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High school assigns lit class obscene gay literature
A whistle-blower told me yesterday that a high school in Deerfield, Illinois, had assigned Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes to students as required reading. Today, Concerned Women for America is reporting the developments:
Deerfield High School in Deerfield, Illinois, had assigned the pornographic book “Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes” to students as required reading. When a group of outraged parents found out, they filed a formal complaint. Now the book has been changed to an “optional title,” meaning kids may still select the book for peer study under the direction of a teacher.
The book is replete with profanity, overt racism through multiple uses of the N-word, an explicit description of a sex act involving Mother Theresa and some of the most graphic, vile and vivid depictions of homosexual anal sodomy every put in print.
The latter statement is not a case of straight-laced Christian schoolmarms with their knickers in knots. I will not link to excerpts, but interested parties may google them and see for themselves.
So regarding all this, here’s my wind-up and a couple of questions. Certainly, the conservatives on this blog would concede that homosexuality has been mainstreamed into schools to an extent that whether gay-themed literature will be assigned is no longer at issue. In some states, it’s the law.
But can not even our gay and lesbian friends on this blog agree that it is not appropriate to assign sexually graphic/pornographic literature to high school students? And, if a teacher is going to assign gay-themed literature, aren’t there more age-appropriate, less sexualized, polarizing choices? Gay activists are constantly arguing that the gay lifestyle isn’t just about sex. Why then assign Angels in America and reinforce the opposite opinion?
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Well, I saw the play at the Kennedy Center a decade ago and it was extraordinary. Tony Kushner, the author, won a Pulitzer Prize for it.
The play in two parts debuted on Broadway at the Walter Kerr Theatre in 1993 and was awarded Tony Awards for Best Play back to back in 1993 and 1994 respectively. Both parts also won back to back Drama Desk Awards for Outstanding Play.
In 2003, HBO Films created a miniseries version of the play. “Angels in America” was the most watched made-for-cable movie in 2003 and won both the Golden Globe and Emmy for Best Miniseries. It starred Merryl Streep, Al Pacino, and Emma Thompson, among others.
Angels in America – The Opera made its world premiere at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris, France, on November 23, 2004. In late 2005, PBS announced that they would air a live filmed version of the opera as a part of its Great Performances lineup. The opera made its U.S. debut in June 2006 at the Stanford Calderwood Pavilion in Boston, Massachusetts.
As a cultural commentary on the AIDS epidemic and its impact on the gay community it’s an amazing work.
I’m sorry you can’t appreciate that.
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One thing I’ve always appreciated about Anlir’s movie reviews, is that he was always cognizant of whether a movie was age appropriate, and what kind of content was in it – not just whether it got good reviews or received awards or the acting/script/effects were good.
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I’m sorry DCLawyer can’t appreciate that.
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OK, DCL, the play and HBO film were well received. Got it.
How about answering the substance of Lynn’s question? (hint: probably not the cleaned-up version of the book that made it onto stage)
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Well, I simply disagree that the work is “obscene” and “pornographic.” And I don’t think it’s age inappropriate for late High School. Given that, and given the work’s clear literary and artistic merit, I’m simply not going to get my nightie in a knot over this.
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Huck Finn uses the N-word repeatedly. Should we ban that too. Oh, I forgot, the school marms have tried.
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Harold Bloom, America’s most ambitious reader if not greatest critic (as he would like to be), provisionally has declared Angels in America to be part of the “Western Canon” of literature.
Parents who want the best for their teens in High School will want them to read this fine play along with Huckleberry Finn and other gay literature.
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If we’re not to use the N-word, even when discussing the N-word, what are we to tell our children when they ask, “What is the N-word?”
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My first take on this story was that, even if you don’t know a thing about Angels in America, the Concerned Women of America must believe the faculty of Deerfield High School are stupid enough to put pornography on the required reading. Upon further reflection, I realized that the Concerned Women of America know that Lynn Vincent is stupid enough to think so, which is all they have to know.
Lynn, what else could a group calling itself Concerned Women of America be if not “straight-laced Christian schoolmarms with their knickers in knots”?
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Because of the legacy of “freedom” in America and the dangers of those that would promote book burning and the threat of religion overpowering personal freedom, there is a tenancy for people to jump in and say, “I don’t support censorship”. Without even really looking at the material, they will fight to preserve “freedom of speech” at all costs. The question they need to ask themselves is, “Is this the “good” fight”?
In my freshmen year of High School, we were assigned, “Manchild of the Promised Land”. A book full of racism, violence, drugs and rape. Of course, there were moral messages, but at 14, did I really get “the message”? Honestly, all I can really remember about the book was the disturbing rapes.
So the question is, “Is it age appropriate”? Everyone knows that I believe it to be wrong to keep children “innocent” by shielding them from the “real” world. Innocence equals ignorance equals victim. But at the same time, do we need to rush children into these “truths”? There is time.
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Abolish government schools. Let parents decide whether their kids are subjected to this tripe.
Christians, look at what a couple of the pornography apologists in this thread have said already. Not only is there no acknowledgement whatsoever that parents may have legitimate complaints here, they’re *advocating* the disputed material. What would compromise look like to these people?
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To be innocent but not naive is the goal. Liberals from what I have seen tend to be the opposite.
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#12: To be innocent but not naive is the goal
Naive is part of the definition of innocent. Is like have your cake and eat it too? Meaning have a kid that is innocent, but is somehow worldly at the same time?
When I see innocent, the words that pop up are “simple, naive, lacking, ignoranct”.
in·no·cent [ ínnəss'nt ]
adjective
naive: more trusting or naive than most people through lack of experience of life or failure to recognize the motives of others
an innocent young girl caught up in a terrible situation
ignorant of something: having very little or no knowledge of something
innocent of the finer points of etiquette
lacking in something: completely lacking in a particular quality
innocent of any artistic skill
noun (plural in·no·cents)
blameless person: a blameless vulnerable person, especially a very young child
naive person: a simple, naive, or inexperienced person
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I think Amphipolis touches on the core of the matter. This assignment goes beyond gay issues to an intentional desire by liberals to ignore sexual appropriateness in anything. The theme of the book is the important thing, and no moral objection has validity.
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I do appreciate that this book an extremely important point and is rightly a part of great western lit. However, I would not appreciate it if a child of mine under the age of 17 was being assigned this in school. Would not appreciate it if a similarly graphic book on hetrosexual sex was assigned, either. So yes, I can agree that this assignment was inappropriate.
One of the few times I actually agree with the bombastic and utterly despicable CWFA.
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What I mean by naive is unsuspecting or credulous. We can be innocent but yet not be surprised by another’s guilt.
Matthew 10:16
I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves.
When innocence and guilt cease to have meaning we becomes naive.
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YEAH: Not only is there no acknowledgement whatsoever that parents may have legitimate complaints here, they’re *advocating* the disputed material. What would compromise look like to these people?
Assumptions. Here’s my story of compromise, with apologies to those who have seen it before:
Not awfully long ago, the father of one of my students sent a copy of the “Miller’s Tale” to the principal with the vulgarities highlighted and asked him to tell me to remove the reading from the syllabus. The parent was a Methodist minister. The principal forwarded the correspondence to me without comment. I asked him to inform the parent that my class would move on to other readings.
I did this to relieve the boy of being embarrassed by his ignorant father. I also wanted to convey the notion that one particular literary classic isn’t a big deal to me. The Renaissance and the rest of English literature lay ahead, truly an embarrassment of riches that afforded many other opportunities to pollute young minds.
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Coyote Blue makes a reasonable point. Kushner’s work is simply not appropriate for high school literature, particularly in context of a public high school.
I agree with Yeah that the time has come for serious Christians to mount a full bore effort to do away with American public schools, which by any standard, including the appropriateness of literature, has become a bureaucratic albatross with a lack of rigorous curriculum and at best mediocre students.
Let the gay advocates fund their own private schools, and the Christians theirs. Basically, as it now is the American schools are infested with teachers like Scroop Moth who are consciously involved in polluting young minds with hard-edged liberal secularism.
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As a play that’s been awarded with just about every major award a play can receive, it’s should surprise no one that this was assigned in a school setting. Its level of provocativeness is more in its language and sexuality, rather than any kind of “gayness” factor. The gayness isn’t the issue. It’s the adult themes of the plot, whether they’re men in love with men or men in love with women.
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The issue is not about the value of the material but about how to choose appropriate material for children who are still under the authority of their parents.
The public school seems to forget this often.
As the rather arrogant ScroopMoth said he did not want to embarass a child due to the father (a minister) being ignorant because of objecting to the type of language being used.
What Mr Moth ignores is that this is a legitimate realm of parental authority. It is not the school’s or teacher’s place to decide when a child is ready to have their “innocence” removed by subjecting the child to that which the parent objects.
If this material were about something the liberals objected to, say Creationism, and the school required it to be read, then the ACLU and their ilk would be in court filing petitions and recalling school boards.
Let it be something that is graphic and lewd and the parents authority is not considered at all.
An obvious reason to homeschool and let Mr. Moth find his own pupils to shape in his own likeness.
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I do appreciate that this book an extremely important point and is rightly a part of great western lit. However, I would not appreciate it if a child of mine under the age of 17 was being assigned this in school. Would not appreciate it if a similarly graphic book on hetrosexual sex was assigned, either. So yes, I can agree that this assignment was inappropriate.
Thank you, Coyote! A liberal voice of reason in the East!
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Call me a schoolmarm…
…but this is akin to sexual exploitation of CHILDREN, yes, CHILDREN (even in High School). I’ve had it with the overstimulation and sexualization of kids. This is not “cultural enlightenment” but, rather, cultural debasement of our young people at a time when they need anything BUT.
This is more of the same: disturbing and disgusting indoctrination.
And, Harrison, while I agree with the net-thrust of your point, I still believe it is important NEVER to concede ground on of safe and normal heterosexual behavior. Yes, it is unpopular. Yes, it makes me (to the popular culture)a “bigot” but, really, we cannot forget the design in human kind which is wholesale being discarded with steamroller efficiency. No matter how many times they attempt to brainwash the next generation of public school children, it isn’t right behavior…it is sinful, it is unsafe, it is shame-producing and death-resulting. Lust is not love and every inclination of the heart and whim of the will should NOT NOT NOT be followed, no matter how intoxicating.
The gayness is an issue.
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PETER LEAVITT: teachers like Scroop Moth . . . are consciously involved in polluting young minds with hard-edged liberal secularism.
This is hysterical, Peter. Besides, I don’t teach anymore. Had I wanted to pollute young minds with hard-edged liberal secularism, I knew it was as easy as requiring them to read Jonathan Edwards. But I considered it one of my failings that I wasn’t able to forestall disgust, let alone to awaken the appreciation Edwards deserves. You don’t give secularists enough credit, Peter! We understand better than anyone that the first step to overthrowing the forms is teaching them. Many a college professor has complained, “How am I supposed to deconstruct the categories of Western metaphysics when these kids don’t know what they are?”
The sex in Angels is no more graphic than the sex in Updike’s Roger’s Version, for example, which in turn is no more graphic (through far sexier) than half the romance novels on the 50-foot isle of Books a Million.
The soul can be overthrown by soft-core eroticism just as easily as by the explicit versions, so people’s obsession with “pornography” never made sense to me. I understand that people glom onto it, but it never turned my crank. Consequently, I suspect that what conservatives actually hate about Angels is that it constructs the Republic of Ronald Reagan as an evil empire. Be honest. Isn’t that the knowledge y’all want to keep from kids?
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Scroop Moth is a TEACHER of children? Good grief. In his post #7 he makes the completely false and defamatory (toward Twain) statement that Huck Finn is ‘gay’ literature.
Wow. No wonder the public schools are increasingly graduating morons – and worse. They are being ‘taught’ by the same.
Or even worse they are being ‘taught’ by people who apparently have no compunction about lying and fabricating slanderous crap in order to support their social engineering agendas.
I am beginning to understand those who claim the total failure of the American public education system. How could it do anything but fail with such termites working at it from inside?
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Jesus’ point of view:
“But if anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be BETTER for him to have a large millstone hung around his neck and be drowned in the depths of the sea.”
Jesus (Matthew 18:6, emphasis mine).
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TWPECK: As the rather arrogant ScroopMoth said he did not want to embarass a child due to the father (a minister) being ignorant because of objecting to the type of language being used.
To being rather arrogant I must plead guilty but that doesn’t excuse the ignorance of the minister nor yours for presuming my cause for judging him.
The Miller’s Tale is a classic, rigorous, and serious lesson in orthodox morality, including the essential details about what’s “above” and “below.” How could you be a father and a minister yet not appreciate Chaucer’s masterful, age-appropriate pedagogy, unless you’re blind — like one of the characters in the story?
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Jesus continued:
“Woe to the world because of the things that cause people to sin! Such things must come, but woe to the man through whom they come.”
Jesus (Matthew 18:7)
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RDEAN, “Naive is part of the definition of innocent.”
Not so. Jesus was fully innocent and at the same time the LEAST naive man who ever lived.”
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Harrison, #19,
Don’t strain at gnats. What’s the moral difference?
Tell us what you think in response to Lynn’s question.
I think it’s about moral and sexual chaos, which is pervasive in our public arena, while Christian spirituality and biblical principles are basically banned.
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Peter Leavitt wrote; “Let the gay advocates fund their own private schools, and the Christians theirs.”
As it is, Peter, Christians who send their kids to Christian private schools have to funds their own schools AND the (all too often) homosexual advocating public schools too.
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I can think of few things more despotic than for government to deliberately use its powers to undermine the beliefs and values of the children of parents who are charged with bring up their children in their faith. This Angels in America crap is nothing but manipulative propaganda used to create sympathy for something despicable. Homosexuals are NOT going to gain support from conservative religious people when change agents in public education so blatantly and heavily-handedly indoctrinate kids to advance the homosexual agenda.
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That’s right Joel. What’s needed is to trash the failed public school system and establish a private school system. Milton Friedman presciently argued the economic case for this. Christians need to make the moral case for it. Do we really want such secular fanatics as Scroop Moth teaching our young people?
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When I was junior (age 16) in HS, we were assigned Go Ask Alice to read. If you are unfamiliar with the book, it is supposed to be a diary (published anonymously) written by a teenage girl who fell into the drug (read: LSD and heroin) culture of her day. It is filled with profanity, drug usage (of course), sex, and even has one homosexual sex scene. This was in a small town HS in the deep south, btw. I do believe the teacher came under fire for assigning it.
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If you don’t want fanatics like Scroop Moth or RDean or any other libs, homosexuals, Democrats or whatnot teaching your children, then vote in a new school board. Put in a curriculum more to your liking. Force change.
Destroying our public schools will destroy our economy, pure and simple. This country will turn into a third-world morass in a couple of decades.
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I see that Scroop Moth is no longer teaching , a distinct blessing to children, though there is a preponderance of his clones loose in the public schools.
Personally, I enjoyed The Miller’s Tale in a college version of Middle English. It’s a tolerably good Chaucer tale, though again hardly suitable for school-boys.
Harold Bloom’s pronunciamento that Angels in America measures up to the canon is absurd. The canon of literature doesn’t ordinarily include modern works. Even T.S. Eliot’s Wasteland hasn’t arrived at that status. If Scroop Moth has bought this trope of Bloom, he reveals a certain naivete.
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My students were deaf and spoke with difficulty, like the person they brought to Jesus:
MAT 7: 33 Jesus took him aside from the crowd, by himself, and put His fingers into his ears, and after spitting, He touched his tongue with the saliva; 34 and looking up to heaven with a deep sigh, He said to him, “Ephphatha!” that is, “Be opened!” 35 And his ears were opened, and the impediment of his tongue was removed, and he began speaking plainly. 36 And He gave them orders not to tell anyone;
Elsewhere, Jesus said, “Not what goes into the mouth defiles a man; but what comes out of the mouth, this defiles a man.”
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Peter, I said “provisional” There’s nothing wrong with Bloom or anyone else giving a best shot at canonical prophecy. Bloom knows about time and influence in literary history, if you don’t know. He’s made it his thing.
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Great point in your last paragraph, Peter. One of the characteristics of a “classic” is its longevity. If the lit-du-jour gains canonical status at the expense of something like Eliot, we might very well have a problem.
As a 16 year old, did I enjoy reading Go Ask Alice? Absolutely. Is it a classic? Not on any planet. Would I have benefited more from reading Faulkner instead? Do I really need to answer that?
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Whenever I hear of Great Literature depicting heinous things, this verse comes to mind:
“For it is shameful even to mention what the disobedient do in secret.”
Eph. 5:12
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Ah yes, the blind secularist leading the deaf.
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TJ – “As a 16 year old, did I enjoy reading Go Ask Alice? Absolutely. Is it a classic? Not on any planet. Would I have benefited more from reading Faulkner instead? Do I really need to answer that?”
I read Go Ask Alice in High School too. Maybe even Junior High. The message I got from the overdose death ending certainly benefited me more than reading Faulkner. The amount of drugs available to me between the age of 14-18 was quite staggering.
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Actually, Travis, the message of GAA was quite clear, but it did not do its job of dissuading me from drug use (though I did not do “hard drugs”; I guess “Acid and Smack and no way back” did get to me a little). It actually made me more curious about drug use because of the titillating events involved. And, of course, when you’re a teenager, the ending is irrelevant since you think that the same thing will never happen to you.
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CWA – “…some of the most graphic, vile and vivid depictions of homosexual anal sodomy every put in print.”
Can anyone provide a link to any excerpts from the book? Seriously. It’s hard to comment on this without actually reading the passages in question.
Somehow I figure the CWA might be exaggerating a wee bit. I hear the Dana Carvey “Church Lady” voice when I read the above quote. And now I’m hearing Anita Bryant orange juice commercials! yipes! Do you hear that too? Anybody? Show of hands?
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Before I start reading responses to this thread I was wonder if we could just take a quick poll.
Who here has actually READ Angels in America??
Lynn, I am looking to you to answer first.
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All I’m going to say is Lynn is not stupid.
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No NJL, I know more than anyone that our Botox loving feature editor is not the half wit she sometimes pretends to be. Scoop was wrong to say that, but here is the kicker. I do not want the Bible tought in high schools and that is based upon having actually READ the Bible. Lynn does not want Angels in America tought in high school and that is warranted by having read CWFA’s commentary on Angel’s in America. I submit that I have achieved a more moral level of decision making than Lynn has!
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TJ – who knows, maybe GAA did, in some way, keep you off the hard stuff? Personally, my 14/15 year old mind wouldn’t have gotten much out of Faulkner. Everyone from that era remembers GAA though.
Looking back, drugs were everywhere. Every day for years. Hard to believe I made it through some of those times. Too many close calls where i could easily have lost my life, the lives of others, or done serious jail time.
Enough about me. I’m off to picket the CWoA book burning. After all, a book is a book, no matter how small.
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PS- I know some of you have aversions to reading in general. Luckily for you the HBO mini-series is actually quite a strict following of the play.
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Deerfield High will require/suggest this filth, but I can’t get a single high school to put on my play Fiddler On A Hot Tin Roof.
What a world.
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If you remember the “plot” of GAA, Travis, you’ll remember that Alice did not intend to get on the hard stuff in the first place. Somebody spiked her soft drink with LSD at a party. It was after that first experience that she upped the ante to heroin. That’s actually pretty scary to think about, and well in line with your second paragraph.
I chose Faulkner because he’s my favorite 20th century American writer. They now teach As I Lay Dying to 11th graders in high school (or did when I was a HS math teacher). That’s certainly easier than The Sound and the Fury, but probably still too much for a junior high student. I’m sure there are lots of great works of American lit that we would have placed before GAA. We didn’t even read the Red Badge of Courage for goodness sake!
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NJLAWYER: Small praise. It was dumb to suggest the faculty of Deerfield High School are dumb enough to assign pornography.
PETER LEAVITT: Ah yes, the blind secularist leading the deaf.
This is neither bragging nor complaining, but I never got to teach a word of literature that you can’t find in the most conventional 11th and 12th grade textbooks of American and English lit — or perhaps not even on your typical home school lesson plan. I assigned Bible reading, too, and was ever the obedient servant of the masters. So, please don’t blame teachers. Plato warned you that literature would corrupt your children. And when they learn that theirs is to reason why, their virginity can be the least of your worries.
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51: Plato warned you that literature would corrupt your children.
And what does this literature teach? Is the moral of the story, “Do what thou wilt”? Is the hero tolerant of everything except intolerance? Does the story revolve around the self? Are the characters awash in self-congratulatory compassion? Cliffs notes please-preferably G-rated.
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Scroop Moth, did you actually say this? “I suspect that what conservatives actually hate about Angels is that it constructs the Republic of Ronald Reagan as an evil empire. Be honest. Isn’t that the knowledge y’all want to keep from kids?” Tell me you didn’t actually teach our kids! You really don’t remember that “the evil empire” was referring to the doomed, and yes evil, Soviet Union? That may be part of the point of the book/movie, but it certainly isn’t “knowledge,” it’s an aburdly ridiculous lie.
I’ve always thought I’d put my kids in public school if I ever had kids…but garbage like this makes it harder and harder even to think about that.
What’s wrong with “innocence”? I’m 40 years old, and I still strive for innocence of evil. I’d never read this book. (I’d skim if it I were on the school board or otherwise had a reason to need to read it. As a regular citizen, I don’t need to read it, and shan’t.) Years ago I picked up The Color Purple. I knew little about it except that it was considered quality literature about the black experience. Somewhere into it, I thought, Is this going where I think it’s going? (Hints of lesbian sex.) I read a little more, and it clearly was. Now, I rarely, rarely start a book and don’t finish it, even if I don’t like it. That book didn’t get finished. Why? I’m an adult, but I value my innocence.
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ScroopMoth, some profane literature, including Angels in America badly corrupts children, though great literature including Pilgrim’s Progres and Shakespeare hardly corrupts them.
Even, much of Renaissance literature, that you claim is capable of polluting minds, has a sacred element.
In fact your argument greatly strengthens the need for privatizing education. If you and your profane friends wish to teach homosexual garbage to high school students, fund your own schools.
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I would like to point out that the reading assigment of Angels in America is optional. Students were not required to read the book.
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Scroopy and Luke, I’ll join Lynn in her “dumbness.” It sure does sound pornographic. If I were a parent, my kid would be in Christian school. Let them read this in college.
My sister teaches high school English, so I will ask her if she teaches this book. At times, I have a tendency to underestimate her, but I just can’t see her teaching this.
Luke: Botox-loving? When you say things like this, I don’t know how to respond to you. Is this a good time to tell you that there are schools that are teaching the Bible as literature?
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This is another vivid reminder for the concerned Christian parent as to how terrible our public schools have become. We have long passed the time when all Christians should take their children out of the these places of corruption and death. They have become like pig stys where teachers love wallowing in filth and drowning your children in it.
2Pt 2:22 But it is happened unto them according to the true proverb, The dog is turned to his own vomit again; and the sow that was washed to her wallowing in the mire.
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PETER LEAVITT: . . . great literature including Pilgrim’s Progres and Shakespeare hardly corrupts them.
You can’t be sure about either of these.
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I don’t believe that parents who take a strong stand against OR love their kids can stand by and watch . . corrupt literature, sexual training within schools, be it homosexual, bisexual, transsexual, or training kids ‘how’ to have sex can keep their kids in public school.
Even in High School there is no need for this explicit education into various forms of sex, or choices, etc.
The liberal ideas of nonsensical teachers and administrators have gone so far, most can’t remember (back when I was a kid) when parents were the controlling factor in their child’s education. . . when parents wouldn’t stand for anything even remotely resembling this sort of pornographic so called ‘literature’- I’m sure there are the mindless, who claim “how can you judge literature”, well it sure doesn’t take a great mind to see that what has been posted as a TOPIC is trash.
Are the teachers in our public schools so undereducated, and deluded by their own sexual perversion that they have to foist it on the rest of us? Is this world so lacking in ‘REAL LITERATURE’ or do we need to fill in the gaps with trash.
My question is “WHY would any thinking, educated person call this ‘literature’? How obtuse can one be?
Christian schools are growing, churches support them, I don’t know how people can even think of sending their kids to public school any longer.
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Shakespeare hardly corrupts? He’s not graphic, but, uhm, there are some barnburner tales in the bard’s works.
To the Christians who want to have private schools, great go do your thing separate from the world in be not in it, that’ll teach us bad, bad, bad sinners.
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Botox loving feature editor?
Lynn uses Botox?
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CoyoteBlue, we’re not interested in setting up private schools to teach sinners anything. We are interested in a school system that has a decent moral compass and that doesn’t teach profane literature. Also, we object to paying taxes for schools that teach objectionable subjects.
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Let’s be fair. Rdean usually falls outside the acceptable, but he was actually in agreement that some things need to wait until a child is older (i.e. an adult in a case like this).
Scroop Moth: You said yourself that there is a ton of other great literature. So, there is NO NEED to expose a high school student to “literature” like this. There is more great literature than any one person could get through in a lifetime, so why pick this?? And for high school??
I read *Catcher in the Rye* in high school, and honestly the ONLY thing I remember about it was all the dirty words. That’s it.
A book like this? All kids will remember are the sex scenes.
I would object to it even if it were heterosexual sex. There just isn’t a place for it in high school literature.
There’s a reason that I homeschool my kids. And, they really do know true literature.
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Coyote (#60) you sarcastically dismisses our concerns as if we don’t matter. But we do matter.
Our property tax dollars finance the public schools. Yet, when we are concerned about what goes on there with our children, we are dismissed, ignored, or told to shut up. We are left with only one alternative—leave. But, you would squeal like a stuck pig if we left and took our tax dollars with us.
Then you would suddenly care. But you don’t care now, so long as we keep paying your bills and leave our children under your thumb. That is both selfish and unjust.
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Michael
My property taxes and income taxes pay for a grand number of your subsidies,including government services for your churches, like fire trucks if there is a fire, for example, so you can imagine I am rather unsympathetic to your argument. If you read my original post on the topic matter you would find that I actually agree regards the topic of sexually graphic lit for kids under 17, but rather than make common cause, comes the sinner, sinner, sinner litany. Gee, pardon my grumpiness, like you say, I must be so selfish and unjust that I could not possibly agree in the first place. And Oh, once again as a person who does not yet have kids, I pay quite a tax to support yours so you might thank me now or not, probably more comfortable for you to continue living in erroneous assumptions land.
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Peter
Well, I object to any scrap of my tax dollars that support Christian institutions that teach kids a kind of moral superiority. So, I guess we kind of have an even gripe. But the remark was aimed at folks on the board who say things like, let’s get rid of all the public schools. I don’t think you are there. If you were to find me at a PTA meeting on a topic like this, I think you would be pleasantly surprised to find a vocal and articulate ally. But hey, see Michael’s post, that just might be beyond imagining.
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I’m with Luke — if you haven’t read the book then why the condemnation. Even if you just read until you felt you couldn’t tolerate it any longer, I will give you some credit. I read the Wikipedia summary — sounds like a work of literature, appropriate for senior academic levels or first year university.
Shakespeare doesn’t corrupt??? At what level are you reading the Bard?
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I want to add one more thing about sex in general and the teaching of sex ed in schools and that is if parents were doing their jobs of parenting in the first place, maybe sex ed would not be necessary. On tolerance, particularly in the matter of sexual orientation, if parents were not teaching their kids to hate what is different, maybe talking about it in schools would be unnecessary. But many a parent is not doing his or her job and so it falls on society, in the form of the school to pick up the slack. If parents were doing their jobs on the teaching of religious philosophy (that being a reference to how the world began) maybe we wouldn’t have to have a controversy on a fairly well proven theory that evolution exists. If Christian parents in particular trusted Proverbs and trusted God with their child, maybe they would have less fear about that child’s exposure to ideas that are at variance with their own. This offends the sensibilities of parents who have particular views which they want to ensure that everyone else shares. But we live in a pluralistic society. So the question for us all is how can we make the best compromises for all of our children and stop the endless accusations?
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Coyoteblue wrote (60): “To the Christians who want to have private schools, great, go do your thing separate from the world…”
Michael Martin (64) responded: “Our property tax dollars finance the public schools. Yet, when we are concerned about what goes on there with our children, we are dismissed, ignored, or told to shut up. We are left with only one alternative—leave.”
CB came back with (65) complaints that her “property taxes and income taxes pay for a grand number of your subsidies…”
_________
Ah, but Michael Martin never suggested that you, Coyoteblue, should “separate from the world” if you don’t like it. However, you did suggest that for Christians who want to have private schools.
Michael Martin’s point stands.
I would add that maybe the government is using our tax dollars for far too many things that we should be doing better for ourselves and our families. Maybe anyone who has no children in public school and is paying tuition in a private school should be excempted from some tax burdens. But as it is, anyone who pays tax dollars should be able to voice opposition to the use of that money, including Coyoteblue. I just wish she more clearly recognized that right for conservatives who pay taxes too. If she did, she would not have suggested that we just “separate from the world.”
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Eliminating public schools would equal economic and intellectual devastation for America. What you all don’t get is the vast majority of Americans with kids use and LIKE their public schools. And many of the rest of us support the idea of public education.
And I don’t want to hear one more word about your blessed tax dollars. Mine are going to fund a military-industrial complex and an immoral war. They’re funding Bush’s “faith-based initiatives.” They’re funding tax breaks for big oil and other polluters. And I can’t do a bloody thing about it, except withhold a war tax and risk prosecution. If you don’t like paying your school tax, how about a little civil disobedience? Otherwise, stuff it. In a democracy you’re going to pay for a lot of things you don’t like.
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Coyoteblue (68),
Many of the very parents who do all the things you suggest at post #68 and do them well, including NOT teaching their children to hate, are also many of the SAME parents who are legitimately outraged with this sort of vulgarity and moral pollution.
What this high school did is not “picking up the slack” where parents are allegedly leaving off–not by any stretch.
Decent parents have every right to make accusations when they believe that a school is polluting the hearts and minds of their children.
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It’s the tax dollars of the rich and well off that are paying for most of what our gov’t does. That’s because the rich pay a much higher proportion of all tax dollars at a higher rate as well.
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Our taxes are too high.
DCLawyer said he did not want to hear one more word about our blessed tax dollars.
So I used five words so I would pass DCL’s muster.
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I know some very devout Christian 9th graders. They have been raised exceptionally well by their families. Wonderfully bright kids. They are more than prepared and equipped to read CWoA ‘banned books’ with zero chance that they’ll spend the rest of their lives down in the hot place where the guy with the horns and pointed stick conducts his business. Give these kids some credit.
“We have long passed the time when all Christians should take their children out of the these places of corruption and death. They have become like pig stys where teachers love wallowing in filth and drowning your children in it.”
Snort! Cough! (Excuse me, I was laughing so hard that milk came out my nose!)
I’m going through my junk drawer tonight in the hopes I can find my “I read banned books” button. It will sure look fetching on my jacket tomorrow.
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No Joel. Michael’s point was a personal slam aimed squarely at me for being selfish with his tax dollars. My rejoinder was look again and oh by the way, I’m not actually against you on this point of sexually graphic literature for under 17’s. The point on separating from the world was to the Christians who say do away with public schools. Michael seems to have taken that personally and aimed back at me in a personal way calling me selfish and unjust. I defended myself against that unwarranted charge. Moreover, the point on separating from the world was irony. Sorry if it was too obtuse. Furthermore it was not I who suggested separation from the world in the first place but rather Christians on this board who did. I was sarcastic, Michael is right about that one thing. But really, if Christians are going to say stop funding public school so we can have private ones, well, they deserve the sarcasm. Do try to keep in mind that I do read whole threads and do try to keep in mind that I do agree on age appropriate material. Sheesh.
On post 68, please do note that I should have said many parents, apologies for being overinclusive. Many parents in this country in this day in age are not actually decent parents, Joel. And there are some that fill their children with hate and fear of that which is different.
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There are many posts on this thread which call those who are opposed to the homosexual lifestyle, and to include it being taught in schools “HATEFUL” or teaching “HATE”- For all those who oppose this idea, who are Believers the word “HATE” is hurled at the speed of sound against us, because we disagree.
Our freedom does not rest upon the immoral acts which are written about in books, handed out to kids in schools whom we nurture and love. Most homosexuals don’t have children unless they have been using ‘ARTIFICIAL’ means, or through adoption, or previous male/female relationships, which have resulted in a child being born. Everyone knows that two males, or two females cannot produce a child, yet these homosexuals feel it their duty to tell us how our children should be instructed within the public school system.
Trying to read through this mumbo jumbo, what I observe is HATE coming from those liberals who would herald in any sort of sex education to include whatever the school board could squeeze past.
I see loud and clear HATE coming from the liberal left in large doses, only because we the heterosexual community will not accept your lifestyle, nor will we stand by while you try and tell us how our children are raised. You have a lot of nerve interfering in our families, it is our freedom of religion which you are stepping on, and its OFF LIMITS.
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There are many posts on this thread which call those who are opposed to the homosexual lifestyle, and to include it being taught in schools “HATEFUL” or teaching “HATE”- For all those who oppose this idea, who are Believers the word “HATE” is hurled at the speed of sound against us, because we disagree.
“Many?” There is exactly one, #68.
The only other times the word “hate” or its variants are #23, where it refers to the play, not to people; #75, where the author of #68 amends her original comment to make it less broad; and a few cases where conservative Christians use it.
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……….
“Many parents in this country in this day in age are not actually decent parents, Joel. And there are some that fill their children with hate and fear of that which is different.”
Interesting how someone has a magical ‘window’ on parents in this country and their parenting skills. Moreover deciding that they actually are not decent parents. Then to further make magical remarks, state that they fill their children with “HATE and FEAR” of that which is different”- Different from what? ….. a sinful life?
Parents who love the LORD who are Believers don’t want their children to grow up to mock God, to disregard the LORD’s Word. That’s one of the problems with those who sin, they want everyone to join their sinful party, but for what reason? Didn’t Satan want Eve to disobey God? Why was that? Could it be that Satan couldn’t bear the fact that Eve and Adam knew the LORD and they enjoyed fellowship with HIM? It’s not to different today, Christian parents raise their children to know the living GOD, they warn them of the pitfalls of sin, the children are taken to church, parents teach them about Christ. The last thing a parent wants to see is a child that goes astray. How must GOD have felt as HE watched Eve disobey HIM in the garden, allowing Satan to tempt her, and them giving in to his deceitful lie which led she and Adam straight out of the garden with their sin.
Lets look at this, two different ways:
CB WRITES
“And there are some that fill their children with hate and fear of that which is different.”
I WRITE:..
“And some parents fill their children with Christ, and to fear the LORD rather than mock His Word.
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Many parents have done a great job raising their children, they have nurtured them, loved them, given them a Christian education, taken them to Church. However……… that child turns from its teachings, from the very parents who raised them.
The parents I describe above are decent parents, what has happened is, the child/children they have raised are the ‘prodigal sons and daughters’ which can come home and repent any time.
It’s a CHOICE, I hope it won’t be too late.
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So the count for those of us who have read the play in question includes Me, DCL, and Harrison? How did we ever get to 77 posts?
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Coyote (#’s 65, 66, 68, 75),
Wow, I posted a nine sentence comment at 8:24 PM. I come back around 11:30 and find a three hour tirade. Obviously my last sentence—“That is both selfish and unjust.”—struck a deep nerve. But, as Shakespeare said, “The lady doth protest too much, methinks.”
I take it then, that you have never been selfish and have always been perfectly just. I can’t say the same for myself.
However, my points stand as originally written.
It is unjust to force me to pay for something and then have school officials contemptuously dismiss my concerns about how they run the schools I am paying for. It is doubly unjust for the Christian, who cannot afford to send his child to a private school, to be forced to have his child indoctrinated in a moral climate he detests. You do not own my child. The State does not own my child. God owns my child and He has given me the responsibility to raise him, not you and not the State. The only reason the public schools exist is to assist parents in the fulfillment of their God given responsibilities. When schools become unresponsive to parental wishes at the most basic level, there is something seriously wrong. Or worse, when they indoctrinate in direct opposition to parents and undermine parental authority at the most basic level, it comes close to criminal.
If you hold against these points I make, then you are unjust.
It is unfair for the government to force citizen A to pay twice as much for the same service as citizen B. This is what happens when the Christian parent, as a matter of conscience, is forced to withdraw his child from the public school system he is paying for and then pay AGAIN to have his child educated in another school. Of course citizen B benefits by having A pay his own bill and B’s too. But what does B care, he’s getting a good deal, even if it is a selfish one.
If you are an indifferent citizen B, then you are selfish.
OK, Coyote, go on another three hour tirade. I don’t care.
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Looks like this is more “on topic” here than in Whirled Views 3.6 (go there for links):
Whereas homeschoolers should be applauded for their dedication and accomplishments, a judge in California has recently declared them all criminals.
Hmph. And just when parents are being encouraged to pull their kids OUT of public schools because of new legislation the Govinator signed to “institutionalize [in public schools] the promotion of homosexuality, bisexuality, transgenderism and other alternative lifestyle choices.”
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Michael
But see I did not contemptuously dismiss your concerns. I did contemptuously dismiss those who say just close public schools. In the explanation of that to Joel, which is part is unclear?
Three hour tirade? I wrote one response to you, one to Joel and then a general one.
As to selfishness, yeah I’m human, sue me. I do pay my fair share of taxes though, more than fair share when it comes to that. The point about a plural society Michael is that the concerns of all citizens should be taken into account, not just the hard right Christian ones and I have to say the way the hard right Christians yelp, you’d swear they are the most victimized group in the country.
Lastly Michael, private school is a choice, whether it be an elite academy or a religious one. If a parent makes that choice, I don’t have much sympathy for the paying twice argument.
Victoria
I see the point on tolerance, which is about how people are treated, not about what is sinful is woefully lost on you.
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HRW and LUKE:
Everything is permissible but not everything is beneficial.
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a couple of other things (not that it makes a difference to folks who are using this issue to go on a tired tirade about decadence and indoctrination):
The book in question is an option in an AP English class that is for seniors only
The book and curricula was approved by the Advance Placement College Board
Again students do not have to read the book.
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I haven’t read Angels but I’ve seen the HBO series. I note that the HBO series is rated TV-MA, which would suggest that the content is not suitable for children under 17.
Having seen Angels, it strikes me as more college/uni age material. Not simply because of the language and sexual content, but for the fact that a number of the thematic ideas are explored through sexual contexts, which is possibly not something high-schoolers are really going to grasp.
Luke (post #80) raises a very important point. If you’re not familiar with the books, or its offshoots, then there’s no context for the criticism. The CWFA criticise the “overt racism through multiple uses of the N-word,” but don’t acknowledge that those multiple uses all come from one character, who is clearly – wait for it – a racist! By the CWFA’s standards any text that grapples with racist characters could be deemed a racist text.
Regarding the pornography issue; pornography is purely designed to arouse the viewer and has no artistic or narrative value beyond that. To classify Angels as porn dismisses the narrative contexts of the sexual interactions. And cherry picking out offending quotes, as the CWFA do on their website, also removes the literary contexts.
I’m not saying that Angels should be taught to high-schoolers, I’m saying that lambasting the work in such an ill-informed way just generates more hysteria than is necessary.
Gay activists are constantly arguing that the gay lifestyle isn’t just about sex. Why then assign Angels in America and reinforce the opposite opinion?
Well, Angels in America isn’t just about sex. There are many complex issues that are explored in the play, for those willing to not fixate on the sexual content.
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DCLawyer,
When we consider all gov’t spending from federal and state taxes (income, property, sales, gas, etc tax monies), we spend more on education than on national defense, by far. And, DCL, I am glad that your tax money has to go to national security (a legitimate expense for federal funds) needs regardless of how ungrateful you might be for their protection of you and your freedoms.
The Iraq war is just, not immoral. Immoral is the word for the jihadists who use Down-Syndrome women to blow innocent people to bits. Al Qaeda is immoral and it is quite moral to fight them.
Also, all sorts of social organizations and applicants for federal and state grants and funds qualify for them and there is no reason that some responsible and effective faith-based organizations should also qualify, if so many others also qualify.
Regarding “big oil”, you should know that the most profit from each gallon of gas we pay for goes to government through taxation. The profits of oil companies pale by comparison.
Paying for funneling moral pollution into our children is something that may indeed call for civil disobedience. And I, for one, won’t follow your lousy and heartless advice when you said we could “stuff it.”
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TRAVIS BIRKENSTOCK wrote; “I’m going through my junk drawer tonight in the hopes I can find my ‘I read banned books’ button.”
Having read the Bible several times, I could wear that button too.
I recall the “banned books” table at the Yale University bookstore. It had all sorts of obvious garbage on it and some other leftist material that I would not necessarily call “garbage”.
I told the clerk that the table was missing the most banned book in our country: The Bible.
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Excellent points at #81.
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LUKE — I’ve read Angels and have quoted from it on previous threads. I think it’s fantastic for 11th or 12th graders. Challenging but less difficult than a Tom Stoppard play.
TRS — You’re right that students have a vast heritage of great literature, which only the most prodigious readers encompass. However, you’re missing something important if you don’t allow students access to ambitious literature of their own time. So what if people a hundred years from now won’t put this particular literary sensation next to the Divine Comedy? Reading great literature doesn’t “rub off” on people any more than staying overnight at the Ritz hotel turns them into members of the beau monde. I’m sure you agree that something more than “exposure” is needed — effort, emotion, or thought. Students have to learn to strike up their own “conversation” with significant texts, because just knowing about them is trivial.
Literature is inherently “dangerous.” Its acid can fuel the batteries of young conservatives and give them something to throw in the face of liberal arguments, but eventually it leaks out and corrodes the common sense of authority, and dissolves the molds of the old order.
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I told the clerk that the table was missing the most banned book in our country: The Bible.
Curious, where in the U.S. is the bible currently banned?
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“Literature is inherently “dangerous.” Its acid can fuel the batteries of young conservatives and give them something to throw in the face of liberal arguments, but eventually it leaks out and corrodes the common sense of authority, and dissolves the molds of the old order.”
That is actually a pretty accurate way of describing my own move leftward from the young Reganite my father hoped I would be.
Oh Ayn, you’re love of self defeating characters turned into an autobiography!
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Caught up with the thread this morning. Some very late comments.
This incident perennially pops up with those 12th grade AP courses. We had a similar incident in our school when Top Dog, Underdog was included on the reading list — the teacher actually brought it to the attention of the administration. (For those unfamiliar with the play, it uses some very profane language while exploring issues in the black underclass). This really is an issue of what happens at the boundaries. This is a pedagogical gray zone: how much of mature literature do you expose to high achieving high school seniors? How much is the AP course oriented to college and how much to the existing ethos of the high school? There really is no easy answer here.
Culturally, Angels in America has a singular place. While Lynn may want something comparable there really is little literature that deals with the horrific shock of AIDS in the 80s as the world was literally dying around gays. This shock modified how churches thought about and ministered to gays. Some other art touches on this time, for example, The Hours but most miss Kushner’s anger.
One other item regarding the dispute: the complainant, Concerned Women for America, was a major political warrior during and after the Reagan years, the very years that Kushner attacks. Theirs is a blood feud going back decades.
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Coyote Blue:
I think you’ve been picked on unfairly on here, for the most part. I don’t understand, however, your statement that since private school is a choice, you have no sympathy for the “paying twice” argument. It’s not true that all private-school parents are wealthy and can afford to pay twice. Nor is is true that people who don’t use a system, and use something else instead, should be required to pay for the system they don’t use. (An elderly neighbor informs me she is required to pay for city sewer though she still has a septic tank. I don’t know whether or not that is true. If it is true, it isn’t fair.)
Now, the I-pay-for-private-school-and-shouldn’t-pay-for-public-too argument leaves out people like you and me, who don’t have children at all and thus could rightly argue that we also shouldn’t have to pay for public school. Which of course takes it back to the whole issue of whether or not there should be public school–you can’t really say parents of private school parents don’t have to pay taxes but singles without children do. Nevertheless, there’s a case to be made for parents who pay taxes being able to use some of those taxes to educate their children in a private school. And whether or not you agree with vouchers, it doesn’t seem too much to have some “sympathy” for people who pay taxes for public schools–but whose public schools so greatly trample their own standards that they pretty much have no choice but to pay twice, and put their kids in private school, whether or not they can really afford to do so.
I’m not for dismantling public schools wholesale. I think it would cause incredible damage. But I do think that public schools need to be accountable to parents, and if they choose not to, they should suffer the consequences. I do think school vouchers are probably a good idea, and that public schools have become far too arrogant that they and not parents have final control over children. This must change.
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CB – 83
“Victoria I see the point on tolerance, which is about how people are treated, not about what is sinful is woefully lost on you.”
YOU WRITE:…….
The word “tolerance” is an interesting word, its definition below –
Tolerance isn’t a given, nor is it a ‘COMMAND PERFORMANCE’ it’s not something which one can command another to do, and that includes the Word of God. Tolerating sin is not commanded in the Bible. Loving everyone is a command, but tolerating a sinful behavior up front and personal isn’t a command, nor is it expected.
Tolerance of so called ‘literature’ in the classroom of public schools doesn’t need to be ‘tolerated’ nor does teaching children every different kind of sexual practice which exists in society. That would include homosexual, bisexual, transsexual, or instructing children as to how to have sex. People can send their children to Christian schools. It’s being done every day.
Tolerance is a word which is bandied about with bravado as though it’s the new ‘religion’ of the day, which of course means one must adhere to whatever needs to be ‘tolerated’ and that most certainly is sin, in the eyes of the liberal left. Abortion, homosexuality just to name two, with ’same sex marriage’ as a hopeful possibility for all the homosexuals.
The law of the land says that abortion is legal, which it is. Homosexuals can live together, people can abort their children because they are selfish, etc. However that doesn’t mean the rest of us need to “TOLERATE” this behavior in our homes or that our children would be subjected to it, if WE choose differently.
I tolerate homosexuals everyday, when I’m out in public they are there. I’m not rude or unkind to them, I have acquaintances who are homosexual and I care for them. What I don’t do is AGREE with them that their lifestyles are part of God’s Word. I don’t pretend that what they are doing isn’t sinful. As a Believer they KNOW that I believe homosexuality is a sin, they don’t need to ask me, their bright enough to understand. I tolerate their rights within this country to live their lives as they choose, just as they must tolerate MY RIGHT to disagree with them because of my belief in the LORD Jesus Christ.
God doesn’t tolerate sin, its proven all through the Bible, right up to the last chapter of Revelation. Now one can sit back and blither,
"I don't believe the Bible is the inerrant inspired Word of God"…. yes you are right, you don’t have to believe it, in fact you don’t have to believe any of it.Report comment to moderator
SM …and dissolves the molds of the old order.
Since we at present live in a predominantly secular cum liberal cultural order with considerable mold, it is hardly a show of cojones to include Angels in America in an English course.
Actually Kushner’s work, far from being a courageous statement, is a rather ordinary modern work extolling the virtue of the gay lifestyle, notwithstanding the horror of AIDS. This book, compared to, say, Bill Buckley’s, God and Man at Yale merely confirms the sensibilities of the liberal elite. Buckley’s book, with great courage in 1951, showed how Yale had forsaken its heritage of orthodox Christianity and individualism and had slid to the Gomorrah of secularism and socialism.
If the herd of pitiable mimetic public school English teachers really wanted to be controversial, they would assign some conservative literature that questioned the pieties of secular liberalism.
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CHERYL D.: . . . public schools need to be accountable to parents, and if they choose not to, they should suffer the consequences.
Perhaps true, perhaps not. They need to be accountable in the way that pediatricians, for example, are accountable to parents. Yet in another sense, parents have no more to do with the content of a class than they do with the content of a tetanus booster. Teachers should be professionally accountable to other teachers, not parents.
I understand that Christians are trying to impose their values on their own kids, if not on all kids, but society must not condone the Christian agenda of using children to spread a narrow ideology and lifestyle.
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Scroop Moth – 97
YOU WRITE: …..
“I understand that Christians are trying to impose their values on their own kids, if not on all kids, but society must not condone the Christian agenda of using children to spread a narrow ideology and lifestyle.”
Of course parents teach their own children their values, who’s values would they be teaching? … the opposite of what they believe? Or maybe the values of the middle east, etc?
We don’t “use” our children. Some children share what they believe others don’t.
Teachers are accountable to parents as to how they behave in the classroom, and what they teach. The school boards are accountable to parents as well, after all we pay their salaries through our taxes.
Perhaps public schools for the most part have become
OBSOLETE.Vouchers are a great plan, they enable parents to seek the education, and moral values they believe in. Educators have become arrogant as to what they expect, what they can teach, and parents are to take it without so much as a word…..WRONG!Vouchers would give everyone options. Those who wanted to send their kids to Christian schools could do so. Those who wanted to send their kids to a ‘form of public school’ which now exists could do that too. This would eliminate many of the problems of those who are fed up with the lack of moral values in school, and let those who don’t care, CONTINUE ON.
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PETER LEAVITT: . . . hardly a show of cojones . . .
English teachers would go into another field if they needed to show their cajones (which isn’t to say they don’t have them.) Shrewd teachers aren’t afraid to back down before a display of power. The more naked, the better. We love dramatizing the lesson that authorities use power to control language. Thus, one of my students will never forget that his father used his influence to stop a class from reading Chaucer. Make my day! Then the boy proceeded to Romeo and Juliet and learned something more about the negligent custodians of youth –and teased his brain over filthy puns. As usual, Shakespeare wins this game, and authorities never know what hit them.
HARRIS has a good point about AP classes. Deerfield IL probably has one of the fine school systems in the country whose AP classes are virtually at a college level. Believe me, those teachers are too busy forcing blossoms in their hothouse to have time to slobber over porn.
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Travis,
The Bible is banned at many public schools in various contexts. I know of a public charter school that uses some facilities at a local church and in the library, the state required that all the Bibles on shleves be covered or removed. Heaven forbid that a child should even see one on a shelf.
I also know of cases where students were not allowed to bring a Bible to school at all.
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Joel: Can the students buy Bibles in stores?
Can they read them in their homes, on the city buses or in the park?
If so, then they aren’t “banned.”
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Steve G.,
Wow, the definition of “banned” has changed. It used to be that complaining about a book’s being mandatory reading, or being present in the school library, was considered banning. Now, as long as a child can access it somewhere else it isn’t “banned,” even if the child isn’t allowed to bring his own copy or see a copy on a shelf.
By that measure, of course, no book is ever banned–all of us have access to amazon.com.
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Why does a child need to have a Bible in school?
This is such a bogus “issue,” and another example of people who belong to what is by far the majority religion in this country whining about imaginary persecution.
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You’re welcome to bring a Bible to my school anytime and the Gideon’s show up every year to do that. And yet Canada has a much lower religious adherence rate.
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Funny how you guys always say I’m the one obsessed with gays. And yet you post on and on saying the most stupid things. Yes stupid.
You can’t turn kids gay. You can only make the ones that are not hate themselves, but that’s not what you, ahem, “Christian’s want”, right? Because you don’t “approve”.
Awful, just awful.
And to you guys to say that a gay should marry a woman if he wants to get married so bad, you are stupid beyond belief.
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I’ve got to agree with RDean on this one. The school is offering the play, an important work of literature, to the most advanced 12th grade students taking Advanced Placement English. These are students who will be going on to college, where they will continue to learn to confront controversial ideas.
And you all are exploding in hysteria and paranoia about it.
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As I said before, arguing with lefties about the filth they love to wallow in is useless.
Ah yes, this book is so wonderful, it has such great literary value, the original play won the Pulitzer Prize, it’s an “important work of literature,” teaching students “to confront controversial ideas,” blah, blah, blah.
Fine. You people love to wallow in this filth and call it great, go right ahead. That’s your right. I disagree with your taste. I think this stuff is excrement of the worst kind and your taste is in the toilet. We could argue this forever.
But that is not the issue here. The issue is my children and the efforts of this tyrannical school system to usurp my parental authority. This sick school system is trying to force feed our children the excrement from your toilet and you agree with them. That is absolutely intolerable.
Keep your hands off my children! That is the message here, pure and simple. And you, in your arrogance, just don’t seem to get it.
Therefore, the Christian has no alternative but to withdraw his children from YOUR school system. It certainly isn’t our system. We have been shut out and for all practical purposes we have no voice in what goes on there. If you want to drive the system into the gutter, go ahead, but you will not take our children with you.
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107 – beautifully stated. What I can’t stand are churches that won’t discipline parents who insist on using the public school system when there are so many alternative resources out there nowadays -generous congregational and deaconal help with Christian day schools, scholarships and fundraisers (if homeschooling is not an option – many times it isn’t)and homeschooling resources and parents who are more than willing to help anyway they can, including having another child at their dining room or kitchen table. We have been blessed with this ministry in ways that are too special to mention. There is simply no other reason for Christians to have their children in public schools other than outright sin.
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MICHAEL MARTIN: Keep your hands off my children! That is the message here, pure and simple. And you, in your arrogance, just don’t seem to get it.
They’re our children too. Can you blame us for wanting what’s best for them?
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Michael Martin,
the parents of the 51 students (all seniors) who took the class knew what the book would be. No matter how people try to make this into a case of “indoctrination,” this is a case of parental supervision, pure and simple.
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Cheryl
Thank you and I will confess I got a little hyperbolic on the lack of sympathy. Vouchers are an interesting idea, but I would want there to be at least something in them about needs (and there might be, this is not an area I know well) as I don’t think parents sending kids to prep schools need a hand out.
Michael
I am sympathetic to your concerns and also think Poncho has a point. I do think school boards and systems should listen to parents when they have concerns that material is not appropriate for the age of the student. But I also think the conversation between schools and parents needs to be inclusive. I do understand that conservative Christians feel under siege by modern culture, but in a pluralistic society what is required is enough talk and negotiations between all groups to come to compromise positions, which are sure to be imperfect (let’s face if everybody is a little happy with a compromise and everyone a little unhappy with it, then it probably is a genuine meeting of the minds) then we will be getting somewhere. What is unhelpful on both sides is to assume motives. On the one side, the plaint that you want to force your morals on us and on the other the same and also on both an imputation of malintention. The bickering does not help all of our kids.
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Bianca – 108
YOU WRITE:……
“What I can’t stand are churches that won’t discipline parents who insist on using the public school system when there are so many alternative resources out there nowadays”
Churches have no right to discipline parents for sending children to public school. NOT ALL public schools are bad.
I remember about four months ago, YOU didn’t want to attend church at all, as you said something to the effect that, there was something wrong with all of them, then you decided to find a church after many of us encouraged you.
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Victoria
We agree on something!
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CB
That can’t be, ARE YOU SURE?
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Pretty sure, but I’ve been banging my head on the wall to make certain!
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Scroop (#9) writes:
“They’re our children too. Can you blame us for wanting what’s best for them?”
No, I do not blame you at all for wanting what you perceive to be best for YOUR children. But when you say “They’re our children too,” DO NOT include my children in your net. They do not belong to you or the state. I will decide what is best for them, not you, and not the state,
On this particular issue the gap between what you consider best and what I consider best has grown so wide that it has become an unbridgeable chasm. In post #107 I felt the necessity of using some pejorative terms to emphasize the width of that chasm and the intensity of my feelings. I don’t do that lightly or with the intent to be deliberately insulting. However, you must realize that when you violate a peson’s children—and this is a moral violation of almost the same caliber as if you physically raped them—you are going to arrouse some very, very intense opposition.
Frankly, I believe the time has come to separate. You go your way with your schools and we will do the same with ours. And to be just and fair about it, you pay for yours and we will pay for ours. Many Christian families do not have the resources to continue paying for your schools and the schools they would like to have for their children. So they are trapped in public schools that are not only failing academically, but which now have the tyrannical arrogance to indoctrinate children in a system of morality that is absolutely detestable to Christain parents.
And we are not just talking about abstract academic issues here. It is a system of morality that has horrible consequences like pregnancies out of wedlock, abortion deaths of children and in some cases of the child mothers too, permanenat damage from venereal diseases of all sorts, AIDS, broken homes and broken lives.
Now if you want to consider all that as what is best for your children, then continue with your promotion of homosexuality, sexual “freedom,” alternative lifestyles, etc. You have been cautioned about this more times and in more ways than can be tallied, but you refuse to listen. All that I have left for you and your children is pity. Go your way and do as you wish with YOUR schools, but I will have no part of it.
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CB – 115
I had to take TWO (2) aspirins.
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P.S. Post #116 should start as “Scroop (#109)”
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Michael Martin,
you are going waaaay off the bean with this.
In the first place, Angels in America was only offered in a ap class of 51 seniors whose parents KNEW FULLY WELL ABOUT THE BOOK.
It seems that is the point that very few people are addressing here. This issue is a tempest in a teapot. It was picked by folks who are exploiting people’s fear and ignorance about gays and lesbians.
There is no case of indoctrination in schools behind this issue.
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poncho – 119
Your argument has no leg’s. It wouldn’t matter if it were two, ten, fifteen or twenty studends, it isn’t appropriate for High School student’s.
YOU WRITE: ……
“It seems that is the point that very few people are addressing here. This issue is a tempest in a teapot. It was picked by folks who are exploiting people’s fear and ignorance about gays and lesbians.”
No one under the age of 12 is unaware of homosexuals and you know this. What you might not understand is; there is no fear, there is no ignorance involved, what THERE IS, which the homosexual community can’t accept is ‘faster than lightening’ the parents and community have stood their ground, and made a STAND for what they don’t want in H.S. education.
Like it or not, you can’t tell parents what to do when it comes to our children. No one has the right to fill kids minds with this none ‘literature’ which they claim is useful, it isn’t, except in the trash bin.
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MICHAEL MARTIN: No, I do not blame you at all for wanting what you perceive to be best for YOUR children. But when you say “They’re our children too,” DO NOT include my children in your net. They do not belong to you or the state. I will decide what is best for them, not you, and not the state,
You’re going to need some help teaching our kids the properties of the possessive “our.” The so-called net isn’t mine, its “ours” — which of course means it’s yours too, hopefully to the benefit of our kids.
I will decide what is best for them, not you, and not the state
Subject to review and oversight, buddy. They’re ours too. You’re answerable to us.
However, you must realize that when you violate a peson’s children—and this is a moral violation of almost the same caliber as if you physically raped them—you are going to arrouse some very, very intense opposition.
Michael, do you have a list of literature you won’t allow your kids to read? If you saw my posts above, you noticed that I deleted Chaucer from a 12th grade class at the request of a parent (who was a Methodist Minister). Hundreds of thousands of English lit books contain that text. Please explain for me who you consider the “rapist” to be — the HS English teachers, or Chaucer, or both? The irony of this discussion is that most Christians, including you, should love their children to have a mastery of Chaucer as dearly as they’d love for them to own 1,000 shares of Google. Hey, I can help them get it — maybe both!
You’ve said “wallow” about five times. Although weakened by redundancy, your point is substantive and powerful. Teachers can indeed “wallow in filth and call it great.” This accusation was at the heart of the case of Polis of Athens v. Socrates. For good reason, it was a capital case. Let me remind you though, that Plato wrote an “Apology” for Socrates justifying the place of philosophy and skepticism in the education and possible corruption of the youth. These are dangerous things. He gives a fine answer which has stood up for 2,500 years. If you’re not familiar with it, look at the essay on Plato’s Republic by Allan Bloom (a famous conservative!)
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MICHAEL MARTIN: Many Christian families do not have the resources to continue paying for your schools and the schools they would like to have for their children.
Maybe we have a common cause here. Conservatives want schools funded by local property taxes. Because good schools raise property values, homeowners owe, supposedly. Also, homeowners don’t necessarily want to pay for kids in other assessment districts.
If you don’t like our method of school financing, don’t blame liberals! We don’t like property tax financing, have been doing the heavy lifting all by ourselves, and would welcome your help in overthrowing it.
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The individual income tax is highly progressive – a small group of higher-income taxpayers pay most of the individual income taxes each year.
In 2001, the latest year of available data, the top 5 percent of taxpayers paid more than one-half (53.3 percent) of all individual income taxes, but reported roughly one-third (32.0 percent) of income.
The top 1 percent of taxpayers paid 33.9 percent of all individual income taxes in 2001. This group of taxpayers has paid more than 30 percent of individual income taxes since 1995. Moreover, since 1990 this group’s tax share has grown faster than their income share.
Taxpayers who rank in the top 50 percent of taxpayers by income pay virtually all individual income taxes. In all years since 1990, taxpayers in this group have paid over 90 percent of all individual income taxes. In 2000 and 2001, this group paid over 96 percent of the total.
The President’s tax cuts have shifted a larger share of the individual income taxes paid to higher income taxpayers. In 2004, when most of the tax cut provisions are fully in effect (e.g., lower tax rates, the $1,000 child credit, marriage penalty relief), the projected tax share for lower-income taxpayers will fall, while the tax share for higher-income taxpayers will rise.
The share of taxes paid by the bottom 50 percent of taxpayers will fall from 4.1 percent to 3.6 percent.
The share of taxes paid by the top 1 percent of taxpayers will rise from 30.5 percent to 32.3 percent.
The average tax rate for the bottom 50 percent of taxpayers falls by 16 percent as compared to a 12 percent decline for taxpayers in the top 1 percent.
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Scroop (#121) writes about my children:
Subject to review and oversight, buddy. They’re ours too. You’re answerable to us.
You are mixing issues and thereby attempting to extend state authority in the tyrannical manner common to all leftist, fascist and Marxist dictatorships.
If the issue were the physical health and safety of a child being injured by abusive parents, you would have a point, but that is not what we are talking about here. I believe you know that and you are thus being disingenuous in your statement.
We are talking about reading material that subverts the moral values of a child. We all know why. All across the nation, the homosexual agenda demands not just their “civil rights,” not just the toleration of their lifestyle, but the transformation of our entire society to “homo-loving” status by the aggressive promotion of homosexuality, especially in our schools.
The homosexual agenda is not all that I am talking about here. It is just the latest and most destructive facet of the entire sexual revolution that has been growing like a cancer since the 1960’s.
Then when people of conscience resist these trends, the typical liberal response is to enlist the power of the state to force conformity. At its most extreme, we see communist and fascist regimes taking children from their parents in order, not to educate them, but to form them into acceptable members of the state.
We are not quite there yet, but what is happening in California right now is another indication of the quickening pace. If we elect Obama or Hillary with her “It Takes A Village” mindset, we can expect the pace to accelerate dramatically.
And your attitude Scroop, aids the process. You don’t claim ownership of my child to prevent abuse, but to shape his mind according to your notions. You are not a full fledged Stalin yet, but you’re moving in that direction.
Subject to review and oversight, buddy. They’re ours too. You’re answerable to us.
Yeah, I understand exactly what you mean!
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Just a side question about taxes here.
Does the US government (federal or state) provide any subsidies for private education?
It may sound like an odd question but, here in Australia, the (former) federal government saw fit to provide equal funding to the private and public school systems (despite public schools accounting for 70% of the student population). The public schools here are seen as the responsibility of the states, from which they receive their primary funding.
So, if I understand my country’s own system, people who send their kids to public schools are supplementing private education with their taxes. This has lead to an ongoing dispute about the rights of private schools to discriminate against their students and/or staff on a religious basis, whilst they’re receiving public money.
Anyway, that’s my long-winded background explanation for why I’m asking if the US govt provides anything to the private schools.
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“We are talking about reading material that subverts the moral values of a child.”
They are 17-years-old, hardly children. I agree that the content of the play is graphic enough that it would be best to leave it for a college lit class, not K-12. However, should your children get into college, (or read the play in HS) I would think you would have confidence in the values you instilled in them that you wouldn’t be afraid of literature that contradicts your values.
Get real, Christians have and always will live in hostile cultures. Indeed, some would say that Christianity thrives in such cultures. (Though I think you should admit it’s a lot easier now than when you were being thrown to the Lions.)
I disagree greatly with much of Angels in America’s values. Not its pro-gay content but its leftist economics. However, it’s still a great piece of literature, and you can disagree with the values that great art represents while still appreciating the artistic content. For instance, much of the great Western art of the past is overtly Christian or religious. Even atheists like Dawkins appreciate the artistic content in the works of Michelangelo that glorify the Christian faith.
It seems to me just flat out stupid to dismiss the artistic content of something just because you strongly disagree with its message. Imagine someone calling The Pieta “religious crap.” That’s exactly what you do when you say this play comes from the “toliet.”
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Michael Martin’s reasons aren’t hard to discern from his rhetoric, Jon.
Angels in America presents homosexuals as human beings, with feelings, ideas, dreams and fears.
Understanding that makes it harder to see them as the mentally ill, immoral, filthy, promiscuous corrupters that Michael Martin’s worldview requires them to be seen as.
It turns them into people deserving of the same empathy, sympathy and compassion as anyone else.
And that humanization is what the Michael Martins of the world most fear.
Have you ever noticed that anytime a film or TV show has a positive portrayal of a gay character, there is a small but vocal outcry using terms “homosexual agenda” and “pro-homo?” If a story has a gay character who is not somehow evil or at least mentally sick, some will insist that it is just “gay propaganda.”
Sad but true.
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SteveG,
That would make sense of a comment by Peter Leavitt (#96) about Angels “extolling the virtues of the gay lifestyle.”
I didn’t really see Angels as “extolling the virtues of the gay lifestyle.” But then, as you similarly suggest, the mere portrayal of gay characters who fail to conform, or fail to eventually conform, to Christian expectations probably constitutes “extolling”, or propoganda, in the eyes of some Christians.
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Icarus … I think that’s exactly it. I used to not understand how the anti-gay contingent of the church could look at things that seemed utterly benign to me and see them as “propaganda.”
And then it hit me: It’s precisely because they are benign that they’re objectionable. They don’t have to be sexually explicit or even mention sex except in the most peripheral ways, and it’s still “homosexualist propaganda.”
If there’s a gay character who isn’t sick, malevelolent or in great suffering as a direct result of being homosexual, these people see it as part of the nefarious plot to trick people into not hating gays.
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………….
“these people see it as part of the nefarious plot to trick people into not hating gays.”
No, but you can complete the job by continuing your constant attacks on those who would be your friend, those who pray for you. Your constant talk of “HATE” doesn’t say much for how you feel about the rest of the world who isn’t homosexual.
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I only talk of “hate,” Victoria, about people who insist on stigmatizing a group of people based on a characteristic.
Fortunately, I don’t think all that many people do that, so your remark about “the rest of the world who isn’t homosexual” makes no sense.
I have no special love for homosexuals and I have no special dislike for non-homosexuals (and a good thing too since that’s the group I’m in.) What I do dislike is people who would judge a person not by what he does but by some trait such as skin color, ethnicity or sexual orientation.
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YOU WRITE:…..
“I have no special love for homosexuals and I have no special dislike for non-homosexuals (and a good thing too since that’s the group I’m in.) What I do dislike is people who would judge a person not by what he does but by some trait such as skin color, ethnicity or sexual orientation.
Skin color or ethnicity has nothing to do with homosexuality, you know that right? Skin color or ethnicity is a ‘cheap shot’ when discussing homosexuality. Sex doesn’t have one thing to do with skin color. Those who are educated know this and would never bring it to debate, thinking it was a valid point, you know this RIGHT?
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Victoria,
I am both gay and African-American and I can tell you that I have had to deal with people judging me on who they think I am on both accounts – i.e. making assumptions about me.
just like you thinking that me being gay has to do with sex. It really doesn’t. I don’t announce my sexual orientation but last year, I received an award for volunteer of the year for my local gay group. I hang it in my office.
Am I announcing my sexual matters by hanging the award in my office at work?
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And Victoria, again I repeat the fact that parents were well aware that their children were reading this book. And the book was offered in a class of seniors. It does matter when parents are awared and approve of books their children read.
It refutes the argument of parents not being able to control what their children read. In this case, they were able to. There really is no controversy here.
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I know that, yes. And I didn’t say anything to the contrary.
The three things I named are things I chose specifically because they are not the same thing. But they do have one thing in common, Victoria:
They are all things that some people cite as good reasons to reject a group of people.
My comment that you first responded to (your post #130) was the more important point … why portrayals of homosexuals that seem completely harmless to most of us are still the subject of the anti-gay faction’s hysteria.
Do you DENY it VICTORIA?
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Poncho – 133
YOU WRITE:…….
“just like you thinking that me being gay has to do with sex. It really doesn’t. I don’t announce my sexual orientation but last year”
I didn’t know you were a homosexual until just now, so lets lay that piece of information to rest. So in essence your belief that I assumed you were homosexual was FALSE, because I DIDN’T KNOW.
You continue to write….
“just like you thinking that me being gay has to do with sex. It really doesn’t.” …….
You see Poncho you don’t take time out to access what people think, because you don’t know what they think, you ‘crystal ball’ the whole thing to fit your ‘agenda’ and then you follow up with a post which isn’t factual.
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Jon Rowe (#126):
Art is in the eye of the beholder. If you consider it great art, it is in your eye, not mine. I don’t agree with your taste in art.
But art is not the reason this writing is being promoted, it is only an excuse. Your additional rationalization that it is being presented only to 17 year olds is nothing but a transparent diversion. You know that I am speaking to a larger problem here than one piece of trash writing. This is just one incident among a multitude of similar ones around the nation being presented to children as early as the third and fourth grade. The homosexual agenda of which I spoke is real and cannot be denied by anyone with eyes to see and ears to hear.
I will say again, the problem is far larger than just homosexuality. It encompases the entire sexual revolution that started in the 60’s. It has brought us over 40,000,000 abortion deaths, soaring venereal desease rates, millions of broken lives and broken families, AIDS. and a host of other problems. You chose to ignore those points.
I spoke very clearly about the usurpation of parental authority and the increase of dictatorial state control. Yet, you chose to ignore those points as well. You would rather quibble about art.
Well, your a lawyer. I can’t expect you to get to the point when your case is weak.
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Steve G,
You obviously believe that homosexuality is a natural and normal occurance—merely one of the characteristics of how a man is born and something over which he has no control. To your way of thinking then, it is extremely unjust, hateful even, to criticize somone for the way they were born.
That conclusion seems logical and understandable if you hold to the first premise. The homosexual community has been working very hard over the years to convince us all of that point of view. You have bought their unsubstantiated arguments, just as they have hoped you would.
I disagree. Homosexual behavior is a moral choice and a very bad one at that.
Good bye.
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Top “Gay” Organization Comes Clean: “HIV is a gay disease.”
Matt Barber had this to say:
“I only hope he will now stop promoting homosexual conduct and push for other liberal elites, especially those running our public schools, to do the same. Educators must truthfully address the ‘gay’ lifestyle’s potentially deadly consequences.”
“It’s criminally reckless for the National Education Association and liberal educators to put political correctness and a deceptive political agenda above the lives, health and well-being of America’s children. The evidence is there for all to see. ‘Gayness’ is not about ‘who you are,’ it’s about ‘what you do.’ The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force has now, in effect, acknowledged that reality. Their honesty is refreshing and unexpected,” concluded Barber.
Lets take the two ‘STATEMENTS’ which are IMPORTANT.
In light of these remarks by someone within the homosexual community who is a leader. WHY would a piece of trashy literature be placed in the hands of students rather than a “WARNING” which could save their lives IF they were to indulge in the homosexual lifestyle.
WHY, would any educator give a teen a titillating piece of tripe to read instead of the WARNING which should be foremost in this day and age to give any kid a ‘heads up’ on what can happen if they engage in homosexual sex.
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#139: In light of these remarks by someone within the homosexual community who is a leader…
Victoria,
Your comments are thoroughly misleading. Matt Barber is Concerned Women for America’s policy director for cultural issues. He is not a member of the gay community. The comments you have quoted are his response and his interpretation of comments made by Matt Foreman, the outgoing Executive Director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. I doubt Barber’s comments represent the sentiments held by Matt Foreman.
Please re-read the article for the correct contexts and, as Serious George would say; “Please take (more) care.”
#139: WHY would a piece of trashy literature be placed in the hands of students rather than a “WARNING” which could save their lives IF they were to indulge in the homosexual lifestyle.
Perhaps we could put warnings on Hamlet that says; “Reading this material may influence you to go mad and kill your uncle.”
Angels in America is a story. Just because a story contains gay or racist characters, it doesn’t mean that the story encourages homosexuality or racism. Arguing that it does is like saying the bible encourages incest because some stories in the bible contain incest.
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Victoria,
You are showing your UTTER ignorance.
That “titillating piece of tripe” happens to be, as mentioned many times, a piece of award winning literature which will probably go down as essential reading in the Western Canon. More importantly, if only you knew what the play was about, you’d see that it totally satisfied your desire for “warning.”
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Well, actually I chose to ignore those points because we probably have very little to quibble about. In my first best world I would privatize all of the public schools. And in the real world, I support vouchers.
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Michael Martin at #138:
So, when did you choose to be straight?
See, I don’t remember ever having a choice. I have always been attracted to the opposite sex and never had a point where I could have chosen to go the other way.
I don’t know anyone else who has either.
Ultimately, the causes of homosexuality remain unclear and may continue to be; but one thing it clearly is not is a conscious choice.
And in your own words: it is extremely unjust, hateful even, to criticize somone for the way they were born.
And it is (I believe) precisely because you recognize this that you work so hard to insist it’s a choice, even though there’s no evidence that it is.
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Victoria,
I was speaking about your comments regarding gays in general and using myself as a point.
But so that we don’t get bogged down in semantics, I see that you totally ignored the other part of my post.
How very convenient for you.
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SteveG,
You can argue the choice issue until the cows come home, but it’s somewhat a moot point. Think about all the protected classes that are covered by US federal anti-discrimination laws and you’ll discover that some protected classes are choices. For example, religion.
So whether something is a choice or not is not the deciding factor in defining protected classes. Similarly, discriminating against something simply because it’s a choice is unjustifiable.
This takes the imperative off arguing the choice issue; from a more legal standpoint anyway.
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MICHAEL MARTIN: I asked you to stop suggesting that I think your children are “mine,” yet you keep doing so in order to make rhetorical points that I think are disingenuous. Society’s interest in your children — and our children — goes well beyond their physical safety, and encompasses their emotional well being, their education and even their happiness. Children have rights. They are members of society, not animals. Parents receive tax concessions for children and are accountable to society in return. As a matter of law, you probably can get away with taking your kids out of society and denying them their right to be part of it, but it’s wrong, and society needs to discourage the ethos that allows parents to use their kids for ideological agendas.
You ignore relevant lines of discussion while introducing extraneous comments about homosexuality (See Harrison’s post above), fascism, Marxism, the 60’s. That’s unbalanced, Michael.
Liberals work hard to engage people like you here but you ignore their comments, unless you can find an excuse for denouncing them, and then fill up the column inches of our screens with high-flying assertions.
What are the moral values of children and what subverts them? Of all the moral hazards children face, the content of their reading, writing and ‘rithmetic, is the least. Because you neglected to answer reasonable questions, my guess is that you think children are corrupted by language that addresses topics of sex. You’re wrong. When Chaucer mentions body parts, his subject is moral blindness. When John Updike describes sex, his subject is belief in God. Words have the power to trigger involuntary responses in the brain, but words about sex aren’t sex. Tolstoy didn’t commission adultery when he wrote Anna Karenina, he described the ethical, social, psychological, and spiritual dimensions of adultery. Words can arouse the horses of desire, but can’t create them where they didn’t exist, and education puts reins in the rider’s hand, and provides models of success and failure (Plato’s Phaedrus).
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MICHAEL MARTIN: I spoke very clearly about the usurpation of parental authority and the increase of dictatorial state control.
You don’t have a plaintiff in this Angels matter. I understand that you’re mad at liberals/fascists/marxists/60’s hedonists. But in this case, we’re talking about a reading list, apparently optional, for AP English. When you interpret this as usurpation and dictatorship, you talk trash.
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MICHAEL MARTIN: You seem to have a swift mind, but it runs in channels that are polluted with dead adjectives like “very” and “very, very.” If your kids ever ask your help with a writing assignment, please make sure you haven’t passed on this bad habit to them.
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OK, let’s see…Until very recently (the end of the class) I was a high school dual-credit lit student. I know for a fact that no english teacher at my public high school would assign reading that included even a small amount of graphic sex, especially gay sex. The Kite Runner was a slightly controversial selection at the ACP teachers’ conference just before the class started. And that’s not just our school, that’s statewide.
I have not read Angels in America, nor have I heard of it, but as I read the two sides of the argument here, I get a reaction to each.
First, I agree that any group calling itself Concerned Women of America does set itself up to not be taken seriously by people who don’t agree with it. Rightly or wrongly, it comes across as prudish.
If this is for an AP class, that means that it is college level. That means that the people in the class are probably at or around age eighteen and are effectively adults. You can make the argument that kids that age are still kids, but at the same time, there is an opposite movement among many of the same people that urges a return to the ancient tradition of having people come of age at twelve or thirteen.
That said, being straight, I would prefer not to read about gay sex in any lit class of mine. At least not unless it served a definitive purpose within the story, and the story itself had a purpose other than gay sex. Being a Christian, I would also prefer not to read about straight sex in a lit class, unless it served a definitive purpose in a story not just about sex.
That after all is the definition of pornography: An artwork of some kind whose core purpose is to showcase sexuality. We would do well not to label things pornographic unless that is how they were intended to be by their creators.
That’s the same type of problem I have noticed whenever Christians blacklist works of art. Most notably, I’m thinking about the Harry Potter series and The Golden Compass. We have a tendency to blindly shut our eyes and ears against our unfortunate victims and get all bitter. Harry Potter turned out to quite benign, and I enjoyed the series very much (not so much Dumbledore’s subsequent sexual orientation, but that’s Rowling’s prerogative). His Dark Materials is a slap in our collective face, so our resentment is justified, but we must be careful not to hate, and so often we protest in an irrational, Medieval way that does not help how the world sees us.
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Good comment Cicero:
Good comment. Angels In America is not pornography and it’s certainly not just about sex. It’s a work of literature that has religious, political, and sexual orientation overtones. And in large part, it’s about dying of AIDS, so even though the play is pro-gay, like Philadelphia it does show the risks involved in gay sex.
There is much to disagree with about Tony Kushner’s philosophy of life (I know I do); but this is the type of play that will get students to think critically. Calling it “obscene” or “racist gay porn” is just stupid. (Sorry Lynn; you should change “obscene” to “graphic.”)
That said, just because of the controversy and adult themes I’d wait until college before assigning this work.
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It is Matt Foreman not Matt Barber, so in posting the WRONG comment, it was miss-leading. Sorry for the confusion.
In
my post 132 I should have posted the following:
“Addressing the topic of AIDS, Foreman drastically deviated from the “gay” lobby’s party line by admitting, “Internally, when these numbers come out, the ‘established’ gay community seems to have a collective shrug as if this isn’t our problem. Folks, with 70 percent of the people in this country living with HIV being gay or bi, we cannot deny that HIV is a gay disease. We have to own that and face up to that.”
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Sorry my post 139.
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Poncho – 144
I read your post, and responded to you regarding those parts which I wanted to comment on. We all do this on the blog, we aren’t required to take an entire post and comment on every sentence and paragraph.
It has nothing to do with convenience, it’s a matter of choice!
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Scroop (#146) writes:
I asked you to stop suggesting that I think your children are “mine,” yet you keep doing so…
Gee Scroop, you are very, very confusing. I’m just trying to taking you at your word (#121):
Subject to review and oversight, buddy. They’re ours too. You’re answerable to us.
So which is it? Are my children mine or yours? This is very, very, confusing. Well maybe it’s the day of the week. Post #121 was on Saturday, and post #146 was today, Sunday. Who will they belong to tomorrow? Me or you? Or maybe just Hillary’s village commune? Whatever suits your purpose on any particular day I guess. This is so very, very confusing and I don’t know how to respond. Scroop, you have named yourself very, very well. You are like that little will of the wisp moth that flits about my reading lamp, very, very confused and very, very uncertain of where to land.
But Moth (I don’t think I will call you Scroop anymore.), there is one thing you seem very, very certain about (for the moment): Tony Kushner ranks right up there with Chaucer, Updike, Tolstoy, and Plato. In case you didn’t remember from the start of this thread, the school made him very, very required reading until the scrutiny from those pesky parents got a lttle too hot for their comfort. You remember don’t you?—those very, very irritating parents who actually had the gall to think that they had something to say about the kids in one of your establishment communes. But of course, parents are very, very easy to forget (dismiss) when one is dealing with literary greats and current fads. (Oops, a little slip there. Tony Kushner is not a fad.
He is a literary giant like Chaucer, I think. Maybe. Oh well, you can decide for us all tomorrow—if it’s convenient and acceptable for you of course.)
By the way, did you notice that I followed your instructions and didn’t insert any “extraneous” remarks about the (shhhhh) h— word. I see your point; to do so in a thread titled “High school assigns lit class obscene gay literature” would have been very, very wrong of me, even hateful. It also would have been very, very off the subject wouldn’t it?
Have a very, very good day Moth.
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OK, Michael, I wanted to say something to you earlier, but I wasn’t sure if you were still in the conversation.
From your posts I assume that you are a conservative, in this case highly offended, parent. I didn’t read them all, nor did I memorize them, but I am guessing that you are Christian. You probably would put your kids in a private Christian school. You may think that any parents who have their kids in private school are greatly wrong. Let me say that I probably agree with most of what you believe about the government school system, especially the objective parts.
Now, as one Christian to another, it really, really doesn’t help our case when we get all angry and sarcastic and start using loaded words like “establishment communes?!” We are supposed to be wise as serpents, but also gentle as doves, as well as loving our neighbor as ourselves. I’m not sure whether it would be on topic to dissect the public school system, so I won’t.
By the way, the slur about the moth is “very, very” childish. In your heartfelt benediction it looks a lot like you’re cursing at him, withour finishing the word.
Please, brother.
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Cicero – 155
I haven’t seen you post before, are you new to this blog?
I’m sure you mean well, but I can assure you that your comments to Michael Martin, are not justified. Take a look at the comments in posts 9 and 121 below. I could point to dozens of them.
This comment made in regards to Michael’s children, or any of our children.
Now lets look at another one:
This is the comment which MOTH made about Lynn Vincent who is the Editor of this blog, and writes for World Magazine regularly. It’s insulting to call this woman stupid. No one has to agree with her on any issue, but to refer to her as “stupid” is not respectful, perhaps it is a lack of vocabulary skills on MOTH’s part? I don’t agree with Lynn Vincent all the time, but that doesn’t give me a license to attack her intelligence, that would be ’stupid’ on my part. Lynn is anything but “stupid”-
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American Family Association
“If your child’s school observes the homosexual sponsored “Day of Silence,” keep your child at home April 25.
Friday, April 25, several thousand schools across the nation will be observing “Day of Silence (DOS).” DOS is a nationwide push to promote the homosexual lifestyle in public schools.
AFA is joining other family-oriented groups in urging parents to keep their children at home that day if their local school is participating in the DOS project. By remaining silent, the intent of the pro-homosexual students is to disrupt the classes while promoting the homosexual lifestyle.
DOS is sponsored by an activist homosexual group, the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN). DOS leads the students to believe that every person who identifies as a homosexual, bisexual or cross-dresser is a victim of ongoing, unrelenting harassment and hate. Students are taught that homosexuality is a worthy lifestyle, homosexuality has few or no risks, and individuals are born homosexual and cannot change. Those who oppose such teaching are characterized as ignorant and hateful bigots.”
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Below is the list of schools we believe will be participating in the April 2008 “Day of silence.”
Scroll down and you can find your state and then look for your children’s schools. What a shock, at least we have the list.
GOD bless our country, and the children that are being raised. May every parent protect them from those things which are sinful, and against HIS Word.
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Hey, Victoria, I understand what you’re saying. I remember that post, and you’re right. I just wasn’t speaking to Scroop Moth’s issues at the moment. Yes, I am new to the blog. By the way, you may be pleased to know that my local high school is not on the Day of Silence list.
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MICHAEL MARTIN: So which is it? Are my children mine or yours?
They’re yours not mine. I said it right. But let me offer an analogy. Land in a National Forrest is ours, and we all have common rights to it. None of us can call it “mine,” but any of us can call it “ours.” However, in addition to our interest in common, you may hold a life lease to a portion of that land for residential use or perhaps a grazing or mining concession. Within the specified boundaries, such leases are yours, not mine, though your lease doesn’t extinguish our common interest, and you remain answerable for your use. In other words, “ours” and “mine” aren’t synonyms.
Moth is great, Michael. I’m proud of my illustrious surname. Some turn it into “mouth” but that’s splendid too. The name goes back to the Normans — “mot” is French for “word.” You can think of me either as a corrupting insect or as the creative force at the beginning of time!
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Cicero, WELCOME to the blog. There are some great people here, some are pastors, lots of writers and editors, a few attorney’s and doctors, and a lots of others from many professions and some who are retired, its a good mix of people. Sometimes we agree and ’sometimes’ we don’t.
I hope you enjoy yourself here.
I’m glad your local H.S. isn’t on the list. There are a few not so far away from us who ARE on that list. I’m hoping people are made aware of this ‘event’-
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MICHAEL MARTIN: the scrutiny from those pesky parents got a lttle too hot for their comfort.
Which, along with my capitulation, provides a counter-example to your claim of usurpation and dictatorship.
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Why Thank You Victoria. ^.^
My first post was 149. It says more about me than the one you responded to.
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Cicero #149,
You make a number of good points.
I would prefer not to read about gay sex in any lit class of mine. At least not unless it served a definitive purpose within the story, and the story itself had a purpose other than gay sex.
As I recall, the sex in Angels is narratively functional and it also serves to deepen the audience’s understanding of the different characters. It’s certainly not functionless titillation.
But Concerned Women for America, like other groups who oppose Angels, are happy to extract, isolate and highlight the sexual elements of Angels, which totally removes them from any narrative context.
The play is not about gay sex. It explores politics of the day (Reagan), religion and numerous human issues of fear, regret, despair, isolation and the nastiest one of all: hope!
(I facetiously call it ‘nasty’ because it is with hope that we endure through all the other turmoil).
It’s also interesting that you bring up the Golden Compass. I was thinking about this earlier because Angels has a similar theme running through it, that is, that God has “left the building.” Perhaps Concerned Women for America were so besotted by the profanity and sexual content of Angels that they missed the humanist message in it.
Anyway, as I said before, I think of this work as more college aged material. It’s hard for me to imagine studying something like this at high school. My English Lit teachers could have been fired for simply telling us that Oscar Wilde was gay!
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By the way, this time to this blog’s community, there were a couple of posts that stood out to me as I scanned down. One mentioned someone’s ignorance as a reason why no one should be homeschooled. As a former homeschoolee, I resent that. I have achieved, by the grace of God, one of the highest honors a high school student can achieve–national merit finalist status. ALL of the other former homeschoolees that I have kept in touch with over the years have been almost or equally successful. Homeschooling, in its proper form, is the best form of education, at least up to a certain age. Period. I’m not being arrogant here. I’m just pointing out a fact that I believe I’m qualified to speak about.
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Thanks, Icarus.
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No worries, Cicero. And a warm welcome to the blog from one of the lefties.
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Oscar Wilde was gay!??
Lol.
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SteveG (#143″ wrote; “Ultimately, the causes of homosexuality remain unclear and may continue to be; but one thing it clearly is not is a conscious choice.”
Since I understand free agency and moral choice to be a defining character of humanity itself, I would conclude that SteveG does not think that homosexuals are even humans.
I consider it grossly dehumanizing to claim that one’s preferences, behaviors and/or inclinations with regard to who and how one loves (sexually or otherwise) are assigned or determined by chemical or genetic impulses or any other forces that exclde human choice. Are humans nothing but robots or automotons? of course not. Apparently, SteveG think homosexuals are less than human.
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Jon Rowe (#126) wrote; “It seems to me just flat out stupid to dismiss the artistic content of something just because you strongly disagree with its message.”
The point of art is, ultimately, its message. It is perfectly rational to dismiss an alleged work of art if it’s message is an intentional lie or it serves fascist propganda, hate, gratuitous moral chaos, gratuitious disrespect and anger, or what have you, especially when targeted to young people. (not that this play does all that or not but I speak in principle in response to the content of your statement).
In some cases, Jon, the quality of the “art” is especially worthy of dismissal since its quality (if indeed it is high) can empower and further the evil message of gratuitous hate or racism or moral chaos all the more. The message is what matters, more than the medium, and an evil message can warrant one’s dismissal or rejection aesthetically or otherwise.
Jon continued, “Imagine someone calling The Pieta ‘religious crap.’ That’s exactly what you do when you say this play comes from the ‘toliet.’”
Now that statement, Jon, is utterly asinine. The Pieta has stood and passed the test of time and this recent play (offensive to many parents) cannot be considered comperable (artisticly or substantively) by any stretch of even your imagination. Be honest.
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Scroop Moth,
“Very” is normally an adverb, not an adjective.
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Cicero – 168
Yes Oscar Wilde was homosexual, you can research this yourself.
I would warn you that this blog is very savvy. Be careful that you have ALL your facts straight.
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I assumed Cicero was being facetious… hence the “Lol”.
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Oh, I was just being facetious. Thanks for the heads up, but I too, tend to be savvy. However, keep in mind that many if not most people in my age group probably would not have known who Oscar Wilde was. :/
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That last symbol should look something like this
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Cicero 174
YOU WRITE:…..
“Thanks for the heads up, but I too, tend to be savvy. However, keep in mind that many if not most people in my age group probably would not have known who Oscar Wilde was.”
Are you serious? Your age group has nothing to do with it. Oscar Wilde 1854-1900. You obviously don’t know when he was born or that NO ONE here on this blog is old enough to have known him, let alone their parents or grandparents.
We all studied in school, and we ALL knew who Oscar Wilde was, age has nothing to do with it.
Here are the list of PLAYS
A Florentine Tragedy:
A Woman of No Importance
An Ideal Husband
La Sainte Courtisane
Lady Windermere’s Fan
Salome
The Duchess of Padua
The Importance of Being Earnest
Vera, or the Nihilists
Here is the list of FICTION
Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime
The Canterville Ghost
The Picture of Dorian Gray
The Portrait of Mr. W. H.
LIST OF ESSAYS
The Critic As Artist
De Profundis
The Decay Of Lying: An Observation
Pen, Pencil, And Poison – A Study In Green
The Soul Of Man Under Socialism
The Truth Of Masks -a Note On Illusion
The Rise of Historical Criticism
The English Renaissance of Art
House Decoration
Art and the Handicraftsman
Lecture to Art Students
London Models
Selected Prose
Shorter Prose Pieces
LIST OF POETRY
A Vision
Amor Intellectualis
Apologia
At Verona
Athanasia
Ave Imperatrix
Ave Maria Gratia Plena
Ballade De Marguerite (Normande)
By The Arno
Camma
Canzonet
Chanson
Charmides
Desespoir
E Tenebris
Easter Day
Endymion (For Music)
Fabien Dei Franchi
From Spring Days To Winter (For Music)
Helas!
Her Voice
Holy Week At Genoa
Humanitad
Impression De Voyage
Impression Du Matin
Impression–Le Reveillon
In The Forest
In The Gold Room–A Harmony
Italia
La Bella Donna Della Mia Mente
La Fuite De La Lune
La Mer
Le Jardin
Le Jardin Des Tuileries
Le Panneau
Les Ballons
Les Silhouettes
Libertatis Sacra Fames
Louis Napoleon
Madonna Mia
Magdalen Walks
My Voice
On The Massacre Of The Christians In Bulgaria
On The Sale By Auction Of Keats’ Love Letters
Pan–Double Villanelle
Panthea
Phedre
Portia
Quantum Mutata
Queen Henrietta Maria
Quia Multum Amavi
Ravenna
Requiescat
Rome Unvisited
Roses And Rue
San Miniato
Santa Decca
Serenade (For Music)
Silentium Amoris
Sonnet On Approaching Italy
Sonnet On Hearing The Dies Irae Sung In The Sistine Chapel
Sonnet to Liberty
Symphony In Yellow
Taedium Vitae
The Ballad of Reading Gaol
The Burden Of Itys
The Dole Of The King’s Daughter (Breton)
The Garden Of Eros
The Grave Of Keats
The Grave Of Shelley
The Harlot’s House
The New Helen
The New Remorse
The Sphinx
The True Knowledge
Theocritus–A Villanelle
Theoretikos
To Milton
To My Wife–With A Copy Of My Poems
Tristitiae
Under The Balcony
Urbs Sacra Aeterna
Vita Nuova
With A Copy Of ‘A House Of Pomegranates’
Here is the LIST of SHORT STORIES
The Devoted Friend
The Happy Prince
The Nightingale and the Rose
The Remarkable Rocket
The Selfish Giant
Poems in Prose
The Young King
The Birthday of the Infanta
The Fisherman and His Soul
The Star Child
The Sphinx Without a Secret
The Model Millionaire
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Michael Martin at #154: Or maybe just Hillary’s village commune?
This is a little off-topic, but I have to comment on this. Have you actually read the book?
I ask because I did, and while it’s been several years ago, what I remember about it is that it argues for the importance of communities to reinforce good values and not undermine what children learn at home.
It could have been written by a moderate-conservative and most conservatives would probably have embraced it. It’s a very all-American kind of argument, starting with the importance of good parents and intact, loving homes and then branching out to cover the importance of good, caring teachers, safe streets, and even, yes, faith.
In it, she writes: Everywhere we look, children are under assualt; from violence and neglect, from the breakup of families, from the temptations, of alcohol, tobacco, sex and drug abuse, from greed, materialism and spiritual emptiness. These problems are not new, but in our time they have skyrocketed. Against this bleak backdrop, the struggle to raise strong children and support families, emotionally as well as practically, has become more fierce.
This is a book that would have been well received in your circles if it had a more right-leaning author. But because Hillary Clinton wrote it and the word “Village” appears in the title, you dismiss it (unread, I’d bet) as something vile.
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Joel Mark at #169: Since I understand free agency and moral choice to be a defining character of humanity itself, I would conclude that SteveG does not think that homosexuals are even humans.
I consider it grossly dehumanizing to claim that one’s preferences, behaviors and/or inclinations with regard to who and how one loves (sexually or otherwise) are assigned or determined by chemical or genetic impulses or any other forces that exclde human choice. Are humans nothing but robots or automotons? of course not. Apparently, SteveG think homosexuals are less than human.
That’s a clever bit of rhetoric Joel, but that’s all it is.
Please, tell us about the time in your life when you could have chosen to be sexually attracted to the same sex or the opposite sex, and chose to be attracted to the opposite sex.
Don’t have a story like that? Then you must agree that biologically the kind of people we are attracted to indeed is “determined by chemical or genetic impulses or any other forces that exclude human choice.”
This has nothing to do with the specific individuals we’re drawn to or how we respond to that attraction. Some have tried to compare homosexuality to adultery but of course that is apples and helicopters. A person who commences an affair with a person of the opposite sex is making a choice to break a vow; a person who feels attraction only to members of the same sex is not making a choice. They may choose to not act on that attraction — and some here advocate that — but they cannot choose not to feel it.
I didn’t choose my sexual orientation. I bet you didn’t choose yours. And I’ve seen no evidence to show that anyone else does either.
There are many things about being human that we have no choice about. Our skin color, hair color, handedness, all these things are with us from the start. We can dye our hair and if we’re left-handed we can force ourselves to write with our right hands, but we can’t really change those characteristics.
If sexuality were in any way a “choice,” most of us would have come to a point in our pubescence where we made that choice. We’d probably be able at any time to change that choice, just as a man who is fond of blue neckties may one day choose to wear a red one. Since that isn’t the case, it’s safe to conclude that sexuality is a matter of how we’re wired from the start.
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Victoria at #176: We all studied in school, and we ALL knew who Oscar Wilde was, age has nothing to do with it.
Since Wilde was notoriously homosexual, they may not teach him in school anymore. You know, thanks to the moral crusaders.
I mean, teaching great and important literature is never as important as making sure nobody gay gets shown in a positive light, right?
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We read The Picture of Dorian Gray in school. We discussed the story, but not the author. I knew nothing about Oscar Wilde as a person until I was an adult. I don’t remember learning much of anything about the lives of the authors whose works we read in school, at least not those who wrote fiction or poetry. We probably learned a little about those who wrote essays, since those would have expressed views shaped by the lives of those who wrote them. But works of fiction and poetry were treated as entities in their own right, able to be analyzed independently of who had written them. (I’m not saying this is necessarily the right approach to literature, just that it’s what seemed to be the approach used by most of my teachers.)
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I remember my high school literature classes in much the same way, Pauline. I was mostly being sarcastic in #179.
It wasn’t until university-level courses that we began to study the relationship between the lives and experiences of authors and the content of their works. I suppose that’s appropriate, if only because time is limited in high school and it’s important to acquaint students with important works. There’s less time to spend talking about the authors outside of a brief understanding of their historical context.
But for a more comprehensive understanding, it is important to know something of the authors. What kind of fiction comes from an Irish homosexual in Victorian era London (Wilde) compared to a 20th Century devout Catholic in the American South (Flannery O’Connor), compared to an English agnostic (Thomas Hardy).
The fundamental disagreement I have with the kind of Christians who get up in arms over things like the play at issue in this thread is that they seem to think that understanding different kinds of people in the world is the same as approving of them. A serious student of literature — and I’d argue that high school seniors in an advanced placement English course count as such, but even if they don’t, college students certainly do — has to grapple with a wide variety of literary thought, and that has to include an understanding of the author’s life.
That doesn’t mean they have to approve. You can be anti-gay and still read literature written by homosexuals. You can be an atheist and appreciate O’Connor, and you can be a devout Christian and still study the works of Thomas Hardy without worrying that it will turn you agnostic.
The panoply of life is rich and varied, and it’s sad that some people are so fearful of being exposed to anything outside of their narrow comfort zones.
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STEVEG asted; “Please, tell us about the time in your life when you could have chosen to be sexually attracted to the same sex or the opposite sex, and chose to be attracted to the opposite sex.”
I am a human being, STEVEG. Thus, EVERY single day of my life and every moment I have had and made meaningful choices that contributed to how, who, when, where and why I love other human beings.
It is rather dehumanizing of you to suggest that homosexuals do not have such moral choices throughout their lives.
I do NOT agree that (in your words) “biologically the kind of people we are attracted to indeed is determined by chemical or genetic impulses.” How could anyone believe that of a fellow human being? I beleve that homosexuals as well as others various types of “sexuals” are human beings with souls, not mere biology bags.
I think it is sad, STEVEG, that you do not even regard homosexuals as human beings who can made moral choices with regard to love.
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STEVEG wrote; “There are many things about being human that we have no choice about. Our skin color, hair color, handedness…”
So what? That has nothing to do with who, how, when, where and why we regularly choose to love our fellow human beings.
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In the original post, Lynn Vincent asked, “But can not even our gay and lesbian friends on this blog agree that it is not appropriate to assign sexually graphic/pornographic literature to high school students?”
Lynn, I doubt that you should expect the gays and lesbians on this blog to somehow be more morally sensitive or fair-minded than those in general in the larger body of our society. They are obviously welcomed on this blog, but let’s not kid ourselves about their mindsets or motives for being here.
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Joel Mark: Rhetorical tap dancing aside, you know that you never made a choice to be attracted to women.
You certainly do choose the kinds of women you’re attracted to, and you chose which one to act on that attraction with and marry. But you never chose to be attracted to the opposite sex; it was just the way you always were.
I am a human being, STEVEG. Thus, EVERY single day of my life and every moment I have had and made meaningful choices that contributed to how, who, when, where and why I love other human beings.
Of course, as do we all. But one of the things you did NOT choose was to be heterosexual. You just are.
Or is that not true?
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Joel mark #184,
Perhaps you misread. Repeatedly.
CoyoteBlue said (#15): I would not appreciate it if a child of mine under the age of 17 was being assigned this in school. Would not appreciate it if a similarly graphic book on hetrosexual sex was assigned, either. So yes, I can agree that this assignment was inappropriate.
Flaming Icarus (that’s me!) said (#86): I haven’t read Angels but I’ve seen the HBO series. I note that the HBO series is rated TV-MA, which would suggest that the content is not suitable for children under 17.
Having seen Angels, it strikes me as more college/uni age material.
Jon Rowe said (#126): I agree that the content of the play is graphic enough that it would be best to leave it for a college lit class, not K-12.
Meanwhile there’s a somewhat non-commital post from Harrison Scott Key (#19) that says: As a play that’s been awarded with just about every major award a play can receive, it’s should surprise no one that this was assigned in a school setting…
Perhaps HSK can be cast into the category of being less “morally sensitive or fair-minded than those in general in the larger body of our society.”
So too can Harris (#93) who described this issue as a “pedagogical gray zone.” Surely such a non-committal assessment must warrant immediate expulsion from the class of “morally sensitive and fair-minded” folk.
So, before you go and cast judgements on other peoples’ “mindsets and motives”, spend a little time actually reading what they’ve said.
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Steveg – 185
You can’t understand this because you don’t want to, if you did, you would have to examine your belief and that’s not something you are willing to do.
We ALL have a choice to turn right or left, we all have a choice to follow the LORD or turn the other way. GOD didn’t give us a nature so that we would willfully do that which is against nature.
Homosexuals are never going to receive acceptance for the lifestyle from Born Again Believers. The reason for this is, because the Bible is clear, we have gone over this dozens of times on this blog. We as Born Again Believers also know that God doesn’t give us temptation which we can’t escape from through HIM. We have all been tempted in many ways, but through the LORD we are delivered from these temptations, whatever they might be.
There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it.
1 Corinthians 10:13
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SteveG wrote; “You know that you never made a choice to be attracted to women.”
SteveG, you have lost the argument. You do not know what I know and what you think you know is totally wrong. I most certainly have chosen, day in and day out, to be attracted to women and to love them respectfully. I even chose to culminate all my many life choices in that regard in the form of a marriage to one particularly fine woman. There are certainly many diverse factors that go into my daily choices, some are physiological, some emotional, some spiritual, some sociological, some historical and cultural. But I am the one who made choices sorting through all the factors over the years in my life.
We are born with a sex drive. How we human beings apply and employ that drive is a matter of many things, all of which are fully compatible with our free moral will and our dialy choices in life.
I choose to be heterosexual every day of my life!
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Flaming Icarus,
I did read what others said, and it backs up my point and my post. You, however, definately misread me, Flaming Icarus.
My comments at #184 did not preclude a variety of opinions among the homosexuals on this blog. I just said that we should not expect the gays and lesbians on this blog to somehow be MORE morally sensitive or fair-minded than those in general in the larger body of our society.
Despite your selections, there have also been some rather alarming justifications from homosexuals and others on this blog of assigning what many of us consider to be inappropriate smut to high school students. The overall contributions of most homosexuals on this blog, in my view, do not represent a more sensitive and sympathetic (to concerned Christians) take on the question Lynn asked than the overall take we would find in the larger homosexual body of opinion.
Sometimes, I think that the homosexuals on this blog (generally speaking) are more hateful toward concerned Christians than the larger majority of homosexuals in America. That’s my take.
Please read more carefully.
I was not commenting on Coyoteblues posts at all.
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Homosexuality: is it a choice or not? The debate goes on and on and on.
No one, based on scientific studies, has a definitive answer. Homosexuals are desperate too “prove” that their condition is natural so as to be relieved of the character stigma that otherwise rests on their behavior. However, that “scientific proof” has not been forthcoming. I believe it is a vain search.
Here’s why. A human being is far more than just a collection of biological cells that can be examined under a microscope. Each of us has a significant spiritual dimension that most liberals minimize if not ignore altogether because of an evolutonary mindset. Yet the answer to the question involves the entire being, both physical and spiritual, and it will never be answered when over half the area of investigation is purposely ignored.
Frankly, I cannot offer a rigorously detailed answer to the question either. The human body, the human mind, the human spirit are all incredibly complex by themselves, let alone the complexities of their intermixture. I just don’t know how to explain it all.
Furthermore, I know that you don’t know either! It is beyond any of us.
The only one who really knows the answer is the God who made us and He is not giving us a scientific explanation either. But He does tell us that homosexual behavior is a sin and that it is a moral choice involving the whole of our being. It is a violation of the way He made us physically and spiritually. The Bible is clear about this and the Scriptural references have been posted on this site hundreds of times.
So, as a Christian, I go with that. Even though I cannot explain all the details, at least I know that the answer encompasses the whole of human nature. A huge portion of our nature is not being purposely ignored merely because some questioners can’t stand the answers.
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Victoria 176
You quote me as:
YOU WRITE:…..
“Thanks for the heads up, but I too, tend to be savvy. However, keep in mind that many if not most people in my age group probably would not have known who Oscar Wilde was.”
Are you serious? Your age group has nothing to do with it. Oscar Wilde 1854-1900. You obviously don’t know when he was born or that NO ONE here on this blog is old enough to have known him, let alone their parents or grandparents.
We all studied in school, and we ALL knew who Oscar Wilde was, age has nothing to do with it.”
Actually, age group has everything to do with it. Visit a high school near you (especially but not necessarily public) and take a random polling of people you meet as to who has heard of Oscar Wilde. Not everybody reads him either. I have, because for a time I went to a school that taught things like that, and I acted in one of his plays. Even adults often are uninformed about things like that, as evinced by a reply or two to your post. I’m not sure what attitude you were trying to convey, especially with the long list.
By the way, though I did not know the exact years of his life, I was well aware that none of us were around during his lifetime. I knew that he lived in Victorian England and I had a good idea that he was gay.
So no, we did not all study him in school, nor did we all know who he was. The people on this blog are, as you said, very savvy. It may be that the vast majority of us are familiar with Oscar Wilde, but keep in mind that the vast majority of the human race is not.
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Cicero – 191
I don’t know where you went to public school, you have said you were home-schooled as well. However, most people I know in my area are acquainted as to who Oscar Wilde was.
As YOU WROTE IN YOUR POST: …. Cicero 174
“Thanks for the heads up, but I too, tend to be savvy. However, keep in mind that many if not most people in my age group probably would not have known who Oscar Wilde was.”
I’m sorry if you are offended by what I posted, I was suprised that you really didn’t know who he was, except ‘after the fact’- Oscar Wilde’s work is still taught in school, did you know that?
YOU WRITE:…..
“It may be that the vast majority of us are familiar with Oscar Wilde, but keep in mind that the vast majority of the human race is not.”
I was not referring to the vast majority of people in the human race, certainly you must know this, I’m sure its not taught in Asia, the Middle East, Africa or China.
Those who have gone to good H.S. would have some knowledge of writers such as Wilde, and ‘would know’who he was- I can’t speak for any area other than where I live/lived and the people I have known, and associate with. Educated people would most likely know who Oscar Wilde was.
Let’s move on to something else -
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Joel Mark at #188: I choose to be heterosexual every day of my life!
Uh huh. Have you ever been sexually attracted to men? Ever had serious desire to be with a man, and successfully chosen to go the other way?
Because if you haven’t, your choosing is no more meritorious than “choosing” to not leap off a tall building. (By which I mean, if a thought never enters your head to do something, you can’t fairly say that that you “chose” not to do it.)
Now if you HAVE struggled with same-sex attraction and chosen to go the other way, that is a different matter. Have you? I’ve asked you that question three times now and you refuse to give a direct answer to it.
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Steveg 193
YOU POST……….
“Now if you HAVE struggled with same-sex attraction and chosen to go the other way, that is a different matter. Have you? I’ve asked you that question three times now and you refuse to give a direct answer to it.
You never disappoint those here on the blog with your ridiculous questions, which you ask over and over again. Does it occur to you that people IGNORE your questions because their dull-witted, and asked for no other reason that you have nothing else to do with your time. It’s OVER THE TOP BORING!
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Victoria
What? NO, I did know who he was, before the fact–I was Algernon in The Importance of Being Earnest! Anyway, yes, lets move on to something else.
Like this. Steveg’s most recent post poses a statement that is in no way dull-witted, and I do not find it any more boring than the rest of this extended argument. He clearly has a keenly logical mind, and regardless of whatever legacy he has had on this post, his most recent–
“Have you ever been sexually attracted to men? Ever had serious desire to be with a man, and successfully chosen to go the other way? Because if you haven’t, your choosing is no more meritorious than “choosing” to not leap off a tall building. (By which I mean, if a thought never enters your head to do something, you can’t fairly say that that you “chose” not to do it.) Now if you HAVE struggled with same-sex attraction and chosen to go the other way, that is a different matter.”
–is an extremely valid point. Sometimes you guys argue with no more reason than rabid dogs.
That said, I have experienced same-sex attraction from time to time. I have in every case chosen to go the other way and to purge it from my mind. There–I gave a direct answer to the question.
I have concluded that same-sex attraction has at least as much to do with affirming relationship intimacy as it does with body type preference.
In a sinful world like this, it is inevitable that people, for whatever reason, will find themselves seeking the love they were made for in unnatural channels. It’s still wrong, but that’s why it is.
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Jonathan
If I choose to answer a post I will, that’s the way its done here, if other’s decide they aren’t going to answer a question, thats also their choice.
It’s rude for someone to continue to ask the same question over and over and over again, and then assume an answer to suit their purpose. I think you get the idea.
Have a nice evening!
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Joel Mark #189,
Ok, Joel. I see your point. I overlooked the “more”. Apologies for the misreading.
However (and there’s always a however), it seems unfair to then impugn the mindsets and motives of the homosexuals who post on this blog after a number of us have answered Lynn’s question in the affirmative.
Victoria #192,
I can’t speak for any area other than where I live/lived and the people I have known, and associate with. Educated people would most likely know who Oscar Wilde was.
If you can’t speak for anyone beyond of your locale and associations, then does that mean that the ‘we all’ in “We all studied in school, and we ALL knew who Oscar Wilde was…” refers only to yourself and your friends/colleagues/acquaintances? Just curious, because it sounded as though (and I’m known to misread things now) the “we all” was broader and more generic than that.
Anyway, if Wilde were not on a school’s curriculum then it’s quite possible that the students at that school would not know about Wilde. I’ve been trying to see if Wilde has been a mandatory part of school curriculum but haven’t found an answer.
But I note that the UK has only just added Oscar Wilde to the mandatory English Literature curriculum as of last year. I’m kind of surprised by this.
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Cicero,
Post 196 above was to you, in response to your post 195 however I posted it to Jonathan.
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I thank SteveG for his thoughtful comments.
He totally nailed it about conservative Christians wanting gays to be portrayed negatively (if they are mentioned at all). A positive, human portrayal of gays is anathema to them.
As for Joel, Victoria, and Michael – they don’t know a damn thing about gay people. They do, however, know how to spread hateful rhetoric about gays.
Jesus is real proud of them!
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Cicero,
I agree that SteveG’s question is very valid. It functionally asks people to empathise with a situation that they may have hitherto seen as completely foreign to them. It’s much easier to dismiss something as being wrong if it remains foreign and unfamiliar.
This debate also often gets shipwrecked on the attraction vs action issue. One side will say; “You don’t choose who you’re attracted to,” and the other side will respond; “Of course you do. Nothing forces you to have sex with someone of the same sex.”
That’s an example of two sides arguing completely different points.
Your answer to Steve highlights the two factors. You explained that you’ve experienced same sex attractions, but you have not acted on them. Now, it was certainly your choice to not act on those attractions (no argument there), but I don’t imagine (I could be wrong) that it was your choice to have those attractions.
So shipwreck 1, in the choice debate, usually happens because people aren’t clear about what they are apparently choosing, or not choosing.
Shipwreck 2 happens because some people simply don’t believe in attraction separate from action, i.e., they don’t believe in sexual orientations. It’s for these people that SteveG’s question is most pertinent, because it requests that they consider that someone else’s homosexuality was reached in the exact same, benign way that their heterosexuality was reached.
Hmm, did I say benign, SteveG?
Perhaps benignly determined homosexuality is as objectionable as benign portrayals of gay characters in plays. Now that’s a thought…
Cicero;
I have concluded that same-sex attraction has at least as much to do with affirming relationship intimacy as it does with body type preference.
This may be a fair conclusion to draw, especially from your experience. But, I would say that most people don’t need to have experienced any relationship intimacy to know who they are sexually attracted to. So, I would ask, are you concluding this about same-sex attraction even though you wouldn’t apply such a standard to opposite-sex attraction? Or do you think that heterosexual attraction also has at least as much to do with affirming relationship intimacy as it does with body type preference?
Enter Shipwreck 3 (it’s kind of an annex of shipwreck 2): Gay virgins. People who have never experienced any relational intimacy (gay or straight) but are clearly/exclusively attracted to members of the same sex.
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Victoria at #194: You never disappoint those here on the blog with your ridiculous questions, which you ask over and over again. Does it occur to you that people IGNORE your questions because their dull-witted, and asked for no other reason that you have nothing else to do with your time. It’s OVER THE TOP BORING!
No, that doesn’t occur to me Victoria, because it isn’t true. My question is relevant, cogent and goes straight to the heart of the matter (as Cicero and Flaming Icarus discern.)
I think you and Joel Mark repeatedly refuse to answer the question because you know the only honest answer you could give is that no, you never chose your sexual orientation. It is just the way you are.
And once you admit that, you would have to face the possibility that the homosexual person didn’t choose his orientation any more than you did. And that is a possibility you cannot bear to face because then you would, if you are of good conscience, be forced to re-evaluate your antipathy toward them.
Every time I ask it and see it ignored (or answered as Joel tries to with a rhetorical trick), my confidence in that belief is reinforced.
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OK
Does Flaming Icarus, Cicero, Anlir and Steveg know one another?
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I think Victoria and Joel’s refusal to answer SteveG’s question actually does answer the question.
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Flaming Icarus at #200: I agree that SteveG’s question is very valid. It functionally asks people to empathise with a situation that they may have hitherto seen as completely foreign to them. It’s much easier to dismiss something as being wrong if it remains foreign and unfamiliar.
Exactly. You know what’s most ironic about that is that empathy is necessary for grace. That’s a large part of the essence of Christianity, that God became man incarnated in Jesus to share in our temptations and sufferings … to empathize.
Perhaps benignly determined homosexuality is as objectionable as benign portrayals of gay characters in plays. Now that’s a thought…
I think you’re right about that.
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Victoria, I have no idea why you ask that, but no … I did not know any of them before encountering them on this blog, and I still know nothing about them other than what they’ve written here.
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There is no question to answer unless you look at yourself and DISCOVER how silly you look!
One of the deep problems with those who sit in the middle of their sins, day after day……? They try to accommodate their sin by thinking that others want to sin just as they do. They can’t imagine that the LORD Jesus Christ is more powerful than sin. Sin is only able to germinate when one gives themselves over to lust and Satan.
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And still you don’t answer my question.
Which as Anlir correctly notes, is an answer in itself.
You don’t want to see homosexuals as vulnerable human beings just like you. As long as you can preach about their sin and deny their humanity, you can believe yourself to be superior.
But you aren’t, Victoria. Your sins are manifest … pride being big one, and hardheartedness another. You “sit in your sin” every bit as much as anyone you accuse, and you are the worse for it because you think it is somehow a virtue.
But you never chose your sexual orientation, did you, Victoria? You know you didn’t, even though you won’t admit it. Your very silence convicts you. Because once you admit it, you have to admit that those you like to look down on and accuse of sin didn’t choose theirs either.
But I do not judge you. I do not know why you are that way, but I do not condemn you for it. I only hope that your heart will one day soften.
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SILENCE doesn’t convict anyone, but stupid, silly questions convicts those who ask them, because they are looking for excuses, because they can’t reconcile their wanton minds to think in terms of how they are made by GOD, but rather how they can transform themselves into something which is un-natural.
Do murderer’s have a choice, does a thief have a choice, do those who molest children have a choice, do those who beat their children or wives have a choice? Do those who lie have a choice, do those who gossip have a choice, do those who cheat on their spouses have a choice. Are these individuals born to do these things, are they able to abstain from these acts which GOD says are sin?
Not everyone thinks of how far they can travel into sin, nor do they try to evade the warnings in the Word of God.
My goodness, I mentioned a lot of choices, is the ONLY choice which man/woman doesn’t have is who they are sexually attracted to? ….
is this the sin which is off limits?How nutty! And to think that some actually believe that they were born that way, to do those things which are un-natural to the same sex, and still believe its not their fault…. “it’s the way they were born” what a handy, dandy excuse to laminate for their license to sin. It reminds me of the ‘tooth fairy’ …. even though we knew there wasn’t one, we giggled as kids waiting to find the surprise under our pillow…. to think adults actually believe there is something viable, un-sinful in homosexuality reminds me of the ‘tooth fairy’- It’s all a TALL TALE!Report comment to moderator
Are these individuals born to do these things, are they able to abstain from these acts which GOD says are sin?
Sure, Victoria, people can abstain from behaviours and actions. But we’re not discussing an action or a behaviour. Sexual attraction is something that you can act on, or choose to not act on. But if you don’t experienced the attraction to begin with, you won’t be faced with the choice of whether to act on it or not.
This is a particularly pertinent point for ex-gay groups like Exodus. Ex-gay groups focus on modifying the response to attractions, not modifying the attractions themselves. Why do they do this? I won’t say it’s because they can’t, but I will say it’s because they very well nearly can’t.
Here’s an interesting article from the Exodus International site by an ex-gay man who discusses a realistic approach to attractions. He makes the strong distinction that it’s the reaction to the attraction that needs to be dealt with, in the reparative setting, not the attraction itself.
Another article from the Exodus site, Homosexuality: Christian Approaches, raises a similar point:
So you can keep claiming that we can choose who we’re sexually attracted to, but not even Exodus International has got your back on that one.
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Victoria,
It is obvious that your side of this argument is losing, whether or not it deserves to. When you argue, you’re not presenting any new arguments, but instead returning to the same assertations about sin and God, which your opponents most likely do not share and therefore which carry no weight with them. It’s like a car spinning its tires futilely while stuck in mud. I have limited time now, but I’ll get back to the conversation with more detail later.
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Cicero (#210):
Your advice to Victoria on supposedly losing this argument, though well meaning, misses an important point. Our ultimate job as Christians is not to win arguments, but to be faithful witnesses. Sure, it helps to be persuasive and we try hard to be so, but that is not our primary focus.
I cannot match some of the gifted liberal writers and debaters who post here, but I can be faithful to God’s Word and the standards He holds us to. Ultimately I answer to Him, not them. What He tells me to do and the standards He sets are the final word. That was part of my point in #190. You view that as “spinning my wheels” with arguments that the opposition will not accept. While it is true that the opposition will not accept those arguments, it is not a vain spinning of wheels.
Right and wrong is never decided by the majority. Even if there were a thousand homosexuals offering their standard litany of arguments on this thread and Joel, Victoria, and I were the only ones standing against their views, that does not mean they “win.” In Sodom, Lot’s family was greatly outnumbered and badgered almost to death until they finally fled. The morning they left, I am sure that the homosexuals gloated in triumph over their “victory.” But we know Who had the last word and that the right was vindicated in the end.
That brings me back to the original subject of this thread, the dictatorial school that tried to force the homosexual agenda upon its students and the concerned parents who rightly resisted. At this point, my advice to all concerned Christian parents is to be like Lot and just leave Sodom. If you love your children, get out now. The homosexuals there, like here, may seem to be “winning” the argument because of their numbers, their underhanded tactics, and many unthinking parents who seem oblivious or indifferent to what is going on. But they will not win in the end, I assure you.
Lately on this thread, the gay’s and their sympathizers have been badgering Joel to “admit” that he is like them. That is a most scurrilous tactic, but it is among many of their underhanded methods to “win” debates while ignoring the evidence of their opponents. Joel is absolutely correct in ignoring this baiting technique.
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Michael Martin at #211: Lately on this thread, the gay’s and their sympathizers have been badgering Joel to “admit” that he is like them. That is a most scurrilous tactic, but it is among many of their underhanded methods to “win” debates while ignoring the evidence of their opponents. Joel is absolutely correct in ignoring this baiting technique.
So when did you choose?
This is not a “baiting technique.” It is the inescapable logical dismantling of the argument that homosexual orientation is a choice.
I don’t blame Joel Mark, Victoria or you for refusing to answer the question; the moment you do, you lose your asserted foundation for your right to anathematize homosexuals.
By the way, before Lot left Sodom, he first offered his virgin daughters to the mob in hopes the men would have their way with them rather than the vistors. Not exactly a paragon of righteousness in my book, or much of a parent.
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cicero – 210
Cicero, I’m not losing anything, but those who don’t turn to the LORD Jesus Christ will lose EVERYTHING. Your comment above ” you’re not presenting any new arguments, but instead returning to the same assertations about sin and God” why would any Believer in Jesus Christ need a new argument when homosexuality is sin. God made that clear in the Bible, so there is no better or newer argument to be made against homosexual behavior.
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Michael Martin has got it totally wrong of course.
SteveG asked a straightforward honest question, which Michael, Victoria and Joel flat out refuse to answer because they know that their position is untenable. Their refusal to answer strips away their religious rhetoric and exposes their unfounded, illogical, immoral hatred of gay people.
Of course, when all else fails they fall back on that old familiar refrain “You’re all going to hell!” as if that puts and end to the whole thing. Of course it doesn’t. If we are all going to hell, I’d contend that Joel, Michael, and Victoria will be sitting there right next to us for their self-righteous, judgmental, hateful treatment of gay people.
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Steveg
Steveg, you aren’t fooling anyone here. It has always been the “you don’t love me” campaign, when Believers don’t agree with homosexual behavior, and refer to the Word of God as it being sin. NOW, it’s “So when did you choose?”
These questions which you and others use as either mantra’s or bait to start yet another argument aren’t clever. The latest of which is, “so when did you choose?”- It really is silly Steveg.
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Is this something “literary”? You decide.
Editor’s Note: I think Alexegz30 was trying to make a point here (that prurient does not equal literary) by posting an indisputably pornographic scene here and asking readers to judge. But the content in the scene is unacceptable for WMB.
Alexegz30: Perhaps you should post a link to the scene and warn people about its graphic content. That way, you won’t violate WMB’s prohibition against sexually graphic material and creatively spelled profanity, but you can still get your point across with bloggers who care to follow the link.
Lynn
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Victoria, your defensiveness is growing as the topic continues because you know you cannot answer the question honestly without destroying your own basis for stigmatizing homosexual orientation.
Otherwise, you’d just answer it.
But allow me to speak to you in the only terms I know you understand:
Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.
Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.
Matthew 7:1-5
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Activists say carmaker meets conditions as sales plunged 8% per month since ‘05
Posted: March 10, 2008
“In the face of plummeting car sales, Ford Motor Company has taken steps to reduce its aggressive, pro-homosexual policies, prompting a family-rights group to call off its boycott of the carmaker.”
“AFA Chairman Donald Wildmon said the original agreement between the family group and Ford contained four items:”
Wildmon said a few minor issues remain, and AFA will continue to bring these to the attention of Ford.
According to AFA, during the 24 months the boycott was in effect, Ford sales dropped an average of 8 percent per month. The organization said its boycott was not entirely responsible for the drop in sales, but played a very significant role. A total of 780,365 individuals had signed AFA’s Boycott Ford petition.
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From Lynn:
“Gay activists are constantly arguing that the gay lifestyle isn’t just about sex. Why then assign Angels in America and reinforce the opposite opinion?”
Angels in America isn’t “just about sex.” It’s about fear of death, fidelity, hypocrisy & bigotry (Ray Cohn), and religion. Sex is a relatively small part of it compared to these themes. Calling it a “pornographic book” is ridiculous! It would be equally correct to call it a religious work, since it has a scene that takes place in “Heaven.” It’s true that it is not appropriate for all ages, but high school should be fine.
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THIS MAKES MY DAY!
It must be nice to be so superior to everyone else, Victoria.
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So now, per Victoria, God has pronounced his judgment upon Ford Motor Co. because it sells cars to gays. Sometimes I wonder if Victoria is a “plant” from Rev. Phelps on here.
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Anlir
Ford Motor Co. obviously decided they couldn’t continue to lose money to support the homosexual ‘agenda’. 780,365 individuals signed AFA’s Boycott Ford petition. That’s a whole BUNCH of signatures, which obviously gave them food for thought, not to mention LOST BUSINESS.
Phelps isn’t anyone my Church or I would think of being involved in, but it doesn’t surprise me that you would say something this silly!
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#222 oooh – hurray for your side!
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It’s WONDERFUL, they saw the light!
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Well Victoria, I know it’s huge moral evil to sell a car to a gay person in your little Rev. Fred Phelps world.
But out here in the real world, Ford Motor Company is happy to sell cars to anyone (gay or straight) who lays down the money.
Your angry, hateful anti-gay language is more than negating your claims of being a Christian.
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Anlir (#214) writes:
Their refusal to answer strips away their religious rhetoric and exposes their unfounded, illogical, immoral hatred of gay people.
Your accusations of immoral hatred are false. Gays have been whining this refrain for years now. You are like the spoiled little girl who screeches, “You hate me! You hate me!” when she is rebuked and doesn’t get her way. I don’t hate you, but you are disgusting and juvenile when you employ such tactics. Grow up.
You said in an earlier post (#199):
As for Joel, Victoria, and Michael – they don’t know a damn thing about gay people. They do, however, know how to spread hateful rhetoric about gays.
Again, you don’t know what you are talking about. You know nothing about me or Joel or Victoria or what we know about gay people. My son is gay and in prison. He doesn’t hate me. I don’t hate him and we get on quite well together. He calls home once a week. When we occasionally talk about this issue, he knows what I believe, what the Bible says, and he doesn’t accuse me of hating him when I tell him he is wrong and in sin. He, in contrast to you, is an adult and can handle disagreement without juvenile hysteria or making lying accusations that I hate him.
As to the choice issue, everyone makes them. When you choose to have sex with another man, you are sinning and your behavior is an abomination to God. He didn’t design you to do that. Your physcial equipment is designed for mating with a human female, not other men, or boys. You should retake Biology 101.
One day you will stand before God and He will say to you, as He did to Job:
“Who is this that darkens my counsel with words without knowledge? Brace yourself like a man; I will question you, and you shall answer me.”
What will you say to HIm about your homosexuality? Will you falsely accuse Him of hating you? Will you have the audacity to instruct Him about how He made you? Will you tell Him to His face that you made good choices every time you had sex with another man?
I can tell you right now that you won’t respond in any of those ways. You will be terrified just to be in His presence. If you are able to speak at all, you will plead for mercy and wish that you had never made the evil choices you did in your earthly life.
However, you won’t have to face that if you repent from your sins now and turn to Christ for forgiveness. He doesn’t hate you Anlir, and neither do I, or Joel, or Victoria.
Rather, He says to you now, just as He did to Israel long ago:
“As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign Lord, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live. Turn! Turn from your evil ways! Why will you die, O house of Israel?”
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Michael Martin at #226: As to the choice issue, everyone makes them. When you choose to have sex with another man, you are sinning and your behavior is an abomination to God. He didn’t design you to do that. Your physcial equipment is designed for mating with a human female, not other men, or boys. You should retake Biology 101.
Unless you have evidence that Anlir is a pedophile, I don’t know why you bring boys into it.
Your comment here though raises a good point: The difference between homosexual orientation and homosexual activity. I will agree with you that acting on homosexual attraction is a choice. But homosexual orientation — having the attraction — I maintain is not.
And Anlir is right, the refusal of you and some others to answer my simple and straightforward question, shows that you know this. Cicero is so far the only one who has.
I can’t comment on your relationship with your son, but I would hope that you would draw from your own experience to understand that people who feel attraction to their own sex are not choosing to feel it.
I will ask you another question: Do you believe that all sex should be for the purpose of procreation?
Many things that are common among heterosexuals are intended for pleasure and intimacy, not procreation. Are those things also sin? If a married couple enjoy a variety of sexual activities, including many that don’t potentially fertilize an ovum, are they sinning? (I think Christians have different views on this, so I won’t assume.)
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Anlir – 225
YOU WRITE:……
“But out here in the real world, Ford Motor Company is happy to sell cars to anyone (gay or straight) who lays down the money.”
Read the article over again it has nothing to do with selling cars to homosexuals. IT IS:
“AFA Chairman Donald Wildmon said the original agreement between the family group and Ford contained four items:”
Anlir this should clear up your idea that its about homosexuals buying cars, its about FORD donating money to homosexual causes and supporting homosexual groups, etc.
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Michael,
I weep for your son! Not only because he’s in prison, but because he has a father who says very mean, heartless and hateful things about gays. I wonder if he can see the words you write on here? Does he really know what you think about gay people?
You can wrap up your Gospel message in all the fancy words you want, but, much like Victoria and Joel, your hateful language toward gays completely negates that message. You might want to reconsider your anti-gay rhetoric if you truly want to share your Christian faith with others.
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Anlir
You are so filled with the mantra of ‘hate’ that you can’t see the difference between Believers loving those who are in sin, and hating the sin.
It’s pitiful that you aren’t able to grasp the love that Michael has for his son, you fictionalize ‘hate’ when there is none, and then you call it “fancy words” when in essence they are sincere words from a father who loves his son.
SHAME on you!
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Victoria, if you had written even one single post about your love and care for a gay person, or any acknowledgement that you see their humanity, you’d have a much more credible argument in #230.
All we ever hear from you is words of sin, condemnation and revulsion. You’re perceived as hating gay people because of your own words.
I can believe Michael Martin might love the person. I don’t believe it about you or Joel Mark. You show no evidence of any grace, compassion or love in anything you say about them.
If we can’t see it, it’s because you’re not showing it.
Shame on YOU, pal.
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Victoria and Michael–
As far as the Bible being our ultimate and sufficient authority, that is absolutely true. However, our minds are made in God’s image. They carry several traits inherent in His nature. Among these are the desires to love and be loved, the desire to create, and the desire to learn. True, the desire to learn is a moot point for God, but it is not for humans, and it is reciprocal to our desire to create and our desire to “have dominion over creation.”
Yes, our job ultimately is to show a good witness to the world, rather than to convince them with words. However, as Jesus said, our chief means of showcasing our uniqueness to the world is in how we love each other. He and the apostle Paul also said numerous times things to the effect of:
–if we have everything, but have not love, what we do have is meaningless
–love your neighbor as yourself
–strive to be at peace with all men
Michael, you describe your fairly positive relationship with your son (the downsides being his gayness and his imprisonment). However, the argument could be made that you love him because it is your nature to, not because you choose to. Between you and Victoria, you have said a number of things ranging from fair to inaccurate to hurtful. Some of these were undoubtedly true, some were not. I would venture to say that the liberals began with their fair share, but that doesn’t matter. We’re supposed to turn the other cheek.
I have a gay cousin. I have a few gay or bisexual acquaintances and even friends. In EVERY case, these people are much friendlier, more compassionate, more tasteful, and, dare I say, more loving, than the majority of the straight people I know. Even the majority of Christians I know. That puts our faith to shame. By the way, the Lord takes no delight in the death of the wicked, so I’m not sure that we should gloat because we had a MINOR social victory. At the very least, it makes us look like jerks.
Now, as to why Biblical authority is not enough.
This is a discussion forum. The liberals, and, in some cases, homosexuals, that you are arguing with, do not accept Biblical authority. They do not hold themselves subject to It, therefore blind and continual returns to it CANNOT POSSIBLY GENERATE A POSITIVE RESPONSE IN THEM! I tried to make this clear in my last post, but maybe I didn’t.
It’s especially telling whenever they manage to quote Scripture or scriptural concepts back at us, especially when they do not take it out of context and are absolutely right.
You do have the right not to answer Steveg’s challenge and not say whether you chose either your sexual deeds or your sexual orientation. That is correct. But as long as you continually revert to the same tactics and do not answer that question, you are on the defensive, you cannot make any headway in the debate, and they have you in a metaphorical headlock.
And that’s another thing. Our job, in being good witnesses to the world, is not to gloat at our audience or explain their doom, but to win them over to our side. The only ways we can do that are through reason that they can relate to, or through our actions. Since actions are slightly out of the question in this medium, we revert to the reason. That is why it is not enough to rely on scriptural authority to vindicate any selfish hateful feelings we may express.
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Also, I want to express my respect for the liberals, gay or otherwise, most notably Anlir, Flaming Icarus, and Steveg, who argue intelligently and with maturity, even though it sometimes puts the Christians among us collectively to shame. You are what makes this work.
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#224 Actually, I think they saw the hate and the missing $$$$$ – that is AFA’s favorite modus operandi, right? You must be so proud!
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I tellya, if America wasn’t completely convinced the Christian = anti-gay, this sure oughta help!
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Cicero – 232
You can speak for yourself, which you have, concerning those you know, but I would STRONGLY disagree with you regarding your remarks. I have found my Christian friends to be far more caring and compassionate, loving and ready to help others than homosexuals. My profession and the experiences I have had to date would not agree with your assessment of friends. Christians by nature are more compassionate and caring. The shame you might feel about yourself or the ‘Christians’ you know are a far cry from my experiences in many large Churches and some of the largest Christian organizations.
There is nothing wrong with being ‘joyful’ after Ford Motor Co. decided to stop ‘donating’to the homosexual ‘agenda’ it is a victory for all who stood firm. Hopefully as Believers stand together there will be many other victories in this area. This has nothing to do with “the Lord takes no delight in the death of the wicked”…. its simply a fact that Ford will not be supporting homosexual ‘agenda’s’…..”death” has nothing to do with it, VERY DRAMATIC Cicero.
You continue to bring up Steveg’s constant request to Michael. Why are YOU SO DETERMINED to keep this up? Not answering a question has nothing to do with “you cannot make any headway in the debate, and they have you in a metaphorical headlock.’” Let me remind you Cicero, this is not a court of law, your constant chiming in with those who ask question and don’t receive answers, and then continue to WHINE is becoming more than transparent.
You Cicero need to understand that is a foolish question. Many of us have been patient, and kind, trying to point to God’s Word as the final authority regarding how we should live, and YES that includes homosexuality.
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Actions come out in this medium through story telling, like Janie, when she told of her work with Exodus International, on a much older post.
It is a shame we don’t have Francis Schaeffer here to explain his approach to gays, but Frank did address it in Crazy for God, and it was not like what is being presented here by those who may otherwise appreciate his words on other issues.
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Victoria – “I have found my Christian friends to be far more caring and compassionate, loving and ready to help others than homosexuals.”
You mean like you are eh?
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#236 Hate is a “mantra?” well whaddya know!
How long do you wait before you say the “t”????
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It’s interesting how Victoria quotes 2 Timothy and doesn’t see how far from what it instructs she is.
Here’s one for you, Victoria: 1 Corinthians 13:1: If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.
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One can speak to you in love Steveg, and you won’t hear it, because you hear nothing but ‘hate’ everytime one of the strong Believers says that homosexuality is sin.
Love is telling someone the truth, and warning them. That’s real love, not the pretend ‘cocktail’ variety!
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Steve G (#227) writes:
Unless you have evidence that Anlir is a pedophile, I don’t know
why you bring boys into it.
I make no accusation that Anlir is a pedophile. I mention boys
because the thread started with an article about homosexuality
being presented in our schools. In other cases across the land
homosexuality is being aggressively promoted to children in grade
school, both boys and girls.
You further write: “…I would hope that you would draw from your
own experience to understand that people who feel attraction to their
own sex are not choosing to feel it.”
I will give you the benefit of the doubt as to your purpose stated
above. However, many homosexuals use the same question with the
scurrilous intent of backhandedly accusing their opponents of
secretly being just like them. I believe the best way to handle such a
question from them is to just ignore it.
So what is the nature of our attraction to others of the same sex?
Here is my experience and what I believe. When I was growing up,
my two heroes were Robert E. Lee and Douglas MacArthur. No
sexual attraction there. Another hero was my stepfather. I loved
him, but no sexual attraction there either. Other men that I admired
were athletes in sports that I enjoyed and participated in: track,
football, gymnastics and diving. I could admire the perfection of their
bodies and performances without feeling a sexual attraction for
them. Like any boy, I also had friends that I participated with in
many activities like riding bikes, playing ball, rough-housing,
occasional fights, Boy Scouts, camping, playing with our dogs,
chess, etc., etc. Again, no sexual attraction in any of this.
Along the way in growing up, every boy and girl begin to have God-
given hormonal changes which arouse sexual desire—no choice
there, and no shame either because that is the way God made us.
Also, the fulfillment of that desire is pleasurable and there is no
shame in that either—IF it is fulfilled in the way God intended.
There is the difficulty. I believe that the first few times that desire is
fulfilled is extremely important in determining the future course of
young lives and the type of attraction they become accustomed to.
If a young person, early on, CHOOSES to fulfill that desire, for
whatever reason, with someone of the same sex, it can become
so cemented in their psyche that it is very difficult to change. What
started as the wrong choice in the fulfillment of a perfectly natural
desire, increasingly seems to lose most, if not all, aspects of choice.
The natural arousal of sexual desire and the unnatural manner of
its fulfillment become so inextricably linked that they soon seem to
be one and the same. What God intended as a wonderful aspect of
man/woman marriage life becomes, for the homosexual, a perverse
addiction that he cannot control.
I have no doubt that most homosexuals are sincere in their mistaken
belief about the inborn nature of their condition. But they have
forgotten their first choosing. They have also been deceived by the
incessant propaganda of the homosexual community on this subject
and by their own desire to justify themselves.
As Romans 1 affirms, their sinful choices have confused their minds,
degraded their bodies, and brought them into a darkness from which
few return. This is tragic and heart rending for countless families
and sons.
You ask another questions: “Do you believe that all sex should
Be for the purpose of procreation?”
No, but all sexual activity should be within one marriage between one
man and one woman.
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Victoria at #241: One can speak to you in love Steveg, and you won’t hear it, because you hear nothing but ‘hate’ everytime one of the strong Believers says that homosexuality is sin.
When that’s all you ever say, no love comes through.
I don’t hold out any hope that you will understand this, but loving people means to some extent accepting them with their differences from you. If you’re convinced some aspect of their life is sinful and you tell them that within the context of a loving friendship they may take it to heart.
When you come out with guns blazing preaching how loathsome and evil they are and that’s all they hear from you, there is no love there. And it’s not the least bit surprising when people conclude you are a hateful person, if the only words you have for them, ever, are of condemnation.
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Michael Martin at #242: There is the difficulty. I believe that the first few times that desire is
fulfilled is extremely important in determining the future course of
young lives and the type of attraction they become accustomed to.
If a young person, early on, CHOOSES to fulfill that desire, for
whatever reason, with someone of the same sex, it can become
so cemented in their psyche that it is very difficult to change. What
started as the wrong choice in the fulfillment of a perfectly natural
desire, increasingly seems to lose most, if not all, aspects of choice.
The natural arousal of sexual desire and the unnatural manner of
its fulfillment become so inextricably linked that they soon seem to
be one and the same. What God intended as a wonderful aspect of
man/woman marriage life becomes, for the homosexual, a perverse
addiction that he cannot control.
Perhaps. But there’s a problem here. You described some of your early experiences and made clear you never felt sexual attraction to other boys.
So when you matured sexually and began to have those sexual desires, they were for women. I would guess that fulfilling them with another male never entered your mind.
You wouldn’t have the risk of choosing to fulfill those desires with someone of the same sex (unless forced into it, but that’s a different issue.)
So we still have the question of choice. You would seek to fulfill those desires with a woman because you never would have had any interest in fulfilling them with man. Why then, do you suppose, another boy would want only another male and have no interest in females, even before there were ever any experiences to shape the desires?
I will give you the benefit of the doubt as to your purpose stated
above. However, many homosexuals use the same question with the
scurrilous intent of backhandedly accusing their opponents of
secretly being just like them.
Just to be clear, I am not a homosexual.
The intent of the question is only to establish that sexual orientation isn’t chosen, at least not for most people. (Cicero may be an exception to that). You’ve answered as I expected you must — that you never had a time where you had to choose. Victoria and Joel Mark haven’t, and I predict, won’t answer it, and that’s ok.
It’s fair to debate whether people of homosexual orientation should act on their desires (though the only remaining options are a sham life pretending to be straight and dragging some innocent woman into it, or celibacy.) But I do not think it’s fair at all to condemn the orientation itself, as it is not chosen.
As Romans 1 affirms, their sinful choices have confused their minds,
degraded their bodies, and brought them into a darkness from which
few return. This is tragic and heart rending for countless families
and sons.
It doesn’t have to be. That’s purely a choice for the parents to make in how they deal with it. My cousin was gay. His father was a minister. And yet even though he believed homosexuality was a sin, he never made his son feel unloved or unwanted … the tragedy comes when a parent can’t find the grace and compassion to do that.
You ask another questions: “Do you believe that all sex should
Be for the purpose of procreation?”
No, but all sexual activity should be within one marriage between one
man and one woman.
I ask a lot of questions, I know. It’s my nature.
The purpose of this one was to challenge your argument from biology. If all sex doesn’t have to procreative, then it doesn’t seem compelling to argue that homosexual sex is sinful for the reason that it can’t be procreative.
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Steveg,
If I never say anything that is worthwhile or valuable to you regarding homosexuality, when you claim that my comments are ‘hateful’ ………..SO BE IT.
I won’t defend myself any longer to you. You have made up your mind that my comments are “guns blazing preaching how loathsome and evil they are and that’s all they hear from you, there is no love there.” . . . . . you will hear nothing else, SO there isn’t much else to say.
It is your HATE which will ‘etch’ itself upon your heart, and mirror your anger at those who post the words from the Bible on this blog, which refute homosexual behavior. You can HATE the very thought of being born just like the rest of us, but believing that homosexuality is a choice. But if you really did, would these debates be so important to you?
The reason many people debate on this blog regarding homosexuality is the situation within the public schools, it’s dreadful.
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Sadly, I don’t think Michael, Joel, and Victoria will ever get it. When you are convinced that you are totally right and everyone else is completely wrong, it’s a mindset that is not open to reason or dialog. Ergo, they have made up their mind, they’re convinced that God is on their side, and nothing is going to change it.
Nailing it down, Michael,Joel, and Victoria are convinced that gays are fundamentally evil. Ergo, everything they do or say is evil
It’s mighty hard to deal with folks who believe they and God are right. I usually find that you have to wait until real life gets ahold of them in some way. Hard times in one’s personal life is usually what it takes.
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Anlir,
Ask yourself this question, “do you think you could be wrong” or is it everyone else including GOD Almighty?
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Michael M #242: If a young person, early on, CHOOSES to fulfill that desire, for whatever reason, with someone of the same sex, it can become so cemented in their psyche that it is very difficult to change.
Michael,
It’s the for whatever reason bit that is significant. As you mentioned, you never experienced sexual attraction towards people of the same sex. So, can you consider the possibility that homosexuals, unlike you, did experience sexual attraction towards people of the same sex (and possibly didn’t experience sexual attraction to people of the opposite sex)?
I’m not arguing about the pros and cons of acting on that attraction, or what the Bible says about the consequences of acting on those attractions. But just as you didn’t choose to not be attracted to people of the same sex (and therefore you didn’t have to choose to reject those attractions) other people didn’t choose to be attracted to people of the same sex.
What started as the wrong choice in the fulfillment of a perfectly natural desire, increasingly seems to lose most, if not all, aspects of choice.
You make it sound like everyone has heterosexual sexual attractions, but that homosexuals just choose to fulfil their attractions the wrong way. It’s simply not true. One wouldn’t act on a same sex attraction without first having a same sex attraction.
Additionally, while early sexual experiences would certainly be formative in one’s life, I don’t think homosexuality is determined, or even defined, by behaviour. As I mentioned earlier, same sex attractions occur in people who’ve never had sex.
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Were we to look through the canon, we would find that sexuality and literature (the actual topic of this thread) have been together for some time. We can find this tension there in Dante’s Inferno where Francesca de Rimini falls into adultery having first read of Lancelot and Guinevere. Books cause sin; through the eyes, to the heart, to the loins.
So this battle over Angels in America really is a rather old one. Is the nation and our public schools really at risk because one AP class in one of the nation’s elite public schools assigns a gay-friendly text to seniors?
If the objection is to the language or content, this reveals only a preference for the vaguer innuendo that we readily tolerate. E.g. John Donne’s sophistication in “The Flea”, or Malvolio’s lines that “some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some….”
If the objection that this is not appropriate for a student of a certain age in an advanced class, then that needs to be stated more carefully than it has. To date, this argument has been summarized as essentially “public school evil.” Now THAT is a boring argument. Moreover, it would only fly if one could show that no other school except a public school would ever assign challenging literature like this. Again, not shown.
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Icarus (#248) writes:
So, can you consider the possibility that homosexuals, unlike you, did experience sexual attraction towards people of the same sex (and possibly didn’t experience sexual attraction to people of the opposite sex)?
Of course I can consider that. I not only consider it, but I believe it is true. The Bible teaches that we are sinners from the moment of conception. We have a sinful nature that touches every aspect of our being. From the very beginning, all of us are sinners, not because of what we do, but because of what we are. This teaching is confirmed by what we see around us every day. There is no such thing as an innocent child. They do not have to be taught to do sinful acts, they do it naturally AND by choice.
When a child gives in to his selfish impulse to hit his playmate and grab that toy he wants, in essence he is no different from the mugger who shots his victim and grabs the wallet he wants. The temptation is there for both and they both choose to act on it. However, there is a significant difference in time, habit and consequences for these two individuals. If the child is taught, early on, to resist the temptation and to learn self-control, he then begins to develop character habits that will help him stay clear of paths leading to more serious acts and more serious consequences. The opposite is also true.
As I said before, every aspect of our nature has been corrupted and is defective from the moment of conception. But every one of us is different and with sinful (evil) tendencies of different strengths in different areas. In principle, the homosexual sin is no different than any other category of sin. In principle, the pattern of temptation and the choice of yielding or resisting is also the same. So, I can empathize with the homosexual who struggles with his sinful tendencies, just as I am grateful for the brother who empathizes with my sinful (evil) tendencies toward covetousness, etc. But empathizing is NOT the same as excusing or glossing over. As painful as it may be, there is a need to face head-on what you are and what you have done.
Eventually, as I grow from childhood I begin to recognize that this struggle with sin, temptation and choices, in whatever area, is a losing battle. I cannot win, no matter how hard I try, and no matter how much discipline I acquire. Is this fair? Does the pot say to the potter, why have you made me thus? Oh yes, he says it. At times he literally screams it and is angry at God when he is held responsible for the bad choices he makes. Romans 9 discusses this dilemma at length. There are things there that are imponderable and beyond my understanding and explanation. There is a mixture of inborn characteristics, personal choices, and responsibilities that I do not really understand and am certainly not able to adequately explain. (See #190)
By my experience, the only way to personal peace in this struggle is when I finally give up and accept what God says about me and quit being angry at Him. Then I discover that He is not an ogre anxious to send me to hell, but a loving father, willing to forgive and desirous for every rebellious child to come home. Many of my questions remain unanswered, but I am content with that for now. I do believe I see a little better now, just as John Newton did when he penned “Amazing Grace.” But one day (beyond this life), all will become clear.
But for those who stubbornly refuse to give up, who maintain their anger and their self-justification, there is only one destiny: eternal separation from the God they have condemned, vilified and rejected in this life. Their choice will become permanent.
When Joel, Victoria or I sound like prophets of doom and gloom, it is not out of a sense of righteous superiority or condescending judgment. Of course it’s easy for some to accuse us of that as they continue with their own pattern of angry self-justification. I can’t help what they do with the message. That’s between them and God.
All I can do is continue to be a faithful messenger. I am truly sorry for those who continue to reject God, blaming Him for the choices they make.
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Please see what Andree says in today’s new thread of “Choosing authority.” The things she mentions there are very pertinent to the debate going on here.
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These will be my final comments on this matter.
We should remember that we cannot persuade (or force) a person to be compassionate, understanding, less judgmental, reasonable, or loving.
While I believe the bigotry and hatred that Michael, Victoria, and Joel express toward gays should be firmly stood up to, I have little illusion that I can change their hearts. I stand up to them because of an important principle: that all people, regardless of their sexual orientation, should be treated with kindness, fairness, and equality (legally and socially).
Ultimately I believe that life (karma, God, et al) has a way of dealing with people who mistreat others, are unloving, meanspirited, judgmental, etc. As our Christian friends so often say, you reap what you sow. I don’t exempt myself from that.
Until we meet again.
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Victoria,
These also will be my final words on the matter, at least in terms of arguing with you. Now, as to post 236:
First, though it is possible that the Christians you live around are superior humans to the ones I have lived around, I doubt that there is a significant difference. To be fair, my statement that all the gays I knew were better than the Christians I knew was a little hyperbolic. However, my point stands. You say that Christians are naturally more compassionate and loving than nonchristians. That is true, I won’t deny it, based on my experiences and my beliefs, but only to a point. It really only is true in countries like Sudan, where the only people who call themselves Christians actually are Christians. I take that back–If you throw in radical muslims and evil dictators, probably all “Christians” are better on average than nonchristians. And another thing. The size or power of a denomination or organization most likely will LIMIT the Christlikeness of its members, for the simple reason that any large church inevitably begins to take on aspects of being a kingdom of men rather than a kingdom of Heaven.
As to my statement about the Lord not taking delight in the death of the wicked, yes, I was being hyperbolic there. But what do you hope to accomplish by rubbing such an inconsequential victory in their faces? Rhetorical question. I highly doubt that Ford has had any kind of revival or is concerned about anything other than the bottom line.
It doesn’t matter whether this is a court of law. The question again is in what you hope to accomplish through this argument. The goal of any healthy argument is to sway others to your side, and if you continually belittle their views and their logic–at best–insult them–at worst–and refuse to respond to their contributions, you are sabotaging your goal. Unless of course, your goal is not to sway them to your side but rather to get some kind of prideful lift out of it all. If that is the case, you are accomplishing nothing but lowering our gospel in their estimation, and wasting your time. So yes, they most certainly do have you in a metaphorical headlock if the best excuse you can come up with not to answer a fair question is to constantly call it foolish. You may not feel trapped, but there is no way in the world you can possibly create a positive outcome for yourself or for your cause.
You say many of you have been patient and kind. While that is true to a degree, your opponents in this debate have been far more so. And please, don’t bring up those Bible verses. They are taken ridiculously out of context, and they do not make a whole lot of sense for this discussion, especially quoted by you. You may not be asking questions here, but you are making assertations and gendering strife. And the rest of the verses? They ALL vindicate your opponents, not you, even the parts you have set in bold.
You speak of speaking in love, and your opponents hearing only hate. Tell me, what love is this? Because I seem to hear essentially the same thing they do. If I were them, I probably would have stopped talking to you long ago. I would definitely be prejudiced against the majority of conservative Christians. Right or wrong, that’s how it is, so whatever brand of love you show is undermining the Gospel. I hope someday you can see this irreconcilable conflict between your religion and your actions. If the angels rejoice everytime a soul is brought to Christ, how much more must they weep whenever one of these souls alienates a potential Christian?
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You seem to live for ‘hyperbole’ it’s always a handy excuse to embellish the truth when its pointed out to you. It’s a deliberate embellishment of facts, and a immature attempt at subterfuge.
I’m not impressed with your assessment of Christians vs. homosexuals, WHY, because its false, not to mention your emerging transparency since you came to this blog. It hasn’t been lost on me or others, not too CLEVER, but you gave it your best shot.
Yes I can see that the Scripture would give you more to think about than you wish.
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16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek.
17 For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, The just shall live by faith.
18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness;
19 Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them.
20 For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse:
21 Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened.
22 Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools,
23 And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things.
24 Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves:
25 Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen.
26 For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature:
27 And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet.
28 And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient;
29 Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers,
30 Backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents,
31 Without understanding, covenantbreakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful:
32 Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them. Romans 1
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……Yes, I can see that you’re not ashamed of the gospel of Christ…..at least as much of it as doesn’t contradict you….But that’s about all I can say for you.
Just to check, how many of you reading this agree with Victoria?
Don’t assume I live for hyperbole–my use of it is both rare and grounded in the truth. You are the one here who is one-dimensional, immature, and un-clever, with a profound inability to question whether you might be wrong about something. That’s a very dangerous attitude for any human to have.
I can also tell that you love to take sections of scripture that deal with negative things out of context. I am truly both surprised and sorry that you cannot see what damage you are doing to any gospel that includes more than what you have taken out of context. Then again, that’s not an uncommon problem in your denomination group.
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“Grounded in truth”? ….. this should help you understand the definition of “hyperbole”-
Hyperbole
Definition:
exaggeration: deliberate and obvious exaggeration used for effect,
overstatement, overemphasis, magnification, inflation, embellishment
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Votes for me would have no effect on how I believe or how I speak boldly for Christ. 80% of this blog could agree with you and that would never make you correct in your assessment of me, or my walk with the LORD Jesus Christ.
You don’t know what Church I am affiliated with, another assumption.
Most of the world doesn’t follow Christ, if they did, HE would not have said:
13 Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat:
14 Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.
15 Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.
16 Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?
17 Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. Matthew 7
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Cicero at #256: You are the one here who is one-dimensional, immature, and un-clever, with a profound inability to question whether you might be wrong about something.
Bingo.
Cicero, I’m afraid my first post to you, made when you’d just started posting here, was less than complimentary. I took a challenge you made to me to have been in bad faith and that was my first impression of you.
Since then, I’ve seen you say many things that are intelligent, well-reasoned, understanding of other points of view and unfailingly courteous, even in disagreement.
You have my deepest respect, sir. I have been around here only about six months, but I have been impressed repeatedly with how almost all of the people who participate are able to argue ideas without it turning personal … a rare thing on the Internet as you no doubt know.
You are a skilled debater, obviously thoughtful and you appear to have genuine good will. You add significantly to the qualities I just mentioned about this site, and I am glad you chose to get involved here.
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Cicero (#232) writes:
“And that’s another thing. Our job, in being good witnesses to the world, is not to gloat at our audience or explain their doom, but to win them over to our side. The only ways we can do that are through reason that they can relate to, or through our actions. Since actions are slightly out of the question in this medium, we revert to the reason. That is why it is not enough to rely on scriptural authority to vindicate any selfish hateful feelings we may express.
First, notice how the substance of this thread has shifted from the original subject of the homosexual agenda being forced upon the children in our public school systems. That, and every issue associated with it, has long been forgotten as the focus now centers on the supposed hate of those who would dare to criticize the behavior of homosexuals. It is my contention that there is no way in these debates that homosexual behavior can be criticized in any manner whatsoever without those charges of hate being brought to the front. It makes no difference if the charges are false or true. They will always be made. And why not? By this method homosexuals are consistently successful in diverting attention and portraying themselves as the wounded victims. What works, works, whether it is true or not.
Second, you say that our job is to win them over to our side and your stated method is human reason that they can relate to. You would forego the use of critical Scripture since they reject that outright.
I disagree. Our job is to present the Gospel message, the whole message. Not just the part that doesn’t offend the listener. Read the Great Commission (Mt 28:19,20). I think you give yourself more credit than you deserve when you state that your arguments based on human reason are going to “win them over to our side.” We are talking about human hearts given over to sin. The Bible makes it abundantly clear that the only One who can change the heart is God Himself. One of the primary instruments used is His Word faithfully presented.
Third, your last accusatory sentence is not up to your own professed standards of Christian love. You speak like Anlir.
Fourth, in all your comments on this thread I have not heard the Gospel message at all. You posts have been devoted primarily to criticisms of Joel, Victoria and me. You have talked about the Gospel and all around it, but what is it? I would like to hear you tell me what it is. If I was Anlir and you sought to present the Gospel of Christ, just what would you say?
Finally, I do not completely dismiss your criticism of my rhetoric. I appreciate the need to avoid giving unnecessary offense and I will keep your rebukes in mind. In this regard, tell me what you think of Paul in this passage of criticism aimed at those Jews of his day who insisted that Christians were still bound by the Jewish rite of circumcision:
I was surprised when I first read this. On reflection, I see it as showing the depth of Paul’s love for his children and his anger at those who would harm them by leading them astray. He minces no words and I am sure that he would be roundly criticized in many circles if he were alive and employing such rhetoric today. He was certainly not what we would call politically correct.
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Michael Martin: First, notice how the substance of this thread has shifted from the original subject of the homosexual agenda being forced upon the children in our public school systems. That, and every issue associated with it, has long been forgotten as the focus now centers on the supposed hate of those who would dare to criticize the behavior of homosexuals. It is my contention that there is no way in these debates that homosexual behavior can be criticized in any manner whatsoever without those charges of hate being brought to the front.
Well we are 260 posts into it (261 with this one). Conversations, if they go on long enough, invariably drift from the original topic to other things.
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Michael Martin #260,
It wasn’t one of the lefties that T-boned the thread with a Ford!
And #250, (and after re-reading #190);
I think we agree to a point on the choice issue. That is, when I say that I didn’t choose to be attracted to people of the same sex, I’m simply claiming to have not consciously decided to be attracted (tempted, if you will) to/by people of the same sex. I do not claim that I’m not making a choice when I decide to act, or not act, on that temptation.
The spiritual consequences in all this are actually a subsequent issue and revolve around what one does with those temptations. Indulging in the temptation (lust) or acting on them (fornication) are the things I see the Bible speaking out against. I don’t believe that the Bible says God condemns people for simply experiencing same-sex attractions. For there would be much less cause to try and persuade homosexuals to live a celebate life if it is simply their same-sex attractions, and not behaviour, that gets them “Romans 1:28ed”.
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#258 Wow – claiming victory and martyrdom in the same thread! I’m impressed.
But I still wanna know how you do those arrow thingies.
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Some liberal Christians argue that the Bible actually doesn’t completely forbid homosexuality. They say that the sin of Sodom was not that the mob wanted to have gay sex with the visitors, but that they wanted to force it on them; that the type of homosexuality Paul speaks of in Romans is about lust and promiscuity and doesn’t address committed monogamy; and that even the Levitical prohibition comes from a time when people believed that the semen contained the life force so that a man “spilling his seed” anywhere but into a woman’s vagina was destroying life (which explains the sin of Onan and explains why Leviticus doesn’t address female same-sex relations).
(And anyone seeking to condemn homosexuals on the basis of Leviticus should remember Galatians 3:10, 5:3 and James 2:10).
One article I read on it made this interesting (but lengthy) point:
Nevertheless, the Bible quite clearly takes a negative view of homosexual activity, in those few instances where it is mentioned at all. But this conclusion does not solve the problem of how we are to interpret Scripture today. For there are other sexual attitudes, practices and restrictions which are normative in Scripture but which we no longer accept as normative:
1. Old Testament law strictly forbids sexual intercourse during the seven days of the menstrual period (Lev. 18:19; 15:19-24), and anyone in violation was to be “extirpated” or “cut off from their people” (kareth, Lev. 18:29, a term referring to execution by stoning, burning, strangling, or to flogging or expulsion; Lev. 15:24 omits this penalty). Today many people on occasion have intercourse during menstruation and think nothing of it. Should they be “extirpated”? The Bible says they should.
2. The punishment for adultery was death by stoning for both the man and the woman (Deut. 22:22), but here adultery is defined by the marital status of the woman. In the Old Testament, a man could not commit adultery against his own wife; he could only commit adultery against another man by sexually using the other’s wife. And a bride who is found not to be a virgin is to be stoned to death (Deut. 22:13-21), but male virginity at marriage is never even mentioned. It is one of the curiosities of the current debate on sexuality that adultery, which creates far more social havoc, is considered less “sinful” than homosexual activity. Perhaps this is because there are far more adulterers in our churches. Yet no one, to my knowledge, is calling for their stoning, despite the clear command of Scripture. And we ordain adulterers.
3. Nudity, the characteristic of paradise, was regarded in Judaism as reprehensible (2 Sam. 6:20; 10:4; Isa. 20:2-4; 47:3). When one of Noah’s sons beheld his father naked, he was cursed (Gen. 9:20-27). To a great extent this nudity taboo probably even inhibited the sexual intimacy of husbands and wives (this is still true of a surprising number of people reared in the Judeo-Christian tradition). We may not be prepared for nude beaches, but are we prepared to regard nudity in the locker room or at the old swimming hole or in the privacy of one’s home as an accursed sin? The Bible does.
4. Polygamy (many wives) and concubinage (a woman living with a man to whom she is not married) were regularly practiced in the Old Testament. Neither is ever condemned by the New Testament (with the questionable exceptions of 1 Tim. 3:2, 12 and Titus 1:6). Jesus’ teaching about marital union in Mark 10:6-8 is no exception, since he quotes Gen. 2:24 as his authority (the man and the woman will become “one flesh”), and this text was never understood in Israel as excluding polygamy. A man could become “one flesh” with more than one woman, through the act of sexual intercourse. We know from Jewish sources that polygamy continued to be practiced within Judaism for centuries following the New Testament period. So if the Bible allowed polygamy and concubinage, why don’t we?
5. A form of polygamy was the levirate marriage. When a married man in Israel died childless, his widow was to have intercourse with each of his brothers in turn until she bore him a male heir. Jesus mentions this custom without criticism (Mark 12:18-27 par.). I am not aware of any Christians who still obey this unambiguous commandment of Scripture. Why is this law ignored, and the one against homosexual behavior preserved?
6. The Old Testament nowhere explicitly prohibits sexual relations between unmarried consenting heterosexual adults, as long as the woman’s economic value (bride price) is not compromised, that is to say, as long as she is not a virgin. There are poems in the Song of Songs that eulogize a love affair between two unmarried persons, though commentators have often conspired to cover up the fact with heavy layers of allegorical interpretation. In various parts of the Christian world, quite different attitudes have prevailed about sexual intercourse before marriage. In some Christian communities, proof of fertility (that is, pregnancy) was required for marriage. This was especially the case in farming areas where the inability to produce children-workers could mean economic hardship. Today, many single adults, the widowed, and the divorced are reverting to “biblical” practice, while others believe that sexual intercourse belongs only within marriage. Both views are Scriptural. Which is right?
7. The Bible virtually lacks terms for the sexual organs, being content with such euphemisms as “foot” or “thigh” for the genitals, and using other euphemisms to describe coitus, such as “he knew her.” Today most of us regard such language as “puritanical” and contrary to a proper regard for the goodness of creation. In short, we don’t follow Biblical practice.
8. Semen and menstrual blood rendered all who touched them unclean (Lev. 15:16-24). Intercourse rendered one unclean until sundown; menstruation rendered the woman unclean for seven days. Today most people would regard semen and menstrual fluid as completely natural and only at times “messy,” not “unclean.”
9. Social regulations regarding adultery, incest, rape and prostitution are, in the Old Testament, determined largely by considerations of the males’ property rights over women. Prostitution was considered quite natural and necessary as a safeguard of the virginity of the unmarried and the property rights of husbands (Gen. 38:12-19; Josh. 2:1-7). A man was not guilty of sin for visiting a prostitute, though the prostitute herself was regarded as a sinner. Paul must appeal to reason in attacking prostitution (1 Cor. 6:12-20); he cannot lump it in the category of adultery (vs. 9).
Today we are moving, with great social turbulence and at a high but necessary cost, toward a more equitable, non-patriarchal set of social arrangements in which women are no longer regarded as the chattel of men. We are also trying to move beyond the double standard. Love, fidelity and mutual respect replace property rights. We have, as yet, made very little progress in changing the double standard in regard to prostitution. As we leave behind patriarchal gender relations, what will we do with the patriarchalism in the Bible?
10. Jews were supposed to practice endogamy–that is, marriage within the twelve tribes of Israel. Until recently a similar rule prevailed in the American South, in laws against interracial marriage (miscegenation). We have witnessed, within the lifetime of many of us, the nonviolent struggle to nullify state laws against intermarriage and the gradual change in social attitudes toward interracial relationships. Sexual mores can alter quite radically even in a single lifetime.
11. The law of Moses allowed for divorce (Deut. 24:1-4); Jesus categorically forbids it (Mark 10:1-12; Matt. 19:9 softens his severity). Yet many Christians, in clear violation of a command of Jesus, have been divorced. Why, then, do some of these very people consider themselves eligible for baptism, church membership, communion, and ordination, but not homosexuals? What makes the one so much greater a sin than the other, especially considering the fact that Jesus never even mentioned homosexuality but explicitly condemned divorce? Yet we ordain divorcees. Why not homosexuals?
12. The Old Testament regarded celibacy as abnormal, and 1 Tim. 4:1-3 calls compulsory celibacy a heresy. Yet the Catholic Church has made it mandatory for priests and nuns. Some Christian ethicists demand celibacy of homosexuals, whether they have a vocation for celibacy or not. But this legislates celibacy by category, not by divine calling. Others argue that since God made men and women for each other in order to be fruitful and multiply, homosexuals reject God’s intent in creation. But this would mean that childless couples, single persons, priests and nuns would be in violation of God’s intention in their creation. Those who argue thus must explain why the apostle Paul never married. And are they prepared to charge Jesus with violating the will of God by remaining single?
Certainly heterosexual marriage is normal, else the race would die out. But it is not normative. God can bless the world through people who are married and through people who are single, and it is false to generalize from the marriage of most people to the marriage of everyone. In 1 Cor. 7:7 Paul goes so far as to call marriage a “charisma,” or divine gift, to which not everyone is called. He preferred that people remain as he was–unmarried. In an age of overpopulation, perhaps a gay orientation is especially sound ecologically!
13. In many other ways we have developed different norms from those explicitly laid down by the Bible. For example, “If men get into a fight with one another, and the wife of one intervenes to rescue her husband from the grip of his opponent by reaching out and seizing his genitals, you shall cut off her hand; show no pity” (Deut. 25:11f.). We, on the contrary, might very well applaud her for trying to save her husband’s life!
14. The Old and New Testaments both regarded slavery as normal and nowhere categorically condemned it. Part of that heritage was the use of female slaves, concubines and captives as sexual toys, breeding machines, or involuntary wives by their male owners, which 2 Sam. 5:13, Judges 19-21 and Num. 31:18 permitted–and as many American slave owners did some 150 years ago, citing these and numerous other Scripture passages as their justification.
These cases are relevant to our attitude toward the authority of Scripture. They are not cultic prohibitions from the Holiness Code that are clearly superseded in Christianity, such as rules about eating shellfish or wearing clothes made of two different materials. They are rules concerning sexual behavior, and they fall among the moral commandments of Scripture. Clearly we regard certain rules, especially in the Old Testament, as no longer binding. Other things we regard as binding, including legislation in the Old Testament that is not mentioned at all in the New. What is our principle of selection here?
For example, virtually all modern readers would agree with the Bible in rejecting: incest, rape, adultery, and intercourse with animals. But we disagree with the Bible on most other sexual mores. The Bible condemned the following behaviors which we generally allow: intercourse during menstruation, celibacy, exogamy (marriage with non-Jews), naming sexual organs, nudity (under certain conditions), masturbation (some Christians still condemn this), birth control (some Christians still forbid this).
And the Bible regarded semen and menstrual blood as unclean, which most of us do not. Likewise, the Bible permitted behaviors that we today condemn: prostitution, polygamy, levirate marriage, sex with slaves, concubinage, treatment of women as property, and very early marriage (for the girl, age 11-13).
And while the Old Testament accepted divorce, Jesus forbade it. In short, of the sexual mores mentioned here, we only agree with the Bible on four of them, and disagree with it on sixteen!
I don’t expect, and won’t try, to convince our conservative friends that they should adopt this view; but it is a very intriguing idea, and the above passage about how few of the Bible’s sexual rules we actually adhere to today is undeniably correct.
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SteveG,
I’m not sure I understand your statement: For there would be much less cause to try and persuade homosexuals to live a celibate life if it is simply their same-sex attractions, and not behaviour, that gets them “Romans 1:28ed”.
If what you’re saying is that actions and not inclinations are what Paul indicts, then within the circle of believers, this would seem to be a rationale for encouraging celibacy for Christians burdened with homosexual inclinations. Is this what you’re getting at? I’m not sure.
In your subsequent quoted commentary, I think there is something missing, namely the intensity and specificity of Paul’s remarks, and their place in the witness of the New Testament. These would have to be diminished or disregarded to sustain the level of ambiguity Walter Wink contends.
Regards,
SG
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Spinoza,
Hold your mouse over the arrow thingie and you should see a little box come up showing the text that was used to create the arrow thingie. (It works in IE at any rate, I don’t know if it works in all browsers.)
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Michael, you have raised an excellent point. I am a professing Christian and have been all my life. I was raised in a variety of conservative Presbyterian environments, and am currently associated with the Missouri Synod Lutherans, though I prefer not to identify with any particular church organization. Part of this is my belief that there is no such thing as a church with pure doctrine, and the inability of any church I have been in to acknowledge that there could be interpretations of Scripture other than their own.
I believe that the Bible is the inerrant word of God, that he is perfect and loving and triune, and that any seeming contradictions to this in His word are based on either twisting, misunderstanding, or taking out of context, of this word. In order to establish His love for his fallen creatures, He sent His son to live a perfect life and die a perfect death. This was both to establish an example for us and to ransom us from our sin. The Spirit of God indwells His elect, who may or may not have been predestined from before all things, and It also serves to draw them closer God in spirit and in truth.I believe that Christianity, properly practiced, is the only demonstrably true religion. I believe that on the last day all things will be made right, all truth will be revealed, and that whatever happens then will be both just and merciful.
As to the Galatians passage:
It is important to remember that most of the New Testament, particularly the epistles, are directed specifically toward congregations of believers. I believe in this case that Paul was expressing frustration with Jewish heretics who sought to impose the old laws which had been fulfilled and which therefore had at best psychosomatic effects.
It is important to note that the only times Jesus himself expressed anger or judgment, he was speaking against the current religious powers, which had become stagnant and corrupt, and lacked even their original, then-unfulfilled virtue. The modern institutional church has much of this same affliction. Part of this has to do with its age, part has to do with its material prosperity in Western countries, and part has to do with its organization.
I believe that Paul was using sarcasm, particularly language that the Gentiles, who had never practiced circumcision and therefore who could relate to this better, would be able to share in. What I mean is, Gentiles would easily mock the entire practice of circumcision, and through hyperbole, liken it to sterilizing themselves completely. This passage also shows that one of the Jews’ main objections to the fledgling church was its disregard for tradition.
Now, as to the (un)necessary offense issue.
Whenever the apostles witnessed to people, they would start with something to which their audience could relate. At no point would they alienate them. When they began with the Jews, who already knew Jehovah, they could begin right with Jesus, since the denial of Jesus was the main thing that separated them from the Christians anyway. However, when Paul went to Corinth or Athens, I forget which, he saw an altar to an unknown god, and used that as a segue to reach the local philosophers. He could not start right with Jesus, nor could he start with the Old Testament, the Bible of the day. I’m in no way saying that Scripture has no part in evangelism. However, throwing it at people who do not first acknowledge its authority is not likely to have good effect. That’s the main problem Victoria has–she keeps using scripture on people who do not recognize it as the ultimate authority of faith and life, and if she is trying to reach them through this, it is very counterproductive. Oh yeah, and whenever someone makes an argument she doesn’t care to address, her response is to say that it’s worthless and not worth responding too. How would you feel if your spouse treated you like that every time you had a disagreement? Victoria, I know I am on thin ice here, but I can’t help wondering how often your husband gets it, even though I know that’s quite personal and none of my business. I won’t go any farther with that tangent.
Also, most of what she has quoted came from either the epistles or the Old Testament. Because of this, it was all designed for the edification of those who were already believers or under a covenant with God, not to be thrown back at the world as various proof-texts. In fact, I don’t think there is any portion of scripture that is geared toward unbelievers. I find this rather telling.
So, if we’re going to be starting our contact with unbelievers with scripture, we really should make sure that it’s either a balanced cross section (and who are we to determine what that is anyway) or a section emphasizing God’s mercy and love rather than grim imprecations. Yes, the Holy Spirit is ultimately what saves, and It can do so by whatever means it chooses, but that is no more a license for us to behave poorly toward our neighbors than God’s forgiveness is a license for us to “sin the more, that grace might abound.
I hope I’ve shed some light on these issues
Victoria, you are part of a large, conservative evangelical denomination–that much is either obvious from your writing or is stated about you on the meet the regulars page. So it’s not exactly true that I don’t know what church you are part of, having such roots myself.
Back to that issue about choosing orientation. Yes, there were times when I was “tempted” homosexually. Each of these times, I chose not to act on my thoughts and also not to think them any further. The vast majority of my temptations have been heterosexual, also. I did choose not to foster these temptations, so in that way, it was a choice. At the same time, though I could have encouraged them and am convinced that I could have become bisexual or even gay, I never “chose” my sexual orientation. What goes into sexual orientation is undoubtedly very complex and probably will never be fully understood.
I would speculate that sexual orientation is a lot like a habit, such as smoking, alcoholism, knuckle-cracking, overeating, or the way we brush our teeth. Anyone can become “addicted” to any of these, but some people never eat too much, and others (myself included, though I am not fat) constantly struggle with it. Everyone agrees that there are chemical factors, emotional factors, and even genetic factors that can predispose people toward these “addictions.” Obviously, sex is ingrained far deeper in humans than smoking or toothbrushing, but I would also guess that homosexuality is ingrained less deeply than heterosexuality. Because I believe the Bible, and because I refuse to believe that the God I believe in would be any harsher to homosexuals than he would to liars or petty thieves, that is one hypothesis I have come up with. I welcome the thoughts of everyone on it. Unless, or course, you’re going to call it childish, worthless, transparent, and stupid, and then post a long Bible passage.
Thank you Steveg, that means a lot.
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Spinoza:
Nya
nya-na 
nyaaa 
nya!
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Serious George: That was Flaming Icarus, not me, who made the “Romans 1:28ed” remark. I’ll let him respond to your question about it rather than presume to speak for him.
As for the post I did make, quoting the Walter Wink article, I’m not trying to argue it pro or con. I just referenced it as being at least worth being aware of as alternate point of view.
I will say that I think that any Christian argument against homosexuality in total has to stand or fall on what Paul said in Romans. Appealing to the Old Testament won’t do, partly because both Paul and James emphasize that if you try to be justified by Law you must perfectly keep the entire Law, and partly because of Wink’s cogent and bracing laying out the case that Christians today ignore 16 of 20 specific Old Testament rules regarding sexuality and see no conflict in doing so.
Of course that number may vary. Some churches do take a stronger stance toward divorced persons than Wink notes, but even they ignore 15 of the 20 rules. And without a clear rationale for singling out a few and disregarding the rest, it’s arbitrary to invoke Leviticus as a reason.
I do recommend people follow the link and read the entire article. The piece I quoted here is only one of several significant arguments he makes.
As regards Paul, I will say that the passage in Romans has two elements that argue against interpreting it as a blanket ban on homosexuality:
1. Paul portrays it as men and women who have been heterosexual suddenly becoming attracted to the same sex. He does not address those who have always been of homosexual orientation.
2. Paul portrays it not as something that is sin, but as something that is a penalty for sin — and not just any sin, but specifically the sin of idolatry.
Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools 23and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles.
24Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. 25They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.
26Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. 27In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion.
That’s the full context. Taken as a whole, it sounds less like Paul is condemning homosexuality than warning that those who don’t acknowledge God will fall into “shameful lusts” and includes both heterosexual (verse 24) as well as homosexual. It says nothing against committed, honorable monogamous relationships, either hetero or homo.
This may vindicate Peter Leavitt’s “pelvic freedom” argument as regards materialists who do believe the creation is all there is and don’t acknowledge a creator. But does it condemn homosexuality per se? That’s much less obvious.
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Very serious, George.
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SteveG,
Verses 24 and 25 are vague, and could be construed as indictment of certain heterosexual behavior, but verses 26 and 27 appear to be specifying. In this passage, the trajectory of what Paul writes appears be following a progressively narrowing focus that leads to a quite specific end. He’s dealing with homosexuality, and doesn’t to my ear sound to be exempting monogamous homosexual behavior. Elsewhere Paul deals with perversion of heterosexual behavior. Neither is given a clear pass. The fact that a lawyer of his caliber doesn’t provide exemptions for “committed honorable relationships” might be telling.
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SG: The fact that a lawyer of his caliber doesn’t provide exemptions for “committed honorable relationships” might be telling.
It might be. But it could also just mean that such a thing wasn’t part of his experience and so he didn’t consider it. One thing that is clear about the whole passage is that it’s describing animalistic lust. Whether it applies to committed love is unclear.
It is clear, however, that the whole bit is described as a consequence of idolatry, of failing to acknowledge the Creator. Paul doesn’t say homosexuality per se is wrong (which might also be telling for a lawyer of his caliber), but