Homophobic pastor arrested for squeezing man's genitals in park

boing
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I was referring to the popular belief system of Christianity. It’s still quite popular, and it still promotes this self loathing that unfortunately gets distributed far and wide by exactly this sort of self-loathing person.

I don’t condone self loathing. The sad thing is that this type of thinking is self-perpetuating. We’ve made strides in reducing it, but there are still vast segments of society in which it’s quite common, nay encouraged.

I have seen positive change with regard to acceptance of homosexuality among Christians lately, most often brought about by the presence of gay members of immediate families. Even that is not enough in a lot of cases.

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I was referring to the popular belief system of Christianity.

Not anymore, it’s not. Most Americans identify as believing in a Christian God. You’re still talking about a small minority. Also, churches in general have been losing membership left and right.

You said “popular belief system.” It’s not a popular belief system any longer. It’s a belief system held by a minority. Even most identified Christians believe in marriage equality, now.

I don’t feel sorry for this guy or any other asshole who holds on to archaic homophobic beliefs.

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Whenever I hear a guy say same-sex marriage is a threat to marriage what I hear is “It threatens my marriage because my boyfriend’s going to start pressuring me to leave my wife.”

I originally thought of that as a joke. It’s depressing how often it turns out to be true, or at least close to the truth.

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Wouldn’t that be the composition fallacy? Something like: Q is made up of A,B,C and D. Z is really horrific, and some of Z are D, therefore Q (which is in part D) is entirely as bad as Z and should be outlawed.

But they are intellectually dishonest enough that they neglect to mention that: some Z are D doesn’t mean Z=D or that D=Q.

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You could call it that, I’m not familiar with the nomenclature. Most of the spam people hit the thread with last night did include the “some of Z are D” aspects, but I have encountered many which were lazy enough to merely present them as sets of disjointed factoids, presumably because “everybody’s” shared cultural context as conservative douchenozzles makes the implication too obvious to think about, so it can get glossed over.

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Yeah. The other day, I was discussing with a rather conservative acquaintance who is also an eagle scout about the BSA’s policies of banning gay parents from being scout masters within a troop. I mentioned that it’s ridiculous and about the most illegal thing the BSA has done. This person immediately said “well, we do need to keep the kids safe”. I was pretty flabbergasted. I asked him if he trusted me to hang out with his kids (he already does), and he affirmed so, I then of course had to reiterate that I was a bisexual, yet I don’t molest anyone, and even the gays stereotype bisexuals as deviants. If he’s willing to let a bisexual guy hang out with, look after, and teach his own children, he has no business being uncomfortable with gay people being scout masters.

I wanted to do the Socratic method, but I got too pissed off too quickly to do better than just point at myself and ask: evil?

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Dude, there are tons of people who truly believe that Obama is a Kenyan born Muslim…

Also, keep in mind that “A poll of Americans in 2013 by Public Policy Polling indicated that 4% of registered voters (+/- 2.8%) believed in David Icke’s ideas.” (wikipedia) [“Conspiracy Theory Poll Results”. Public Policy Polling. Retrieved 2013-04-03]

It unfortunately seems to be human nature to want to view “other” as evil, even if you have to fabricate “evidence” to support that position. Empathy and compassion? Waaaaaay too difficult!

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Do you have numbers to support this? Not trying to be argumentative or a dick, but my experience has been vastly different than what you describe.

I live in CA, and we still (shamefully) passed prop 8 a few years back. The voting majority, in one of the most “liberal” states in the union, voted against gay rights. One has to assume that there were a fair number of people who voted against 8 with the thought process of “I think it’s evil/immoral, but I don’t think we should legislate morality”.

Even among the more liberal college educated “Christians” I know, discomfort with homosexuality seems to correlate directly with how fervently religious you are. Not that any of the above necessarily applies across the whole country/US society, but my experience has been that, unfortunately, homophobes are still a majority (though a quickly dwindling majority). I’d genuinely love to read any data that indicates otherwise.

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heh heh, you think that somehow logic is involved in these thought processes :smile:

cute. (and extremely optimistic)

But yeah, I think you’re right about what type of logical fallacy is involved.

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Yeah, the discussion ended with my conservative friend saying, “Well, you’re you, and I know you’re a good guy,” I was too angry to say that it’s logically inconsistent to just assume gay people are riskier at taking care of kids than straight people except for a few exceptions due to familiarity. He made me feel like such an Uncle Tom (don’t hit me, I don’t know how else to express the feeling. “well, of course you’re one of the good’ns”)

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despite being bi… Wow. That sucks. I’m not sure I could tolerate someone like that. Actually, I’m sure I couldn’t.

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Yeah, well, I grew up with the guy, we went to elementary and high school together. It’s just that he’s never been able to see the world past his own privilege. Or maybe he just has a genetic bias into conservatism. You know they say birds of a feather flock together, but necessity makes strange bedfellows, and we both needed friends. We don’t hang out nearly so often anymore, but we’ve known each other a very long time.

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Let the dead bury the dead my friend.

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Pedantically dissecting the word “popular” for your rhetorical ends, you conflate it with “majority”. For something to be popular doesn’t mean a majority of people agree. It just means a significant collection finds it compelling enough to warrant the use of this adjective by others to describe it. Christianity is a popular religion when compared to Pastafarianism, for example, though neither constitutes a majority held religious belief. By your definition of the word, there could only be one popular religion.

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But, as marilove is trying to point out, even in a country like the US, which has a majority Christian population, homophobia is increasingly not the norm. Which means even Christians in the US are increasingly not subscribing to the “popular belief” (your words) that homophobia is okay (and, in my estimation, hewing closer to the way Jesus would want them to be treating other people, but that’s a tangent…).

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@Bobo
@Mister44
@popobawa4u
@Malarkey

Cute, how you all pretend to know what the troll was thinking when all s/he did was post a link .

Me thinkst thou doth protest too much.

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Why do you presume to know what I was thinking? What am I protesting?

I was simply responding to Mister44’s remark: “I still don’t get how people cling to that like it’s the same thing.” By actually telling him how it can happen. Perhaps you interpret this as a value judgement for some reason.

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Me thinkst thou doth not know what that (mis)quote really means.

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Uh, marriage equality? “A few years back” was a LIFETIME ago when it comes to the fight for equality. Please note that in 2010, I stood in front of a Senate hearing and protested DADT (we were aiming our protests directly to John McCain), risking arrest.

DADT was repealed, for fuck’s sake! That’s a huge thing. HUGE. And it was not an easy fight.

I’ve been in the thick of it for YEARS. I’ve also payed close attention to the comment sections of Arizona news sites, and things are so very different than they were in, say, 2002. I know that’s just anecdotal, but as someone who grew up in Arizona, trust me when I say shit has changed.

It is now legal in Arizona to get married to a same-sex partner, and when that news hit, EVERYONE was so happy, including in my small little hometown in my small home county, where two well known and well loved lesbians got married - it was huge news, welcomed fully by even the most conservative in my home town and the county as a whole. (And trust me, my Arizona home town is very conservative. This is in the same county where Quartzsite is – cowboy country, through and through; this is the deep, deep deserts of western Arizona; google “Quartzsite Marshall Law” and you will not be disappointed.)

A gal I grew up with since birth was celebrating that marriage. Publicly. She even blessed their marriage, in her Christina way!!

In 2008, this same woman and I had several different arguments about gay marriage – she was vehemently opposed due to religious reasons. She and I argued about this more than once, but she was like a sister, so I kept her in my life. I’m not sure when it happened, but I do know that merely SIX years later and she’s done a complete turn and is now in full support of gay marriage.

As a queer woman who was never sure if the people I grew up would fully accept me, I cried my eyes out the night that marriage equality became legal in Arizona. Because of my friend, who is now in full support of marriage equality when so recently she wasn’t, and for so many others like her. There was a HUGE celebration in my home town – something that never would have happened in 2008.

Yes, there is plenty still to be done, particularly when it comes to trans* rights, but homophobia at least in mass numbers is a thing of the past in the U.S.

This asshole is part of a very small minority.

OVER HALF of the population of the US now believes that marriage equality should be legal. Over half. That’s … a fucking majority.

Even evangelicals are getting out of the fight, because their numbers are dwindling.

Look at this! Shit like this WOULD NOT have happened in 2008! Now it’s happening all over. People are leaving their churches because their churches espouse homophobic beliefs. It’s one of the biggest reasons churches are losing members, in fact. That and people just aren’t as religious as they used to be.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/12/indiana-church-that-fired-gay-choir-director-closing-after-attendance-withers-away/

ETA: AND a couple people in my home town helped produce a gay indie movie that’s doing pretty well on the indie scene. This is a town I ran away from when I was 19 because it was so oppressive. And now people are helping to produce gay indie flicks and are celebrating a lesbian wedding as if it’s like, totally a thing that’s normal. WTF? It’s so very different, it is almost mind-boggling.

I have a first date this weekend with a lady who seems promising. The fact that I could fall in love with a lady and get married in my home town and the people I grew up around would support it?! I mean, my immediate family has always been pretty open minded and even progressive, but my tiny little home town as a whole? Not so much.

But I could get married to a woman in my tiny Ariona home town. That’s a thing I could totally do now. And people would largely celebrate! It would probably not even be a big deal. People probably wouldn’t even be surprised, for the most part. Basically, everyone that matters would be there at the wedding.

Are you queer? That might be why you don’t see it as clearly as I do. I COULD VERY WELL GET MARRIED TO A WOMAN IN MY SMALL ARIZONA HOME TOWN AND IT WOULD NOT BE A HUGE DEAL. That is amazing and mind blowing to me.

Disclaimer: I don’t want to get married. But I could. To another woman. In my tiny home town. Wtf. Still amazes me.

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I just wanted to say that it’s great that you’re out as a bisexual guy! That can’t be easy. A good male friend of mine – a Christian – just came out. It was very brave.

I’ve said in these comments that homophobia is mostly a thing of the past. HOWEVER, bisexual men are still often completely erased – their mere existence denied. Biphobia still exists. For men, because people seem to think men are either gay or straight, and nothing in between; and for women, because women’s sexuality is rarely taken seriously and it’s probably just a phase or something.

Bisexual men are often not treated very kindly, in a way that gay men and women and bisexual women will never understand (I am a bisexual woman, btw). Indeed, when I say “sexism hurts men, too” this is exactly what I’m talking about.

So thank you for being an out bisexual male. I believe more bisexual men exist than most people realize – just as many as bisexual women. But it’s so much harder for men to come out as bisexual. You did good.

“Hope will never be silent.” - Harvey Milk

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