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The separation of church and state — here’s exactly what happens when religious zealots are elected into public office and don’t see a problem with conflating the two:
Lawmaker Pushes Bill To Allow Bullying Of Gay Students And Concealed Guns
How did we get to this point, where purportedly educated people simply toss our founding documents and cast them to the wind based on what a specific reading of holy texts (translated multiple times no less)? The U.S. exists because people flocked here to get away from religious persecution.
Somehow, over time, we’re back where we started and people elected to hold public office now want to play the victim when their bible-based irrelevant views on public policy are called out. Take Kentucky Republican legislator Mike Harmon who feels the need to protect anti-gay bullying — along with allowing concealed weapons to be carried in school.
“Well if someone says ‘You know, I think homosexuality is a sin,’ well we don’t want that child to be bullied because they have a certain moral or religious belief…We certainly don’t want them to be labeled a bully, just because they have that particular belief.”
You chose your religion. You chose what to believe. You don’t chose who you are: black, white, Asian, Hispanic, gay, straight. Or any combination thereof. You have no choice in the matter, yet it’s OK to protect those who chose to bully you for whom you are.
Brilliant!
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That is only half true, Pam: The U.S. exists because people flocked here so they could persecute others on the grounds of religion without themselves being persecuted.
Puritan New England was a far more theocratic society than even England. Several colonies — Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and Maryland, in particular — were created specifically so that religious people could have territory where they were The One True Faith. The United States was founded on the principle of religious persecution.
You ask “How did we get here?” Pam, we never left.
“Well if someone says ‘You know, I think homosexuality is a sin,’ well we don’t want that child to be bullied because they have a certain moral or religious belief…We certainly don’t want them to be labeled a bully, just because they have that particular belief.”
If you hate people who have done no harm to you you are a bully.
“Well if someone says ‘You know, I think homosexuality is a sin,’ well we don’t want that child to be bullied because they have a certain moral or religious belief…
If you belief inteffers with another’s Right’s to life liberty or happiness then yes we do. Besides just how many cases have their been in Kentucky where Gay Rights or tolerance was the reason why students bullied anti gay students?
I think this bill is Right Wing Thought Control to protect Gay Haters from teachers trying to teach tolerance.
Harmon implies that just being a religious homophobe is what gets these kids marked as bullies, and of course it isn’t. That’s just another in what seems an endless string of fundie play-the-victim cons. What gets them labeled as bullies is that they ACT on their bigotry…which is okay with the likes of Harmon, who have never actually read the words printed in red in their KJV.
The GOP realizes that Gay Marriage is getting more popular with young people and are desperate to save their wedge issue among young voters who still believe.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvey_Milk_High_School
I suspect the GOP in order to preserve the right to hate will demand a Dan White highschool.
Side note Dan White aside from killing Harvey is also famous for the
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvey_Milk#Assassination
I do remember hearing GOPers attack bleeding heart liberals for that. We should start using this as an example of how the law does not apply to republicans.
Agreed if you can’t tell kids bulling is wrong if you bully gay kids then all bullies will just say hey I thought the kid I was bulling was gay.
Whats the next the Bible says slaves should obey their masters will be protected to in highschool?
Either there is an objective right and wrong or there is not. The bible states things without fact stealing is wrong we can all agree a kid who steals from another kids highschool locker is wrong and should be punished.
We until this bill became an issue agreed that bulling other kids is wrong.
It seems hate wants special privileges it wants the right not to be punished for bulling.
Tell me should kids who parents divorced over cheating be told by bible thumpers their Moms should be stoned to death? Thats also in the old testament heck one can argue that kids without sin should be the ones to throw the stones but even in JC’s time that was considered to radical and they did public executions then.
In Kentucky that idea might not be to radical.
Ding.
On edit: Read a book called Manifest Destiny this summer. Published in 1935. It is the entire history of the U.S. from Puritan arrival. One of the main points of the book is how the U.S. has been driven by thoughts of its being the “chosen people,” straight outta OT and not very diff from Israeli wingnuts, wh is one of the little recognized reasons why U.S. & Israel are so tightly joined at the hip. You can see the relationship bet the phrases chosen people & manifest destiny. And the only anti-homosexual parts of the bible are in the OT as far as I know.
In the entire history of the U.S. chosen peeps has been cited as the reason for land grabs. Not confined to the designated “awakenings” periods. I started to list pages where religious phrases of that sort appeared in politician quotes, but gave up, as it was every 2-3 pages. So OT mindset extremely embedded in U.S. political structure.
My son once asked “What does Xtianity have to do with Christ anyhow,” and you can see that the answer is “very little,” bc Xtianity as practiced by the wingers is all about the OT and NT not so much.
…ok, so on the one hand these folks want to prevent anything supportive or positive from being said about homosexuality in our public schools
…but at the same time and on the other hand they want to protect the right of bullies to walk up to their homosexual classmates and tell them they’re going to burn in hell
And the fact that they’re wanting to bundle this with the notion that students have a right to carry concealed firearms on school campuses, wtf are they thinking?!
If I didn’t know any better, it almost seems like they’re giving a wink and a nod and tacit approval to more tragedies in our public schools like Lawrence King…
hi pam;
could you post that passage and if possible, the itterations in translation through the years?
Given Obama’s lack of popularity and the fact he will never get Righty votes no matter how much he tries now would be a good time for Obama to make a stand and defend gay rights.
The polls show the issue is getting more popular especially with younger voters. Yes I know Obama has no Stones but even weak politicians like Mitt jump on the bandwagon on issues they previously opposed to get elected.
If Obama does not jump on this then he is weaker than Mitt Romney.
Letting Highschool kids with their hormones have guns in school is insane tell me are private schools also covered?
If not then I bet Rep Harmon has ties to the Private and charter school industry.
tcu, the man is thick as they come, he has been given the information long ago, the more he tries to get their vote the less respect and more hate he amasses from them and us
so his solution is to try even more, with even more of the same results
I doubt his motus will change
thats a GREAT point, needs some research to find out, I bet you are correct
In a perfect world. there would be a mechanism to allow those who are sure they are heading to Heaven to get there much faster.
Hullo, Perris,
There are several passages and here are a couple links to analyses of some of them. The wiki entry needs a few more citations and is a work in progress, but it offers some history of the translation discussions.
http://www.soulforce.org/article/homosexuality-bible-gay-christian
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bible_and_homosexuality
Jake
Phoenix
These un-American, un-christians didn’t get this from either the Constitution or the teachings of Christ. They get this from their own hatefulness and sense of privilege.
Having said that, it is true that the history of this country and of christianity is rife with this same hatefulness and sense of privilege. We had a chance at true enlightenment starting in the ’60s but that light was extinguished by the ’80s. Before that we lived in a country that told itself that it was “Shinning City on the Hill”. Of course, that wasn’t true and since then we’ve only slipped further into darkness.
Read the last paragraph of my 8.
I hope it’s okay with Margaret if I quote her bumper sticker here.
“Stop using Jesus to be an asshole.” Or something like that.
I don’t know whether to scream or cry. Or pray.
jake, that’s great reading and I am thoroughly enjoying myself, I have found a paragraph which is off point here but on point just about everywhere else when talking to a now a day “conservative”;
holy crap jake, we can use that passage to give it back to them and say “the lord will destroy us because of your greed as it says in ezekiel
the article puts it very nicely, they are “sodomites” and committing “sodomy” when they hoard everything for themselves and or show no mercy
nice passages on that site
so from now on I think I am going to call these “conservatives” “sodomites” and “why do you enjoy sodomizing your fellow mand?”
tee hee
their heads will explode
The only use of the bible I’ve ever seen is to cherry pick the passages that make your point.
The reason for cherry picking the anti-homosexual passages is bc bullies need small-group sized enemies to pick on to pump up their own self-esteem. It has nothing to do with religion.
“Stop using Jesus to be an asshole.”
Hadn’t heard that. I LIKE it.
Is that under copyright or can anyone use it?
Agreed He is Bush when confronted with failure he doubles his bet on a losing hand:(
Dunno. Ask Margaret when you see her.
I’d say use it in passing. Free speech and all that. But, I wouldn’t go out and make t-shirts without checking first.
Sorry if this is all too OT but here is the link to Rev Mel White’s website (he’s the fellow who wrote the first link I posted):
http://www.melwhite.org/
An Evangelical Xian himself, he apparently used to ghost-write for other evangelicals.
http://www.melwhite.org/
To invert (and probably blaspheme by so doing) a New Testament-ish fable, Mr White seemed to have had his own Saul-on-the-road-to-Damascus moment in the early 1990s, acknowledged his gay self and founded the organization “Soulforce”.
I found something that he needs to reference;
I need to find that quote from jesus
From now on I’m taking all of MY spiritual guidance from this dead parrot I bought yesterday.
I partially agree–with the exception of Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania was a Quaker colony, and Quakers, by the very nature of their religion are a secular group. It may be argued that Pennsylvania was the LEAST theocratic of the original colonies.
And, Manifest Destiny can be summed up as “Succumb to our domination or we will kill you”.
Intolerance and bigotry have been a part of christianity since it’s founding. According to the history the first discussions after the death of Christ was the status of women in the church. They decided that women were not equal to men and therefore had no standing or authority. That decision made any church that came after illegitiment. That act set the stage for all of the exclusions and intolerance that followed.
Not to mention all the abuse & War, Inc (going back into the eons & mists of time, where “Inc” wasn’t yet “invented” but was essentially the same idea as today) in the name of so-called “Christianity.”
Really, at the end of the day, “Christianity” like most/all other religions, dogmas & philosophies can be summed up thusly: follow the money….
Quite agree. The whole idea is to promote perputual victimization of so-called “Christians” in order to make them believe in siege mentality. It’s a two-fer: “Christians” inordinately support War, Inc (as some kind of “Christianizing” endeavor), while also feeling smugly self-righteous in being pitted against (and thereby distracted from how they’re being used and ripped off by the PTB) “the other” smaller fry.
And no, most of these types simply ignore what’s written in red in the KJV and/or they don’t even realize that there’s any red type face in their Bibles bc they don’t venture into the NT.
OK I see it’s time for the “Big Gay Anti-Christ.” Take it away, Janine!
The TaNaKh has elements of:
– classic and paleo hebrew http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_Hebrew
– Aramaic
It didn’t acheive canonical form until the Middle Ages in the Mazoretic text http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mazoretic_text.
However the Septuagint translation into Koine Greek, for centuries the only version accessible to Gentiles, dates to the second century BCE http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Septuagint.
The New Testament was written in Koine Greek (of varying degrees of sophistication), with a smattering of Aramaic. However “Common Sayings Source” material was probably Aramaic in the oral tradition, prior to inscription.
Modern bible translations rely on a variety of source materials in many languages: e.g. Hebrew (paleo, classical, and Mazoretic), Aramaic, Syriac, Greek (Koine and Byzantine, and Coptic).
The idea these days is not to come up with a “definitive” text, but rather a one that best expresses in the current idiom the likely sense of a passage. One tries to carefully note alternatives in source material, and interpretive ambiguities.
I must have missed that Beatitude that goes:
“Blessed are the bullies in My name, for they shall kick RIGHTEOUS ASS!”.
OT– Speaking of bullies. The cocaine use can explain a lot (summary regarding physical mechanisms).
There’s this other Beatitude that the secular humanists have hidden from us:
“Blessed are those who have scored righteous blow, and share it with their Savior, for their’s will be the VP slot in the Kingdom of Heaven.”
It turns out that Jesus was a lot more like his contemporary American followers than the secular humanists want you knowing about.
You cannot conflate the Quakers of the 1700s with the Quakers of today, any more than you can compare the Puritans with today’s New England Presbyterians. George Fox was a fanatic who frequently wrote letters to judges berating them for “wrong” verdicts, had regular visual and audio hallucinations, and was imprisioned several times on charges of treason and conspiracy. William Penn was a strident pamphleteer, writing extremist religious tracts and regularly spending time in prison: he spent several weeks as a prisoner in the Tower of London on the warrant of King Charles II himself.
Pennsylvania was given to the Penn family to make good on debts the Crown owed to William’s father. For the 80 years that the Penn family owned the colony (1681 to 1763), it was relatively tolerant of non-Quakers, true: all oaths had been abolished, there was no mandatory military service, and so on. Nonetheless, non-Quakers were at a serious political and social disadvantage, and Quaker doctrine dominated the colony just as thoroughly as Puritan doctrine dominated New England and Catholic theology dominated Maryland.
More likely the Domionists would want an Eric Rudolf High School, after the Atlanta bomber who bombed a gay clum and a Planned Parenthood Clinic.
I’m beginning to think those who think they know for sure they our headed for heaven and all hell can’t stop them, are either staying here with the rest of us or will be the last ones to leave. such a joke, ha ha