I wholeheartedly believe that protections need to be expanded to this group but I don’t think that this is the best way to do it since the argument that the original legislation didn’t intend to extend protections to this group seems reasonable to me.
Accordingly, I don’t know if these kinds of lawsuits help the situation or not. On one hand if the suit is unsuccessful it is a waste of time and gives legislators an out because “well we thought the courts would take care of it. On the other hand, even if it is still unsuccessful, it sends a message to legislators that there is an injustice that needs to be addressed and there is an appetite to address it.
The current law is clear on this and it should NOT be allowed to have its interpretation be more broad than it was intended. If LGBT is to be protected, then a new law or an expanded law should be created and voted upon.
Business owners and leaders should have rights too. It continues to be more difficult to fire someone for performance or cause. No matter how much documentation you have, the fired person can play any card and accuse the owner/boss/business of being discriminatory, even if there wasn’t any. As an owner or leader, you now have to weigh this in your decision as false accusations can still damage a business’s reputation.
Honestly, with the exception of Texas, I think most businesses just want good, intelligent, hard working employees who are not disruptive. They want to be successful and provide a good place to work, and really don’t care what race or sex or religion… the person is.
“I wholeheartedly believe that protections need to be expanded to this group but I don’t think that this is the best way to do it since the argument that the original legislation didn’t intend to extend protections to this group seems reasonable to me.”
This is one of the most hopeful threats I have seen from all liberals here.
This, this right here, is absolutely crucial. That we don’t reinterpret laws, we rewrite them. I am going to give you a lot of credit in the future due to this post as well as some other liberals here who understood this same thing.
I have to disagree a little bit. I think statutory law should be superseded by common law on many occasions. When conflicts of the law exist or when the original drafters didn’t contemplate certain eventualities (for example, original telecom laws didn’t envision the internet) then we need to reinterpret enough to patch the legal system up.
In this case, it isn’t like Congress didn’t know LGBT people existed. They just believed that those people didn’t believe protections at the time OR, if they did, that they wouldn’t have been able to pass it in that political climate.
“I have to disagree a little bit. I think statutory law should be superseded by common law on many occasions. When conflicts of the law exist or when the original drafters didn’t contemplate certain eventualities (for example, original telecom laws didn’t envision the internet) then we need to reinterpret enough to patch the legal system up.”
No. We don’t. This is too much of a risk. Here I was thinking liberals finally understood why this was a problem, and I almost think you are now backtracking because it’s me, a conservative who agreed with you. Are you trying to be contrary?
We should not reinterpret laws, we should rewrite them. Ben Shapiro says this better than I could, and there is very good reason to operate like this.
In other words: YouTube Ben Shapiro debates on the matter.
When a judge reinterprets the law, justice is no longer absolute, and many times, it is reinterpreted by someone who is not elected, has a life long term, and 9 people go through screening. 9. This is a bad way of dealing with issues, when you look at the supreme court’s history, as Ben Shapiro points out. It becomes arbitrary based on the scenario as well, and justice can be manipulated. Reinterpretation leads to tyranny, rewriting, leads to revolution and success.
I’m not at all backtracking because a conservative agreed with me but rather qualifying my original statement since I wasn’t sure if you misinterpreted. I may be trying to be contrary though since my name is kind of appropriate.
Justice is not and should not be absolute. The system of common law with pervades the western world is itself a system of change where law and ruling can be overturned in the face of a new situation and a new set of norms. Without such a system, law would have to consider every eventuality and every possible permutation of events which is impossible. The legislative power can’t hope to keep itself up with the pace of society and technology.
Also, tyranny at the hands of judges is no different than tyranny at the hands of any official. If they are not elected, they are selected by elected representatives.
September 27, 2017 at 12:08 pm
Come on, Man says:
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I think this is sickening, the current US administration is actively trying to prevent what should be an unalienable right to a group of it’s citizens. Our country is supposed to be better than that. Every day I become more and more ashamed.
Sorry but I have to disagree. The law is clear in this case and the intent was not to be protection of sexual orientation. That said the do nothings in congress need to get off their proverbial butts and right this wrong, but it is the courts job to interpret the law and it’s intent not to write new law. So write your legislators and ask them to amend the law!
Honestly, it doesn’t matter to me what the law says.. This is a moral and ethical issue. The people who site the specific verbiage in this instance are the same group of people that stood on the side of discrimination before 1964 & Title VII. The fact that not only has this not been resolved yet, but is being actively fought against by the US Government is an absurdity.
If you don’t care what the law says, discussing this with you is useless because the case is only about whether the employer violated existing law. A private company should never be found liable in a civil case based upon what the law should be; only for violating an existing legal duty, pursuant to an existing law.
Of course he doesn’t care what the law says. He is just spouting off talking points and moral equivalences. Notice how he says “The people who site the specific verbiage in this instance are the same group of people that stood on the side of discrimination before 1964 & Title VII.” This really is an absurd objection that no one has made, or would ever explicitly say. Suretylike, to your point, this entire article is essentially about current legal statutes, but to “Come on, Man” it is about immoral people who stood against the civil rights movement. Talk about a red herring.
October 2, 2017 at 3:04 pm
wayne smith says:
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You have your law and your history incorrect. It was Democrats on the side of Discrimination during 1964 in the south. Look it up…democrat governors, democrat police chiefs, etc.
Now, if you don’t like the law you may lobby to have a new law created. You don’t get to claim “moral and ethical” as a reason to ignore law and re-write it from the bench simply because in your learned opinion only you know what is moral.
What’s an unalienable right here? People are fired for all sorts of reasons, a guy was fired for just being in a bus with donald trump 10 years ago recorded on tape for christsakes.
The law only says what it says, and even that was poorly conceived at that.
If an employer wishes to deny itself labor and talent, it should be able to, otherwise, I could add a long list of groups who should never be fired. We’ve seen countless fired for having the wrong opinions alone…
You should be ashamed, the abuse of executive privilege is why you are filled with regret. The ill conceived decisions by Obama led to kangaroo courts and the backlash which destroyed the credibility of the left. The reliance on judicial rulings rather than democratic law through legislation led to the left being held hostage to the democrat party through dubious rulings, their voter base captives, blackmailed, allowing them to become corrupt without limit, and now you reap the consequences of doing everything the wrong way at every opportunity.
If you want an absurd law, you must do the hard work of getting it passed through the legislative process, stop trying to cheat the system, it only costs you in the end.
You don’t get to pick your race and you don’t get to pick your gender….wait a minute…never mind. Today I’m a pussy cat, tomorrow maybe a pit bull, Friday maybe a 6 year old confused little girl. Yep, we have made our bed, now let everyone lay in it.
Jack, you are correct on both posts. If a worker does not perform their job and there is cause to fire them, it doesn’t matter what gender they are. By the way, God made Adam & Eve, not Adam and Steve and that was God’s intention.
Who someone loves consensually is not my business, as long as they don’t hurt anyone. Love can be hard enough to find in this world.
What gender someone identifies with is not my business, as long as they don’t hurt anyone. While I may not understand transgenderism or all the facets of gender identity, it’s not for me to judge since I also don’t believe God makes mistakes, nor could I ever claim to known His intention since I am human.
Life is way too short as it is.
Yeah, that’s right Agent, God did not intend for man to have relations with another man. I mean, look at the rest of the animal kingdom. There is just NO evidence at all that any other mammal has relations with their own gender. None. It’s just us humans that do it, so it’s got to be totally unnatural (end sarcasm).
You must not lie down with a male in the same way that you lie down with a woman. It is a detestable act.
1St Corinthians 6:18 – Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin that a man may commit is outside his body, but whoever practices sexual immorality is sinning against his own body.
Believe what you want, you are the one who will face judgment one day.
Leviticus 19:19
Do not wear clothing woven of two kinds of material.
Believe what you want, you are the one who will face judgment one day
September 28, 2017 at 12:54 pm
Agent says:
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Hey very confused, God made man in his own image and gave him a brain to reason with. Other species in the animal kingdom do not have that ability. Too bad he shorted you in the brain power and reasoning category. Now, you and your cohorts can down thumb me once again. I couldn’t care less.
“Too bad he shorted you in the brain power and reasoning category.” Insulting Agent is back! I was worried when you made 2 full posts without insulting someone. All seems right again.
Confused, glad you can proof text. Please, since you are quoting Scripture, explain to everyone the historical view on civic, moral and ceremonial laws in the Pentateuch. Before you go attempting logical fallacies–like argumentum ad absurdum–you may want to actually read and understand what you are quoting. Jews and Christians alike have historically observed that the Pentateuch gives various types of laws within the context of ancient Israel. The Pentateuch contextually lays out laws which are moral–and therefor are always binding–and ceremonial–which are specific to Israel’s relationship to the first temple.
You were the first one to quote Scripture – I merely provided another line from the same source (Leviticus) to show that you are simply picking and choosing lines to “prove” that if the bible says it’s bad, it’s wrong — yet there are other parts of the bible that say “it’s bad, so it’s wrong” but you willfully choose not to follow those rules even though the bible says your actions are wrong too.
September 28, 2017 at 2:06 pm
Augustine says:
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Hi Confused… Actually I jumped into the conversation mid stream. You are confusing my comments with Agent’s FYI. Leviticus is largely laying out the holiness code in regards to ancient Israel’s conduct within the OT temple system. When I wear clothing with multiple fibers I am not in violation of Leviticus because I am not an Israelite worshipping God at the temple in Jerusalem. Levitical law is strictly given within the Old Testament sacrificial system which was destroyed with the temple in 70 AD by the Roman general Titus…
September 28, 2017 at 2:11 pm
Augustine says:
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Alright my friend, I am done ranting. No hard feelings. We can certainly agree to disagree on this. Have a great day and God bless.
September 28, 2017 at 4:46 pm
Confused says:
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Sorry Augustine – you’re right, I did confuse your post as being one from Agent. As for the Old Testament and the difference between civic/moral/etc laws, obviously I do not know that. I do stand by part of my original response to your post: some people just pick and choose which parts of the bible they want to take literally and which ones are open for interpretation or those which shouldn’t be taken at face value.
September 28, 2017 at 11:21 am
Augustine says:
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“Come on, Man.” Is your comment supposed to be intentionally flippant, arbitrary and disrespectful to all religious people? Because it is. You are probably one of these tolerance preachers who is ironically intolerant of others.
Augustine, a lot of people are saying “Common Man” to the NFL right now and they will be expressing their displeasure to the prima donnas violating their employment contracts with the teams.
September 28, 2017 at 4:07 pm
Come on, Man says:
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I don’t know if i would consider myself a tolerance preacher… Just a person who doesn’t care about made up stories and make believe entities. Most of which are typically used to continuously oppress people.
Is that being disrespectful?
September 28, 2017 at 5:06 pm
Augustine says:
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“Come on, Man,” Ah yes the old “sky fairy” rant. You have criticized religion without actually offering anything substantive in its place. Regarding “made up stories” and “make believe entities,” what exactly are you referring to specifically? What about the philosophical and economic worldview of communism? How about atheism? The 20th century alone saw atheist dictators murder more people than all the religious or holy wars combined. Stalin murdered twenty million, Pol Pot about one million, and Mao about forty five million combined. Do you have problems with those folks? Have you considered that they were all supposedly “enlightened” atheists? I would say your beliefs are only disrespectful when you are intentionally going out of your way to offend people. It doesn’t seem like you even remotely understand what you are criticizing. Why are religious people seemingly the object of your scorn?
September 28, 2017 at 5:19 pm
Augustine says:
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“Come on, Man.” I am done for the day. Thanks for the back and forth. Have a great day.
September 28, 2017 at 2:26 pm
Agent says:
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Confused, sorry I hurt your little feelings. Are you in a safe space now? Spare us your tears.
Confused, you worry a lot about things you shouldn’t worry about. That is what Progressives do, worry about a Conservative opinion on any subject. No wonder Progressives try to shut down the 1st Amendment.
September 27, 2017 at 2:41 pm
Counterpoint says:
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A classic example of your slippery slope reasoning. Just like people used to think that same sex marriage would mean that bestiality is legal, apparently the new version is thinking that respecting trans people’s rights means that you can identify as whatever you want.
Social conservatives need a new dead horse to beat.
Well, I see I brought out all the nasty Progressives to down vote me for my opinion. We still have the 1st Amendment despite all the efforts to quell free speech.
By the way, the Social Conservatives won and the Progressive Left lost. What part of that do you not understand and please explain your version of right from wrong.
No, everybody lost when the Tom Delay and his ilk decided to gerrymander the voting districts across the country. That led to the creation of voter suppression laws, which coupled with the Citizens United decision, led to the Social Conservatives “winning”, when in reality, they are outnumbered significantly and seemed destined to try their damndest to send this country back to the 1950s with women in the kitchen, gays in the closet, and the minorities in “their place.”
Democrats out-spend Republicans in just about every election yet are the first to complain about money in politics. You liberals are so freaked out about Citizens United but Hillary used her faux non-profit group to rake in millions from foreign corporations. So hypocritical.
October 2, 2017 at 5:00 pm
Counterpoint says:
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Wayne, that doesn’t mean that those concerns aren’t reasonable. If they were to NOT outspend Republicans then they would loose representation and then they couldn’t advocate for it.
It’s like nuclear disarmament; everyone wants nukes gone but nobody wants to be the first one to do it.
September 27, 2017 at 6:08 pm
BS says:
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The First Amendment gives you the right to express yourself without the government trying to silence or punish you for that expression.
The First Amendment does not guarantee you the right to not be thumbed down by other citizens expressing their own First Amendment rights.
The culture war is real. Truly a clash of ideologies and philosophical and religious worldviews. The thing that irritates me about the progressive left in these types of issues is that often they assume that secular humanism is the de facto objective worldview and they have a truly myopic view of the first amendment.
I agree that the culture war is real. The worldviews held by our current news readers and their stories – other than Fox News I suppose – are a startling contrast to the reality that the more you try to influence a people the more they thirst for the truth. God holds the truth but man wants to do his own thing. 1 ounce of faith could cause a tree to uproot itself and plant in fertile soil.
That is one thing many (most?) Christians forget. Faith alone gets you nowhere, or only slightly more than nowhere, but with good works, sure, why not?
Faith can move a mountain, as they say, but you better bring a shovel and bucket.
A tree cannot uproot itself and plant itself in fertile ground. That would be impossible. But a person surely can.
People so often forget that the “works” part of faith is a key counterpart, and without it, faith is meaningless. It is why those who disingenuously wring their hands at tragedies and offer “thoughts and prayers” are the true dregs of society.
Either:
a)pass legislation to prevent further tragedies of that nature
or
b)Admit that owning guns is more important to you than people’s lives, including the dozens of children at Sandy Hook, the clubgoers at Pulse, the concertgoers of Las Vegas, etc, etc, etc.
It isn’t the mass shootings ever. My local news jumps between: “Local girl shot in bed while sleeping from stray bullet” to “Check out last night’s sports scores!” without blinking an eye shows that we are WELL past feeling about gun violence.
Written boldly on the U.S. Supreme Court building is the following:
EQUAL JUSTICE UNDER LAW
The Constitution is for All Americans, not just for arrogant and dangerously hypocritical extremist religious groups. They falsely claim that their religious freedom is being stepped on because they aren’t legally permitted to express their irrational fears and hatred by firing/refusing to hire, refusing to rent/lease or sell, refusing to perform a service for LGBT — including providing medical care.
I am helping a young man who is a refugee from Iran– his mother turned him in to the authorities because he is gay. Three times he had to appear before Islamic Court in Tehran and three times his mother told the court to execute her son. They issued an order for execution. Evangelical pastors [cult leaders] have influenced laws in Uganda and gay people have been murdered as a direct result. So, I don’t view Evangelicals as being much different than radical Muslim extremists. In fact, they aren’t very different at all. Both groups spread false information about LGBT people, they stir up hatred among their ranks, and equate being gay to bestiality. However, in their favorite hate spot in the Bible known as Leviticus (which was specifically for the Israelites during that time to keep them as a separate and cohesive people. They only time they applied those laws to people of other kingdoms was if they wanted to live among the Israelites and be part of the communities– they had to adhere to the laws in which they were living. And, according to the Original Hebrew, three different words were used but all three were translated into English as “abomination”. Lev. 18:17- Hebrew word “Zimah”- marrying a woman and her daughters or granddaughters; Leviticus 18:23- Hebrew word “Tevel”- bestiality; Leviticus 20:12- Hebrew word “Tevel”- man who has sex with daughter-in-law.
The Hebrew word “Toevah” was used for (Leviticus 18:22) Thou shalt not lie with mankind…”Toevah”. Having sex with your wife while she is menstruating – “Toevah”. Eating Pork, Lobster, Shrimp, etc. “Toevah”. The reason Egyptians would not set and eat with Hebrews? “Toevah”. So, if you want to lump gays in with anything, it would not be incest, nor bestiality. “Gay” would be most like eating a lobster. Gays are like lobsters. Further, the passage about man lying with a man is preceded by -21 “And thou shalt not let any of thy seed pass through the fire to Molech, neither shalt thou profane the name of thy God: I am the Lord.” This is a reference to idol worship, which included the use of temple prostitutes– male and female, not physical attraction of two men who express their affections. Further, Sodom & Gomorrah were NOT destroyed because of “homosexuality”. The Prophet Ezekiel provides the answer quite clearly [paraphrasing] They were arrogant and overfed, had an abundance, they were unconcerned, they did not help the poor and needy. –Jesus seemed to concur when using S&G as an example of what would happen if a city refused the Apostles its hospitality.
Arrogant, having an abundance, unconcerned, did not help the poor and needy…. sounds to me like good old “conservative values.”
Conservatives have a nice history in the U.S…. they used their bibles to put sinners in the pillory and stocks, used their bibles to condemn witches, bibles to defend and fight for slavery, used their bibles to support segregation, bibles to fight against interracial marriage, bibles to oppose equality for women, and bibles against LGBT (including children who are LGBT). Let’s not forget that most of the GOP and many republican voters do not even believe in science. No one should be looking to them for any answers regarding religion, or how to be a good neighbor, even if your neighbors are Muslim, Hindi, African-American, Native American, Mexicans, or LGBT. I would rather live in a diverse neighborhood (which I do) than to live next door to evangelical cult members.
I wholeheartedly believe that protections need to be expanded to this group but I don’t think that this is the best way to do it since the argument that the original legislation didn’t intend to extend protections to this group seems reasonable to me.
Accordingly, I don’t know if these kinds of lawsuits help the situation or not. On one hand if the suit is unsuccessful it is a waste of time and gives legislators an out because “well we thought the courts would take care of it. On the other hand, even if it is still unsuccessful, it sends a message to legislators that there is an injustice that needs to be addressed and there is an appetite to address it.
The current law is clear on this and it should NOT be allowed to have its interpretation be more broad than it was intended. If LGBT is to be protected, then a new law or an expanded law should be created and voted upon.
Business owners and leaders should have rights too. It continues to be more difficult to fire someone for performance or cause. No matter how much documentation you have, the fired person can play any card and accuse the owner/boss/business of being discriminatory, even if there wasn’t any. As an owner or leader, you now have to weigh this in your decision as false accusations can still damage a business’s reputation.
Honestly, with the exception of Texas, I think most businesses just want good, intelligent, hard working employees who are not disruptive. They want to be successful and provide a good place to work, and really don’t care what race or sex or religion… the person is.
“I wholeheartedly believe that protections need to be expanded to this group but I don’t think that this is the best way to do it since the argument that the original legislation didn’t intend to extend protections to this group seems reasonable to me.”
This is one of the most hopeful threats I have seen from all liberals here.
This, this right here, is absolutely crucial. That we don’t reinterpret laws, we rewrite them. I am going to give you a lot of credit in the future due to this post as well as some other liberals here who understood this same thing.
I have to disagree a little bit. I think statutory law should be superseded by common law on many occasions. When conflicts of the law exist or when the original drafters didn’t contemplate certain eventualities (for example, original telecom laws didn’t envision the internet) then we need to reinterpret enough to patch the legal system up.
In this case, it isn’t like Congress didn’t know LGBT people existed. They just believed that those people didn’t believe protections at the time OR, if they did, that they wouldn’t have been able to pass it in that political climate.
“I have to disagree a little bit. I think statutory law should be superseded by common law on many occasions. When conflicts of the law exist or when the original drafters didn’t contemplate certain eventualities (for example, original telecom laws didn’t envision the internet) then we need to reinterpret enough to patch the legal system up.”
No. We don’t. This is too much of a risk. Here I was thinking liberals finally understood why this was a problem, and I almost think you are now backtracking because it’s me, a conservative who agreed with you. Are you trying to be contrary?
We should not reinterpret laws, we should rewrite them. Ben Shapiro says this better than I could, and there is very good reason to operate like this.
In other words: YouTube Ben Shapiro debates on the matter.
When a judge reinterprets the law, justice is no longer absolute, and many times, it is reinterpreted by someone who is not elected, has a life long term, and 9 people go through screening. 9. This is a bad way of dealing with issues, when you look at the supreme court’s history, as Ben Shapiro points out. It becomes arbitrary based on the scenario as well, and justice can be manipulated. Reinterpretation leads to tyranny, rewriting, leads to revolution and success.
I’m not at all backtracking because a conservative agreed with me but rather qualifying my original statement since I wasn’t sure if you misinterpreted. I may be trying to be contrary though since my name is kind of appropriate.
Justice is not and should not be absolute. The system of common law with pervades the western world is itself a system of change where law and ruling can be overturned in the face of a new situation and a new set of norms. Without such a system, law would have to consider every eventuality and every possible permutation of events which is impossible. The legislative power can’t hope to keep itself up with the pace of society and technology.
Also, tyranny at the hands of judges is no different than tyranny at the hands of any official. If they are not elected, they are selected by elected representatives.
I think this is sickening, the current US administration is actively trying to prevent what should be an unalienable right to a group of it’s citizens. Our country is supposed to be better than that. Every day I become more and more ashamed.
Sorry but I have to disagree. The law is clear in this case and the intent was not to be protection of sexual orientation. That said the do nothings in congress need to get off their proverbial butts and right this wrong, but it is the courts job to interpret the law and it’s intent not to write new law. So write your legislators and ask them to amend the law!
Honestly, it doesn’t matter to me what the law says.. This is a moral and ethical issue. The people who site the specific verbiage in this instance are the same group of people that stood on the side of discrimination before 1964 & Title VII. The fact that not only has this not been resolved yet, but is being actively fought against by the US Government is an absurdity.
If you don’t care what the law says, discussing this with you is useless because the case is only about whether the employer violated existing law. A private company should never be found liable in a civil case based upon what the law should be; only for violating an existing legal duty, pursuant to an existing law.
Of course he doesn’t care what the law says. He is just spouting off talking points and moral equivalences. Notice how he says “The people who site the specific verbiage in this instance are the same group of people that stood on the side of discrimination before 1964 & Title VII.” This really is an absurd objection that no one has made, or would ever explicitly say. Suretylike, to your point, this entire article is essentially about current legal statutes, but to “Come on, Man” it is about immoral people who stood against the civil rights movement. Talk about a red herring.
You have your law and your history incorrect. It was Democrats on the side of Discrimination during 1964 in the south. Look it up…democrat governors, democrat police chiefs, etc.
Now, if you don’t like the law you may lobby to have a new law created. You don’t get to claim “moral and ethical” as a reason to ignore law and re-write it from the bench simply because in your learned opinion only you know what is moral.
What’s an unalienable right here? People are fired for all sorts of reasons, a guy was fired for just being in a bus with donald trump 10 years ago recorded on tape for christsakes.
The law only says what it says, and even that was poorly conceived at that.
If an employer wishes to deny itself labor and talent, it should be able to, otherwise, I could add a long list of groups who should never be fired. We’ve seen countless fired for having the wrong opinions alone…
You should be ashamed, the abuse of executive privilege is why you are filled with regret. The ill conceived decisions by Obama led to kangaroo courts and the backlash which destroyed the credibility of the left. The reliance on judicial rulings rather than democratic law through legislation led to the left being held hostage to the democrat party through dubious rulings, their voter base captives, blackmailed, allowing them to become corrupt without limit, and now you reap the consequences of doing everything the wrong way at every opportunity.
If you want an absurd law, you must do the hard work of getting it passed through the legislative process, stop trying to cheat the system, it only costs you in the end.
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Who someone loves consensually is not my business, as long as they don’t hurt anyone. Love can be hard enough to find in this world.
What gender someone identifies with is not my business, as long as they don’t hurt anyone. While I may not understand transgenderism or all the facets of gender identity, it’s not for me to judge since I also don’t believe God makes mistakes, nor could I ever claim to known His intention since I am human.
Life is way too short as it is.
Yeah, that’s right Agent, God did not intend for man to have relations with another man. I mean, look at the rest of the animal kingdom. There is just NO evidence at all that any other mammal has relations with their own gender. None. It’s just us humans that do it, so it’s got to be totally unnatural (end sarcasm).
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Leviticus 19:19
Do not wear clothing woven of two kinds of material.
Believe what you want, you are the one who will face judgment one day
Hey very confused, God made man in his own image and gave him a brain to reason with. Other species in the animal kingdom do not have that ability. Too bad he shorted you in the brain power and reasoning category. Now, you and your cohorts can down thumb me once again. I couldn’t care less.
“Too bad he shorted you in the brain power and reasoning category.” Insulting Agent is back! I was worried when you made 2 full posts without insulting someone. All seems right again.
Which god was that?
Confused, glad you can proof text. Please, since you are quoting Scripture, explain to everyone the historical view on civic, moral and ceremonial laws in the Pentateuch. Before you go attempting logical fallacies–like argumentum ad absurdum–you may want to actually read and understand what you are quoting. Jews and Christians alike have historically observed that the Pentateuch gives various types of laws within the context of ancient Israel. The Pentateuch contextually lays out laws which are moral–and therefor are always binding–and ceremonial–which are specific to Israel’s relationship to the first temple.
You were the first one to quote Scripture – I merely provided another line from the same source (Leviticus) to show that you are simply picking and choosing lines to “prove” that if the bible says it’s bad, it’s wrong — yet there are other parts of the bible that say “it’s bad, so it’s wrong” but you willfully choose not to follow those rules even though the bible says your actions are wrong too.
Hi Confused… Actually I jumped into the conversation mid stream. You are confusing my comments with Agent’s FYI. Leviticus is largely laying out the holiness code in regards to ancient Israel’s conduct within the OT temple system. When I wear clothing with multiple fibers I am not in violation of Leviticus because I am not an Israelite worshipping God at the temple in Jerusalem. Levitical law is strictly given within the Old Testament sacrificial system which was destroyed with the temple in 70 AD by the Roman general Titus…
Alright my friend, I am done ranting. No hard feelings. We can certainly agree to disagree on this. Have a great day and God bless.
Sorry Augustine – you’re right, I did confuse your post as being one from Agent. As for the Old Testament and the difference between civic/moral/etc laws, obviously I do not know that. I do stand by part of my original response to your post: some people just pick and choose which parts of the bible they want to take literally and which ones are open for interpretation or those which shouldn’t be taken at face value.
“Come on, Man.” Is your comment supposed to be intentionally flippant, arbitrary and disrespectful to all religious people? Because it is. You are probably one of these tolerance preachers who is ironically intolerant of others.
Augustine, a lot of people are saying “Common Man” to the NFL right now and they will be expressing their displeasure to the prima donnas violating their employment contracts with the teams.
I don’t know if i would consider myself a tolerance preacher… Just a person who doesn’t care about made up stories and make believe entities. Most of which are typically used to continuously oppress people.
Is that being disrespectful?
“Come on, Man,” Ah yes the old “sky fairy” rant. You have criticized religion without actually offering anything substantive in its place. Regarding “made up stories” and “make believe entities,” what exactly are you referring to specifically? What about the philosophical and economic worldview of communism? How about atheism? The 20th century alone saw atheist dictators murder more people than all the religious or holy wars combined. Stalin murdered twenty million, Pol Pot about one million, and Mao about forty five million combined. Do you have problems with those folks? Have you considered that they were all supposedly “enlightened” atheists? I would say your beliefs are only disrespectful when you are intentionally going out of your way to offend people. It doesn’t seem like you even remotely understand what you are criticizing. Why are religious people seemingly the object of your scorn?
“Come on, Man.” I am done for the day. Thanks for the back and forth. Have a great day.
Confused, sorry I hurt your little feelings. Are you in a safe space now? Spare us your tears.
As stated earlier, insulting Agent is back! I was worried when you made 2 full posts without insulting someone. All seems right again.
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A classic example of your slippery slope reasoning. Just like people used to think that same sex marriage would mean that bestiality is legal, apparently the new version is thinking that respecting trans people’s rights means that you can identify as whatever you want.
Social conservatives need a new dead horse to beat.
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No, everybody lost when the Tom Delay and his ilk decided to gerrymander the voting districts across the country. That led to the creation of voter suppression laws, which coupled with the Citizens United decision, led to the Social Conservatives “winning”, when in reality, they are outnumbered significantly and seemed destined to try their damndest to send this country back to the 1950s with women in the kitchen, gays in the closet, and the minorities in “their place.”
Democrats out-spend Republicans in just about every election yet are the first to complain about money in politics. You liberals are so freaked out about Citizens United but Hillary used her faux non-profit group to rake in millions from foreign corporations. So hypocritical.
Wayne, that doesn’t mean that those concerns aren’t reasonable. If they were to NOT outspend Republicans then they would loose representation and then they couldn’t advocate for it.
It’s like nuclear disarmament; everyone wants nukes gone but nobody wants to be the first one to do it.
The First Amendment gives you the right to express yourself without the government trying to silence or punish you for that expression.
The First Amendment does not guarantee you the right to not be thumbed down by other citizens expressing their own First Amendment rights.
The culture war is real. Truly a clash of ideologies and philosophical and religious worldviews. The thing that irritates me about the progressive left in these types of issues is that often they assume that secular humanism is the de facto objective worldview and they have a truly myopic view of the first amendment.
Sorry the above comment was not a general comment on the article, but was intended to be a reply to “Come on, Man” in the initial comment.
Secular humanists objectively realize that snakes can’t talk.
I agree that the culture war is real. The worldviews held by our current news readers and their stories – other than Fox News I suppose – are a startling contrast to the reality that the more you try to influence a people the more they thirst for the truth. God holds the truth but man wants to do his own thing. 1 ounce of faith could cause a tree to uproot itself and plant in fertile soil.
So, the truth held by your “God” is that snakes talk and trees can uproot themselves and move about freely? Wow.
Faith without works is dead.
That is one thing many (most?) Christians forget. Faith alone gets you nowhere, or only slightly more than nowhere, but with good works, sure, why not?
Faith can move a mountain, as they say, but you better bring a shovel and bucket.
A tree cannot uproot itself and plant itself in fertile ground. That would be impossible. But a person surely can.
People so often forget that the “works” part of faith is a key counterpart, and without it, faith is meaningless. It is why those who disingenuously wring their hands at tragedies and offer “thoughts and prayers” are the true dregs of society.
Either:
a)pass legislation to prevent further tragedies of that nature
or
b)Admit that owning guns is more important to you than people’s lives, including the dozens of children at Sandy Hook, the clubgoers at Pulse, the concertgoers of Las Vegas, etc, etc, etc.
It isn’t the mass shootings ever. My local news jumps between: “Local girl shot in bed while sleeping from stray bullet” to “Check out last night’s sports scores!” without blinking an eye shows that we are WELL past feeling about gun violence.
Written boldly on the U.S. Supreme Court building is the following:
EQUAL JUSTICE UNDER LAW
The Constitution is for All Americans, not just for arrogant and dangerously hypocritical extremist religious groups. They falsely claim that their religious freedom is being stepped on because they aren’t legally permitted to express their irrational fears and hatred by firing/refusing to hire, refusing to rent/lease or sell, refusing to perform a service for LGBT — including providing medical care.
I am helping a young man who is a refugee from Iran– his mother turned him in to the authorities because he is gay. Three times he had to appear before Islamic Court in Tehran and three times his mother told the court to execute her son. They issued an order for execution. Evangelical pastors [cult leaders] have influenced laws in Uganda and gay people have been murdered as a direct result. So, I don’t view Evangelicals as being much different than radical Muslim extremists. In fact, they aren’t very different at all. Both groups spread false information about LGBT people, they stir up hatred among their ranks, and equate being gay to bestiality. However, in their favorite hate spot in the Bible known as Leviticus (which was specifically for the Israelites during that time to keep them as a separate and cohesive people. They only time they applied those laws to people of other kingdoms was if they wanted to live among the Israelites and be part of the communities– they had to adhere to the laws in which they were living. And, according to the Original Hebrew, three different words were used but all three were translated into English as “abomination”. Lev. 18:17- Hebrew word “Zimah”- marrying a woman and her daughters or granddaughters; Leviticus 18:23- Hebrew word “Tevel”- bestiality; Leviticus 20:12- Hebrew word “Tevel”- man who has sex with daughter-in-law.
The Hebrew word “Toevah” was used for (Leviticus 18:22) Thou shalt not lie with mankind…”Toevah”. Having sex with your wife while she is menstruating – “Toevah”. Eating Pork, Lobster, Shrimp, etc. “Toevah”. The reason Egyptians would not set and eat with Hebrews? “Toevah”. So, if you want to lump gays in with anything, it would not be incest, nor bestiality. “Gay” would be most like eating a lobster. Gays are like lobsters. Further, the passage about man lying with a man is preceded by -21 “And thou shalt not let any of thy seed pass through the fire to Molech, neither shalt thou profane the name of thy God: I am the Lord.” This is a reference to idol worship, which included the use of temple prostitutes– male and female, not physical attraction of two men who express their affections. Further, Sodom & Gomorrah were NOT destroyed because of “homosexuality”. The Prophet Ezekiel provides the answer quite clearly [paraphrasing] They were arrogant and overfed, had an abundance, they were unconcerned, they did not help the poor and needy. –Jesus seemed to concur when using S&G as an example of what would happen if a city refused the Apostles its hospitality.
Arrogant, having an abundance, unconcerned, did not help the poor and needy…. sounds to me like good old “conservative values.”
Conservatives have a nice history in the U.S…. they used their bibles to put sinners in the pillory and stocks, used their bibles to condemn witches, bibles to defend and fight for slavery, used their bibles to support segregation, bibles to fight against interracial marriage, bibles to oppose equality for women, and bibles against LGBT (including children who are LGBT). Let’s not forget that most of the GOP and many republican voters do not even believe in science. No one should be looking to them for any answers regarding religion, or how to be a good neighbor, even if your neighbors are Muslim, Hindi, African-American, Native American, Mexicans, or LGBT. I would rather live in a diverse neighborhood (which I do) than to live next door to evangelical cult members.