are trying to take away options for NON-Christians!

Wrong. Nobody is asking you to treat gay marriage and homosexuality as "right and normal." We are asking you to TOLERATE it's existance. You tolerate a cold, you tolerate a crying baby, you tolerate the existance of people who believe differently than you do. If we were asking you to consider it "right and normal" it would be called ACCEPTANCE.As for "leaving it alone," I would ask YOU to leave it alone and let Gays do the same thing the rest of us have been doing for centuries. You are restricting THEIR rights, and that is NOT freedom.

Appeal to tradition fallacy. Just because "it's tradition" doesn't make it right. It was "tradition" to treat blacks as property. It was "tradition" to keep women in the home and not let them vote for themselves. You don't know what YOU are talking about, Faith. Okay, here come the quotes:

quote:

---

John Adams (the second President of the United States)

​

Adams signed the Treaty of Tripoli (June 7, 1797). Article 11 states:
The government of the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion.

​

From a letter to Charles Cushing (October 19, 1756):
Twenty times in the course of my late reading, have I been upon the point of breaking out, ‘this would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it.’

​

From a letter to Thomas Jefferson:
I almost shudder at the thought of alluding to the most fatal example of the abuses of grief which the history of mankind has preserved the Cross. Consider what calamities that engine of grief has produced!

​

Thomas Jefferson (the third President of the United States)

​

Jefferson’s interpretation of the first amendment in a letter to the Danbury Baptist Association (January 1, 1802):
Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between church and State.

​

From Jefferson’s biography:
...an amendment was proposed by inserting the words, ‘Jesus Christ...the holy author of our religion,’ which was rejected ‘By a great majority in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and the Mohammedan, the Hindoo and the Infidel of every denomination.’

​

James Madison (the fourth President of the United States)

​

Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments:
Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise....During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less, in all places, pride and indolence in the clergy; ignorance and servility in laity; in both, superstition, bigotry, and persecution.

​

Additional quote from James Madison:
Religion and government will both exist in greater purity, the less they are mixed together.

---

I can provide more, if you wish. This nation was founded as a secular nation, intended to have no mixing whatsoever, in order to protect the rights of all religions. The government must be left secular so that churches can have the right to practice their religions as they choose.

False equality.Let's apply the same logic to interracial marriage."Blacks have the right to marry people of their own race just like any other race. It shouldn't be legal for them to marry outside of their own race."This is a bigoted statement."Gays have the right to marry people of the opposite sex just like everybody else. It shouldn't be legal for them to marry within their own sex."That statement is identical and just as bigoted.This message has been edited by Rahvin, 07-21-2005 02:30 PM

So, how old were you when you came home from school and told your parents "I've decided to be heterosexual!" Attraction isn't a choice. I can no more choose my sexuality than I can choose to be attracted to certain physical traits. Appeal to tradition fallacy. Being tradition doesn't make it right. Marriage was quite different even a few hundred hears ago, as well, in case you've forgotten.Wives were considered property, and marriages were done out of political convenience, to provide an heir for the family inheritance (if any), and for an additional family labor force. That was "traditional marriage" a few hundred years ago, before all of this talk about marriage being for "love" and spouses being "equal partners."Marriage's traditional definition didn't work as an excuse then, and it doesn't now. Marriage is a legal contract. An animal cannot enter a contract, becasue it cannot give consent. Polygamy opens various other legal headaches - marriage allows for exclusive rights to the spouse, which is not conducive to a polygamous marriage. The contract just doesn't work between multiple partners.It does, however, work between two homosexuals. You are bigoted to deny them the right to marry.Please leave your strawman arguments and red herrings at the door.

Exactly.Examples of theocracies would include the Taliban and Dark Ages Europe. Those didn't work so well for freedom, did it?

Top of the Google search reveals this.

quote:

---

Most human sexuality researchers believe that one's orientation is fixed and unchangeable. Exceptions are those specialists in human sexuality who are also religious conservatives. Many of the latter are members of NARTH, a small professional organization that promotes conservative religious beliefs about homosexuality.

---

In other words, unbiased researchers conclude that sexuality is NOT a choice. Religious conservative "scientists" conclude based on their preconceived notions.As to your "reformed" homosexuals:

quote:

---

The success rate of these therapies in actually changing clients' sexual orientation appears to have been between 0% and something less than 0.1%. The success rate at changing clients' sexual behavior is much greater. Some of these techniques can persuade homosexuals to be celibate, either through terror, guilt, or persuasion that God considers same-sex behavior to be an abomination. They can persuade bisexuals to confine their sexual activities to members of the opposite sex. They may even be able to train gays to successfully have sex with a woman, while fantasize about making love to another man. But therapies do not seem to be capable of changing one's feelings -- one's sexual orientation -- in the vast majority of people.

---

You know OF people who have been guilted, pressured, and brainwashed into SUPPRESSING their STILL EXISTING urges. That is all.

Law does not make a thing right. It is entirely possible that gay marriage will be banned in the US, fully democratically. This is the weakness of democracy - tyranny of the minority by the majority. This is why we have a 3-branch government and checks and balances.For a long time the law defined blacks as property. For a long time the law didn't allow women to vote. These were democratically defined, but still WRONG.

How exactly can you misinterpret this?!

quote:

---

Thomas Jefferson (the third President of the United States)

​

Jefferson’s interpretation of the first amendment in a letter to the Danbury Baptist Association (January 1, 1802):
Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between church and State.

​

From Jefferson’s biography:
...an amendment was proposed by inserting the words, ‘Jesus Christ...the holy author of our religion,’ which was rejected ‘By a great majority in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and the Mohammedan, the Hindoo and the Infidel of every denomination.’

---

"thus building a wall of separation between church and State.What do you THINK that means?!How about some more:

quote:

---

Jefferson’s The Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom:
Our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions, more than on our opinions in physics and geometry....The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.

​

Jefferson’s Notes on Virginia:
Reason and persuasion are the only practicable instruments. To make way for these free inquiry must be indulged; how can we wish others to indulge it while we refuse ourselves? But every state, says an inquisitor, has established some religion. No two, say I, have established the same. Is this a proof of the infallibility of establishments?

​

Additional quotes from Thomas Jefferson:
They [the clergy] believe that any portion of power confided to me, will be exerted in opposition of their schemes. And they believe rightly: for I have sworn upon the alter of god eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.

​

I have examined all the known superstitions of the word, and I do not find in our particular superstition of Christianity one redeeming feature. They are all alike founded on fables and mythology. Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined and imprisoned. What has been the effect of this coercion? To make one half of the world fools and the other half hypocrites; to support roguery and error all over the earth.

​

In every country and in every age the priest has been hostile to liberty; he is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own.

​

Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear....Do not be frightened from this inquiry by any fear of its consequences. If it end in a belief that there is no God, you will find incitements to virtue on the comfort and pleasantness you feel in its exercise and in the love of others which it will procure for you.

​

Christianity...[has become] the most perverted system that ever shone on man....Rogueries, absurdities and untruths were perpetrated upon the teachings of Jesus by a large band of dupes and importers led by Paul, the first great corrupter of the teaching of Jesus.

---

How exactly have I "misinterpreted" Jefferson? Perhaps you just haven't actually READ anything that he wrote, and don't have the simplest clue what you are talking about.The fact that Congress and individual judges may have tried to express their religion through the govenment does not mean it was right or constitutional for them to do so. If you were on the Supreme Court, I'm sure you would rule in favor of all manner of theocratic law, but it wouldn't make you right.Your argument is an appeal to authority and an appeal to tradition.

They were wrong, just like you. Your argument is an appeal to authority, and false.

That's right! And freedom is for good Christian white...Oh. Wait. That's BIGOTED. The state won't tell YOU to do anything at all. The state will call it a marriage, only because it uses the same contract that heterosexual marriages use and gives the same rights. You can call it whatever you want.

No, I just lurked for a month or so and jumped right in.Thanks for the welcome, and I'm glad the quotes I provided were interesting to you.

Yeah, I've posted in a few topics, and started one of my own. I've been around for a couple of weeks or so.

Ah, sorry for the misunderstanding.No, I haven't posted elsewhere prior to here, though I recently joined another unrelated board.I've seen other people with the same name elsewhere, though.

For once we are in agreement. The seperation IS to protect religion.However, the establishment or even recognition of one religion over others (ie, Christianity over atheism, Buddhism, etc) leads to the same problems those church leaders were worried about.The seperation is intended not only to protect Christians from being forced into atheism, Faith, it is ALSO intended to protect atheists and other religions from Christianity.That's why school or state sponsored prayer is bad - it is a state recognition of a religion.You're right in that the government doesn't need protection. But becuse we citizens give the government power over us, the government must not be allowed to recognize any one faith above any others. Secularism is the only way to allow ALL religions to practice as they please without being influenced by the government.