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God – 2

Want to go for the best three out of five??? ;-)

Comment by Democrat Soldier — December 6, 2007 @ 8:24 am

From the book of James in the New Testament…

James 1 starting at verse 12

Blessed is the man who perseveres under trial, because when he has stood the test, he will receive the crown of life that God has promised to those who love him.

When tempted, no one should say, “God is tempting me.” For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone; but each one is tempted when, by his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed. Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death.

In September 2001, Michael Guest, an openly gay man, was appointed as the U.S. Ambassador to Romania. Guest’s presence made Bucharest a more attractive assignment for other gays in the Foreign Service, exporting not democracy or free markets but the sexual revolution.

Gays and Lesbians in Foreign Affairs Agencies (GLIFAA), lists increasing opportunities for same-sex partners accompanying personnel on assignment overseas and securing taxpayer-funded health insurance and benefits for the partners and children of lesbian and gay employees in its mission statement. As the gay marriage debate raged at home, taxpayers began to foot the bill for defacto union[s] in Bucharest.

Advertisements for the annual Christmas parties invited not just spouses but partners. Suddenly it was like there was a club running thing, said one Foreign Service veteran who had been stationed there. If you weren’t part of the gay clique, you did not belong. After Guest began his mission, the persistent recognition and endorsement of same-sex partners prevented a devout Evenglical Christian and father of five, who had been accustomed to his post being a family-friendly environment, from participating in certain events to avoid having to explain homosexuality to his young children.

Others who have worked in Bucharest claim that the cultural shift at the embassy was not limited to the formal approval of same-sex relationships and make graver charges. These witnesses claim that promiscuity among some Americans stationed in Romania increased to levels that threatened to jeopardize the mission’s reputation and subject U.S. government employees to blackmail. They stated that some diplomats were engaging in homosexual relations with Romanian citizens and other foreign nationals.

Such dalliances led some to ridicule the U.S. diplomatic presence in Romania as the pink embassy and the Bucharest bathhouse. A letter sent by a group of Romanian NGOs and individuals to President Bush and Secretary Powell in January named high-level appointees responsible for having “transformed the U.S. diplomatic addresses in to havens of debauchery”, and further alleges that [b]ased on reports and pornographic photos circulating around newspapers they.. use their privileged positions to corrupt young Romanians, paying them for sexual relations, by both cash and visas to the U.S. The signatories of this letter include the Union of War Veterans, the National League of December 1989 Combatants, and three former Romanian parliament members.

An erstwhile gay lover of a former high-ranking official at the USAID mission in Bucharest has described such conduct in a sworn statement. He says that he lived with this official for four years in his government housing under the guise of serving as household help. There he claims to have witnessed U.S. government employees engaged in lewd acts and entering into other compromising positions.

According to his deposition, these acts included multiple sexual encounters with young Romanian men, some of whom may have been minors. The high-ranking USAID official’s taxpayer-provided residence was said to be the site of wild sexually charged parties where participants allegedly used drugs and viewed pornography. He states that this official has made sexually explicit photographs of himself available on the Internet. He accuses other officials of paying for sexual favors as well as offering foreign nationals visas in exchange for money or sex. Asked for comment, the USAID press office said it was unaware of any such allegations. Calls to the Inspector General’s office were not returned.

This goes beyond moral and cultural tensions over homosexuality. If true, these serious betrayals of diplomatic responsibility are incompatible with the professional climate required to represent this country abroad effectively. Contrary to a firm U.S. policy against illicit sexual liaisons and the corruption of minors, they would constitute illegal acts using taxpayers’ property and money with the potential to harm national security.

In addition, our national reputation has suffered enough recent damage in Romania due to the case of Kurt Treptow, a prominent historian the U.S. embassy in Bucharest placed on the Fulbright Commission. Yet Treptow was a convicted sex offender. He videotaped himself engaging in sexual acts with children as young as seven, some of whom were allegedly orphans, and was sentenced to seven years in Romanian prison for pedophilia and child abuse.

In addition to the allegations about Guest’s role in Treptow appointment, newspaper articles accused Guest of poor leadership in presiding over an embassy that the paper says is plagued by mismanagement. Several of the articles accuse embassy officials, including Guest, of engaging in influence-peddling in the appointment of outsiders to embassy posts. One article accuses the embassy of assisting U.S. citizens in obtaining legal assistance in Romania to adopt children in what it calls a multi-million dollar adoption effort in which U.S.-owned adoption agencies allegedly charge $10,000 or more to facilitate adoptions for Americans.

In July 2004, Guest was recalled to the U.S. Department of State following a yearlong onslaught of articles in an English language newspaper in Bucharest accusing Guest of corruption and mismanagement. Whoever is posted as U.S. ambassador to Romania will be responsible for maintaining acceptable standards of conduct.

Embassy has been instrumental in initiating annual gay pride parades in Bucharest since 2004 and organizing them since. In 2005, there was such opposition from Romanian Orthodox Church and folks all across Europe that Romanian president had to step in to get the relectunt Bucharest mayor and police commissioner to issue the 2005 GayFest permit. Both 2006 and 2007 GayFest met with violent clashes from protestors.

When Bill Clinton selected the homosexual James Hormel to become ambassador to Luxembourg, some senators objected to Hormel not due to his sexual orientation as such but rather because he was considered likely to use his ambassadorship as a government-sanctioned platform for gay-rights advocacy. There were no similar concerns about Guest, who was a 20-year career diplomat, lifelong Republican, and former Reagan administration press aide.

What about all those homosexual animals? I guess God DID make people homosexual!

Bitbit- 0
God -1

Comment by bitblt — December 4, 2007 @ 2:53 pm

You want to make this assertion legitimate, you must also concede that you MUST apply the same criteria to ANY married couple. If one church doesn’t like interracial marriage? Interfaith marriage? International marriage? You are essentially saying that it is up to each church, each faith, each IDEOLOGY, as to which marriages they are legally allowed to acknowledge, and which they are legally allowed to discriminate against.

Familial ties have existed for as long as humanity has, but how can one possibly assert that the ancient foundation is one man, one woman? On the contrary, in many cultures, and throughout history (and prehistory) the dominant males spread their seed far and wide, take multiple mates/wives, discard mates/wives who are barren or unable to conceive the desired (usually male) offspring, etc. In fact, this behavior has strengthened humanity in the long run, allowing stronger, smarter, faster humans to survive, while those unable or poorly equipped to survive to die out. MODERN man has circumvented this process WITH civilization, allowing far more men to successfully breed with women.

In cultures such as American culture, marriage is a legally binding contract. A church can marry people until they are blue in the face, but those marriages mean nothing, legally, unless the state has acknowledged that contract A couple unable to marry faces many challenges, including but not limited to social discrimination (such as being refused a right to rent property), medical discrimination (where a couple cannot see one another, because they are not married, even when one is undergoing life-threatening surgery), property discrimination (as a divorce court is SPECIFICALLY SET UP to divide assets in the case of a dissolved marriage, whereas a civil court’s rules, which apply to unmarried couples, are poorly equipped to deal with such a splitting of assets), legal discrimination (there are many rules and laws that apply to married couples that allow them to severely shorten the time required to resolve legal issues, whereas an unmarried couple would essentially need to pay lawyers huge sums of $$$ for their time and effort to DUPLICATE those laws, writing them in to the contract that takes the place of the blanket protections that the simple status of “married” and the ~$100 for the marriage license covers…clearly discriminatory), and so on.

Gay or polygamous marriage does not in any way, shape or form threaten our society, or threaten civilization itself, or threaten straight couples. On the contrary, gay marriage gives individuals the many and well-established legal protections that straight marriage has had for many, many years.

The only people, literally the ONLY people hurt when you prevent gay or polygamous marriage, are those whom you prevent from getting married. Not only are you infringing upon their LEGAL rights, you are also likely infringing upon their RELIGIOUS rights as well. You are telling THEIR church, THEIR religion, THEIR friends and family that THEIR views and THEIR rights are not to be respected.

It is vile.

It is disgusting.

It is quite thoroughly bigoted.

How so? Are you suggesting that civilizations can not exist without marriage?

So, Daryll, how does your little mindset account for religious groups that DO allow same-sex marriage within their denominations?
As for bitblt, SHOW ME the scripture that states UNEQUIVOCALLY that “God created marriage”, especially one that is limited to “one-man, one-woman”. I recall PLENTY of Biblical tales of men being “married” to multiple women (best story is probably Jacob and Rachel and Leah and their handmaidens–that’s the one that invented the whole “Twelve Tribes” nonsense; if you feel that has some special rationale, try the one about Solomon and his 1000 or so wiveS and concubines–note the significant plural). Marriage is a man-made creation that, under modern American laws, is REGULATED BY THE STATE. You CANNOT get married in this country WITHOUT a STATE-ISSUED LICENSE, no matter who performs the ceremony. (And, incidentally, the law doesn’t mandate ANY religious aspect to the ceremony. Virtually every marriage ceremony–even the religious ones–include a “by the power of the State of _________” clause.)

Comment by JosephW — December 4, 2007 @ 3:29 pm

Matthew 19

4″Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’? So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate.”

This is Christ quoting Genesis 3 which for me is rather unequivocal, but if you don’t believe Christ is the Son of God, this quote probably won’t matter at all to you.

It is true that there are several accounts in the Old Testament of men having more that one wife. Two of the most notable cases you have mentioned. There are not many of these cases. In no case does the Bible ever say that more than one wife is a good, permissible situation. The Bible doesn’t give instructions on how to treat more than one wife.

In fact in the cases you mentioned the Bible points out the negatives of the practice, especially with King Solomon. The Bible says his many wives drew him away from the God of Israel.

Many Conservative Christians(CCs), I would be one of them, believe that marriage is older than religion or government. CCs often describe it as the first institution created by God.

Just as the constitution does not mention marriage the government simply accepts the practice of a man and a woman living together in a marriage.

There’s not a government on the earth powerful enough to change that, and why would they want to change it? Marriage has a huge stabilizing effect on a populace. Civilization is dependent on the institution of marriage.

One can be married without a license or without a ceremony. This is because the most important part of the marriage ceremony is the, “I pronounce you man and wife.” This is the declaration of intent to live together as husband and wife. This is what people respect and recognize. When couples live together as if they’re man and wife, people take the act to be the declaration of intent.

The state issued license is not permission to be married; it’s the state’s record of the marriage.

They don’t ask you to see your marriage license when you introduce yourself as Mr. and Mrs. They don’t ask to see your marriage license when you enroll your kids in school. They don’t ask you to see your marriage license when you apply for a mortgage – at least they didn’t use to. Until there is a problem with the division of property or of responsibility for the children the license is a minor issue. Without the ceremony and the license the first time the couple allows themselves to be addressed as Mr. and Mrs. they have represented themselves as married – recognition of intent to be married. It’s never a big deal unless there’s a problem with the property or the kids. Then, an unlicensed couple will be declared common-law wife and treated as if they were married.

If a couple living together doesn’t want to be married they have to keep representing themselves as not married.

One more point: It’s obvious prima facie that progressives are 1000 times more loving than the right – they care about other people and planet, unlike the right.

This is the right’s new big “talking point” about progressives. It’s a projection of their own hatred (Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, anyone?) and also last-ditch weak defense against ideological argument, now that their economic agenda is being revealed to many in the center as 30 years of supply-side GREED for the big corporate rich and privileged (and their Bible literaist wing is laughed out of any serious intellectual debate).

All gods are metaphors at best, lies at worst, and it’s high time we quit giving air (let alone airtime) to the poisonous voices of the theocrats.

God doesn’t make trash.

Until you are able to take your Bible and throw it in the fireplace, you will never understand what is in it.

What God has joined together, no man should attempt to divide. If God does not want people to fall in love with and commit to someone else of the same gender, then he wouldn’t make those people homosexual. If God just wants those he made homosexual to just suffer, then he does not really love them and, therefore, is not really the God you think he is. No person of a particular faith has a right to force that faith on anyone else, as you support on a regular basis.
And our secular government has no business telling people who they can and cannot marry on the basis of one brand of religious belief, regardless of any perceived or claimed “majority” status.

And I ask again, when are you going to knock the TP dust off your sandals?

Comment by PatrioticLiberalChristian — December 4, 2007 @ 12:46 pm

Presupposes a fact not in evidence….that God made people homosexual. God certainly didn’t design people to be homosexuals. So, what’s your authority for this statement?

God didn’t put two same-same gender people together in a sexual relationship and call it a marriage. He put a man and a woman together in a sexual relationship and called it a marriage.

Further, I suppose you know that Christ endorsed the marriage relationship in Matthew 19 ( I’ve posted it enough that surely you’ve seen it!) when he quotes Genesis by saying that a man and a woman are one flesh when they are married. This phrase “one flesh” has serious spiritual implications throughout the Bible.

Believe it would have been more genuine of you to say that evolution makes people homosexual. Believe you can also make a better case as to the cause of homosexuality by blaming evolution..

Our secular government can not grant the right for two same-same people to marry because God has never granted that right.

To be married other people have to recognize that a couple – a man and a woman – are married. Do you think you can force someone to recognize a same-same gender couple as married?

This is about much more that changing the laws.

Do really want Daryll to stop posting on TP? If he leaves there really won’t be much “contrast” on TP?

You know, like the joke about the Marines?
A: “Why are the Marines looking for a good men?” Q:”Contrast!”

Just for the record are you a Christian who believes in the divinity of Christ?