BRUSSELS (ChurchMilitant.com) - Brussels is getting backlash from Poland for flying a gay flag outside of the European Parliament.
On Thursday, a rainbow flag was hoisted up in front of the building for the first time in its history, marking "International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia."
Despite outcry from Polish conservatives, the European Union said, "Regrettably, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) persons in Europe are still subject to serious discrimination and maltreatment on the basis of their sexual orientation or gender identity."
Ryszard Legutko, co-chairman of the European Conservatives and Reformists group, said in a letter to the European Parliament that Thursday's initiative displayed "just one lobby group."
He questioned why the Parliament would not promote other unofficial "international days" like those celebrating museums, beer or students.
Since 1990, May 17 has been remembered as the anniversary of the removal of homosexuality from the International Classification of Diseases of the World Health Organization.
But Legutko blasted the display of a rainbow flag, saying it endorses a "moral revolution" that privileges same-sex couples. There are "practically no ... attacks" on those with same-sex attraction, Legutko emphasized.
There are 'practically no ... attacks' on those with same-sex attraction.
This didn't stop the European Commission and European External Action Service, also in Brussels, from illuminating its headquarters with the colors of the gay flag.
Frans Timmermans, vice president of the European Commission, said, "It's time we put an end to the widespread discrimination against LGBTI people together."
However, Legutko instead recommended hoisting a flag with a fish — a symbol of Christianity — to symbolize the millions of Christians suffering persecution worldwide.
Poster Comment:
Many of us are sick and tired of politicians kissing the asses of queers! Resurrect the law that outlaws homosexual acts and proselytizing today's thoroughly confused youth. The belong hidden under a rock.
Widespread LGBTQI discrimination? Where? When? By whom? If it happens there must have been major stories in the press. But nothing.
Instead what I see are Christians being slaughtered and persecuted by the thousands over the last 20 years and not a word from the atheistic marxists in Brussels, London, Berlin, Paris.
I'm all for it. There's nothing discriminatory or unconstitutional about regulating behavior. If we don't like it, why should we have to put up with it?
It depends on the behavior and the situation,and you have to put up with it for the same reasons other people have to put up with YOUR brain farts,as long as you are not harming anyone else.
Nobody died and made you a public personality monitor.
If liberals can ban prayer in schools -- a constitutional right protected by the first amendment -- we can certainly ban homosexual behavior.
First of all,there is NOTHING the least bit "liberal" about those people,so quit bragging on them.
Secondly,you are a bleeping clueless fool if you can't understand that what YOU are demanding is PRECISELY the same thing you are bitching about,the right to deny other people their rights to live their lives in peace.
In the entire history of the world,the only nations that had to build walls to keep their own citizens from leaving were those with leftist governments.
You should. What about those born with "what amounts to a genetic birth defect" an attraction to young children? Animals? Dead bodies? They get a pass also because they were "born that way"?
Are you REALLY so stupid you can't figure that out?
You should have been born in Germany or Russia in the 20's. You would have fit right in with the official police state state of mind back then,and made a good work camp guard.
In the entire history of the world,the only nations that had to build walls to keep their own citizens from leaving were those with leftist governments.
If. Truth is, society is more against police intrusion in the bedroom than it is against perversion, and we - the majority -are right about that. So we've stripped away the power of you, the minority, to enforce laws on private sexual behavior. You still hate it, but you've lost the law. We took it from you, and we're not giving it back.
ATTENTION MISTER WHITE!
NEENER,NEENER!
In the entire history of the world,the only nations that had to build walls to keep their own citizens from leaving were those with leftist governments.
I'm against the public, not private, behavior of gays.
You sure don't sound like it. Seems to me every post you make is "there oughta be a law to make faggots illegal!"
In the entire history of the world,the only nations that had to build walls to keep their own citizens from leaving were those with leftist governments.
Homosexuals father or give birth to children every day, and have done so since the dawn of time. You would agree that they do it a lower rate, based on common sense? Over the course of several generations such genes would be wiped out of the pool. Ergo - homosexuality is acquired.
Unfortunately your theorem isn't as supported as well as we might hope, there seems to be more of them or perhaps the zombie hordes have always been with us, hiding in the sewers like allegators
Gays made their gains through the courts, not through the legislatures. Let's be clear about that.
Not so. The Supreme Court swept aside statutes barring gay marriage, but anti-discrimination statutes have been put into place through the vote in states and municipalities all over the country.
In this sense, it is similar to Roe v. Wade, or to Prohibition.
Had a vote been taken to legalize abortion in 1973, it would have failed, but the Supreme Court ruled. Were it put to a vote today, abortion would remain legal.
In a similar vein, Prohibition was pushed through by organized Christian Temperance organizations, but once the law was in place the public at large resented the law, broke it on a massive scale, and ultimately overcame the standard apathy to come out and vote. Indeed, the drive to end Prohibition assisted FDR in getting elected President the first time.
The Courts and the ballot box work together to change things. Frequently the court breaks entrenched political power, and the people go to the ballot box to protect their gains against the revanche
Condemned, sure. But outlawed? No. Empowers the police and politicians too much. If people want to piss on each other and roll around in feces, I think there's something wrong with them. If they do it in the street that needs to be stopped. But to empower the authorities to go into private places to stop and punish things that people do in private? No. It's much worse to have such powerful police than it is to have people committing acts against nature.
"My dear, I don't care what people do so long as they don't do it in the street and frighten the horses." - Mrs. Patrick Campbell
But to empower the authorities to go into private places to stop and punish things that people do in private? No.
I suppose it follows, then, to ask "Where do you draw the line?"
After all, people can molest children, beat slaves, drown puppies, traffic heroin and make bombs in private. Do we just let that go?
No. You draw the line at murder, non-consensual sex, slavery, animal cruelty and terrorism. Drugs is where the issue gets muddier. Is it better to maintain drug prohibition and thereby keep the general level of drug abuse and drug addiction lower in the society, as alcohol prohibition did (50% reduction in cirrhosis during prohibition - it massively reduced alcoholism and drunkness, but at the price of intrusion and organized crime)? Or is it better to let people consume what they will unmolested, and treat the results medically?
I would say it's a line-drawing exercise, just as drinking ages are. Strong drugs such as LSD and opiods are terrifically destructive fast. Weak drugs, such as cannabis or nicotine, don't destroy most people who have used them, and most people have tried them at one point or other in their lives.
The line is drawn where democracy draws it. If I were King, or running a political party, I would call of marijuana to be treated as tobacco, and for the drinking age to be lowered to 18.
I expect that in our democracy, I will eventually win on the first point: pot is gradually being legalized. I'm not really comfortable with that: I would have preferred that the harsh drug laws from Rockefeller until now really had stamped out drugs. But they didn't, and they won't, and I'm not willing to go on chewing up lives in a losing war.
I expect that I would lose on the second: when the drinking age was 18 there was a lot more death on the roads from drunken high schoolers.
It is not. You do not understand how natural selection work.
Is adultery acquired? What about democracy?
Tendency toward adultery is based on genes. Why? Because it helps to pass MORE genes to the next generation.
Tendency toward equality and justice is supported by the selection as it secures more genes for the weaker to pass. So is tendency to dominate and grab more - it helps strong to increase their share in the pool.
You will say it is contradictory. Yes, because nature is not a legal code.
We would have to open up a discussion of nature, law, science, God, existence, philosophy to take this one to ground.
I could have that discussion with you, if you really wanted it. This forum is a strange place to try to have such a discussion, because it will be like Socrates and Plato having a discussion around a campfire...in a jungle full of angry bears and wild bucks in rutting season.
Still, if you really want to have that discussion, we can. Could be interesting.
Still, if you really want to have that discussion, we can. Could be interesting.
These topics are more like work for me. Actually it was in my past. I could explain one thing or two, but to debate, the topics would have to be more advanced.
For example how the neo-Lamarckian schemes and original (pre-genetic) Darwinism relate to gene sharing and communication within ecosystems and biosphere as a whole. Also how the gene switching is regulated. Also the role of inter-population segregation in targeted streams of micro-evolution. Evolution of human gene pools interacting with collective psyche. Etc ...
These topics are more like work for me. Actually it was in my past. I could explain one thing or two, but to debate, the topics would have to be more advanced.
For example how the neo-Lamarckian schemes and original (pre-genetic) Darwinism relate to gene sharing and communication within ecosystems and biosphere as a whole. Also how the gene switching is regulated. Also the role of inter-population segregation in targeted streams of micro-evolution. Evolution of human gene pools interacting with collective psyche. Etc ...
I didn't say debate. I find debate useless and uninteresting. Nobody ever convinced me of anything by taking an adversarial position to me and fighting with me. Not one time, in 55 years, has anybody ever convinced me of a single thing by debate. Debate is completely useless.
Not so. The Supreme Court swept aside statutes barring gay marriage, but anti-discrimination statutes have been put into place through the vote in states and municipalities all over the country.
From Wiki:
"The strongest expansions in LGBT rights in the United States have come from the United States Supreme Court. In four landmark rulings between the years 1996 and 2015, the Supreme Court invalidated a state law banning protected class recognition based upon homosexuality, struck down sodomy laws nationwide, struck down Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act, and made same- sex marriage legal nationwide."
"Adoption of children by same-sex married couples is legal nationwide since June 2015 following the Supreme Court's decision in Obergefell v. Hodges."
When you can't get the votes, plead your case in front of a socially liberal court.
I'll agree with you when nature files a suit in court and testifies,and wins.
In the entire history of the world,the only nations that had to build walls to keep their own citizens from leaving were those with leftist governments.
Prohibition was pushed through by organized Christian Temperance organizations
Who,like all the other commie "do-gooder" organizations was anything BUT "temperate".
In the entire history of the world,the only nations that had to build walls to keep their own citizens from leaving were those with leftist governments.
No. You draw the line at murder, non-consensual sex, slavery, animal cruelty and terrorism.
Unfortunately common sense is very uncommon,and WAAAAY too many people confuse their own personal biases with common sense.
"Why,if I had MY way........."
In the entire history of the world,the only nations that had to build walls to keep their own citizens from leaving were those with leftist governments.
It is not. You do not understand how natural selection work.
No,you don't. You confuse religious doctrine and prejudices with nature.
Nature doesn't give a flaming flip WHAT you,me,or anyone else thinks. Nature is something we deal with by trying to adapt to it,not something we give orders.
In the entire history of the world,the only nations that had to build walls to keep their own citizens from leaving were those with leftist governments.
For example how the neo-Lamarckian schemes and original (pre-genetic) Darwinism relate to gene sharing and communication within ecosystems and biosphere as a whole. Also how the gene switching is regulated. Also the role of inter-population segregation in targeted streams of micro-evolution. Evolution of human gene pools interacting with collective psyche. Etc ...
You have no excuse at all for your arguments against the existence of homosexuality.
In the entire history of the world,the only nations that had to build walls to keep their own citizens from leaving were those with leftist governments.
In my opinion what's acquired is the predisposition to homosexuality -- as with the predisposition to pedophilia, alcoholism, drug use, smoking or being overweight, to name a few.
Doesn't mean you have to engage in that behavior, or that you're entitled to engage in that behavior, or that the rest of us have to accept that behavior as normal.
When you can't get the votes, plead your case in front of a socially liberal court.
Yep. That's our system. The quickest way to ban abortion completely is to get five pro-life justices and have them abolish abortion nationwide as a matter of constitutional right of persons to life.
The power is there. The only question is: who is to wield it?
Doesn't mean you have to engage in that behavior, or that you're entitled to engage in that behavior, or that the rest of us have to accept that behavior as normal.
That is true. The only behavior we HAVE to engage in, involuntarily, is breathing and excreting.
So, the question is: what are you ENTITLED to engage in? I think we would both come down on the side of saying "What the law of our land lets us do."
So then it's purely a question of what that law should be (and who decides).
I think that the law should let people have whatever sex they please with other consenting adults, and I think the law should not give any recourse to those who dislike that. And that's actually what our law DOES, right now, so I am content with it.
The only question, then, is whether or not we have to ACCEPT legal behavior as "normal". You and I both don't think that homosexual activity is "normal". It's deviant. I shrug my shoulders at it because I just don't care what people do. You are horrified by it. I think it's important that you don't get to express your horror legally in any way, that you essentially have to passively accept something you really don't like, even if you don't think it's normal at all, because the law says it's legal.
In the same vein, I know that abortion is the intentional pre-meditated murder of an innocent unborn child. It horrifies me, and if I had the power, I would outlaw it and punish those who commit it. But the law is against me, so however abnormal I find the activity and the law, I just have to lump it. If it's important enough to me, I can emigrate to get away from that law, or I can persuade other people to agree with me and get an administration in there that will put five like-minded people on the Supremes.
In general, I find the liberalizing and relaxing of legal restraints on personal liberty to be a very good thing and I support it. I think we went too far with abortion, but everything else seems, on balance, positive to me. Including letting gays have whatever sex they want to have. I don't care. And I don't think that people who DO care, like you do, should have any say in it. So the law is permissive, and the politics have to be strong enough to stop you in your tracks. One of us is going to be unhappy. In general, moralistic, puritanical and racist types have had their politics beaten down and beaten back over the course of American history, and greater and greater liberty has emerged. I strongly support that trend, both of freeing people from puritanical laws, and of putting into place the political and legal structures to prevent your side from regaining momentum to ever be able to change any of the rules back.
Ergo, for example, in the case of race, not only did slavery and segregation need to be formally outlawed on paper, but we needed the FBI and internal intelligence and law enforcement apparatus of state to go in and smash the KKK and related organizations, to prosecute and persecute and beat them down sufficiently that people recognized that they would pay a heavy social, economic, political and economic price if they sided with the losing side of that fight. The past was racially oppressive. People did not change their minds easily. So once the racists were defeated in physical and legal battle, they needed to be forcibly oppressed by the government, persecuted, so that people would be afraid to join their ranks or mouth support for them, for fear of their own well being.
This was effective. The KKK was once a mighty organization that struck fear into many, both physical fear on the ground and also in the halls of power. But they were defeated and reduced, to the point that only a crazy person on the margins who was so filled with racial hatred that he would be willing to give up any prospects of a decent job or a normal life would join.
In some lands in history, masturbation was a mortal sin, and was punished violently through public whipping or worse. Unmarried heterosexual fornication and gay sex in private between consenting adults both fall into the category of masturbation: things that are nobody's business, that nobody should be able to punish. Since some people want to, and are unhappy if those things are allowed, those people have to be kept unhappy, by making damned sure they cannot wrest back control of the law to reimpose their views.
Unmarried heterosexual fornication and gay sex in private between consenting adults both fall into the category of masturbation
Not exactly. Into category of mutual masturbation falls female homosexuality and sometimes male homosexuality. Heterosexual fornication is not a masturbation.
Serious unnatural sin is anal sex, also among heterosexual couples, perhaps lighter in the later case.
At least so say canons of the Orthodox Church that deal with sins and penance.
Not exactly. Into category of mutual masturbation falls female homosexuality and sometimes male homosexuality. Heterosexual fornication is not a masturbation.
I did not mean the mechanics. I meant to say that these are all grave sexual sins, according to the dominant religions anyway.
In general, I find the liberalizing and relaxing of legal restraints on personal liberty to be a very good thing and I support it.
Well, that would work in a society consisting solely of responsible adults -- as would most Libertarian ideas.
But our society also consists of impressionable children along with irresponsible adults who expect, nay demand, the rest of us to pick up the tab when things go bad for them.
So, the question is: what are you ENTITLED to engage in? I think we would both come down on the side of saying "What the law of our land lets us do."
Nope. It would be the behavior you choose to do because you're you. No one gets to tell YOU what to do. You're "entitled" to do whatever your personal moral compass allows.
An example of this would be Jeremiah Johnson or any of his mountain men friends. They live above the treeline and away from civilization.
Yor problem is that you want to behave like a mountain man but live among the rest of us. Doesn't work that way.
Obviously the Orthodox Church and the Catholic Church have different views of sex. Masturbation is, and always has been, a very grave sin - a mortal sin of sexual immorality - in the Catholic Church. The catechism confirms this. So, while I agree with you, based on the mildness of the Torah towards this sin, calling it a mere uncleanness, the Catholic Church holds masturbation to be porneia, a gravely disordered sin, and notes that the mental aspect involved constitutes lust in the heart and mind, which Jesus identified as adultery. So, our discussion has uncovered another enormous difference between the Eastern Orthodox and Catholic Churches, and a very ancient one.
Perhaps harshness of Latin Church toward minor sexual transgressions is a result of mandatory celibacy that affected mindset of their clergy?
BTW, the church canons that I mentioned are from long before Schism, so perhaps Western attitudes were formed by the scholastic celibate scholars during Middle Ages?
I wonder how much hypocrisy was involved there and guilt tripping?
The Catholic Church says that its moral views on this date from the early church, from long before the Schism. So, this is an example of something on which the Church that was once united always disagreed, apparently, between East and West. In a similar vein, the Eastern Orthodox allow remarriage after divorce. I don't know if they always have, but they do now. The Catholic Church never did - to the point of losing England on account of it.
The Catholic Church says that it's moral views on this date from the early church
The Whore of Babylon's "Moral views" are a crock of Bullshyte exemplified by how it plays the shell game with predators like Joseph Maskell and E. Neil Magnus.
Well, that would work in a society consisting solely of responsible adults -- as would most Libertarian ideas.
But our society also consists of impressionable children along with irresponsible adults who expect, nay demand, the rest of us to pick up the tab when things go bad for them.
Meaning, your argument is specious.
My argument is the law of the land. Your argument is your own reasoning, and it has not persuaded the bulk of the American people.
Our laws already permit consenting adults to perform whatever sex acts they please in private, and also on film for the Internet to see.
Our laws recognize that impressionable children should be protected from such things, and so we have an age of consent, we have rules against pornographic information being distributed or viewed by minors. We have ages of legal marriage.
We have struck what we, as a society, consider to be a reasonable balance between adults' rights of sexual liberty, and the need to protect children from sex before they are mature.
You don't agree with where the society has drawn the line. I do, so I include myself as part of the "we" that have set the rule where we have set it.
It would be one thing if you were taking the position I do on abortion - that it is evil, and wrong, and SHOULD BE outlawed, but is, in fact, legal. I call the law itself evil in the case of abortion.
If you did that regarding the laws of sexual liberty, because you disagree with the degree of permissiveness in our society, then I would have little to say to you other than that we disagree on the amount of sexual liberty there should be.
Trouble is, though, that's not what you are arguing. You are speaking as though your opinion on these matters IS the law, as though you are the final arbiter not of right and wrong, but of what the law IS. And you are not. The law IS, in fact, precisely where I think it ought to be on the subject: very broad personal liberty, with some protection for children - but not so much protection for children that private adult sexual behavior, and public adult affectionate non-sexual behavior (hand-holding, kissing, snuggling), is restricted. Where the law IS, is where I think it should be. You object to it quite strongly, but you speak as though your opinion, which is NOT the law, and which, in fact, has absolutely no force or authority in our society (just as my opinion on abortion has no authority in our society), WERE the law.
You have called my "argument" specious. It's not specious. It is operant. It is authoritative. The Law IS what I have said I like, and it IS NOT what you think on the subject.
So, you can lament how bad things have become that our laws are so permissive - O Tempus! O Mores! - and there's little I could say to that other than "I disagree". But when you take the tone of a king, or a grand inquisitor, as though you are the arbiter of what the law is and what arguments are acceptable - well, I have to call you out on it, because that's just not true.
Someone like Stone could come along and say that the law of society is beneath the Law of God, and that I am some sort of evil heathen for wanting societal laws to be less restrictive than the laws of God. At least then he would be able to refer to an actual law that our civil laws breach. I do precisely that when speaking of abortion, which is the pre-meditated murder of innocent children, under the law of God - but NOT under the law of the state in which we live.
There's a realism to the way I discuss these things. There's an authoritarian unrealism to the way that you discuss it. Your viewpoint USED TO BE the law of the land, just as slavery and segregation USED TO BE the law of the American South. But the South lost that fight, and now the law down South is a law that most there opposed at one point. Likewise, the law of sexual restriction and illegality of homosexual or unmarried heterosexual contact has been swept away. The folks who believed in those old laws fought for them, against people like me, who fought against them. They lost. The law on those subjects is what I say it is, and what I want it to be, not what they say it is.
With abortion, I've clearly lost the battle at present. Not sure whether the war can eventually be won or not on that front. But I never make the mistake of equating my personal opinion of things with the law. Where the law agrees with my opinion, I am happy. Where it doesn't, I am sad or irritated. In no case do I do what you do, and assert that my opinion, where its faction has already lost control of the law, is nevertheless "the law". It isn't.
Yes, we DO say. And you fellows in Eastern Orthodoxy say that your way of doing things is the way it has always been. And in truth, documentary evidence of both positions existing simultaneously exists.
Which REALLY means that the Church was never actually united way back then, it was just so spread out and had such greater issues pressing that these differences that have always separated East and West did not come to the forefront for about a millennium.
When they did, and Europe was stable enough that Christians could fight about these differences that were always there, they did fight about them, and each claimed - truthfully - that THEIR way of doing was "original".
There hasn't been REAL Christian unity in belief or doctrine since the beginning. The Acts of the Apostles are full of the contentions of the Apostolic generation, and it never got better than that afterwards.
Neither the Catholic NOR the Orthodox Churches would ever want to admit THAT, so each goes on believing itself to be authentic and original, which is actually true, but each considers all other ways to have "fallwn away" from the original purity, which each asserts they alone represent. And that is patently false.
Those who are honest enough to admit that the evidence shows greater diversity than most would like, are quick to then change the discussion to questions of hiearchical authority.
From my perch, the failures of both churches on that score are howlingly self-evident.
Then the Protestants came along and blew things up.
Meanwhile the Oriental Orthodox could claim that BOTH the Catholics and the EO have lapsed into error and heresy, but if they did claim such a thing, nobody would listen or care, because, really, who are THOSE PEOPLE to have an opinion. Theological wisdom from Africa or India or the deep middle east? Please!
My own view: the Quakers have gotten it more right than anybody else, as far as actually listening to God goes.
