WIP

I didn't say they act the way they do because their church tells them to; but if the church teaches the homosexuality = sin doctrine, that is used to justify their other statements or actions. But, communism is a spent force in the world today, fundamentalist religions are not! And communism is not really an evidence-based philosophy to begin with. It may be materialistic, but it also has many of the trappings of religion also. It's likely that the success of communism depended on the 'cult of the emperor' movements that developed around Lenin, Stalin, Mao, and the Kims in North Korea. Even in China, the Communist Party has lost its moral underpinnings in the age of capitalism. It's just about maintaining one party government control. Back in the days when Mao was in charge, every stupid idea he had, was followed to the letter...so, in the 1960's Cultural Revolution, he declared that there was famine because too many birds were eating the grain in the fields, and ordered that all birds be killed everywhere. So, when the Americans and other first westerners were visiting China in the early 70's, the thing that freaked them out most wasn't the millions of people dressed in the same Mao Jackets -- it was the eery quiet, because there were no birds anywhere! I assume that China recovered their bird populations at least a little after that lunacy of Mao, but the ecological repercussions may never have been set right afterwards. And, whatever Mao said in the past, he can't harm homosexuals today. I would suspect that these days, with the Communist Party facing riots in the streets and riots at sweatshop factories, they have much bigger fish to fry than worry about what gays are doing there.

Now, show me the community that sanctioned murder within the community? This is where morality begins...we've already pretty well established that humans are not blank slates! We do have physical traits that are universal, which are necessary for a social animal living in groups. What is fluid, is what if any regard we have for the 'other.' Primitive societies usually had one word in their language for their tribe, or community, and one word for everyone else, no matter what tribe they were from, they were all outsiders....our historic legacy leaves us with the example of Jew and gentile. And, whether they would immediately kill all strangers or seek cooperative arrangements, such as trade, depended on the situation on the ground: the degree of crowding and competition for food and other resources, and whether or not their main camps had secure natural barriers that protected them from attack. As civilization progressed, political and religious identifications have developed to try to unite people of different family backgrounds, and the future of the human race itself right now, hinges on our ability or inability to develop a universalist sense of the world and all of the people of the world having the same primary interests in common, and mutual survival requiring everyone's cooperation, regardless of race, nationality, or religious background. Could you explain further? Are you implying that opposing cannibalism and the slaughter of innocents is a western value that has to be spread or imposed on the third world? I guess that is what you are trying to imply....that based on this dubious anecdote, third world people are ruthless and self-interested...or at least more so than the 'third world' people I live near and work with!

The way the agency running the CBC is set up, at arm's length from Parliament, it takes a long time before a government could replace directors with people of their own liking....and hopefully Harper won't be in power long enough to make that happen! If anything, he will try to follow the path of crippling the CBC through budget cuts....the same tactic that Republicans started under Reagan in the 80's with PBS. And speaking of PBS -- it's in a sorry state right now compared to where they were in the 70's. Their news shows were more of the same beltway journalism that the networks ran, but they at least had independent news analysts and documentaries that challenged the status quo. As PBS, and it's affiliates lost public funding and became more and more dependent on endowments and corporate grants to stay on the air, their programming has become more and more pathetic! Bill Moyers was forced to give up his show because of sponsors, and his new show is carried on less than half of the PBS affiliates because of this fear of the corporate directors. He doesn't pull his punches when analyzing the issues that the rest of the MSM won't cover....like the most recent episode on ALEC for example. And NOVA...now there's an example of how "public" television is no longer public, when the Koch Foundation becomes the major sponsor, and for some reason, NOVA ignores the entire issue of climate change! I confess that I am not a great fan of the CBC, largely because the national network has a schizophrenic mandate. Should the CBC even be in the business of trying to compete with private broadcasters....I don't think so! They shouldn't be bothering with expensive sports coverage like Hockey Night In Canada for example....let private networks spend their money on that stuff. It's trying to be all things to all people, instead of concentrating on what most public networks do in most countries - stick to airing programming that would not be aired by commercial broadcasters and broadcasting in small markets that the private broadcasters wouldn't bother extending service to. So, I don't know about the rest of Canada, but here in Ontario, TVO is what a public television network should be; and they do it on a fraction of the CBC's budget. Same crap goes on with public radio - NPR and PRI programs are corporate-funded wastes of the airwaves. Real public radio in the U.S. only exists on a handful of fringe low power public radio stations that still remain on the air and are disappearing one by one, as the declining U.S. economy leaves only a handful of wealthy beneficiaries with the money to spend on media. The U.S. banking and finance system is about to crash, so forgeddabout trying to run a military/commercial empire too! And a U.S. Military that's largely grounded would go a long way to reducing carbon emissions!

But, atheists who despise homos have to accept wherever the trail of evidence leads to. Atheists cannot claim to have divine or divinely inspired 3000 year old texts to apply as the absolute authority on the subject. Where it becomes especially damaging, is when Christian converts in Africa, accept the dogmas they learned from western evangelists and apply what the Bible says to the letter of the law, i.e. putting homosexuals to death in Uganda.

Fascinating factoids from the distant past dept: Sandy Denny had already made her name as a solo artist and as a member of the Strawbs before joining Fairport Convention. When I discovered the Strawbs back in the early 70's, they were prog rock band that wrote dark and often disturbing lyrics....the whole album - Grave New World for example. But, it wasn't until I found an old disc in the import bin of the local record store of an early Strawbs album with Sandy Denny, that I discovered her, Fairport Convention, and realized what a metamorphosis the Strawbs had made from the 60's through the 70's. Anyway, this was one of my favourites: http://www.youtube.com/watc'>http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=shlRX7zFP64

We have five corporations controlling 80 to 85% of our private broadcast media, while the U.S. has six; while both Canadian and U.S. Governments are considering further mergers. I could find the link if you really need it, but the FCC Chairman is quietly at work (no public hearings this time) trying to change media consolidation rules that would allow one major media mogul (like Rupert) to own all of the major TV, radio and newspapers in the same market....like Murdoch is trying to do in L.A. right now. When the Bush Administration was trying to pass these rules in his 2nd term, there were demonstrations outside the hearings, and Democrats in Congress (including then Senator Obama) rose up in opposition and declared that they would not allow it to pass. Now, under a Democratic Administration, they are about to do the exact same thing in almost complete secrecy, because, aside from the fringe left media, none of the mainstream - even supposedly liberal media sources are talking about it! This further underlines a point made by radical leftwing black activist - Glen Ford (Black Agenda Report) that Barack Obama was not "the lesser of two evils," as portrayed in campaign strategies to get alienated leftists back, "he was the more effective evil," because he would carry out most of the same policies that a Republican president would do, with just a little tweaks and adjustments on the social issues. So, maybe the minority voters had no choice other than to support Democrats this last time around, since the Republican Party was running directly against them, but a lot of liberals and left-leaning Democrats who were coaxed back under the hope that an Obama - freed from having to campaign and raise money again, will be free to follow a real progressive agenda, are going to see more disappointments in the future, besides what the FCC is doing, and the recent failure of the Obama Administration to provide any leadership at the latest waste-of-time climate talks!

My source is the headlines on the supermarket tabloids. Do you think I really give a damn one way or another? This is only an issue for those of your persuasion, bent on persecuting homosexuals, and a small, and very unfortunate segment of self-hating gay collaborators who assist the process.....the Republican Party wouldn't be able to function without them! But, just to waste more time on your side-trolling issue, a quick search reveals Tom Cruise is #1 on Perez Hilton's poll on the most likely still-closeted gay Hollywood celebrities....he even ranked ahead of Jake Gylenhaal...not that's saying something! John Travolta wasn't in the top 10, and a further waste of my time reveals that he has successfully sued the author of a biography that attempted to out him, although he still has another potential outing waiting in the wings, as a former pilot is seeking release from a confidentiality agreement he signed when employed by Travolta, so he can have the chance to write his own book and spill his guts. And your hero - Kirk Cameron...whatever that creepy looking relationship is that he has going with Ray Comfort, they are still dicks for a whole lot of reasons. But, if you want gay evangelical pastors and church leaders who were outed mostly from their own behaviour (Ted Haggard anyone), there sure are a whole lot of them on the evangelical scandal wiki page. It seems that sex scandals outnumber money and fraudulent healing scandals, and the sex scandals are at least evenly divided between gay and straight....although when it involves interfering with children and minors, it hardly makes a difference! It's just another aspect of the way sheer hypocrisy and fraud can bubble to the surface when people are made to do things that are totally unnatural: like not have sex, or not masturbate, or not even think about sex, as that is equal to actually doing it in the most paranoid, neurotic interpretations.

Still not buying it! The standpoint that gay men can change or be forcibly changed in sexual orientation is not far removed from the more traditional view years ago, that these are either evil or diseased people who must either be put to death or banished to gay ghettos in the major cities. The stories from the Bible Belt indicate that teenage boys in fundamentalist families aren't given a choice in the matter before they undergo whatever sort of gay reversion therapy is prescribed; they have to go through it whether they want to or not. And I don't believe you put a homosexual man into gay therapy and come out with a heterosexual afterwards. All you get is a gay man who keeps his attractions secret and tightly closeted. That would explain the high number of evangelical sex scandals over the years that involve secret gay affairs or the molesting of boys.

yeah right! You're going to give us your professional assessment that opposing betsy's continual trotting out of discredited evidence is oppositional defiance disorder.....or maybe it's because most of us noticed that the experts who study these things abandoned those theories 40 years ago. If you're referring to women changing sexual orientation, you might have a case...I mentioned the same thing the last time I posted a comment here; but if you're going to claim that men can change sexual orientation....bullshit! Science News... from universities, journals, and other research organizations Study Suggests Difference Between Female And Male Sexuality June 13, 2003 The study's results mesh with current research showing that women's sexuality demonstrates increased flexibility relative to men in other areas besides sexual orientation, according to Chivers. "Taken together, these results suggest that women's sexuality differs from men and emphasize the need for researchers to develop a model of the development and organization of female sexuality independent from models of male sexuality," she said . The study's four authors include Bailey and three graduate students in Northwestern's psychology department, Chivers, Gerulf Rieger and Elizabeth Latty. "Since most women seem capable of sexual arousal to both sexes, why do they choose one or the other?" Bailey asked. "Probably for reasons other than sexual arousal."

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What does it tell us, that an obscenely wealthy organization like this has to be subjected to outside pressure, before they will stop trying to pressure suppliers to disregard health and safety concerns in factories where workers earn on average $37.00 per month for working 6 days a week up to 11 hours per day? Obviously nobody at the head office said anything like:'you know, we saving a fortune sending clothing production to this country, let's cut them a little slack. That conversation never happened....which was what the pro-free trade propagandists told us would happen 30 years ago. Western manufacturers have a strong incentive to keep countries like Bangladesh poor and marginalized. They have no intentions of allowing them to improve their living standards, as this might lead them to want to improve wages and working conditions even further in the future. No, these organizations are not the same kinds of organizations! Corporations only have a duty to serve the interests of their shareholders, not the public at large. The U.S. did operate with a system of demanding public accountability from corporations for the first hundred years as a nation. A corporation did not get a permanent charter to operate back then. It had to be reviewed on a regular basis; and the corporation had to demonstrate how it was acting in the public good, or at least was not causing public harm. But, those rules were chipped away on the road to corporations becoming "people too" as Mitt Romney would say. And the CEO's, and top executives, and major shareholders of corporations, have all of the personal qualities of the average psychopath or sociopath: In Jon Ronson's widely acclaimed book The Psychopath Test, Professor Robert Hare told the author: "I should have spent some time inside the Stock Exchange as well. Serial killer psychopaths ruin families. Corporate and political and religious psychopaths ruin economies. They ruin societies." http://www.independe...er-6282502.html Government is highly populated with politicians who are narcissists, addicted to the almost constant attention accorded to them. And NGO's.....it depends on which of the thousands of different NGO's we're talking about before any judgment can be made. Many NGO's are run by sincere, dedicated activists trying to improve the lot for people living in third world situations. Some NGO's are just shadow government operations, like many of the U.S.-sponsored NGO's, which take over public functions that are normally performed by a local government, and take their funding and directions from a head office based in the U.S. or elsewhere, often carrying out U.S. foreign policy interests, rather than learning about what the locals want to have done. The NGO's acting as the shadow government in Haiti after the earthquake, come to mind. They have helped to marginalize the elected government of Haiti, and keep it starved for funds, as they collect the lions share of donations and U.S. foreign aid dollars. In the world I grew up in that might have been true for a time: unemployment was relatively low, a third of the private sector workforce was organized and members of unions or professional associations, and gaps in wealth and income were at historic lows. But all that started changing approximately 30 years ago, didn't it? As soon as the first free trade deal was inked, we started seeing the chipping away of bargaining power of the workforce, the beginnings of outsourcing production, and outsourcing and the threat of outsourcing leading to a steady decline in union membership and weakening of employees position in collective bargaining. The new reality is that all big business focuses on, and needs to focus on is maximizing profits. They don't need to worry about any other factors after they have successfully bought politicians and the political process itself. Antitrust laws have been weakened, both directly and indirectly through trade agreements. And with the lack of protection against consolidation of ownership and foreign ownership, a point is reached in many markets where a business no longer faces real competition. In markets where Walmart has forced other chains and small local retailers and grocers to close, they refrain from passing the savings on to consumers, and start pocketing the difference between retail price and the lowering of product cost from the suppliers. In a high unemployment environment, they don't have to be concerned about employee happiness....otherwise they would offer decent wages. Even safety laws and other regulations become meaningless in an environment where the corporate tail wags the political dog. consider that 14% means 1.8 million employees -- which makes Walmart the largest employer in the U.S. after the U.S. Government. jobs.lovetoknow.com/Largest_American_Employers And as Walmart continues to grow and buy out competing chains, as they have done where I live, and Target being the only other major retailer adding stores, the choices for the retail worker are even less than before. This is getting tiresome: In a related matter, two officials who attended a meeting held in Bangladesh in 2011 to discuss factory safety in the garment industry said on Wednesday that the Walmart official there played the lead role in blocking an effort to have global retailers pay more for apparel to help Bangladesh factories improve their electrical and fire safety. Ineke Zeldenrust, international coordinator for the Clean Clothes Campaign, an anti-sweatshop group based in Amsterdam, said Walmart was the company that “most strongly advocated this position.” The meeting was held in April 2011 in Dhaka, the country’s capital, and brought together global retailers, Bangladeshi factory owners, government officials and nongovernment organizations after several apparel factory fires in Bangladesh had killed dozens of workers the previous winter. According to the minutes of the meeting, which were made available to The Times, Sridevi Kalavakolanu, a Walmart director of ethical sourcing, along with an official from another major apparel retailer, noted that the proposed improvements in electrical and fire safety would involve as many as 4,500 factories and would be “in most cases” a “very extensive and costly modification.” “It is not financially feasible for the brands to make such investments,” the minutes said. http://www.nytimes.c...-fire.html?_r=0

2020! Seriously! Aren't we still in the year 2012? And if so, this report is yet another one extrapolating some present trends into the future without any examination of whether the trends can be supported.....and I don't believe they can be just on the basis of comparing the high population growth rates with the declines in arable land and fresh water resources. We've been over this before! Like I said the last time, capitalist economic theory only measures what can be measured in dollars. And farmers growing a substantial portion of their own food supply does not add anything to the monetary economy....although the benefits to the farmer are better than earning meager wages and having to give back a good portion of those wages to purchase food that is likely the lowest price and more likely to be cheap calories with less nutritional value. We'll see how long the trend from farming to sweatshop labourers goes on before health, longevity and other measures of wellbeing start to take a nosedive. And, this is a rehash of what we were talking about before. If anything, the continual pressure from Walmart, Disney, Gap and other U.S. corporations to cut costs, will reduce the real wages of Bangladeshi factory workers over the coming years, not increase them! And, not that I would even want globalization to be a permanent economic system to start with, but the costs of transportation necessary to outsource production halfway around the world, is going to get too expensive for one product after another, as the conventional oil reserves are declining, and the world is depending more and more on expensive, unconventional oil to transport people and goods. Well, that's a no-brainer -- 1971. Because children born last year in Bangladesh are 40 years closer to a time of reckoning, when an increasingly degraded environment and rapidly rising sea levels, lead to a time when storm and flooding disasters are great enough to force millions of Bangladeshis to try to flee, in search of food and dryer land. And it will be difficult to get out, as they are already hemmed in by the ocean, but India has been building miles of fences and barbed wire barriers to wall off any land passage for a wave of refugees to enter Indian territory by land.

You could be right; I know I am going from second hand observations on this one, but someone I consider a credible source.

That brings to mind a story I heard from Frank Schaeffer in an interview on the subject of his father - Francis Schaeffer, one of the pillars of the modern evangelical right movement. He said his father was strongly against the legalization of abortion, and that motivated him to be more political. But he was opposed to a lot, maybe even most of the attitudes and tactics taken on by Falwell, Robertson and others, who came along after him and focused their attacks on homosexuals and had complete disregard for the poor. If he lived to see the modern day marriage of Republicans and Evangelicals, he might have wanted to take it all back and wish he'd never started working with them back in the early 70's.

I would guess that the majority of men engaging in sex in prison are doing so against their will. It's been a scandal for ages that prisons and the prison system itself gives tacit approval for buggery of new inmates and rewards prisoners for raping male prisoners that they do not feel can be completely subdued through accepted prison disciplinary practices. If the system wanted to stop male rape in prisons, they could do it; in some twisted way, they like the idea that getting raped in prison could act as a disincentive to commit crime after being released. As for the men in prison who are engaging in sex willingly, it's important to point out that sexual orientation is not fixed into specific categories, and has to placed in a spectrum from 100% heterosexual through bisexual stages to 100% homosexual. Some psychologists claim that nobody is 100% in either category...and to complicate the picture even further, most psychologists studying sexual behaviour tell us that sexual orientation is more of a physically fixed behaviour in men, but not so for women. So, it's not unheard of for women, such as a friend at work, to say that she did not feel she was a lesbian while she was married, but somehow in her late 30's, she was losing interest in her husband, finding other women more attractive, panicking about this realization, but then meeting a woman she fell in love with and going through the messy process of telling her husband and going through divorce. When these types of situations happen with men, the guy is almost certainly someone who was already gay or was bisexual with a strong interest in men, that may or may not have been suppressed right back before he got married in the first place. I guess the takeaway is people are too complicated to fit into a few neat little categories.

Sure it is! I've heard from so many televangelists over the years about how easy it is to be tempted into the gay lifestyle, that maybe they could be right....or maybe they could just be projecting, because they are so conflicted about their own gay thoughts.

Did you ever wonder why? Or do you just want to continue to assault gay men? For whatever reasons, dancing is categorized as a feminine activity in our society, regardless of the skill, athleticism and training that dancers have to do to be at the top of their game. Which is why, when a friend of mine who is divorced, in his 40's and having trouble finding steady work in the last few years told me about his only steady income of late - as a set builder and grip for our local theater company, he says he is reluctant to tell most people where he is working now....precisely because most of the actors and senior staff at the theater who are men, are also gay. While none of the young women working in the theater are...maybe the gay women are in the Armed Forces or out driving trucks or something...but they don't seem to be in the theater! And as my friend notes, if he was at least 10 years younger, he would be having the time of his life, because there are so many single chicks and none of the guys around seem to be interested in them...in a sexual way that is. If we lived in a non-homophobic society, would a theater company be a little bit more balanced in the sexual orientation dept.? Likely yes, but it's hard to say.

Just as I figured, you live in theoretical La La Land! But, you probably don't realize it because you have so much company in there. At least 99% of economic discussion....whether it calls itself liberal or conservative or even marxist for that matter, begins from the standpoint that nature is collection of resources to be harvested for our use and enjoyment. The notion that our independence from nature is illusory, since we take the biosphere systems that recycle the atmosphere, the water, the soil, all for granted, does not mean that whatever our economic dreams are, are not dependent on the basic biospheric systems continuing to function normally. Heck, most people even take the non-renewable resources for granted....as you are doing here....but there are absolute limits to the quantities of metals, minerals and stored carbon in the ground, but that's not the threshold peak oil and peak resource theorists are concerned about. It's the inverse relationship between energy and materials cost of extraction to what is still left in the ground available for use. As we go deeper underground, extraction costs rise, just as the harvesting of lower and lower grade ores requires more energy and excavation to be done to acquire the same amounts. Our modern capitalist system has expanded energy and resource consumption so rapidly, especially in this modern era of globalization, that the majority of essential non-renewable natural resources are already adding costs due to growing scarcity, and especially oil, is the prime reason why real economic growth is NOT happening today. I'll go out on a limb and declare that no nation is going to achieve those good old days of 10% annual GDP growth again, because of the impact on oil prices if nothing else! In this past U.S. election season, many Democrats were pretending it was 1933, while Republicans were pretending it was 1980. But neither scenario will occur with the application of either Keynsian or Friedmanomic theories because both of them were constructed on a cheap oil economy that no longer exists. The new economic reality will have to adapt to zero economic growth or declining economic growth. Any increases will be temporary and lead to sharper declines afterwards.

Yep! But I heard about it after it went viral. But if I didn't make it clear enough before so that Betsy can't twist my words around again, the gays who should be forced out of the closet are the public voices who condemn homosexuals or claim that gays can be turned straight....and that would include Tom Cruise on this one....and especially those political leaders, like the Republican gay politicians who were outed...Larry Craig and Mark Foley come to mind....and Foley in particular was preying upon young men who served as Congressional interns in Washington, and yet his Republican colleagues maintained his cover all through his five or six terms in Congress because he did their bidding, including speaking and voting strongly against gay rights. That's the kind of hypocrisy that is most lethal.

Yes! I'll go with what the sleazy tabloids say about Hollywood stars living in denial when it shows up in the Enquirer. You see, the three main tabloids are all owned by the same company. One prints pure bullshit, another prints rumours that get passed around, but the Enquirer gets their stories through checkbook journalism, so when they have a story...like the one about John Edwards impregnating a secret mistress, the odds are it's a real story that will eventually surface in the MSM. Whenever I'm in the supermarket checkout line, I notice that the stories about Obama being a secret Muslim, being secretly gay, having other women, still using drugs, being an illegal etc. are splashed all across the other two tabloids on a constant basis, but not on the main brand! And that's because the company that owns these tabloids is rightwing extremist, so they make sure the other two have all the crap about Obama that doesn't really matter, but like rightwingers in general, they give Obama a free pass on doing nothing...not even mentioning the poor...doing nothing on climate change...expanding U.S. wars of aggression and the military budgets...NDAA and other attacks on civil rights etc. etc., all these things that should have had some opposition from somewhere, get stuffed by the way the U.S. two party system functions....but getting back to the issue at hand, yes, if it's in the Enquirer, they probably bought an insider's testimony to get the story! No, I'm not gay, and I've will have been officially married for 25 years this January....not including the almost 3 years prior that we lived together in sin! And, of course I am aware that there are many men and women who are gay or highly bisexual, who have lived secret lives, while putting on the front of conventional marriage to please their families, their church communities and society in general. But, I want to see those days when gays have to live in denial, and young gay men have to be careful in public to avoid attack, all come to an end! Most of the reason why gays would live in denial in the first place and have a sham cover marriage, is because of the type of brainwashing that you were subjected to and wish to subject others to! I've heard Brother Ray talk on this subject, and he spouts the conventional rightwing evangelical line; but the way him and Kirk interact....especially the fondling of that banana in the video, left a lot of people wondering what was being said at a subconscious level! All I know is I like bananas, I make sure we have plenty at home, especially in the winter time, but I have never felt the impulse to fondle a banana! And, on a public forum, those of us who refrain from posting personal information about ourselves so we can feel more freely in speaking our minds, would have no need to hide whether we were gay or straight, or whether or not we support gay rights. But, in my personal life fwiw, I pretty much say the same thing on this topic whenever I hear gay bashers or the stupid comments that were bandied about before gay marriage was recognized regarding gays attempting to 'recruit' children into their lifestyles. People should be accepted the way that feels natural to them. There should be no such things as "reparative therapies" to try to turn gays straight. We don't come into this world off some cookie cutter assembly line! People are all different, and have different needs. There are not even sharp lines between what's normal for each gender. Some males seem effeminate, while some females are quite masculine in behaviour. It does seem from casual glance that effeminate men have a bigger problem gaining acceptance than butch women. But that's getting off topic too, and these behaviours do not even track specifially along the lines of who's gay and who's straight anyway. Thanks, I'll go check it out, because I believe your views on social issues are more of a concern for others than whether or not you accept the theory of evolution.

Should I assume you that the progressives you are referring to would be the black church leaders who founded and pushed the civil rights movement along in the U.S.? Or are you referring to that small Christian voice, most prominently led by Jim Wallis - founder of Sojourner's Magazine, who attempt to remind Christians of the social gospel contained throughout their Bibles, especially in the Gospels and the Book of Acts? Or, maybe it's both....whatever....I would rather see the "coercive" power of government used to remind people (whatever their metaphysical beliefs) that they have a greater duty than ensuring their own self-interests! And, if the Christian Right is willing to give billionaires, libertarians, Rand acolytes or just plain selfish A#$holes a free pass on that one, so they can concentrate on controlling birth control and making their followers confused neurotics about sex....then I would say from the pov of an outside observer that the Christians on the political left more closely reflect the values contained in most of the books of the Bible than the right wingers. I'm still waiting for a right wing Christian to provide an adequate explanation for how that early Christian community described in Acts is not a template for a communist society!

I had too many other things going at the time to bother posting a response, but you lost credibility with me back when you posted that sob story testimonial of an Israeli woman complaining about having to run to air raid shelter every time the air raid siren goes off! It never occurred to you that on the other side there are NO shelters! Which is precisely why the casualty figures end up 3 to 176 after the bombing campaign has ended. At best, Israel/Palestine is awash, because a nation that practices ethnic cleansing on a regular basis to expand its territories, can be the object of asymmetrical warfare if that's the only avenue left available to redress grievances. In other words, if you don't feel safe in your country, after they have refused to deal land for peace....including go so far as to be the ones who made Hamas what it is today, then it's time to move to a safer nation that doesn't steal territory from others!

Thanks for posting a comedy classic! Are Ray and Kirk really gay, or just living in denial...like Tom Cruise, John Travolta etc.? I recall seeing part of one of those retrospective 'where are they now' type shows about the cast of Growing Pains. The takeaway seems to be that nobody liked Kirk, some refused to do a reunion movie if he was part of it, and he wouldn't hardly talk to others back when they were taping the shows after he turned gay....I mean born again! If someone is strongly evangelical, they have a higher standard to clear than the average believer, who just wants the freedom of conscience, and the freedom to practice their faith. But, when they get up on the soapbox and start telling everyone else in the world that they need to take the same medicine that they have swallowed, they better show results to back up their claims!

Well, you are taking a leap into the absurd, or at least somewhere I don't want to go! I thought the future of our species might be important for some reason.