Presidential Election

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Macarthur
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Thankfully you are in a huge minority and shrinking by the day
kurt vonnegut
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Bob Lee said:


I assume you mean the same legal standings as marriages, but without terming it a marriage. Absolutely not. I don't think gay couples should be able to adopt children or purchase eggs, or pay a brokerage to rent the wombs of poor women to grow children for them to have and raise for example. I don't think people have a right to have a child of their own.

I think we should encourage people to get married and have children, which gay couples can never do, because it's a net benefit for society. To the extent tax credits and benefits encourage that, I think they're good. I can't see a benefit to society of offering tax credits to men who sleep with each other, for no other reason than because they sleep with each other.

I know I'm responding with a lot of questions - I appreciate your responding.

What should be the legal criteria for determining who can adopt or have a surrogate? Assume we agree on the basics and ensuring the adopting persons have income, stability, clean records, etc. What is the thing that specifically disqualifies same sex persons from adoption?

As follow up questions, can a single person adopt / have a surrogate? Straight Hindu couple? Or Muslim couple, Jewish couple, atheist couple? How about an openly Satanist couple?

I'm fine with tax incentives for people to have children. These already exist and already apply only to couples with children. There are economic and tax related benefits purely associated with marriage that applies to straight couples that do not have children and plan to not have any children. If 'tax benefit' is something purely attached to having children, and nothing else, is it fair to apply it evenly to all couples not producing children?

Bob Lee
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kurt vonnegut said:

Bob Lee said:


I assume you mean the same legal standings as marriages, but without terming it a marriage. Absolutely not. I don't think gay couples should be able to adopt children or purchase eggs, or pay a brokerage to rent the wombs of poor women to grow children for them to have and raise for example. I don't think people have a right to have a child of their own.

I think we should encourage people to get married and have children, which gay couples can never do, because it's a net benefit for society. To the extent tax credits and benefits encourage that, I think they're good. I can't see a benefit to society of offering tax credits to men who sleep with each other, for no other reason than because they sleep with each other.

I know I'm responding with a lot of questions - I appreciate your responding.

What should be the legal criteria for determining who can adopt or have a surrogate? Assume we agree on the basics and ensuring the adopting persons have income, stability, clean records, etc. What is the thing that specifically disqualifies same sex persons from adoption?

As follow up questions, can a single person adopt / have a surrogate? Straight Hindu couple? Or Muslim couple, Jewish couple, atheist couple? How about an openly Satanist couple?

I'm fine with tax incentives for people to have children. These already exist and already apply only to couples with children. There are economic and tax related benefits purely associated with marriage that applies to straight couples that do not have children and plan to not have any children. If 'tax benefit' is something purely attached to having children, and nothing else, is it fair to apply it evenly to all couples not producing children?




If a child is up for adoption, their circumstances are already less than ideal. The criteria you gave are good minimum requirements. I would add married to the list. I don't think it's practical to have religious tests for secular adoption agencies, but I hope Catholic adoption agencies would try to place children with good Catholic families if they can. Placing children with avowed satanists would be a horrible injustice and I hope agencies who have the children's best interest in mind would pass if a better option were available. But like I said, it may not be practical in every situation. We should consider single parents in cases where they're the child's family member. I don't have hard and fast rules except we should choose the best option available, which is almost always 2 parents of opposite sex.

If I had my way, I would limit tax benefits to married couples, widows, and widowers with children for the reasons I gave. But I think marriage as a vocation is still a societal good, even if it can't produce children because of some malady or something. So I don't have an issue with it.
Bob Lee
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Macarthur said:

Thankfully you are in a huge minority and shrinking by the day


Well, there are at least 7 of us, and there'll be 1 more of us in October. At some point we're going to go from a shrinking minority to a growing minority.
kurt vonnegut
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Bob Lee said:



No, you should have the same freedoms I do. The question always is who should win out in a conflict of wills. Which philosophy is freeing, and which one stifles freedom. If a woman prostitutes herself to afford her heroin addiction, in large part because she lives somewhere those are permitted, is she more or less free than a woman who has managed to avoid the near occasion of sin because she lives somewhere those things are forbidden?

If someone's "religion" includes prostitution and drug use, but I want to raise children where those things aren't allowed, who should win?

On a purely theoretical basis - all other things equal - the first woman has more freedom. Objectively. The difficulty I have with your example is that women that work as prostitutes to support a drug addition are often not choosing that line of work or recreational habit because this is what they want to do with their life. Unfortunate circumstances, abuse, lack of education or opportunity, and other things often play a role and have the affect of making it seem like the woman in question has less freedom.

I think that your last question hits on a frustration that people like me have. I have personal objections to all manner of beliefs about Christianity. But, I have ZERO interest in EVER telling you what to must believe, how to believe, or how you must live your life. As long as your actions do not directly impact me, I don't care what you believe, who you sleep with, or what you put in your body. But, it goes beyond that. I am willing to fight for you to have the right to do all of the things I have personal objections to. Would you do the same?

When you ask about a hypothetical person who might not wish to allow elements of my religion that do not affect them, we are no longer simply talking about competing freedoms. We are talking about the elevation of one freedom at the expense of another. If there are elements of my religion that do not affect you directly and you wish to make illegal, then you do not support freedom of religion. You simply support freedom to do the things you want and you support restriction of freedom for people to do certain things you don't like.

Freedom of religion has to be a two way street, in my opinion. It is a common comment on this board that Christian freedom of religion is being challenged today in this country. But unless Christians are willing to show that the are in support of freedom of religion (and not just freedom for Christians), then the comment is going to ring hollow. In other words, if you want the secularist and atheists and non-Christians to hold sacred your right to your faith, you have to be able to return the favor.
Bob Lee
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The crux of the differences between our worldview is in that first paragraph. You view freedom as the ability to choose. I view it as the pretext for a uniquely human existence wherein we have a responsibility to choose to do things that are worthwhile.

For example if a lion forces copulation onto another lion, we don't say he's committed a crime. He hasn't raped the lioness. Human freedom isn't like that. We know men CAN do that, and sometimes they do. But that's an injustice. Not freedom.

W/r/t your second paragraph, there are no purely private sins. We're political creatures. We live with each other and interact with each other. Societal norms and taboos inform our consciences. We draw boundaries all the time.
kurt vonnegut
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Bob Lee said:

The crux of the differences between our worldview is in that first paragraph. You view freedom as the ability to choose. I view it as the pretext for a uniquely human existence wherein we have a responsibility to choose to do things that are worthwhile.

I don't object to your definition of freedom. I accept that my freedom comes with a moral duty to do something worthwhile. However, I hold this as a personal truth. And what exactly 'moral duty' entails is a personal belief and decision. For me, the problem arises when we endow government with the authority to determine for us what is and is not worthwhile.


Quote:

W/r/t your second paragraph, there are no purely private sins. We're political creatures. We live with each other and interact with each other. Societal norms and taboos inform our consciences. We draw boundaries all the time.

I understand what you are saying, but, for legal purposes, I think we must draw some line or distinction between 'private' and 'public' in this case. And I don't think it is hyperbole to say that the First Amendment hinges on it. If what my wife and I do behind close doors is your business, then what your preaches says from the pulpit is now my business. Right? The idea of 'no private sins' is also recipe for the dissolution of church autonomy to decide how and what it teaches.

Those societal norms and taboos are a product of a collective formed by the sum of 300+ million individuals. We each ought to have 1/300 millionth say in what those norms and taboos are. No more, no less. I think that people have become comfortable with the idea of government placing its thumb on the scales of those norms when it suits them. And we've become comfortable with expressing outrage when it places its thumb on the scales that doesn't suit us.
kurt vonnegut
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Bob Lee said:


If a child is up for adoption, their circumstances are already less than ideal. The criteria you gave are good minimum requirements. I would add married to the list. I don't think it's practical to have religious tests for secular adoption agencies, but I hope Catholic adoption agencies would try to place children with good Catholic families if they can. Placing children with avowed satanists would be a horrible injustice and I hope agencies who have the children's best interest in mind would pass if a better option were available. But like I said, it may not be practical in every situation. We should consider single parents in cases where they're the child's family member. I don't have hard and fast rules except we should choose the best option available, which is almost always 2 parents of opposite sex.

If I had my way, I would limit tax benefits to married couples, widows, and widowers with children for the reasons I gave. But I think marriage as a vocation is still a societal good, even if it can't produce children because of some malady or something. So I don't have an issue with it.

For the record, I don't really oppose Christian adoption agencies having more autonomy in deciding where they place children. I don't know much about how adoption agencies are regulated, but I would say that I am uncomfortable with the application of certain anti-discrimination rules on a Christian adoption agency.

However, public adoption agencies should be a different story. On what grounds does a public agency determine that a Christian family is better than a Muslim family is better than an atheist family is better than a Satanist family? And on what grounds does a public agency decide that a couple is unfit to be parents because of their sexual orientation?
Bob Lee
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kurt vonnegut said:

Bob Lee said:

The crux of the differences between our worldview is in that first paragraph. You view freedom as the ability to choose. I view it as the pretext for a uniquely human existence wherein we have a responsibility to choose to do things that are worthwhile.

I don't object to your definition of freedom. I accept that my freedom comes with a moral duty to do something worthwhile. However, I hold this as a personal truth. And what exactly 'moral duty' entails is a personal belief and decision. For me, the problem arises when we endow government with the authority to determine for us what is and is not worthwhile.


Quote:

W/r/t your second paragraph, there are no purely private sins. We're political creatures. We live with each other and interact with each other. Societal norms and taboos inform our consciences. We draw boundaries all the time.

I understand what you are saying, but, for legal purposes, I think we must draw some line or distinction between 'private' and 'public' in this case. And I don't think it is hyperbole to say that the First Amendment hinges on it. If what my wife and I do behind close doors is your business, then what your preaches says from the pulpit is now my business. Right? The idea of 'no private sins' is also recipe for the dissolution of church autonomy to decide how and what it teaches.

Those societal norms and taboos are a product of a collective formed by the sum of 300+ million individuals. We each ought to have 1/300 millionth say in what those norms and taboos are. No more, no less. I think that people have become comfortable with the idea of government placing its thumb on the scales of those norms when it suits them. And we've become comfortable with expressing outrage when it places its thumb on the scales that doesn't suit us.


But societal norms and taboos are also the product of our laws. do you think it's a coincidence that abortion has become so pervasive that some women will even proudly say they've had one or more, since Roe v. Wade was decided, and not before then?

Is it a coincidence that divorce and single parent households are more pervasive since no fault divorce became the norm?

Have those things had positive impacts on society? Wouldn't it be better if we hadn't done them?
Sapper Redux
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Quote:

But societal norms and taboos are also the product of our laws. do you think it's a coincidence that abortion has become so pervasive that some women will even proudly say they've had one or more, since Roe v. Wade was decided, and not before then?


Boy, have I got news for you…

Oh, and people not being stuck in violent / abusive relationships is a good thing. Kids are better off in a safe single parent home than in an abusive two parent home.
nortex97
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It's funny to me how 'gay stuff' is so important to the R/P board vs. f16. In every single discussion.

And again, neither candidate has any history at all of 'going after' gays. Trump had the first gay cabinet official, who still is social media wise very actively supporting him. Decades ago VP Cheney had the first openly gay child of a Potus/VP office holder. Justice Kennedy, who wrote the famous/infamous 'love wins' decision, was nominated by none other than Ronald Reagan. Lindsey Graham, well, enough said.

Consensual homosexual adult activity should have zero bearing on who one votes for, pragmatically. The only religious caveat I'd draw on that is that if one values such sexual freedom/activity or whatever one calls it, the Democrats are heavily aligned with the Hamas wing/moslem voters who overtly want to restrict this over time, and want to bring more sharia law adherents/believers into this country. To the point where their obvious/best candidate for VP was disqualified for being Jewish.

Bob Lee
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Sapper Redux said:

Quote:

But societal norms and taboos are also the product of our laws. do you think it's a coincidence that abortion has become so pervasive that some women will even proudly say they've had one or more, since Roe v. Wade was decided, and not before then?


Boy, have I got news for you…

Oh, and people not being stuck in violent / abusive relationships is a good thing. Kids are better off in a safe single parent home than in an abusive two parent home.


Not sure what I'm supposed to infer from this? You have news. Okay?

Are you saying Abortion was not seen by almost everyone as a shameful act? Society's attitudes on abortion haven't changed since Roe v. Wade was decided?
AGC
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kurt vonnegut said:

Bob Lee said:

The crux of the differences between our worldview is in that first paragraph. You view freedom as the ability to choose. I view it as the pretext for a uniquely human existence wherein we have a responsibility to choose to do things that are worthwhile.

I don't object to your definition of freedom. I accept that my freedom comes with a moral duty to do something worthwhile. However, I hold this as a personal truth. And what exactly 'moral duty' entails is a personal belief and decision. For me, the problem arises when we endow government with the authority to determine for us what is and is not worthwhile.


Quote:

W/r/t your second paragraph, there are no purely private sins. We're political creatures. We live with each other and interact with each other. Societal norms and taboos inform our consciences. We draw boundaries all the time.

I understand what you are saying, but, for legal purposes, I think we must draw some line or distinction between 'private' and 'public' in this case. And I don't think it is hyperbole to say that the First Amendment hinges on it. If what my wife and I do behind close doors is your business, then what your preaches says from the pulpit is now my business. Right? The idea of 'no private sins' is also recipe for the dissolution of church autonomy to decide how and what it teaches.

Those societal norms and taboos are a product of a collective formed by the sum of 300+ million individuals. We each ought to have 1/300 millionth say in what those norms and taboos are. No more, no less. I think that people have become comfortable with the idea of government placing its thumb on the scales of those norms when it suits them. And we've become comfortable with expressing outrage when it places its thumb on the scales that doesn't suit us.


Why does legally neutral punish religion? Why does neutral expect Christians to be closeted rather than gays? How is this not simply someone else tipping the scales (like you or sapper)?
Jabin
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Quote:

Oh, and people not being stuck in violent / abusive relationships is a good thing. Kids are better off in a safe single parent home than in an abusive two parent home.
Those are the only two options? Why do you assume that the only alternative to a single parent home is an "abusive" two parent home?
kurt vonnegut
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Bob Lee said:


But societal norms and taboos are also the product of our laws. do you think it's a coincidence that abortion has become so pervasive that some women will even proudly say they've had one or more, since Roe v. Wade was decided, and not before then?

Is it a coincidence that divorce and single parent households are more pervasive since no fault divorce became the norm?

Have those things had positive impacts on society? Wouldn't it be better if we hadn't done them?

I think it all still comes down to what you believe the government's role should be. There are many things that are 'legal' that could be argued to be a net negative on society. Where do you stop and where do you draw the line?
kurt vonnegut
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AGC said:



Why does legally neutral punish religion? Why does neutral expect Christians to be closeted rather than gays? How is this not simply someone else tipping the scales (like you or sapper)?

I'm not sure how my position punishes religion or expects Christians to be closeted.
Bob Lee
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kurt vonnegut said:

Bob Lee said:


But societal norms and taboos are also the product of our laws. do you think it's a coincidence that abortion has become so pervasive that some women will even proudly say they've had one or more, since Roe v. Wade was decided, and not before then?

Is it a coincidence that divorce and single parent households are more pervasive since no fault divorce became the norm?

Have those things had positive impacts on society? Wouldn't it be better if we hadn't done them?

I think it all still comes down to what you believe the government's role should be. There are many things that are 'legal' that could be argued to be a net negative on society. Where do you stop and where do you draw the line?


I said it earlier. You draw the line between justice and injustice.
Jabin
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Kurt, let's take this another direction. Do you think that Muslims should be allowed to conduct honor killings or Hindus to practice sati here in the US? Why or why not?
kurt vonnegut
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Jabin said:

Kurt, let's take this another direction. Do you think that Muslims should be allowed to conduct honor killings or Hindus to practice sati here in the US? Why or why not?

No, I would not support those things. Generally, limiting a freedom is a acceptable where it is necessary to protect someone from being harmed or where it is necessary to keep from unjustly limiting someone else's freedoms.
Jabin
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kurt vonnegut said:

Jabin said:

Kurt, let's take this another direction. Do you think that Muslims should be allowed to conduct honor killings or Hindus to practice sati here in the US? Why or why not?

No, I would not support those things. Generally, limiting a freedom is a acceptable where it is necessary to protect someone from being harmed or where it is necessary to keep from unjustly limiting someone else's freedoms.
Why? Aren't you imposing your values and morals on Muslims and Hindus? Isn't that a religious/philosophical/moral belief that you are imposing on others?

In Muslim or Hindu cultures, your attitude would be seen as ludicrous.
nortex97
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AG


Truly blessed!
kurt vonnegut
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Jabin said:


Why? Aren't you imposing your values and morals on Muslims and Hindus? Isn't that a religious/philosophical/moral belief that you are imposing on others?

In Muslim or Hindu cultures, your attitude would be seen as ludicrous.

Of course, any law is an imposition of some value.

The limitation of Congress against restricting religion, free speech, the press, etc. and everything in the First Amendment is an imposition of a value. If I can assume that it is a shared value between you, Bob, and myself, then I hope to discuss how we implement laws and rules that are consistent with this original shared value.

The First Amendment only works with some degree of mutual respect. You have to regard as me worthy of those individual rights and I have to regard you as equally worthy. Which is why I have been saying - if you only care about religious freedom for Christians, then you don't care about religious freedom. If you or Bob do not share the values expressed in the First Amendment, then lets be open about it.

It is not the case that I am philosophically opposed to any and all imposing of values. That would be an impossible goal for any society. However, I believe that it is within the spirit of the First Amendment and the Bill of Rights that we should have a set of laws and rules that permit as much freedom of religion, speech, press, etc. as possible rather than limit that freedom to one narrow and specific acceptable band of behavior.

As an example, lets say we had three laws to evaluate:

Law 1 - All children must be brought up within a Christian church, receive a state approved Christian education, and pledge to live according to Christian principles. Parents are permitted only to choose a denomination.

Law 2 - Children may not be permitted to be brought up within any religious organization or be permitted to receive a religious education.

Law 3 - Parents may decide whether or not to bring up their children and educate them in any church or with any philosophical tradition as they see fit.

These are stupid examples maybe, but I think it illustrates the point. Laws 1 and 2 offer a very narrow band of what is acceptable and provide very narrow descriptions of what our freedoms are. Law 3 offers the most options and is a far more broad and wide application of religious freedom. I support law 3.

The cultures that you believe would find my position ludicrous are likely cultures that do not share my (our) value in the First Amendment.
barbacoa taco
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kurt vonnegut said:




The First Amendment only works with some degree of mutual respect. You have to regard as me worthy of those individual rights and I have to regard you as equally worthy. Which is why I have been saying - if you only care about religious freedom for Christians, then you don't care about religious freedom. If you or Bob do not share the values expressed in the First Amendment, then lets be open about it.
At the end of the day, the true test of whether someone is actually principled when it comes to the issue of freedom is whether they still believe in it even when it's uncomfortable. And conservatives (including many in this thread, and the vast majority of F16, and nearly the entire Republican Party under Trump) consistently fail this test.

Freedom of speech? --> "As long as you aren't speaking out against Israel/teaching an uncomfortable subject in school/selling a book about an uncomfortable topic."

Freedom of gay couples to marry/adopt? --> "No, it's not marriage according to my faith, and kids shouldn't grow up in a house like that." This has always been the case for LGBT rights, and we never heard the end of it when SSM was a political issue.

Ten Commandments in schools, even though it's blatantly unconstitutional not all the students are Christians. --> "I don't care."

Banning medication abortion/IVF/contraception is a blatant violation of personal freedom that is based entirely or mostly on religious belief without any regard to anyone else's beliefs.

In Trump's case, if anyone speaks out against him or insults him, he's tried to sue them, said we should expand libel laws, and said other incendiary things totally unbecoming of any political leader. Because he thinks speaking out against him is off limits.

Project 2025 and Christian Nationalism (one and the same) seek to strip away people's rights and completely undermine the First Amendment, because the drafters of that document ultimately believe that freedom only applies to them and their allies. Anyone who falls outside this group is a group to be controlled.
Jabin
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I think that I largely agree with what you wrote. We should not try to impose a theocracy of any kind in America.

That's the easy part. The hard part is what does that mean in real life?

For example, I grew up in a time when prayers were still said over the public school PA system. It was a joke. They'd have kids say the prayers and we all knew that the kid that said the prayer that day had been sleeping with his girlfriend the night before, had gotten drunk, or had been smoking weed. In one way I was glad to see the prohibition of public school prayers because I thought that they brought ridicule down on God.

On the other hand, that prohibition is itself a religious value. It is impossible to have a society and legal system truly and completely free of all religion. Even that attempt is a religious statement. Every law, even those that are deemed to be malum prohibitum, are actually based on moral values that ultimately derive their basis from some sort of religious or world view system.

The type of society that Sapper proposes, for example, I find extremely offensive. It is an imposition of his moral values on me and my children. His proposal is to allow only secular views and the relativistic moral values that are incorporated in secularism.

I suspect that a society and legal system based on some, even any, religious consensus is probably the most stable society. As our society becomes more and more balkanized, we become less and less stable.
kurt vonnegut
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barbacoa taco said:


At the end of the day, the true test of whether someone is actually principled when it comes to the issue of freedom is whether they still believe in it even when it's uncomfortable. And conservatives (including many in this thread, and the vast majority of F16, and nearly the entire Republican Party under Trump) consistently fail this test.

To be fair, I think a lot of people fail this test on both sides.
barbacoa taco
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that's fair, though the OP is specifically about conservatives and who to vote for as a Christian
Sapper Redux
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Quote:

The type of society that Sapper proposes, for example, I find extremely offensive. It is an imposition of his moral values on me and my children. His proposal is to allow only secular views and the relativistic moral values that are incorporated in secularism


What I'm proposing is equal rights under the law regardless of beliefs. You can raise your children how you like. You shouldn't get to tell me how I have to raise my children.
AGC
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Sapper Redux said:

Quote:

The type of society that Sapper proposes, for example, I find extremely offensive. It is an imposition of his moral values on me and my children. His proposal is to allow only secular views and the relativistic moral values that are incorporated in secularism


What I'm proposing is equal rights under the law regardless of beliefs. You can raise your children how you like. You shouldn't get to tell me how I have to raise my children.


This doesn't exist; laws by their nature limit practice of belief. No one actually wants it anyways: surely you don't want child brides married off in smaller mormon sects, for example. Hence the idea of 'neutral' preferences non-theists when they propose it.
Jabin
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Sapper Redux said:

Quote:

The type of society that Sapper proposes, for example, I find extremely offensive. It is an imposition of his moral values on me and my children. His proposal is to allow only secular views and the relativistic moral values that are incorporated in secularism


What I'm proposing is equal rights under the law regardless of beliefs. You can raise your children how you like. You shouldn't get to tell me how I have to raise my children.
Except you guys won't let me raise my children how I like. You are increasingly taking away parental rights over children to fit your worldview dogma. You won't allow Christians to teach Christianity in public schools, yet you blanket those schools with secular propaganda.

You are so sure that you're right that you can't even see your own inconsistency.
kurt vonnegut
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Jabin said:

Sapper Redux said:

What I'm proposing is equal rights under the law regardless of beliefs. You can raise your children how you like. You shouldn't get to tell me how I have to raise my children.
Except you guys won't let me raise my children how I like. You are increasingly taking away parental rights over children to fit your worldview dogma. You won't allow Christians to teach Christianity in public schools, yet you blanket those schools with secular propaganda.

Can you expand on the things that secularists are doing that restrict how you raise your children?
Bob Lee
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kurt vonnegut said:

Jabin said:

Sapper Redux said:

What I'm proposing is equal rights under the law regardless of beliefs. You can raise your children how you like. You shouldn't get to tell me how I have to raise my children.
Except you guys won't let me raise my children how I like. You are increasingly taking away parental rights over children to fit your worldview dogma. You won't allow Christians to teach Christianity in public schools, yet you blanket those schools with secular propaganda.

Can you expand on the things that secularists are doing that restrict how you raise your children?


The wrong assumption is that "not religion" is practically different than anti-religion. Leaving children to their own devices when it comes to first principles: how did the world come to exist? Where do our rights come from? Questions about the nature of the human person and epistemological questions. The most basic questions that are the foundation for even just our ability to know anything at all. It's anti Christian. Our entire reason for existing is to love God and serve God. But just pretend God doesn't exist while at school. My kid's not allowed to sing a Marian antiphon in a school talent show but, if she wanted to sing a Miley Cyrus song about how she doesn't need a man and she can love herself better, that's a-okay.
barbacoa taco
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Jabin said:

Sapper Redux said:

Quote:

The type of society that Sapper proposes, for example, I find extremely offensive. It is an imposition of his moral values on me and my children. His proposal is to allow only secular views and the relativistic moral values that are incorporated in secularism


What I'm proposing is equal rights under the law regardless of beliefs. You can raise your children how you like. You shouldn't get to tell me how I have to raise my children.
Except you guys won't let me raise my children how I like. You are increasingly taking away parental rights over children to fit your worldview dogma. You won't allow Christians to teach Christianity in public schools, yet you blanket those schools with secular propaganda.

You are so sure that you're right that you can't even see your own inconsistency.
are you saying that not allowing Christians to teach Christianity in public schools is an infringement of your religious freedom?

If you want your kids to be in a Christian school, then send them to a private Christian school.

This is exactly the attitude I was talking about in my earlier post
Bob Lee
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barbacoa taco said:

Jabin said:

Sapper Redux said:

Quote:

The type of society that Sapper proposes, for example, I find extremely offensive. It is an imposition of his moral values on me and my children. His proposal is to allow only secular views and the relativistic moral values that are incorporated in secularism


What I'm proposing is equal rights under the law regardless of beliefs. You can raise your children how you like. You shouldn't get to tell me how I have to raise my children.
Except you guys won't let me raise my children how I like. You are increasingly taking away parental rights over children to fit your worldview dogma. You won't allow Christians to teach Christianity in public schools, yet you blanket those schools with secular propaganda.

You are so sure that you're right that you can't even see your own inconsistency.
are you saying that not allowing Christians to teach Christianity in public schools is an infringement of your religious freedom?

If you want your kids to be in a Christian school, then send them to a private Christian school.

This is exactly the attitude I was talking about in my earlier post

I do. But I'm also compelled to contribute my money to fund schools that teach secularism.
barbacoa taco
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Bob Lee said:

kurt vonnegut said:

Jabin said:

Sapper Redux said:

What I'm proposing is equal rights under the law regardless of beliefs. You can raise your children how you like. You shouldn't get to tell me how I have to raise my children.
Except you guys won't let me raise my children how I like. You are increasingly taking away parental rights over children to fit your worldview dogma. You won't allow Christians to teach Christianity in public schools, yet you blanket those schools with secular propaganda.

Can you expand on the things that secularists are doing that restrict how you raise your children?


The wrong assumption is that "not religion" is practically different than anti-religion. Leaving children to their own devices when it comes to first principles: how did the world come to exist? Where do our rights come from? Questions about the nature of the human person and epistemological questions. The most basic questions that are the foundation for even just our ability to know anything at all. It's anti Christian. Our entire reason for existing is to love God and serve God. But just pretend God doesn't exist while at school. My kid's not allowed to sing a Marian antiphon in a school talent show but, if she wanted to sing a Miley Cyrus song about how she doesn't need a man and she can love herself better, that's a-okay.
I find it odd that people equate a secular setting with an anti-Christian setting.

School is not church, and simply acknowledging that is not forcing anyone to "pretend God does not exist." Individual prayers and other religious acts by students are protected. What's not protected is school sponsored prayer or endorsement of any religion. There are Christian student groups, moments of silence, and See You At The Pole. There are even some schools that teach the Bible as literature in English class.

Yet again, you seem to think the lack of special treatment is the same as oppression.
Bob Lee
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barbacoa taco said:

Bob Lee said:

kurt vonnegut said:

Jabin said:

Sapper Redux said:

What I'm proposing is equal rights under the law regardless of beliefs. You can raise your children how you like. You shouldn't get to tell me how I have to raise my children.
Except you guys won't let me raise my children how I like. You are increasingly taking away parental rights over children to fit your worldview dogma. You won't allow Christians to teach Christianity in public schools, yet you blanket those schools with secular propaganda.

Can you expand on the things that secularists are doing that restrict how you raise your children?


The wrong assumption is that "not religion" is practically different than anti-religion. Leaving children to their own devices when it comes to first principles: how did the world come to exist? Where do our rights come from? Questions about the nature of the human person and epistemological questions. The most basic questions that are the foundation for even just our ability to know anything at all. It's anti Christian. Our entire reason for existing is to love God and serve God. But just pretend God doesn't exist while at school. My kid's not allowed to sing a Marian antiphon in a school talent show but, if she wanted to sing a Miley Cyrus song about how she doesn't need a man and she can love herself better, that's a-okay.
I find it odd that people equate a secular setting with an anti-Christian setting.

School is not church, and simply acknowledging that is not forcing anyone to "pretend God does not exist." Individual prayers and other religious acts by students are protected. What's not protected is school sponsored prayer or endorsement of any religion. There are Christian student groups, moments of silence, and See You At The Pole. There are even some schools that teach the Bible as literature in English class.

Yet again, you seem to think the lack of special treatment is the same as oppression.

Secularism requires the removal of religion. That's what it is. How can it be anything but anti-religious?
 
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