LGBTQ+ Rights and Religion

Well yes, but there's rarely anything of the sort sitting in the shelf of the pews. You're lucky if you find a Catholic who even owns a Catechism, much less has read any of it.

Hell, my grandmother doesn't even have the right denomination's Bible and doesn't believe me when I tell her KJV is not accepted by the Catholic Church.

In fairness, that isn't something even traditionalist Catholics are pleased about.

Schild und Schwert der Partei

Good thing I'm agnostic. Being a Christian sounds complicated.

If it was simple, it would not be realistic.

I dunno- the laws of gravity are pretty simple, and they are exceedingly "realistic".

A good description of how the world works needn't be unwieldy; quite the opposite.

edited 9th Nov '13 3:20:02 PM by muramasan13

Smile for me!

Not really. Gravity: An Introduction to Einstein's General Relativity is 656 pages long

A table for example is four legs and board. However, if you look at it in detail, down to the smallest part of the think that can be called a table you will find that it really is quite complex.

edited 9th Nov '13 3:35:59 PM by Soban

"That "main argument from the Right" is a new one on me. Leaving aside the question-begging assumptions about what "human rights" we're talking about here, you'd think my monthly Right-Wing Cabal newsletter would've mentioned that it was a talking point somewhere among someone (where the hell are my dues going?)."

It's common for conservatives less inclined to be more honest to simply state that pro-equality measures like bills or allowing marriage are "attempts to destract from serious matters".

Basically, failure at Hanlon's Razor, cowardice and standard hypocrisy all rolled into one.

edited 9th Nov '13 3:36:19 PM by peryton

Please come back after you've taken a physics class beyond the freshman-level introductory sequence — preferably one involving wavefunctions. Our current best explanation of gravity hinges on a theoretical construct describing a yet undiscovered particle and decades of quantum mechanics and general relativity. It's actually the least understood of the fundamental forces.

Anyway, on topic. "Attempts to distract from serious matters" is a weird one since homosexuality is usually lumped in as one of the "serious matters" brought up by fundamentalists — usually brought up to smokescreen their economic antics.

edited 9th Nov '13 3:49:49 PM by Pykrete

And yet, G=(m₁m₂)/r² works perfectly well for most practical purposes.

The theories of gravity are complicated, but the laws aren't so bad. There is a difference.

edited 9th Nov '13 3:48:55 PM by muramasan13

Smile for me!

Most very rough approximations are more than sufficient for everyday use. Hell, you don't even need that many digits of pi to approximate the scale of the universe down to atomic precision. But obsessively computing pi to millions of digits as a party trick has spawned entire branches of mathematics and computing, which are immensely useful for everything else. Hell, that equation for gravity (which you messed up — G is a constant that goes on the other side) is a generalization of what we thought for centuries was just a constant value. Everything else we do and don't know about gravity is a generalization of that.

We wouldn't have had any of that if we'd just settled for "the simple thing". Life, science, morals — these are all incredibly complex topics, and while simple models are a good way to wrap our heads around it at first, they will all inevitably explode into O(scary). And that's not always a bad thing. Learning the overlying context of all those simple principles brings a greater understanding of...pretty much everything.

edited 9th Nov '13 4:00:25 PM by Pykrete

Complexity is a function of level of description - are you looking at the IKEA blueprint, the molecules that form wood grain, the table in a feng shui diagram, etc. More useful is the concept of sophistication, or the degree of useful details provided by a more complex body of information. In other words, are we getting more useful concepts for all the complexity we have to tolerate?

Share it so that people can get into this conversation, 'cause we're not the only ones who think like this.

I can't help but feel you're making something of a false equivalence here. There are reams and reams of theological debate, yes, but it's all about figuring out which bits of the bible to follow and which to ignore. A physics textbook might be a doorstopper, but everything in there is what the author thought was true at the time of writing and the complexity is due to the mechanics of the subject at hand. If a scientist realizes that something in there is wrong, he'll publish a new edition.

This is not the same as spending three volumes arguing whether or not a book says you're allowed to stick your dick in a guy's pooper.

edited 9th Nov '13 4:15:22 PM by Elfive

That too.

Share it so that people can get into this conversation, 'cause we're not the only ones who think like this.

Those reams of theological debate are also things that the author thought was true at the time of writing, whether or not it's in a field you happen to ascribe to or respect. To an adherent of said theology, Poopers in Leviticus: a Treatise is probably a considerably more compelling read than quantum gravity theory.

edited 9th Nov '13 4:28:42 PM by Pykrete

Probably, but I'd be willing to bet it would be for all the wrong reasons.

Unfortunately, not being a Christian doesn't mean I don't have to live by their rules.

Speak for yourself. I keep on forgetting how fast I'm supposed to accelerate when I'm falling, with some pretty spectacular (And/or messy) results. I'm bemused by and a little bit envious of all the rest of you who act like it comes naturally.

Also, the universe itself is really goddamn annoying. The fact that we exist in the first place is a huge violation of the first law of thermodynamics, and while that's more of an observation than something actually proven, existence itself just doesn't make any sense. Where did it come from? Some people say God, and you know what kind of response that gets—which, of course, is the crux of the problem. Where there parameters or conditions that were required to trigger the Big Bang, or God, or the ur, "First," comment? If so, how were they decided, and why were they true at the time? What caused them? If not, why isn't it happening all the time? We should be up to our eyeballs in Big Bangs.

Honestly, I'm pretty skeptical that the universe exists in the first place.

—-

Moving on.

Possible discussion question: Why do you all think there's a (Not necessarily indicative of the majority) tendency for members of religious groups to feel passionate about LGBT rights on account of their religious beliefs? I'm not asking for the justification used or opinions on said activists—what I'm wondering is, "Why is this issue important?"

In other words, of all the various sins and ideals, why do LGBT rights get so much passion? Is it because sex is such an important aspect of our psychologies that we're bound to have strong feelings and morals when it's brought up? Is it self perpetuating (In other words, if all people talk about is homosexuality, people will keep talking about homosexuality)? Is it related to various leaders throughout history, including religious ones, encouraging reproduction and population growth? Et cetera, et cetera.

edited 9th Nov '13 8:59:28 PM by Rem

Fire, air, water, earth...legend has it that when these four elements are gathered, they will form the fifth element...boron.

I think that a lot of it is because they've lost all the other fights. So many of the other sins have been accepted into our culture (pre marital sex being the big one), gay rights is one of the few where they have any chance of making a difference.

Sprung from an area notorious for institutionalized sexual abuse, base rules set up in its infancy by a guy who was so weirded out by sex that he thought the ideal scenario was extinction by celibacy, and a long background of cultures who associate physical uncleanliness (and by association, "ew, gross!") with sin. And of a more recent strain, news outlets and politicians who like to point at gay people and cry doom, then completely fuck the economy sideways and run off with billions of dollars while everyone's too busy screaming about gays to notice.

Premarital sex is historically not a huge issue outside the nobility. While a subject of discussion, sacramental marriage as we know it today wasn't a thing till like the 12th century, and for a long time it wasn't available at all to general peasants. For the most part marriage was a common law deal, which mostly meant you just shacked up with whoever's daughter you bought for a good enough dowry. Having sex before that was still considered a sin, but in practice it mostly fell on the woman because women were basically furniture with a face for a long swath of human history.

Extramarital sex was another can of worms.

edited 9th Nov '13 9:44:10 PM by Pykrete

Homophobia is pretty much a demonstration of xenophobia. Societies in general like to solve their problems by destroying individuality.

LGBT, like it or not, are pretty much the apex of individuality*. Religious people are the apex of conformity. When the two clash, what do you think it's going to happen?

• LGBT people, not the community, which is every bit as judgemental as any other.

The smallest minority on earth is the individual. -Ayn Rand

hashtagsarestupid

From The Other Wiki and its article on "Objectivism and homosexuality".

It's almost as though Ayn Rand's "philosophy" is simply a verbose restatement of her own personal prejudices! Funny that, eh?

Schild und Schwert der Partei

No really?

edited 10th Nov '13 5:16:03 AM by joeyjojo

hashtagsarestupid

Even the most bigoted person can sometimes drop little nuggets of wisdom. I imagine Hitler had some good tips about caring for dogs.