Excuse me, but you were the one who promoted that because you implied that I was an evil dictator for suggesting that homosexual men stay single. Can I ask you again to explain to me why that's a "wrong" suggestion?
I never called you an evil dictator. I just simply stated that you're suggesting that homosexuals remain single and celebate for the rest of their lives. If they choose to do this by their own volition, that's fine. But none of us have the right to tell anyone else that they don't have the right to love and to be with someone in a mutually consenting relationship.
Nothing could be further from the truth. They're human beings just like us
Oh, put a sock in it with this ridiculous propaganda, I know they are humans and never suggested otherwise, this leftist zombie rhetoric you employ is incredibly irritating.
Propaganda? I was merely making a simple statement. No propaganda intended. I guess one person's simple comments in another person's propaganda and vice versa.
where sex only plays one part of their lives just like heterosexuals. Please forgive me if this is not what you said and if I misunderstood.
Ok, you're forgiven because you did misunderstand.
"They are prohibited from that behavior by G-d - It doesn't affect my quality of life but theirs!"
Fine. Then let G-d be the judge and not us.
Indeed, but it is a sin for us to promote their behavior or tell them it is ok when it isn't! And THAT does affect us.
When did I ever say we should encourage their behavior? I never said that! The only thing I say is that we should just leave them the hell alone. That's not the same thing as encouraging their behavior.
The result of this kid's suicide was not the result of being encouraged or discouraged by others, it was the result of bullying, embarrassment, and harrassment. If he wasn't bullied this way, he wouldn't have done what he did. So I'm not saying the bullies should have encouraged him, they shoulda just left him the hell alone. If they just did that, this kid would still be alive today.
All I'm saying is that we oughta do the same. We shouldn't encourage them. We should just leave them alone.
"Why should the degree to which it affects my quality of life be relevant to this discussion."
Because if something doesn't affect us personally and isn't doing harm to anyone else,
Logical fallacy - it is doing harm because encouraging a person to sin is a sin for us (and it harms the person being encouraged too).
Again, leaving someone alone to live their own life is NOT the same thing as encouraging.
then we should just live and let live and let G-d take care of the rest.
There's a logic to this which I agree with. Live and let live does not mean sanctioning unions of homosexual "partners" where the intention is to live together and have sex with one another in a loving relationship or putting female rabbis in kippas to sanction it. (And that's what marriage does entail!) It would mean staying the hell out of it.
I never mentioned any of the above items. I fully agree that we should just stay the hell out of it.
"In Judaism this behavior is a sin. Period. It seems that you're coming from a place where you don't care what Judaism says. So there is no way to have a commensurable conversation. However, the Jewish community functions with adherence to our peculiar Jewish religion."
This just proves the point of Sam Harris that G-d and religion are conversation stoppers. It doesn't matter what the rational merits and reasons of an argument or issue. If G-d says it, then there's no debate. It's the end of the conversation. Plain and simple.
So what? Why can't certain conversations have conversation stoppers? Why is there no such thing as a red line in society?
Such absolutistic dogma to live by! I, for one, don't believe that things in life are that simple. But that's a whole other issue for another discussion.
Judaism is not an "absolutistic dogma" but an obvious issues like this where G-d quite plainly says certain things are forbidden, there really can't be an argument about it. It doesn't mean "things in life are that simple" (that's a quite general statement) and there can be many difficult and complicating circumstances surrounding that prohibition. But nonetheless the prohibition exists, difficult or complicated as circumstances might be and we have to bear that in mind despite whatever obstacles...
I don't think it's accurate to assert that obeying G-d is "believing that things in life are simple."
No, what I'm saying is that by boiling things down to whether something is right or wrong by stating that, "Well, it's wrong because G-d said so" is simplifying things. I say this because I strongly believe that many things that we claim that G-d says is wrong was simply made up by humans and then they put these words into the mouth of G-d in order to try to control people's behavior. I know that this might be a very blasphemous thing to state on this forum. But it's honestly what I believe. And hey, I haven't been banned yet for expressing these beliefs. But I won't be surprised in the least if I ever am. The fact that I haven't been banned for expressing my agnostic secular humanistic beliefs shows that this forum is relatively tolerant.
