Posted on 05/20/2003 8:14:33 AM PDT by theoverseer
In four Gospels - including the Sermon on the Mount - Jesus neglected to mention the subject of homosexuality. But that hasn’t stopped a handful of self-appointed leaders of the so-called Religious Right from deciding that it is an issue worth the presidency of the United States. In what the Washington Times described as a "stormy session" last week, the Rev. Lou Sheldon, Paul Weyrich, Gary Bauer and eight other "social conservatives" read the riot act to RNC chairman Marc Racicot for meeting with the "Human Rights Campaign," a group promoting legal protections for homosexuals. This indiscretion, they said, "could put Bush’s entire re-election campaign in jeopardy."
According to the Times’ report by Ralph Hallow, the RNC chairman defended himself by saying, "You people don’t want me to meet with other folks, but I meet with anybody and everybody." To this Gary Bauer retorted, "That can’t be true because you surely would not meet with the leaders of the Ku Klux Klan."
Nice analogy Gary. Way to love thy neighbor.
This demand to quarantine a political enemy might have had more credibility if the target – the Campaign for Human Rights -- were busily burning crosses on social conservatives’ lawns. But they aren’t. Moreover, the fact that it is, after all, crosses the Ku Klux Klan burns, might suggest a little more humility on the part of Christians addressing these issues. Just before the launching of the 2000 presidential campaign, George Bush himself was asked about similarly mean-spirited Republican attacks. His response was that politicians like him weren’t elected to pontificate about other people’s morals and that his own faith admonished him to take the beam out of his own eye before obsessing over the mote in someone else’s.
The real issue here is tolerance of differences in a pluralistic society. Tolerance is different from approval, but it is also different from stigmatizing and shunning those with whom we disagree.
I say this as someone who is well aware that Christians are themselves a persecuted community in liberal America, and as one who has stood up for the rights of Christians like Paul Weyrich and Gary Bauer to have their views, even when I have not agreed with some of their agendas. Not long ago, I went out on a public limb to defend Paul Weyrich when he was under attack by the Washington Post and other predictable sources for a remark he had made that was (reasonably) construed as anti-Semitic. I defended Weyrich because I have known him to be a decent man without malice towards Jews and I did not want to see him condemned for a careless remark. I defended him in order to protest the way in which we have become a less tolerant and more mean-spirited culture than we were.
I have this to say to Paul: A delegation to the chairman of the RNC to demand that he have no dialogue with the members of an organization for human rights is itself intolerant, and serves neither your ends nor ours. You told Racicot, "if the perception is out there that the party has accepted the homosexual agenda, the leaders of the pro-family community will be unable to help turn out the pro-family voters. It won’t matter what we say; people will leave in droves."
This is disingenuous, since you are a community leader and share the attitude you describe. In other words, what you are really saying is that if the mere perception is that the Republican Party has accepted the "homosexual agenda," you will tell your followers to defect with the disastrous consequences that may follow. As a fellow conservative, I do not understand how in good conscience you can do this. Are you prepared to have President Howard Dean or President John Kerry preside over our nation’s security? Do you think a liberal in the White House is going to advance the agendas of social conservatives? What can you be thinking?
In the second place, the very term "homosexual agenda," is an expression of intolerance as well. Since when do all homosexuals think alike? In fact, thirty percent of the gay population voted Republican in the last presidential election. This is a greater percentage than blacks, Hispanics or Jews. Were these homosexuals simply deluded into thinking that George Bush shared their agendas? Or do they perhaps have agendas that are as complex, diverse and separable from their sexuality as women, gun owners or Christians, for that matter?
In your confusion on these matters, you have fallen into the trap set for you by your enemies on the left. It is the left that insists its radical agendas are the agendas of blacks and women and gays. Are you ready to make this concession -- that the left speaks for these groups, for minorities and "the oppressed?" Isn’t it the heart of the conservative argument that liberalism (or, as I would call it, leftism) is bad doctrine for all humanity, not just white Christian males?
If the President’s party – or conservatism itself -- is to prevail in the political wars, it must address the concerns of all Americans and seek to win their hearts and minds. It is conservative values that forge our community and create our coalition, and neither you nor anyone else has - or should have - a monopoly in determining what those values are.
Sodomy statutes are clearly "sharia"-style laws
You really believe that JEFFERSON was a MUSLIM:
Thomas Jefferson on Sodomy Sect. XIV. Whosoever shall be guilty of rape, polygamy, or sodomy* with a man or woman, shall be punished; if a man, by castration, a woman, by boring through the cartilage of her nose a hole of one half inch in diameter at the least. Peterson, Merrill D. "Crimes and Punishments" Thomas Jefferson: Writings Public Papers (Literary Classics of the United States, Inc. 1984) pp. 355, 356.
all homosexuals think one way
Compared with their heterosexual peers, homosexual men were at greater risk for psychiatric disorders, including mood and anxiety disorders, bipolar disorders, major depression, obsessive-compulsive disorders, panic disorder, agoraphobia, social phobia, and simple phobia. ---Theo G. M. Sandfort, Archives of General Psychiatry Vol. 58, Number . , 2001. Page(s) 85-91.
Texas Phys.Resource Council, Christian Med. & Dental Association, Catholic Med.Association Sodomy is an efficient method of transmitting STDs. And regardless of the reason, same-sex sodomy is far more effective in spreading STDs than opposite-sex sodomy. Multiple studies have estimated that 40 percent or more of men who practice anal sex acquire STDs. In fact, same-sex sodomy has resulted in the transformation of diseases previously transmitted only through fecally contaminated food and water into sexually caused diseases primarily among those who practice same-sex sodomy.
Homosexual behavior increases risk of AIDS - Dr. Brian J. Kopp, ... An exhaustive study in The New England Journal of Medicine, medical literature's only study reporting on homosexuals who kept sexual "diaries," indicated the average homosexual ingests the fecal material of 23 different men each year.
Medical Consequences of What Homosexuals Do FECAL SEX About 80% of gays (see Table) admit to licking and/or inserting their tongues into the anus of partners and thus ingesting medically significant amounts of feces. Those who eat or wallow in it are probably at even greater risk. In the diary study,5 70% of the gays had engaged in this activity--half regularly over 6 months. Result? --the "annual incidence of hepatitis A in...homosexual men was 22 percent, whereas no heterosexual men acquired hepatitis A." In 1992,26 it was noted that the proportion of London gays engaging in oral/anal sex had not declined since 1984.
Citizens Against Government Waste Since the first federal resources were made available to state and local health agencies for AIDS prevention in 1985, federal funding, which now includes money for research, treatment, and housing, has skyrocketed to $13 billion for fiscal 2003. As a result of the work of highly mobilized lobbying forces, more is spent per patient on AIDS than on any other disease, though it does not even currently rank among the top 15 causes of death in the United States. In one year, 1998, heart disease, the nation's leading cause of death, killed 724,859 Americans only 6.8 percent less than the 774,767 who have contracted AIDS in the last 20 years.2 Of those 774,767 total AIDS cases, 462,766 have died. During that same period, 14 million Americans 30 times more have died of heart disease.
The fact is, there is a concerted effort by activist groups to promote homosexuality as "normal", "good" and something to be celebrated.
It's an agenda, and being promoted by homosexual advocacy groups. What the heck should it be called other than a "homosexual agenda" ?
As you know, slander and misrepresentation are among the most grevious sins in jewish eyes and it seems to me that you have slandered me most egregiously. I believe in Torah, I just don't believe that x-ians can have their cake and eat it to when it comes to interpreting Torah in their daily lives.
I realized when I wrote my initial post that I might be making a mistake and misinterpreting your position, but I recklessly continued based on my emotions. Slander is like murder, and I have indeed committed a great sin. I must therefore apologize to you publicly, before joesnuffy and all FReepers, as well as ask for your forgiveness as well as that of HaShem Yitbarakh. My public slander of an innocent is indefensible.
I am sorry that I reacted emotionally, but as an observant Noachide I am so sensitive to (and unfortunately accustomed to) the stereotype that chr*stians are "Bible-believers" and defenders of morality while Jews are liberal non-believers. I am furious at Horowitz for publicly condemning the Torah's anti-homosexual attitude, a position for which his Jewishness will be blamed, you may be sure. Yet he had to invoke J*sus to make his liberal point! (This is not the first case of a Jewish liberal having to invoke the "arch-conservative" J*sus to justify his position.) I saw your initial post to joesnuffy and, instead of first checking your other posts or your posting history, reacted emotionally. I certainly do not consider belief in the "new testament" to be necessary for one to be a "true conservative" (in fact, no believer in a "new testament" can truly be a conservative). However, Horowitz has done real damage and this cannot be brushed under the rug. However hypocritical his chr*stian critics, he deserves only condemnation and no defense. Biblical morality has again been identified with chr*stianity, and opposition to Biblical law again identified with Judaism. G-d help us.
As for myself, I am an observant Noachide, which means that although not Jewish I acknowledge the Torah as G-d's Ultimate Truth. I utterly reject chr*stianity and every other false religion. However, while your consternation at the chr*stians is understandable, you are wrong to demand that they first observe the entire Torah before having the right to condemn homosexuality. As a matter of fact, non-Jews are explicitly not supposed to observe the Shabbat or Yamim Tovim as Jews do (though life is to revolve around the Jewish calendar), and there are other Jewish laws which are explicitly forbidden to non-Jews as well. As for others (such as eating pork), while they may be voluntarily adopted by non-Jews, they are not and cannot be considered absolute requirements. Non-Jews are forbidden only to eat meat or drink blood taken from an animal while it was still alive. Therefore you are mistaken to imply that non-Jews are not supposed to eat pork and are "picking and choosing" if they do otherwise. (In fact, non-Jews are permitted to bring as whole burnt offerings any clean beast, as Noach did, and are not restricted to those animals permitted as sacrifices to Jews.)
While I was wrong, I nevertheless urge you to be extremely cautious so as to avoid giving false impressions of Judaism. I realize that considering my own impetuosity this is somewhat hypocritical, but at least my idiosyncracies aren't likely to be applied to the entire Jewish people.
Shalom uverakhah.
See Acts 10:10-16.
B Knotts,
Read the entire story and contemplate Acts 10:28. G-d showed Peter that he was not to consider the gentiles unclean. The vision was not an endorsement on pork chops and ham and cheese sandwiches, G-d forbid.
X-ians claim that "all" of G-d's word is inspired, inerrant and consistent yet the way most xians interpret it is very inconisistent when you see in Torah that we are not supposed to eat pork and in the "New Testament" it's ok.
Isaiah 66:17 says, "Those who santify themselves, and purify themselves to go into the gardens, behind one tree inthe middle, eating swine flesh, and the hateful then, and the mouse, will be cut off together, says the L-ORD."
I can't remember where this quote comes from, but it seems approps (sp?) here: 'the Moral Majority is neither moral nor a majority'.
As I said on another thread concerning this subject; their (Fundies and/or Evangels) input is welcome, and can be put to the good, but if they think they're going to intimidate this President or this President's followers into blind acquiesence to their agenda, they'd better think again.
If they want to walk, that's A OK. Better a party rid itself of it's more fanatical sects, if it can.
going to intimidate this President or this President's followers
POST #199.
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