It’ll also damage their state economies if it’s removed, which they would certainly take the hit for. Plus hearing from all their constituents who have actually benefited from it.
This is a great short video about “traditional” marriage.
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Ah. Thank you!
Given the person’s general “look,” I just assumed she was a newspersonality of some sort.
Seemed to me both Grumblebum and chgoliz both inferred starting points of the example exchanges. From Grumblebum’s “burn in hell” to chgoliz’s “I know you’re a reprobate” I was only continuing that line of thought.
Now a nice prayer is better, but still inconsiderate on some levels. If I know enough about a person to have an inkling of their belief system, and their partner is injured in a car accident, I’ll not offer a condolence that injects my religion when I can just go straight condolence any more than I’d offer to make a donation to my church in their name to help them with the medical bill.
I know evangelicals see it differently, (not that you are one!) but the way I see it and the way I think someone trying to be respectful of another might see it is that religion is personal, very personal, and if I know or believe it isn’t shared, I’ll keep it personal out of respect for them but also myself.
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Absolutely, and of course. My “some” could have been made clearer, I suppose, but given the makeup of bbs, it could be argued to be a given. This isn’t a place where blanket statements thrive.
My girlfriend is an atheist, but worked at a church in an administrative capacity for years without any conflict or professed irritation. A coworker went through a public (facebook) atheistvangilism phase, with tons of angry memes, misreadings of scriptural intent, and so forth. I’m fond of both parties, but I only make out with one of them 
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I don’t think we disagree about it being (potentially) an aggressive act. My perspective is that its a fairly minor one, and that getting worked up about it kind of undercuts the appeal to logic that atheism depends upon. Others’ mileage may vary. I mean, some people really like honk their car horns in anger, while I think it’s for avoiding accidents only, and doing so in other situations is silly. I’m not saying that people shouldn’t honk their horns, I’m saying that it doesn’t seem to help other people drive better, and it distracts us from driving better, ourselves.
I agree fully with your second point, here, in that many people use this as shorthand for, “Ahhrrg, that sucks: I hope things get better.” I’m personally more interested in another human being giving a shit about my troubles, than I am in their reliance on a cultural default setting.
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Damn right about that car horn!
Hmmm. I guess not!
On the other hand, if I accepted that construct, wouldn’t I get to wear one of these?
'Cause I could live with that. (Greek helmets = the badassedest helmets.)
I didn’t mean to imply that it precluded it; just that the availability of suitably empowered state agents, who can be compelled to do the job(and, should logistics demand it, we could probably expand the set of offices that qualify you to officiate marriages) made any parallels to the ‘place of public accomodation’-styled arguments in favor of desegregation, at the expense of freedom of association, less compelling; and served as a reason why fears of clergy being conscripted to marry the gays are almost certainly unfounded.
I don’t imagine that preferences for church vs. court ceremony will differ all that much(except where local religion skews sufficiently uniformly reactionary that options are slim); ‘the gays’ don’t seem to approach marriage all that differently from anoyone else, the ability of the state to provide marriages as required is just a feature that ensures that they’ll never need to resort to trying to bludgeon the reactionaries into line.
Bingo! Except some of those people are powerful in many ways --just not as powerful as they think they are. Barriers to what should be (in their minds) are anathemas. Not only is such behavior small-minded and self-serving “othering” (as you point out) it is also a blatant show of protectionism for institutionalized repression.
Let them rage in apoplectic impotence. Humanity needs to evolve.
Thing is that it was specifically white and black marriages that outraged people. Marriages between whites and Native Americans were grudgingly accepted. Slavery warped white people’s perceptions of what kind of marriages were acceptable, because white and black was viewed as an intolerable challenge to white supremacy.
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The reason why I find “I’ll pray for you” to be offensive is because it’s the same as saying “I’m going to try to psychically mind control you into obeying my will.”
It’s nonsense, but the religious sincerely believe that it works and is an acceptable alternative to either dialog with another person, or getting on with their life.
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Except you are slathering your personal beliefs onto a situation in which they might very well be unwelcome. You can pray for the lady without saying anything, and say you hope she gets better without the need to mention your praying.
Those same “well meaning” Christians would shit a brick, if their wife was hit by a car and someone said, “oh, i’ll stick pins in a doll fashioned in her likeness to help her get better” or “i’ll sacrifice a cat to chase the demons away from her” or “i’ll channel an alien overload to imbue her with healing energy” or “i’ll create some spells and do a summoning to aid her” etc. It takes a right a**hole to interject your religion into someone else’s tragedy, and a myopic one to not see the issue with that.
I’m going to remember that one.
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You should read Dr. Bob
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Mine gave me a look of ‘You know you are going to HELL doncha boy’ but then he was Irish Catholic which is a totally different animal. The priest I talked with in St. Louis was actually pretty cool, he realized I had a healthy idea of marriage and figured if I had made it 26 years in St. Louis in the neighborhood I lived in and not be Catholic yet then there was little he was gonna say to change my mind as far as that went.
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I certainly can’t tell you how to process that sort of statement. Here’s how I would, though: Assuming that it was said as a reaction to something that disturbed that person on (their perceived) religious grounds, I would recognize that they were so flummoxed that they’d abdicated the issue up the chain. Not, “I’m going to psychically control you,” but “I’m so freaked out/frustrated that all I can hope for is that someone else (i.e. god) resolves this.” (I think this fits with your “alternative to dialog” perception, but with a different spin.) In other words, that they were admitting a form of defeat. Despite whatever annoyance I felt, I’d mostly just feel sort of sorry for them.
If it was meant in – ahem – good faith, as an expression of concern, I’d probably mostly feel thankful. Otherwise, it’s like if a neighbor brought you some food in a time of distress, and you were like, “Fuck you, I hate fruitcake!”
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Some folks get all weird when they start planing weddings. I can definately see an overlap of
a) people desperately wanting to wed at iconic/unique/historic location, and
b) people officiating at iconic/unique/historic location desperately wanting to deny teh gayz.
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Amen and awomen! Most of the people posting the stuff about the end of the US and so forth usually feel they don’t have any power over their lives. So it’s easy to hate others who seem to have it all together. Sad
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You must not live in Texas. There, it’s assumed that all people you’d associate with are good Christians. My two atheist friends who comprise the Russian department at a state college in central Texas tell me that it’s… interesting to navigate this.
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From there, both deep backwater Piney Woods terrain and tha big city of Houston.
And yes, now having been free for over a decade I find it ever more difficult to talk to all but a few of my relations there.
I mean I respect their choices as best I may, but really… in the middle of conversation about children I’m talking about a (not a) problem that we’re having a time resolving and out of the blue I’m hearing comfort and …“don’t worry, God will help them with that…” from people that didn’t talk that way when I left… it’s spooky sometimes.
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