Exi5tentialist wrote:eRv wrote:Lucky your job is concern trolling the internet..
In any case:

So you can say "some religions do", and that's acceptable, but when we say it, you start bleating "islamaphobia!!1!".
It depends, not on whether you say it or I say it, but on whether the particular category being discussed has homopobic practices. To summarise:-
- The Church of England is homophobic, because it has adopted homophobic policies, and because it is an organisation, those homophobic policies apply throughout the organisation. There may be many people within the organisation who oppose those homophobic policies, but they cannot alter the fact that the organisation itself is homophobic in practice and policy.
Wrong.
- The Roman Catholic Church is homophobic, because it has adopted homophobic policies and it acts as an organisation with a single person who expresses homophobic ideas at the top of the organisation.
Wrong again.
- The Metropolitan Community Church is explicitly not homophobic, they have equal marriage and do not discriminate.
So, what's the problem exactly? Gays can join the MCC rather than some other private religious organization that doesn't allow them to participate in particular sanctification rituals of that church can't they?
- Because the Metropolitan Community Church is a Christian Church, it is unfair to describe Christianity as homophobic. As a religion, Christianity is too diverse to make that generalization.
This is true, but it's not "diversity" that's responsible for that, it's the fact that Christianity, as a religion, isn't "homophobic" at all. None of the mainstream Christian churches you named prohibit persons of homosexual sexual orientation from being members of the church. Indeed, to my knowledge they all welcome such persons to be members of the church. The single fact that those churches refuse to sanctify gay marriages is not a manifestation of "homophobia" in any way whatsoever, it's merely a rule of the church, based on that organizations beliefs regarding what the meaning of "marriage" is
within that particular religious organization. If that religious belief is that marriage is a bond between one man and one woman only, and that only such a pairing
can be (which is to say "can possibly be") sanctified
by God, then it is simply impossible, according to that religious belief, for two (or more) persons of the same sex to have their intimate personal relationship sanctified
by God through the expedient of a church ceremony, and the church simply
must deny such a ceremony to
anyone (which in Catholicism includes divorced members) who is not "qualified"
according to the commandments of God as given to the membership by religious authority.
Therefore it's neither "homophobia" nor even bigotry to decline to provide what would be, in the eyes of God, and therefore in the eyes of the church, a false ceremony that does not provide to the individuals involved what the church believes God provides to marriages made according to God's commandments. For the church to engage in a sham ceremony to satisfy some political or social agenda would in fact be a fraud upon the participants and a violation of what the church was founded to support, which is the commandments of God, not the political, social or secular interests of those who do not hold the same beliefs.
Such persons, be they gay or anything else that disqualifies them from being married in the church (such as persons know to be sterile) simply have to find a different place or system of belief under which to seek out sanctification of their desired intimate personal relationship.
Now, it may be that God is homophobic, or simply a pragmatist interested in perpetuation of the species rather than serving the sexual and domestic desires of everyone, but being God, God is hardly required to changes his/her/its commandments to suit the homosexual sociopolitical agenda. If homosexuals don't like that fact, I suppose they can file a discrimination suit against God in federal court...for all the good it will do them.
- Islam is the same as Christianity in that respect
No, Islam, in the Koran, explicitly calls for Muslims to kill and/or enslave non-Muslims and to kill homosexuals.
- I have tended to use the terms Church and religion interchageably, but my meaning is the same. In my view, religions are constructed by people. Dead people have no power to construct them.
Your view is irrelevant. In the view of, for example, the Catholic Church, Catholicism was constructed by Jesus Christ, the Son of God and its adherents are merely obeying the dictates of God and have neither power nor authority to change those dictates.
- To mischaracterise a religion is to project as stereotype or a prejudice against it. In the case of Islam, this is islamophobic.
Characterizing Islam as a fascistic, genocidal, totalitarian, murderous, oppressive and evil religion isn't "phobic" in any way, it's simple fact, based on the contents of the Islamic rule book, which is called the Koran, and in which Muslims are explicitly and expressly commanded to enslave, kill, persecute and oppress anyone who is not a Muslim.
- The problem at Orlando was a murderous level of prejudice.
Indeed, Islamic prejudice.
I oppose perpetuating this problem by transferring the prejudice from gay people to islam. I do not believe in making a bad situation worse.
Well, since Islam is the motivating factor in the attack, whether you oppose it or not is utterly irrelevant, it's an irrefutable fact and it's Islam that makes bad situations worse whenever it rears it's ugly head.
"Seth is Grandmaster Zen Troll who trains his victims to troll themselves every time they think of him" Robert_S
"All that is required for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." Edmund Burke
"Those who support denying anyone the right to keep and bear arms for personal defense are fully complicit in every crime that might have been prevented had the victim been effectively armed." Seth
© 2013/2014/2015/2016 Seth, all rights reserved. No reuse, republication, duplication, or derivative work is authorized.